North, that was the only direction he had been given.

  The temple in the northwest was the one Rykard knew was on fire. Northeast, he had no knowledge about whatsoever. The map, however, indicated that it would be easier to get to. It was a straight line through the forest, no exceptionally hilly stretch in the way. The northwest included crossing the thickest part of the Hexagon’s western hill-belt.

  ‘Alright,’ Rykard thought and stretched. ‘If anyone touches my shortstack before I see her, I’ll put the rest of this Hexagon to the torch.’ The thought had a jovial tone to it. That did not mean Rykard was not considering the option.

  Once he had oriented himself, Rykard broke out into a sprint.

  The previously wandering pace of his gait was a joke compared to the sheer speed he forced his superhuman body to move at. His lungs expanded and contracted, moving air in and out, to keep his blood pumping and his limbs moving. The fabric of his clothes stretched and soon became damp with sweat.

  Controlled breathing through his nose was difficult to maintain. Soon he exhaled through his mouth. His muscles burned. He ran and leapt, crossing over a gap in the forest floor where a small river had gradually cut a trench. The water sparkled an intense blue.

  Rykard left the stream behind and continued to storm northwards. Fallen pines and chunks of bark crunched under his steps. The drumming of his heartbeat grew more protesting. Almost, the king surrendered to the demands of his own body.

  With sheer willpower, he pushed through the resistance. ‘This is MY world!’ he shouted at his corporeal form. Where other men would have met their limit, the sovereign forged ahead. He ran and ran, until he crossed the threshold of motion. A hypnotic trance, of sorts, where it was more difficult to stop than it was to just keep on running.

  Wood and stone, dirt and water, all of it flew by under him. Rykard only stopped to wolf down dried meat and drink from whatever clear water source he could find. Such was the speed that he ran at, without ever slowing, that he crossed a distance further than what he had walked in one and a half days in the remaining hours he had avaible on this one.

  The northeastern temple came into view, behind hills and pine trees. It had not been burned, but it appeared like that might change soon. A crowd around the temple was banging on barricaded doors, shouting words that Rykard could not hear over the pumping of his blood.

  Completely drenched in sweat and breathing with the intensity of a smithy’s bellows, Rykard began to slow. The crowd was so occupied with trying to get into the temple that they did not notice his approach. Predominantly, they were men, typically shirtless or lightly dressed in self-made fur clothing. Many of them were armed with axes, some with pickaxes or bows. What few women were present hung back, letting their trained brothers, husbands, and fathers take the lead. The typical configuration of a crowd without the blessing of magic to overcome sex differences between typical humanoids.

  Rykard continued to pump air in and out. The light spots of torches danced in front of his eyes. Like their words, the motions were blurred. He wasn’t sure if they were about to put the temple to the torch, or if they simply brought them as light sources. It was the dead of night, after all.

  Blood and air still rushing through his body, Rykard stepped forwards. Shoulders pulled back, chest emphasized, his gre directed at the building and the world at rge, he walked like only the heir to an empire could walk. It had been ingrained into him at a young age, then manifested completely when learning was repced with lived experience.

  That he was at the edge of what he was physically capable of only furthered his drive. No pesky thoughts, no slivers of subconscious doubts, just his sheer physical presence backed up by his sovereign will.

  It only took one person to notice him to start a chain reaction. Heads turned, then the rest of the bodies followed. One after another, the men and women attached their gazes to him. The shouting stopped. The crowd parted. Rykard continued to walk forwards, until even those that had been banging on the doors were looking at him.

  No one dared to stand closer than two metres next to the king. No one dared to speak. People barely even dared to breathe. Rykard stood at the base of the three steps leading up to the wooden main gate of the cathedral. The structure of grey stone blocks was impressively ornate in its craft, but the materials used appeared to be cheap - just rock, lumber and cy.

  All waited for the ornately dressed man to speak, to do something to break the spell his presence cast. Of course, this one was not magical at all. Rykard had not strained his mana in the slightest. This was a spell of the purely social kind. To enchant a crowd, sometimes mundane gestures sufficed entirely.

  If he waited too long, the currently awed silence would eventually turn awkward. Standing in the clearing made for him, Rykard considered for a second what he should do.

  “You.” Rykard pointed off to his side, the eyes moving after the hand had been extended. A little piece of showmanship, that made it seem like he had picked his target following some kind of supernatural intuition, when he really was just directing his finger at someone randomly.

  He found a man in the second row, his tall head standing out between the shoulders of two other men. Besides being tall, the short-haired male was not outstanding in this crowd of rough looking folk. If Rykard had to take a guess, everyone around him at this moment made their living as hunters, gatherers, woodcutters, and fur tailors - all simultaneously. None of them struck him as the sort to need to rely on trade to live off the nd.

