139 The Order of the Heated Blade (2/2)

A sound of twisted laughter filled the chamber. The noise was at least as loud as the sound of the agonized wails that sounded out from the victims of the cruel and routine sacrifice. The extraplanar entities were delighting in the violence and pain they were inflicting on their victims. Each of them was visibly smiling, and their grins weren't unlike those of children who just got a new toy. They weren't the only people smiling though.

Ava was grinning, fully enthralled by the violence she was seeing. There was an excitement in her eyes that was unlike any other emotion she ever showed. I sensed her approval of this, and not for the first time I wondered if she'd make a good leader of a pain-based cult.

A few other mortals were also grinning, and in some cases even looking at the blades embedded in them, with delight. They too had cried out in pain but their cries also contained a hint of delight and euphoric, almost sexual joy. Their faces were flushed, and even the blood that poured out of them seemed to pour out slowly as if to ensure they had more time to enjoy this.

The perpetrators of the violence quickly grabbed and pulled out their blades, indelicately yanking them out of their victims. The wicked weapons were cruelly designed and as they slid out of the bodies of their victims they inflicted greater pain on the mortals the demons had used as living sheaths. I shivered, feeling a strange sense of delight as the mortals cried out again, in greater pain this time.

One of the strange changes that had occurred to me over the course of these last few weeks was that I had acquired a greater sensitivity to things. I had begun to develop a much stronger awareness of reality, and especially of the sacrifices worshipers of mine had given to me. This was a consequence of my acquisition of the second tier of influence over the knowledge domain and was a single component of a power intersecting the domains of faith and knowledge.

This manifested itself in two ways: the first was a sort of physical sense, a delight that I felt at being given things by my worshipers, and the second was that I began to receive notifications informing me of sacrifices. I received the notification alerting me to this sacrifice, while I shivered. It was a simple one, but one that I liked to see nonetheless.

[Alert: The Order of the Heated Blade is performing another of its daily rituals to you. Their entire membership is currently mutilating nearly forty human victims. These human victims are humans you created. The human victims are becoming more and more corrupted, and a small number of them are becoming aware of their secret masochistic desires.

The Order of the Heated Blade summary: This is one of your newer Torunian cults. It is a strange, public cult that is situated in your tower.

It worships you as a god of fire, pain, and evil. It has almost fifty members and is led by a pain-knight. This cult is the first cult of yours that mixes different types of extraplanars in its membership and is currently composed entirely of extraplanars.]

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As the creatures continued the ritual before me, I began to walk among them. I took my first steps forward and quickly found myself beside on the other side of an incubus and his victim.

The demon's victim was a tanned-skinned man who was doing his best to suppress a smile, working hard to look like he was in agony. His eyes were wide open, and there was a conflict clearly visible within them. I chuckled as I looked at him, studying him for a moment.

I gazed into his pain-wracked eyes for a moment, and immediately learned his most ”shameful” secret, thanks to a new, passive power of mine that synergized the subdomains of pain and truth and the knowledge domain. The secret was whispered into my mind by the voice of the subdomain of truth, and learning it was a delightful experience.

The man was a masochist and he secretly enjoyed these rituals. It was, in his mind anyway, an embarrassing and terrible source of shame for him. But it didn't have to be.

”Don't be ashamed.” I told him, smiling at the man. My smile was serene. ”I am a god of life, pain, and pleasure. I created you for the purpose of being a perpetual sacrifice. It is your destiny to be here, in what for you might well be a paradise, forever. Embrace your desires. Delight in your agony.” I told the man, telling him the truth. The incubus on the other side of him smiled savagely at the man.

In terms of my overall morality, a significant shift had occurred during the time that I was in this tower. I had grown used to the idea of using my power over life to create lifeforms that would exist solely to be sacrificed.

This was a natural consequence of my increased awareness of sacrifices to me and to the rise of a number of different types of cults appearing throughout Torus and beyond. It was also decisively evil, as was the fact that I had actually begun to create living beings fully intending for them to be sacrificed. That said, because of this change to my morality, my powers over life and pain had actually begun to expand.

The power I had activated earlier was called ”Confession” and with it, I could learn a person's secrets by gazing into their eyes while they were in pain. With it, under the right circumstances, I could learn any dark and hated secret a person possessed. It was a truly and deliciously evil power that I was actually quite fond of. It was far from the only power I had gained that I liked, though it was certainly a flashier one.

I mulled over my new powers, all while the extraplanars around me continued their savage ritual. Many of my new powers were wide-spread ones rather than personal abilities. And more than a few of the knowledge-based powers I had acquired were linked to me sharing my knowledge with others. Among other things I could now sap someone's sanity all while whispering eldritch truths in their ears, and I could inspire someone by sharing possible futures with them.

I could also target someone who is willing to share their memories with me and create copies of their memories to infuse myself with or to share with others. My newest powers, especially those tied to knowledge were a strange array of abilities. My new abilities were quite fun to mess around with, and in doing so while in my tower I had gained an incredible amount of new knowledge.