As soon as the intruders were dead, Milo was finally able to connect with Raven. Telling him everything that had happened, the king made him appear in Athenia in just a few seconds. With him were Regalia, the djinns, even Maria and Hilma. Having clothed themselves with haste, they still appeared a bit dishevelled, but for now that mattered not in the least.
Wasting no time at all, Raven marched for the dungeons where Markus had taken the intruder's bodies and Aradin was being kept with his companions. The king had told all that he could, and so the general told him not to move from his throne and to continue to look after Viola and the heir within her body.
By the time he arrived at the dungeon's entrance, the entirety of the original party, along with Liliyana, were standing by him. It had nearly been a week since their leader had been amongst the other girls, simply mating and relaxing, and so they had little clue about what was happening both with him in general and the entire story of the intrusion of the city.
However, every time they asked a question, Raven was far too focused on getting to the source of the problem to explain anything. The others eventually decided to take over, but before they could even finish their story, a rumbling cacophony of howling voices came flooding from the deeper ends of the dungeons. Not three, but enough voices–enough of the same, at least, to flood a hundred halls. In agony, they screamed, and as the group finally arrived at their cells, it finally made sense why exactly.
Severed from their bodies, the heads of the three intruders were nailed to the wall. Split into countless many, some of the flesh and the other of their shattered soul, each head was shattered both in the physical and the ethereal plane. Not to mention the countless necroflowers–enough to devastate a lesser god were growing on their skulls.
Shifting his attention momentarily to the others inside the cell, Raven noticed a handful of his soldiers crammed up in a corner. They hadn't yet noticed his presence, thanks to their anxiety from being around Markus and the talking heads. But as soon as the warlord entered the cell, that quickly changed. A bit surprised by his entrance, they jumped to their feet and offered a salute of the heart as they'd trained to. With their heads lowered, however, none of them dared even look at him, as the fate of their leader depended on the general's decision after all.
"At ease…" Ignoring them for now, Raven walked up beside Markus and turned to the heads. Each mumbled to its own tune, saving nothing of note, really, as the ethereal knight had already tortured every bit of information out of them.
"They're just puppets of the gods of the council. They don't belong here, not in our world…" His visor lowered, and his eyes glaring at the heads still, Markus wanted to end their miserable existence once and for all. "Otherworlders like that witch friend of yours, but something about these bastards is different."
"Like what?" Raven asked.
Glancing sideways, Markus held the warlord's gaze for a while. He wasn't sure if Raven was ready to hear what he had to say, but then reminded that he was no longer just an adventuring boy, the dark knight caved.
"They held a rifle, it's lost now in the spell that I cast to defeat them–and yet, even now, I can sense something familiar in these idiots." Slowly turning his head to the intruders again, Markus took a moment to ponder his own sanity. "Almost as if I were standing by the hero again…and by that I mean, Nightsilver."
Eyes furrowed all around Markus, and even some gasps could be heard echoing down the corridors. Nobody could've expected that response, an outworlder reminding Markus of the greatest warrior they've ever known? The man who stood toe to toe against the demon lord? How was that possible? Their limited minds just could not comprehend.
"What..uhmm, anyways–we'll talk about that later, why don't you tell me why they were here and what god they were serving exactly." Not to waste any time on discussing something with no clear answers, Raven decided to jump to the point.
And as Markus began to explain everything to him, he realized just how little they knew about the council gods. Being sent by them to strike fear in Athenia and her followers, the intruders were a party of the twelve souls from Gaia. They'd been forcefully taken from their homes, and some even seemed to come from different timelines. The man with the rifle was about two hundred years younger than the girl, and the man with the chainsaw on hand was three hundred years older than the girl.
They were all offered great power, great wealth, and a number of other desirable things. And in return, all they had to do was do as the gods told them to do, which mainly involved getting rid of the hero's party along with any influence of Athenia's. Once their task was over, they would be returned to their home world with the rewards, or at least that's what they thought would happen initially, as the council members began killing the less worthy at the slightest inconvenience, making this whole ordeal a fear-driven slavery of sorts.
"That's all I could find out before their minds shattered completely," concluding his explanation, Markus decided to take his leave. "Do what you want with their heads or the flowers, I'll be returning to the king now."
Watching him walk away, Raven's mind raced for a bit. On one hand, he was glad that at least three of the twelve souls had been dealt with, on the other, his anxiety grew as they now knew the exact location of another god's territory and could attack again any moment.
'They blocked the connection through the teleportation ring, too. We're gonna need to find a fix for that, otherwise, who knows what might happen the next time someone attacks?' Pondering over the idea, another adjacent thought crossed his mind. 'A warning, huh? Why don't we send a warning to those fuck as well, show them how much more prepared we are to devastate the homes of their loyals!'
Squeezing his fingers and gritting his teeth, truly wanted to level a city under the council god's rule. Turn it into dust along with their people, however, that thought quickly subsided as he turned around to look at Aradin and his companions.
"Now what happened to you?" He asked, even though he could already sense corruption building up inside the man.
Much like Arche, the leader of their party had been affected by black water, and thus, to study him and keep everyone around him safe, the general eventually decided to send him under Linkle's watch by the new fountain of dark water in the desert.
Hearing that, any hopes that Aradin had to visit his family crumbled, and so did the hopes of the others to enjoy the city of fertility. Even so, accompanying their leader through a portal, they kept marching forward–for deep within their minds they knew that it was better for Aradin to be away from the city until they figure out exactly what has been happening to him.
"I thought Linkle was coming home too," speaking up for the first time this entire time, Mel decided to question why Raven would send them to the desert when she was supposed to arrive in Athenia anyway.
The answer, however, was simpler than she expected.
"If Linkle can find a way to separate death from life in that nail from Athenia, then I'd prefer to have him under her watch than anyone else, even you and me." And with that, the conversation came to an end, however, the storm had yet to pass, as there were plenty of other problems just waiting for him on the horizon. The first on that list? Finding a way to secure Athenia while he and his party were away from the kingdom.