59: the unspoken bargain
A warm, restless breeze swept through the village of Oakhaven, carrying the faint, earthy scent of sun-baked brick and the distant, dry whisper of the eastern plains. The houses here weren't grand; they were low, solid structures built from mud-fired terracotta brick, their roofs heavy with weathered slate. It was a place struggling against the dust, and the wind seemed intent on winning.
In the center of the dusty common, the air was thick not just with heat, but with a desperate, agitated energy. Villagers, their faces grim, stood hunched over their hastily-gathered weapons. Pitchforks glinted dully, and the few torches they held spat smoky defiance into the bright morning sun.
Garren, the village leader, a man whose silver hair and stern eyes usually commanded respect, was shouting. "We'll wait no more! Vurnam starves us, ignores us! Tonight, we take what's ours—"
The last word choked in his throat.
The breeze, which had been a lively whisper, suddenly died. The heavy silence that dropped over the village was not natural; it was a physical weight, like stepping into a vacuum. Every dog stopped barking, every loose shutter stopped rattling.
Garren looked past the frantic, frozen faces of his people, toward the main road. The air there seemed to shimmer, drawn inward by a magnetic force.
A figure emerged, walking with a calm, effortless gait that unnerved everyone. It was Leornars. His casual attire—simple brown slippers, white open-collared shirt, and blue trousers—was at odds with the sheer, crushing authority he radiated. His eyes, the color of fresh blood, held a deep, quiet intensity.He had a blue Cresent moon earring on his left ear,a black music note necklace and a black bracelet.
But Garren did not see a man. He saw a tear in reality.
For the village leader, everything around Leornars—the terracotta houses, the cracked earth, the very sunlight—was washed out, grayed. The man himself was an impossible beacon, surrounded by a swirling, pulsating crimson aura that seemed to feed on the light of the morning. His eyes were not just glowing; they were two blazing, inescapable red spheres that felt like the terminal judgment of a god. Garren felt his stomach drop away; this was not a man to be defeated, but a force to be endured.
The villagers' unified gasp was a thin, terrified sound.
Garren's panic was overridden by a lifetime of leadership instinct. With a choked roar, he snatched a bow and loosed a single, desperate arrow.
The missile covered the distance in a blur. Leornars did not break stride. He reached out a bare hand, and the arrow was simply caught, its momentum annihilated. With a soft snap that sounded thunderous in the oppressive quiet, he broke the shaft and let the pieces drift to the dust.
He stood opposite the crowd, his posture utterly relaxed, yet embodying absolute menace.
"Aura of Depravity," he whispered.
The word was a trigger. The invisible tension that had been binding the village snapped, replaced by a horrifying, psychic siege. Leornars' aura flared, not outward in a wave of heat, but inward, directly into the minds of the people.
A collective, shuddering scream of pure terror ripped through the village square as the illusions took hold. To the villagers, Leornars was no longer a man; he was a living engine of dismemberment. They saw flashes of their own bodies, neatly and brutally separated, their insides spilling onto the dry ground—a terrifying premonition of their own ends delivered with cold, surgical precision.
The effect was instantaneous and absolute. Men who had been prepared to fight Vurnam knights instantly dropped to their knees, some clawing at their own faces as if to tear the images away. Others simply fainted, their bodies collapsing like sacks of grain in the dusty street.
Leornars walked through the terrified, kneeling crowd, his boots barely scuffing the dirt. He sat down on a rough-hewn rock near the dry fountain, crossing one leg over the other, his slipper dangling loosely.
"What do you achieve with a coup?" His voice was low, reasoned, but its gentle tone only made it more terrifying. "What is the use of it? Does it benefit you to bring pitchforks against the Vurnam knights? What is the real intention?"
He let the question hang, radiating patience and absolute power. When a few of the stronger men tried to lift their heads, Leornars answered their defiance with a simple statement, delivered like a mathematical equation.
"Aura of Depravity, 30 percent power... 200 meter range."
The pressure intensified exponentially. The strongest villagers were pushed flat onto their bellies, their breath punched out of them by the psychic weight, their muscles trembling violently as they fought the urge to simply die to escape the visions.
"I am waiting for answers," he said, the words utterly devoid of warmth, radiating a cold, pristine cruelty.
Leornars then shifted his gaze. A small, dark-haired child, oblivious or too focused to notice the carnage, was by the community well, struggling to draw water. The cup she managed to pull up held a disgusting, muddy, rust-colored sludge.
His brow tightened—an expression of sharp, clinical distaste.
He instantly dispelled the aura of depravity. The suffocating pressure lifted, and the village square was filled with the ragged, shuddering sounds of people gasping for air, gulping in the life-giving breeze they had been denied.
Leornars walked to the child, gently taking the cup from her hand. He sniffed the murky liquid and, with a curt sound of revulsion, poured it out onto the cracked earth. "Disgusting."
With a snap of his fingers, the ground around him seemed to peel open. The air was filled with a sudden, silent crowd. Two hundred Undead soldiers materialized, not rotting, skeletal things, but perfectly preserved, freshly-fleshed warriors clad in polished armor. Then, the monstrous, magnificent form of Ascian, his inferno wolf, appeared with a low, primal growl, immediately commanded to dig a new well a few meters away.
