Chương 15: Bonus Chapter - High Priest Gadiel Moonsbreath

Content warning! This chapter features our previously mentioned evil underling, who has no problem with betrayal or murder. If you want to stick to the cozy disaster lesbian vibes, feel free to skip this bonus chapter - you're not missing anything important to the actual plot. High Priest Gadiel Moonsbreath watched quietly from the ruined, crumbling tower, his ashen skin soaking in the moonlight. His army of moon-gifted creatures milled about below like a sea of wheat rolling in the midnight wind.

"Simply gorgeous," he murmured to the hooded figures arrayed in an eager semicircle behind him.

"So many children blessed by the Moonlight herself." Wolves and goblins, trolls and drakes, ghouls and golems.

"The pitiful things. They lived such horrid lives, doing nothing more than fighting amongst themselves for scraps of food and shelter. Now they are gifted with Her love, reshaped in Her will, given guidance and purpose. They must be honored to fight on Her behalf tonight." Slowly he turned, his hands held behind his back as he assessed the highest ranks of the followers he'd cultivated over the last several hundred years. Simpletons and imbeciles, the lot of them.

Only marginally more useful than the fodder teeming below.

"And you, my beloved companions. My chosen advisers. Tonight we celebrate our beloved Irien's return, and we shall bathe once more in her light and stand at her side as her chosen few. You are those chosen few who rejected her banishment at the hand of those wretched false gods that claim the same divinity as her. You are those who toiled endlessly to spread her gospel to those who listened and those who didn't." You are those who will die, their blood my final sacrifice upon her altar.

"Tonight we return her to her rightful place in the world." He watched them for several moments in silence before sighing.

"It is time. Our foolish foes approach, intent on stopping our great work. Go, my children. Show them the error of their ways and grant them blessed death at the hands of our beloved Moon." The hooded figures hurriedly filed out of the room to take their place amongst the army below. Only one person remained. Hadriel. Her face was hidden deep in the gold-adorned cowl of her robe but he could feel the fervent religious passion pouring off of her.

She was his oldest adviser, an elf who had followed him from the moment Irien had turned him into a vampire, his childhood friend from a long-decimated elven tribe. She was his most capable compatriot and night time companion, who had slaughtered villages full of the unworthy and brought him their bloody corpses as fuel and feed. She was a fool who thought she was his equal.

"My Lord, please award me the honor of joining you in the ritual chamber. I must see the great goddess's awakening myself. Please!" The urgency in her voice was as palpable as it was wasted upon him. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Gadiel feigned an indulgent smile as he stepped forward to lower Hadriel's hood and look upon her fanaticism one last time.

"Hadriel, my beloved. You deserve no such thing." He relished the shocked expression on her face. It was the last expression she would ever wear, as he tore her throat out with his razor sharp teeth and bathed in her blood. Delicious.

"I am the only one worthy of Irien. Know your place, trash, as I stand by her side." He spit upon her corpse as he left the tower, ignoring the bugling of war horns and the clash of steel and magic beginning outside the decrepit fort he'd called his home for nearly two hundred years. On the long walk from the highest tower to the deepest tunnels of the ruins, Gadiel's thoughts danced with the excitement of the coming ritual, unable to stay focused on the ceremony itself.

Tonight was the culmination of over four hundred years of planning, and he couldn't help his eagerness. Deep in the bowels of the tunnels his moronic cult had tunneled for him, he found himself once more breathless staring at the Summoning Pool. Being in the presence of the vortex of blood and moon-blessed magic was a lackluster imitation of his Goddess's presence, but even that much was enough to set his body on the edge of ecstasy.

The final preparations for the ritual consumed him, and he was only vaguely aware of the presence of the adventurers until they burst into the ritual chamber. Those fools. Once I've dealt with them, their blood will be the last spark that brings Her blessed light back. I must inform them of their great role in this work.

He turned his back to the altar and looked upon the three adventurers he was about to turn into sacrifices, taking his time to gloat about their asinine refusal to worship Irien as the one true goddess. I must make them truly understand everything I've done for her, the love I hold for her, the delight she brings upon those worthy. Only when he was sure that they understood all he had sacrificed, the convoluted depths of his planning for tonight, did he finally attack. Their paladin first.

When I shred her shield, they will know great despair in the difference between us. Except his sword deflected harmlessly off of the foolish paladin's shield in a cascade of sparks. Fine. So they are no sniveling weaklings. All the more power for the Summoning Pool. A dagger sunk into his shoulder, a cowardly move from their duplicitous rogue. He hissed and tried to reach to rip it free but found himself bound in the coils of magical serpents, their poison burning through his veins.

A shove from the paladin's shield sent him stumbling backwards, and a light blinded him as it burned a hole through his torso. Blinking the stars from his eyes, he felt the numbing cold of defeat for the first time in his life. No! No, no, no, no, no! I was so close! It was my right, my due! Irien save me, I did everything for you! Save your loyal child from this fate! I do not deserve such defeat!

He wheezed a rickety laugh, the confidence sounding fake even to his own ears as he stumbled back towards the Summoning Pool.

"It seems that I shall have the honor instead!" The pain was excruciating, ripping through every cell as it deconstructed him from the outside in. Irien, please, spare me!