  “Step forward.” The demand was heeded, as if Rykard’s voice had a magnetic draw that could not be helped but be obeyed. “Tell me - exactly - what is going on.”

  “We are… demanding entrance to the temple,” the man answered, somewhat hesitantly. Any confusion regarding Rykard’s demand was immediately wiped away by a panic. “Excuse my tone! Ehem,” he cleared his throat, then continued with more respect. “When our world was pulled into the void, we were confused, and now we want to drag out those who have lied to us for all these years. We want our money back, our hard-earned trinkets, and we want answers for where we are.”

  All of that fit with what Rykard had learned from his assaints earlier today. The picture continued to settle: an exploitative priesthood overtaxing the locals, who now were turning their resentment into violence.

  The expnation continued.

  “Most of the priests in there, we’d gdly make a head shorter, but we don’t want to put the building to the torch while Melvin and Helenn are in there.” There were nods all around. Rykard only had to raise an eyebrow to make the man divulge even more. “Melvin is one of the few priests with a good heart, sir, he always used his magic to heal people, free of charge… and Helenn is an angel, in more ways than one. An oddly small one.” The man gestured around the height of his hips. “Angel nonetheless. She’s come up with all kinds of trinkets that made our lives easier.”

  The entire crowd took a simultaneous, deep breath, when Rykard’s exhausted, dark expression turned into a pleased, crooked smile. “You don’t say?” he half-said, half-hummed. “Would you describe her as short and stacked, perchance?”

  The man nodded repeatedly, as did all the other men around - to the soft headshaking of the wives. “Shortstack, fat ass, huge fucking tits.”

  ‘I have heard enough,’ Rykard thought and turned back to the door.

  With a wave of his hand, Rykard shooed the people off the steps. They jumped off the sides, just to be out of the way. Path unobstructed, the king took the three stops and stopped in front of the thick, wooden gate. It was double-winged and covered in grooves from axes that had been warningly swung. Nearby windows were barricaded with moved shelves. No doubt, the door was simirly barred.

  Rykard tapped against the wood with his knuckles. “Let me in,” he demanded simply.

  No response.

  “Alright then.” Still smiling, he drew his arm back. Like a hammer, the side of his fist barrelled against the gate. Metal hinges squeaked. Wood bent inwards. For a moment, Rykard could see people inside the hall behind the gate, then the thick beam id across the inside of the door bent back and sealed the door again. “That was a friendly knock!” Rykard shouted. “Let me in, or I’ll consider doing more of the same - or let these people continue what they were doing. I’ll count down from 10! 10! 9! 8!...”

  Rykard drew out the numbers, just waiting for signs of obedience. He was down to 2, when he finally heard movement behind the door. He stopped, the beam was lifted out of the metal hoisters holding it up. A moment ter, the door opened, and the crowd behind Rykard cheered. Fearfully, a pair of priests with bushy, carefully trimmed beards and ornate robes peeked past the halves of the gate.

  They stopped near instantly when he raised his hand. “Wait here,” he simply told them, then stepped inside. “Close the door behind me - do not seal it.” He instructed the two priests.

  Doing as he told them, the priests had the gate sm back shut, leaving the room in the dim light of a few candles and basic illumination spells. The entrance hall of the cathedral was a room with few windows, a high ceiling, and walls painted in gold and other expensive materials. The outside of the church belied the sheer luxury on the inside, as if no one but the ones frequenting its walls was allowed to y eyes upon it.

  Rykard gave a cursory gnce to the priests around. They were simirly ornately dressed, even had big white hats with golden trims, all of it entirely impractical. The bodies under the robes were rotund, to put it nicely - well fed, despite the harshness a taiga typically brought with it, with none of the muscles of the people outside to expin how they had gotten that much food.

  Just from the looks of them, Rykard was willing to believe that there were horrendous taxes involved.

  He, however, paid little attention to them and instead beheld a tiny bundle that glowed from within. Her skin was as white as fresh parchment, her hair as blonde as sun rays, and a band of literal light hovered above her head - a proof of divine origin.

  A simple white piece of clothing covered her, stretched tremendously by the size of her tits. Had she been taller, they would have rivalled Vyra’s in their volume, but this woman was barely even a metre tall, and so the sheer demands of her size demanded that they were less in total. Still, they seemed more than big enough to let Rykard’s dick disappear between them.

  Her midriff, certainly, was hidden mostly by their soft, natural sagging. All of her curves were squished together, and that included the combination of wide hips and thick thighs that would have made Rykard question how she got around, had it not been for the pair of wings behind her back. They were stylized, tiny things, each barely rger than his fist, and hovered behind her shoulder bdes like anchored ornaments of white.

  There was so much more to look at. Her eyes, as radiant as her glowing hair. The pale gold lines that disappeared underneath the tiny skirt. The cord wrapped around her midriff, showing off how narrow that part of her voluptuous curves was. The little window atop the side of her hips, showing even more of her illustrious skin.