The resulting water, however, was the same brackish, muddy mess.
"Hmmm... it seems something is fundamentally in the water system," Leornars mused.
Garren, the village leader, finally pulled himself up, every muscle screaming in protest, his silver hair dusted with dirt. He stared not at Leornars, but at the flawless, terrifyingly silent army of undead soldiers.
"There's a sand beast in the water source," Garren rasped, stumbling back a nervous step. "It's tainting our wellspring." He finally locked eyes with the man who had just nearly killed his entire village without touching them. "Who are you?"
"I am Leornars Servs Avrem."
The name was a thunderclap. Every villager who had regained consciousness instantly dropped into a terrified, simultaneous prostration, their foreheads pressed to the ground.
"It's the White Plague," they whispered, the name a blend of ancient fear and reverence.
Leornars ignored the mass surrender. He was focused only on the murky puddle sinking into the dry earth. "A sand beast. That explains the disruption. Garren, lead me to the source."
"The source is the Whispering Waterfall, my Lord," Garren said, his voice now a trembling mix of fear and desperate relief. "A half-hour trek east, past the old shepherd's ruins."
The half-hour trek was silent, save for the rhythmic, unsettling tread of Leornars' undead army. The path opened into a hidden gorge, the air immediately cooler, smelling of wet rock and ancient moss. Towering basalt cliffs framed a small, crystalline basin—the Whispering Waterfall. But the basin was a sickly, churning tan. In the center, a huge, segmented mound of hardened sand shifted uneasily—the Sand Beast, a massive, grotesque centipede of gritty, oily earth.
With a grinding shhhhhh-crack, the beast surged out of the water, raising a massive, diamond-shaped head. It let out a high-pitched, abrasive shriek that scraped along the inside of Garren's ears.
Leornars walked calmly to the edge of the pool. He raised his left hand, and his crimson eyes flared, not with fire, but with a cold, absolute negation of heat and light. The air around him suddenly dropped twenty degrees, and the vibrant colors of the gorge seemed to dim, as if the light itself was being swallowed by an infinite shadow. This was the Dark Aria.
"Silence," Leornars commanded. His voice was a deep, resonant chord struck in the void between worlds.
The Sand Beast froze, paralyzed by a cold, destructive force it could not comprehend.
From Leornars' outstretched palm, a tiny pinprick of void flame manifested—a deep, endless purple-black. He let it expand into a fist-sized orb and watched it travel with casual, terrifying slowness across the agitated water.
When it made contact with the Sand Beast's head, there was no explosion, only a cold, silent consumption. The void flame didn't burn; it erased. The creature's sand structure began to collapse inward as the purple-black fire devoured its essence, leaving behind nothing—not ash, not smoke, not even dust. The beast dissolved entirely into a momentary black stain that instantly faded, leaving the pool water rapidly clearing to pure crystal..
"If they knew that I already knew about this beast and I had killed it hours ago before coming here" he thoughtfully said
Leornars lowered his hand. The oppressive pressure lifted.
He turned back toward the terrified Garren, his demeanor shifting instantly from the cold judge to the pragmatic, concerned strategist.
"Your water is now clean, but that brings us back to our original conversation," Leornars stated, his tone flat and logical. "What I want, Garren, is for your village to survive the coming years."
He gestured toward the dust-caked world they had left. "You speak of rebellion against Vurnam City, which is defended by three thousand veteran knights. Let's assume you win. What then? You'd be left with a power vacuum and no military infrastructure."
Leornars pointed east, toward the rising wind. "The Monster Infestation is the true enemy. You've dealt with a sand beast a nuisance. The reports from the border are of entire packs of Iron-Clad Wurms, the kind of creatures that chew through castle walls."
He stepped closer to Garren, his voice lowering to a confident, perfectly reasoned argument. It wasn't a threat; it was a simple, generous business proposal.
"The truth is, your rebellion is useless—not because I am strong, but because you are needed elsewhere. You need the Vurnam Knights' protection, their resources, and their coordinated defense against the real threat. Your village is a vital perimeter."
Leornars placed a hand on Garren's shoulder, an intimate gesture devoid of warmth.
"Side with the Vurnam Knights. Unify the village with the city. You give up the notion of taking the city, and in exchange, the city saves your lives. I can promise your people permanent access to clean water, a military garrison posted on your far edge, and trade rights that will lift this village out of the dust."
He finished with a slow, chilling smile that promised both rescue and lifelong servitude.
"What is the use of rebellion if you are outnumbered, and there's a monster infestation in the east? It's a simple trade, Garren. And I, Leornars Servs Avrem, will personally ensure the Vurnam Council agrees to the terms of your loyalty."
Leornars let go of the leader, having delivered the logic of their survival as a perfect, simple, manipulative package. He waited, his expectation absolute.
"Plan C, complete."
He simply vanished, the Undead army and Ascian dissolving into wisps of shadow, leaving Garren alone in the gorge with the clean, running water, the crushing weight of Leornars' bargain, and the ghost of a crimson glow still burning behind his eyes.