Chapter 115: it was Unauthorized!
Elsewhere,
The underground chamber was vast and suffocating as its its jagged walls carved upwards. Mana orb Torches guttered weakly in rusted iron sconces, their flames struggling against the heavy, stagnant air, casting long, wavering shadows across the assembled crowd.
Grey-robed figures lined the perimeter—dozens of them, their faces swallowed by hoods. At their sides, their mutated summons shifted with a restless, hungry energy. The hall was a menagerie of twisted shapes: wolves with jointed, arachnid limbs, serpents bearing clusters of blind, snapping heads, and constructs forged from warped metal that bled pulsing dark magic. All of them had been changed by something or someone in the Court that causes mutations.
And in the center of the chamber, two of the Nemesis Court’s most powerful operatives were seconds away from tearing each other apart.
Clamour stood with his arms crossed, his sharp, aristocratic features curled into a sneer of absolute contempt. Behind him loomed his Treant. It was no longer a mere elemental of the forest; the mutation process had warped it into a mountain of rotting, black bark and malice. Its hollow-knot eyes burned with a sickly, toxic green light, and its massive, infected roots instinctively crushed the stone floor beneath it with every subtle shift. Thick veins of violent purple pulsed beneath its bark, beating in perfect synchronization with Clamour’s own heart.
A dozen paces away, Smithy held his ground. His grey robes were still scorched from the debacle in the Whispering Dark. At his feet, the Void Eel coiled in restless, incorporeal spirals, constantly phasing in and out of the stone floor. Unlike the horrors lining the walls, the eel was pristine, entirely unblessed by the Court’s forced evolution.
"You had no right," Smithy hissed, his voice echoing sharply off the vaulted ceiling. The surrounding cult members watched in deathly silence. "The Tower of Ash was not in our plans, the perimeter was inert. Collapsing it served absolutely zero strategic purpose! All you’ve done is drag the TCA’s eyes right to our doorstep. There are containment teams swarming Ashwick right now. You haven’t intimidated them, Clamour. You’ve given them a scent to trace!"
Clamour’s smile was thin and bloodless. "The Tower of Ash was an education for those little shits. Cross and his little band of upstarts believe they are untouchable. They think they can disrupt our operations, capture our people, and walk away breathing." His voice dropped to a lethal cadence. "They need to understand the cost of their interference."
"The cost of their interference is the Cleansing!" Smithy shot back. "A synchronized strike across dozens of Towers, meticulously planned for months, authorized by the Lord himself! Every asset, every mutated summon, every scrap of intelligence we’ve bled for has been building toward the Cleansing! And you are risking it all for a personal vendetta because a novice Archer embarrassed you!"
"I am executing the Lord’s will!" Clamour snarled.
Behind him, the Treant responded to his fury. Its massive roots violently surged, cracking the ancient flagstones in a rapidly expanding radial web. The nearest cultists scrambled frantically backward to avoid the crushing wood.
"I am his most devoted instrument!" Clamour continued, taking a step forward. "I act in his interests. You, Smithy? You have always been soft. You wanted to recruit Cross from the beginning. You saw ’potential’ in him. You still do, don’t you? Even after he handed our operatives to the TCA. Even after he humiliated you in that fucking flooded cathedral."
Smithy’s jaw tightened. "Cross and his party would have been invaluable assets. They are undeniably strong. They are young and yet consistently break High Class Towers. They adapt. The new world we are forging will require Climbers like them—people who understand the crucible of combat. Erasing them is a catastrophic waste of potential."
"The new world we are building will not suffer their existence!" Clamour’s voice cracked like a whip. "They are weeds! They killed our operatives! They made a mockery of us! They are a cancer, and I will cut them out!" He raised a hand, and the Treant’s roots rose behind him like a hundred striking vipers. "And if you cannot see that... if you are still clinging to the pathetic fantasy of recruiting them... then perhaps your usefulness to the Court has expired as well."
The Void Eel hissed, its incorporeal form violently solidified in the space between the two men, its translucent scales crackling with defensive, spatial energy. Smithy’s hand drifted toward his summon mark. "You wouldn’t dare."
"Wouldn’t I?" Clamour’s eyes shone with malicious delight. "Look at your precious Void Eel, Smithy. You haven’t put it through the mutation evolution yet, have you? It’s still the exact same weak, pathetic creature that lost to some bunnies. Now look at my Treant. Look at what true devotion to the process achieves." The Treant’s roots spread wider, casting deep shadows across the hall. "I could crush you both into this stone. The Lord rewards devotion. Your hesitation is just a quiet form of treason."
The Void Eel coiled tighter, ready to snap. The Treant’s roots tensed to strike.
"Enough."
The word was not shouted. It was spoken softly, almost gently. Yet it cut through the oppressive heat of the chamber like a razor through flesh.
Every head turned.
Their Lord, Darius Fester, stepped from the deep shadows at the far end of the hall. He was a towering, broad-shouldered silhouette. His immaculate black suit, tailored with blood-red seams, stood in stark contrast to the ragged robes of his followers. His pale, dead eyes swept over Clamour and Smithy with the cold, unhurried calculation of an apex predator deciding which prey to devour first.
As he walked, the darkness in the room seemed to bend and deepen around him, the shadows themselves bowing to his presence.
And then, the Oblivion Drake uncoiled from the dark.
It was a nightmare given physical weight. Massive and serpentine, its scales were the color of dead stars—an absolute, suffocating black shot through with the faint, dying light of ancient suns. Its eyes were literal voids, perfect spheres of darkness where light and sanity went to die. As it exhaled, the ambient temperature in the room plummeted so violently that the lights dimmed to embers, and a layer of white frost crawled across the stone.
It didn’t feel like a mere summon. It was like a god’s judgment made flesh.