GRP Chapter 24

Their eyes met.

The instant Garthe's eyebrow drew fractionally together, a savage force swept out. Killing intent thick enough to make hardened warriors step back.

Mariaeks could not breathe. She shook in small tremors.

Garthe held her in his cold gaze for a moment, then turned. He passed through the fortress gate without looking back once and was gone.

Mariaeks's legs were going. She nearly sat down backward. Oze appeared quickly and steadied her from behind.

"Oh—are you alright?"

Oze offered what comfort he could. "The Anir is always more sensitive than usual right after battle..."

A short breath escaped her.

She had genuinely thought she was going to die. She had felt deeper fear than the night she had held a dagger to his throat. Their eyes had only met, and Garthe had shown more hostility than the moment his heart had been stabbed through.

The ragged breath dissolved into the cold air. She curled in on herself and trembled, until a cold wind touched the cold sweat beaded on her forehead, and she raised her head. In her eyes: only the dark night, the light-dust from before gone without a trace.

The underground cell was far colder than outside.

Ryaia, eldest of the Paldoa sisters, shuddered.

Heroes who transcended human limits were not much affected by environment. She'd never even caught a cold, wearing only a light tunic and robe. So why was she so cold?

The question formed and the answer arrived almost immediately.

Ah. Not the cold, then. The atmosphere the space itself created. A dim, cramped room lit by only a few candles. Implements of unknown purpose hung across the walls. The smell of blood soaked deep through the cold air, unpleasant in the specific way of things that had been seeping in for a long time.

Perfect. The perfect embodiment of an underground torture chamber.

And Garthe, seated with his legs crossed, was lowering the temperature of the space further still. A man who would look dangerous in a flower garden, placed in a space like this—the combination of environment and subject was devastating.

The prisoner, all four limbs bound by specialized shackles and manacles, kept clacking his teeth together. No one had helpfully explained where he was or what would happen next, but he had apparently figured it out on his own. Even a human who had grown strong by consuming divine power had no way to stop a chill that was beginning to seep into the bones.

'Well, having to look at those eyes...'

The prisoner was facing Garthe directly. Being dropped into the middle of Heimdrykze would have been more merciful.

Ryaia tried imagining holding Garthe's gaze for an extended period and found herself shuddering at the mere thought.

Don't commit crimes. At least not in Olgidphaenn. Not if you didn't want to spend thirty minutes sitting in silence, pleasantly meeting the eyes of whoever ran the place.

Today, in particular, Garthe seemed to be in an especially poor mood. The face was the same as always, but the weight behind it was different.

At the foundation of his emotions there was always something sharp and dangerous. Because of his position as a hero, people tended to accept Garthe's unusual nature as a given—a special person, special in all things. But those who had known him for a long time, stripping away the bias of the word hero, privately thought the Anir's temperament was, if one were being honest about it, somewhat shit.

Ryaia had seen Garthe's mood improve—by even the smallest margin—exactly three times. Roughly once every decade or more, if it happened at all. A truly singular occurrence.

So the current atmosphere—of someone about to seize whoever was nearest—was not unusual, but today was different. Of all the years she had known him, he was at his most weighted and his sharpest. She had no idea what had happened during the solo subjugation.

Garthe drew the pipe from his coat and put it between his lips. Flame from his empty hand lit the end red. A familiar smell began to spread—the thing he always had with him, a bitter poison herb that blunted the mind.

Garthe ran his tongue across the inside of his mouth. Smoke, soaked deep, sent a sharp current through his nerves. The taste hit—bitter enough to sting the tip of his tongue—and even before the effect began, the raw edge of the pain subsided on reflex.

Years of it. The body remembered the slight relief that followed the vile bitterness and settled in advance.

He drew in the smoke. Deep enough to reach every part of him. Gray smoke pushed into the part of his mind that felt full of sharp spines. The sensation arrived: nerves melting thick and slow, the body forced to loosen, thought and sensation both dulled.

In numerical terms—a reduction from roughly a hundred to roughly seventy. The cost: a reliable onset of unpleasant feeling. Not the situation for complaining about side effects. Several days away from Mariaeks. His condition was a mess.

