My Servant System



It would appear that their goal was simple; they were to use their bodies as containers of mana to fuel a Ritual Circle that wasn't one that I could recognize or understand in a brief moment, though it was clear what it did as a billow of black mana erupted from the center of it.

These cultists here - either willingly or not, I wasn't entirely sure - used themselves as the battery for a spell to tear open a gateway from one location to another; a gateway that connected somewhere else to here.

Not a Gate; it wasn't connected to the Labyrinthian, but instead to somewhere else inside the Empire - or perhaps outside the Empire - and allow another group of true cultists to spill out in droves.

Draped in mantles of dark sapphire blue, the collective of various races poured out of the gateway and raised a myriad of weapons towards us, black metal dripping with liquids pointed our way as they charged, trying to catch us unaware.

Their cloaks of blue covered the black metal cuirass, vambraces, and grieves that they wore, the armor doing its job to cover vitals and necessary limbs from damage while still keeping them light and their movement fluid.

Shouts and cries escaped their lips as they all chanted "Bow before the Cult of Ambition!" over and over again, their blades, axes, hammers and staves becoming shrouded in raw mana as they charged at us, an unending stream of bodies pouring from the gateway.

A moment was all I allowed myself to feel surprised at the situation, before my own spells draped themselves around me and my lovers as we prepared to face the onslaught of cultists, layering spells over one another and allowing light of gold, silver and blue to shine around us.

Without any words we moved into place, Jahi donning her Golden Cloak and setting her feet as she leveled her great sword at the rushing cultists, Anput and I at her sides with our own weapons ready.

The Wisps behind us moved up and began to prepare a second line of defense for us to fall back to should we feel overwhelmed, before they began to draw runes and prepare spells to aid us from afar.

My Khopesh was still dripping with blood, and my hands were wrapped tightly around the hilt, my eyes focused on the noisy cultists, making me flip the blade from the cold, straight edge of the outside crescent to the serrated, hungry edge of the inside crescent, my lips curling into an anticipatory smile.

With the Marquess joining us, we stood before the horde of cultists and allowed them to crash down at us, meeting their blades and fury with our own, beginning the slaughter anew.

In front of us were hundreds of cultists once more, but this time they were armed and dangerous, but even that didn't make me feel fear, instead allowing excitement to course through my veins alongside the adrenaline as I lunged forwards and began to cleave through the first, my Khopesh laden with deadly frost slicing through the woman's collar and cutting her cleanly in two, killing her before she even got a chance to raise her blade.

I moved with fluidity as I allowed the Khopesh to guide my strikes, using its momentum to begin my dance as I stepped aside from a sword swipe and responded with a cut of my own, lopping off the man's wrist and following it up with a rapid cut to his throat, tearing the flesh apart and killing him next.

Hooking the blade forwards, the jagged tip of my blade pierced into another man's skull and stabbed his brain, pulling some of it out as I yanked the Khopesh back and moved around his collapsing body, unleashing three rapid slashes at the fourth cultists torso, tearing past the armor and opening their stomach up to the world, intestines spilling onto the ground and squelching as the cultist fell to their knees onto them.

Removing my left hand from the hilt, I stuck my palm out towards a cluster of cultists and traced out the runes in a moment for the burst spell, sending shards of ice slicing towards and into them, the shotgun blast putting them out of the fight as [Frost of Despoina] took effect.

I kept that spell ready as I aimed at the next cluster, firing off another blast before lunging towards them, using them as cover even as I shot a third blast at them point blank, blowing their chests open and sending more splinters of ice into the crowd.

Flames fell to the earth around me, followed swiftly by the thunderous booms of lightning bolts that caused the fire to explode outwards, miniature bombs devastating the area as Leone and Kolia worked together once more.

With a momentary lull as the cultists reeled from the blast that happened nearby, I traced out the runes for a new spell even as my Khopesh rose and fell, decapitating a cultist and maiming another.

A Ritual Circle appeared in front of my palm, and I hurled it into the air and grinned, watching as it spun and shimmered, activating after more mana seeped into it from my Core.

Double handing the Khopesh again, I began to dance around the cultists around me as the spell started to take effect, lances of crystalized, jagged ice dropping to the earth and skewering people before exploding into clouds of shrapnel that tore through flesh like a hot blade through butter.

The massacre had begun, and there was nothing that the cultists could do about it as they continued to pour out of the gateway, none of them capable of withstanding the four separate bastions of slaughter that were established around them.

Nor could they hope to flee away from the gateway and away from us, since bolts of lightning or arrows of fire rained down on any who became too afraid to challenge one of us, hoping to escape.

The death toll reached dozens in seconds, before turning to hundreds and hundreds as more poured out from the gateway, leaving the question of how many people were inside this Cult of Ambition... 

And how many of them wanted to die.