Corsairs and Cataclysms 3: A Darkwyrlds Tale (Corsairs & Cataclysms) by Devan Drake

Author:Devan Drake [Drake, Devan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Hector’s head hit the ice with a thud, frozen in his final slack-jawed expression. It bounced on the ice, the neck stump staining the crisp white with rancid black blood.

Not that there was much crisp white left in the immediate vicinity for long. The protective shell flickered and sputtered out of existence around me, but I didn’t have to worry about a sudden inrush of abominations in my weakened state. They started screaming and held their heads or cradled other body parts almost immediately after I decapitated their sick father. With a disgusting wet-popping sound, all those that had come after me ruptured violently from within.

Their scaly skin expanded in painful bubbles until it could take no more and split explosively. Black blood and innards were liberally sprayed in every direction. It was like someone had set off a series of cherry bombs stuffed in frogs prepped for dissection. Only on a much larger scale.

Everywhere I looked, abominations dropped to the ice or fell from the side of the ship they were scaling. Storm Raider had looked to be on the verge of being overwhelmed. A consequence of being on the wrong side of the Crab-clawed Primate. A hefty number of the abominations had run over towards them instead of trying to go around the Primate to get to Marena’s Mercy.

Speaking of the Primate, it looked perplexed for a second, then shrugged its mighty grey shoulders and proceeded to scoop up the corpses and shovel them into its mouth. Somebody was happy, at least.

A handful of the abominations were not dead. They were rent apart and horribly injured, but alive. I spotted a couple that managed to slither back into the lake through the hole in the ice we punched with the ships. However, most of the few survivors flapped and mewled on the ice too far away to escape. My summoned monster had already seen the movement and abandoned eating the dead for those who could still wriggle. It wouldn’t take the Primate long to finish them off.

The battle was over.

<Quest Purging the Mark completed. Chaos Dragonscale Breeches and Divine Dilemma awarded> Quixbix intoned in my head. <You’ve got until the end of the day to assess your reward dilemma.>

That was a relief. Something I’d noticed at the end had me worried for a second. “Was it my imagination or was Hector dead before I cut his head off?”

<Good eyes. I suspect he gave up the mantle of being Sholmdir’s champion. That slippery sea god must have had another candidate waiting in the wings. Dumb sap probably didn’t understand it would be instantly fatal.>

“Wouldn’t that screw up my quest?”

<Nope. The devil is in the details. The mark of Sholmdir’s wrath was tied to Hector’s life force, not the mantle. The mark is gone, so your quest is complete. The rest of the pantheon won’t be overly happy with Sholmdir, though. A champion still existing on Earth won’t cost them anything extra, but any refund of energy or influence they were expecting to receive isn’t going to happen.

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