Garthe thought of Mariaeks, suddenly. His smile turned cold.

Ryaia and Samthyeon each shifted, edging a step at a time, until they stood a pace or two away from Garthe. Going near him when he wore that face had never ended well for anyone. The only reason neither of them had fled the room was the fortunate presence of an appropriate target directly in front of him.

"P-please... I'll tell you everything. Just let me live..."

The appropriate target had, at the appropriate moment, provided the appropriate stimulus.

Keeping his mouth shut would have done more for his lifespan. If you were going to be stupid, at least have instincts to compensate. Samthyeon exhaled internally.

Garthe exhaled a long stream of smoke and rose heavily to his feet. Seated, he had been enormous. Standing, he looked the size of a mountain.

The regressor on his knees shook.

"First... let's exchange a light greeting."

Garthe reached through the bars. The regressor's face settled easily in his large grip.

"Hello."

Dark red flame lapped between his fingers. Tsss. The smell of burning flesh.

"AAAAAAHHHH!"

The screaming continued to fill the underground room.

The man did not last long.

Ryaia, who had been frowning at the smell of burning flesh, tossed out a remark.

"Very weak."

"I don't know. He lasted longer than I expected," Samthyeon answered without particular feeling. "He regenerated once, in the middle."

He did not add: for all the good it did him.

"The gods he ate did him some good, at least."

"He got to suffer longer because of it. Is that what people are calling 'some good' these days?"

At Ryaia's expression of distaste, Garthe let out a short laugh.

"Why—wasn't that what he wanted? To be a little stronger, live a little longer, suffer a little longer."

Crawling into the flames of one's own accord. What else was there but to laugh.

Regressor was the name for any being who sought regression to the past. They coveted what was understood to have once been a single divine unity and sought to gather its scattered pieces by consuming the power of other beings—to revert to the powerful forms of the past. Behind the aim of becoming a more complete being, a god, there was no great conviction.

To grow stronger. To live forever. To become a hero whose name spread across the continent—like "the hero Garthe," specifically. To build a name and reputation. To earn money. To hold land. And to share ecstatic love with the greatest beauty on the continent.

Modest, if you looked at it one way. Grand, if you looked at it another.

"How should we handle this?"

"Best to give him the eternal life he wanted."

Olgidphaenn was not only Fox's Den Fortress—it was the name for all the frozen territory adjacent to the divine realm. This vast, barren land held many things: dozens of villages, hundreds of fortresses, thousands of humans, and tens of thousands of corpses.

The frozen land had originally been divine territory. Long ago, humans and various peoples had lived here together, but a god descending from Heimdrykze had brought a harsh winter to the region now called Olgidphaenn. The event 135 years ago: the Great Disaster.

Plants, animals, humans—all creatures large and small—had been seized by winter and frozen. What came to occupy the white silence was what could survive that extreme cold: monsters and gods. Olgidphaenn had been no more accessible to humans than Heimdrykze across the river, until Garthe conquered it.

That had been a decade ago. People sent by the Thul'Mhoriae Alliance and those who had come driven by hope or desire rebuilt ruined kingdoms and villages into fortresses, establishing their presence in earnest—but they had not fully erased the traces of the Great Disaster. The tens of thousands of corpses still found regularly were evidence of that.

The fresh corpse would join them. Garthe had said to give him the eternal life he wanted, so it would be discarded in the desolate ground where criminal bodies accumulated. If lucky, eaten by a monster. If not, frozen in place like all the others—for a hundred years, for a thousand.

Garthe tapped the ash from his pipe onto the corpse and rose.

"Thul'Mhoriae."

He left, the last warmth given.

The Bountiful Moss, which served the finest food anywhere in the fortress, was full again that night. Seats were in such short supply that some had stacked oak barrels and food crates from the storehouse to use as chairs. The cause: the celebrated figures of Fox's Den Fortress, the warriors under the hero Garthe, had packed in. The free mercenaries and criminals who had taken their seats first had been unable to hold out against the force of that presence and had eventually vacated.