Chapter 912 — Anomaly

A thick stench of blood poured into his nostrils, and Bishop Fernanco, who had only just stepped into the room, instinctively furrowed his brow, his face taking on a grave expression.

As a regional bishop who had personally taken the field of battle, and who to this day still practiced the creed of the God of War—journeying each year to several dangerous regions to help the local knight orders wipe out magical beasts—he knew that smell all too well.

The two other priests in the room noticed the regional bishop's arrival and at once withdrew silently to one side. Fernanco's gaze passed over them and swept slowly across the rather spacious priests' rest chamber.

The scene within was plain at a glance—beds, tables, chairs and the like all arranged as usual; against the north wall stood a shrine to the God of War; on the floor before the shrine lay a great pool of blood not yet fully congealed, and at the center of that pool, a mass of flesh utterly jumbled together, its original form impossible to discern.

Within that horrifying mass of blood and flesh could be seen many fibrous strands joining one another, as though in the very process of forming some kind of fascia; fine hairs crept out from certain crevices in the flesh, thick and stiff as brambles, and many scraps of clothing, wholly corroded, lay scattered about this dreadful scene of death, flecks of blood spattering the ground within some three meters of the pool.

Even the Bishop of the God of War, long accustomed to scenes of blood and grotesquerie, could not help but feel a genuine horror rise within him at the sight.

"Your Grace Fernanco," said a priest, approaching from the side. "I salute you. May your heart be as steel."

"As steel, my brother," Fernanco said, nodding to the priest, his gaze returning to the scene of death at the center of the room. He asked in a low voice, "When was it discovered?"

"Before dawn. A priest on night patrol first noticed something amiss and raised the alarm."

"And that priest?" Fernanco frowned. "Bring him to me."

"That priest..." An odd look came over the face of the priest beside him. "His condition is somewhat abnormal. We have only just calmed him with a potent spell of mental soothing—I fear he may lose control again, and even attack you."

Fernanco shook his head. "No matter. I too am skilled in mental soothing—bring him."

"Yes, Your Grace."

The priest departed on his errand, and moments later footsteps came from beyond the door, mingled with a terrified, endlessly repeated muttering. Fernanco looked toward the sound and saw two acolytes of the church supporting between them a young man in an ordinary priest's robe as he entered the room. The man's condition made the regional bishop's brow furrow at once—

The poor wretch trembled from head to toe, his face pale as a corpse, fine beads of sweat covering every inch of his skin, a turbid haze shot through with a faint blood-red film over the whites of his eyes. He had plainly lost his right mind; the whole way in he had been muttering under his breath, and only up close could those broken fragments be made out:

"The God of War protects... protects... heart as steel, heart as steel, through a hundred battles undying... the God of War protects... I have converted, I have converted..."

The poor man kept on in this way from first to last, as though entirely unaware of the regional bishop standing before him, until a few seconds later his wandering gaze suddenly caught the scene behind the bishop. That lifeless mass of flesh seemed in an instant to prod the deepest terror in his heart; he let out a scream such as a human voice can scarcely produce, wrenched himself free of the two strong acolytes by main force, and lunged straight at Fernanco, the nearest to him, shrieking in a cracked and frantic voice: "In the name of the God! Exterminate the heretics! In the name of the God—"

The priests around them cried out in alarm, but Fernanco merely shifted half a step to the side. He caught the out-of-control priest's robe with his backhand and pulled him around, and as he did, his other elbow drove out hard. There was a dull thud, and the priest collapsed senseless to the floor without the slightest resistance.

Only then did the priests beside him react; they hurried forward in a fluster. "Your Grace Fernanco! Are you all right?"

"I am fine, but he may need a few days' rest," Fernanco said with a wave of his hand, his brow tightly knit as he looked down at the priest on the floor. "...Take him away."

The acolytes at once carried the unconscious priest from the room, and Fernanco heaved a deep sigh. A priest beside him could not refrain from asking, "Your Grace, do you believe this matter..."

"Has that priest been like this the whole time? Praying without cease, calling on our Lord without cease... and taking his own brethren of the church for heretics?"

"Yes, he was like this from the moment we found him," the priest answered at once. "He was discovered lying at the door of the room, already deranged, and he very nearly killed an acolyte. But by whatever method we examined him, we could find no trace of mental corrosion or a curse upon his soul... it is as though he were committing these mad acts entirely of his own will."

Fernanco nodded with a stern face, then asked, "Who else knows of this?"

The priest thought a moment. "Apart from those within the church, only you have been informed as yet... ah, word may also have reached the count—he should not know precisely what has happened inside the church, but the fact that we dispatched a messenger in haste and sealed the church after daybreak cannot be hidden from the count's eyes and ears."

Fernanco's brow knit even tighter. Matters were developing in the direction he least wished to see, yet all was already beyond recall, and he could only force his attention back to the incident itself—the pool of flesh on the floor was plainly the deacon who had died so horribly within the church, the War God's priest Kosto himself. He had known this priest, and knew him for a man of formidable transcendent power; even taken by surprise by a high-tier adept, he could never have died without so much as a struggle. Yet in the whole room, apart from the bloodstains, there was not the slightest trace of a fight—not even the lingering aura that follows the casting of battle magic...

The flesh lay before the shrine of the God of War, where scraps of cloth not entirely corroded still remained. Apart from clothing, the rest should have been the cushion used in prayer... and then the candle before the shrine, burned down to a last stub, the incense left in the vessel, and the prayer book lying open on the table—together these could compose but one unsettling conclusion:

This War God's priest, meeting his death, appeared to have been... melted by his own flesh in the midst of an ordinary prayer to his god.

Fernanco believed he was not the only one to have guessed this horrifying possibility; on every face he saw a gloom too thick to dispel.

And when he thought again of the priest driven mad by witnessing the scene firsthand, the whole affair grew all the more disturbingly strange.

"Your Grace," a priest could not help saying, "what do you think befell Priest Kosto?"

"...Perhaps a very powerful evil spirit assailed our sanctuary, disrupted Priest Kosto's rite of prayer, twisted its direction and polluted the priest's soul," Fernanco said in a low voice. "But that is only my own conjecture—and if an evil spirit so powerful truly appeared within the town, then this matter must be reported to the archdiocese..."

"The count's household will likely send someone soon to inquire," another priest said. "How shall we answer?"