  Rykard, however, narrowed in on a whole different fact.

  “Why is she tied up?” he asked, his voice quiet and threatening, like the rumble of a distant storm. Rope kept the hovering woman anchored to a bookshelf, a gag from letting her move or answer for herself. Rykard knew when women enjoyed that kind of treatment - this shortstack certainly did not. She didn’t seem overtly worried either. It was more like she was just… hanging around and going with the flow.

  No answer.

  “Why - is she - tied up?” Rykard asked again, his tone making clear this was the st time.

  It was at that moment, the squirming of a second tied up person in the room managed to grab Rykard’s attention. One of the priests had himself been wrapped in ropes and gagged. He tried to spit out the cloth in his mouth, and somehow succeeded. “They took us as hostages because they know the people like us!”

  “Ah, that must mean you are Melvin,” Rykard put two and two together, then he swiftly lost interest in the man.

  Rykard’s attention turned away - far away. Where his body was exhausted, his mana was as vibrant as ever. An ocean of prismatic potential within his soul, ready to make reality bend to his will. Shaping the surface of that ocean into a string, he threaded it through the needle of his mind and then pierced the veil.

  His consciousness sought the malevolent wills seated at the bottom of the conjuration realm. The dregs of creation, ready to bring misfortune using any excuse they could be given. Rykard extended his arm in the dimly lit room, hand hanging limp, and one by one the lights went out.

  An unknown onlooker would have thought their eyes were pying tricks on them. In the near absolute darkness, it was normal to imagine movements. That was, until something audible hit the ground with a wet squelch. The priests all, instinctively, took a step backwards. “Spare those two,” was the only command Rykard gave the creature. Melvin and Helenn watched wide-eyed. The decadent priesthood took another step back.

  Over the expensive carpet, creatures of bck tar crawled, reflecting what little torchlight cascaded through the barricaded windows. They had no true shape, nothing that eyes could identify as heads or limbs. There were only jaws that formed impossibly rge out of the mass of the flowing bodies. The creatures bloated, the rims of their mouths sharpened into rows upon rows of ft teeth.

  Each of the seven priests had one of the demonic entities lurch towards them. Two ran for the gate, three for the door that led deeper into the cathedral. All five found their feet stuck in the bck tar. Here and there, the abyssal maws began to close.

  Terribly slow, inevitably, teeth sunk into flesh. Shoulders, ribcages, legs, whatever the individual entity fancied, as long as there was meat on top of bone. Bloated mouths colpsed into sleeves lined with razor sharp teeth, which then pulled backwards. The priests screamed as the entirety of their clothes, skin, fat, and muscle, was stripped off their skeletons.

  Rykard regarded one set of screams as enough. One mental command, and the creatures went for the heads of the priests. Immediately, there was silence, save for the heavy breathing of Melvin. Silence did not equal death. Even as the liquid maws shaved their scalps off, even as they drowned in primordial malevolence, the priests were kept alive.

  “A tad distasteful, I know,” Rykard said and crossed the room. The bck tar parted for him, revealing a still clean carpet underneath. He let the bck slimes continue their work behind him. They would continue their cruel cuts until the priests either died of shock or blood loss. “I don’t delight in these sights.” Rykard knelt down in front of the shortstack, and began to undo her bindings. “But I do have to make a point when it comes to crossing me - or mine.”

  The little angel returned his gaze in gold. There was some fear in her eyes, about the scene pying out in front of her and the man that had caused it. Rykard could hardly fault her for that. Still, he deemed it best to let her see what he was capable of. Both to establish what kind of man he was and what protection she would find in becoming one of his.

  The fear never matched that of the hyperventiting priest on the other side of the wall, nor did she start screaming when he removed the gag from her. “That, uhm, still seems a little bit much,” she carefully suggested.

  “I disagree,” Rykard stated simply and looked over his shoulder. “Besides, it's too te now.”

  The bck sludge bubbled once, before sinking into the carpet. As it did, it faded from existence, leaving behind only seven skeletons. The white bones were covered in razor thin lines.

  He returned his attention to the now free shortstack. She was the only source of light in the room, gold softly radiating off her exposed skin, and more intensely off her hair and eyes. She raised a hand to her hair, many of its wild strands moving in an ethereal breeze. A tiny smile showed on her face, despite the entire situation.

  “Sooooooo… I’m Helenn,” she introduced herself. It was almost comedical, but where else could this conversation go now? “Thanks for saving me, that was cool, not so sure on the death torture, not so cool, but they were kinda, sorta, really big cunts, so I’m not sure what to feel about that either….”

  “THEY WERE HOLYMEN!” Melvin screeched.

  “He’ll calm down in a bit… probably,” Helenn whispered. “Soooo… what’s your name?”

  “Rykard,” he introduced himself.