Chapter XVII: Verendus And Corypheus; The Cursed Souls

The Cirro clouds in the caelum afternoon sky where the sun is supposed to be descending from its daytime peak were covered by the blinding darkness of mist in the sky. The place was eaten by murklins covering the catastrophic clouds, where tumbleweeds could be seen running around from the chilly breath of the wind as it gave a calming birr of the dried fallen leaves on the ground.

A passel of bibblers could be heard outside the inn as their fracas laughter put the place in a fine situation, spreading nonsense lampoons about the verendus.

*Creak!*

The deafening silence suddenly consumed the two-storey wooden building when the door chimed, and the group of people strutted down the scene, catching their attention, especially the little kid who was wearing a long black hoodie. Hidden underneath are the golden embroidered soles of the temple, with its right eye covered in a luxurious-looking eyepatch, walking towards the man wearing a monocle on his left eye, wiping the beer mugs.

"This is not a place to play, kids." 

His tone of voice was cold, while he continued to wipe off the glasses, making Zev make a balloon on her cheek.

"This jerk-"

She gritted her teeth, forming a fist on her hands that was immediately cut off by Khalid.

"You!-"

He raised his hand in front of her before she continued to speak.

"One order of coffee shot." 

He stated that made the bartender freeze for a second before he let out a deep sigh and gave one spare golden key to Khalid, making Zev roll her eyes.

As they headed straight towards the spacious room, it left the others in awe. Seeing that it had immense space with lots of doors and high ceilings, a better place for a vacation than a clandestine meeting.

"Milord! This room is unexpectedly wider than my room!" 

Dal exclaimed.

'Ha, you must be kidding me.' 

Zev thought, looking at him with a hostile look in her eyes.

"This is not the time to play around." 

Khalid coldly stated, looking at the big-built man who was holding a kid in his arms while his eyes were glued to the window.

"Garion, this place is rather calm in such a situation." 

He stated as soon as they were all seated on a wooden chair inside the room.

"Well, that's because half of the kingdom was protected by the imperial knights."

Garion abrasively stated, sitting beside Dal on a long rectangular wooden table.

"How about the other?" 

He asked curiously, leaving them all startled by his reply. 

"Some parts of the kingdom were already abandoned because they were unbeneficial to the king." 

Before he could even finish his word, Zev's roaring voice shouted in anger.

"BULLSHIT!" 

She cursed at the wind with a fire burning in her eyes.

Khalid puts his finger on his chin as he leans his back on the chair, letting Zev in rampant as she continues to curse and speak acidic things out of her mouth.

'...So they abandoned the land of stone for the treasures.' 

He logically thought while his brows frowned, diving from his caustic deep thoughts, and before Garion could continue to speak, he cleared out his throat with a serious yet sympathetic look in his deep venetus-colored eyes.

"Well, that's nothing to be surprised about; the place that the king abandoned was only the territory of commoners."

"He only puts up a protection barrier for the nobles to live; that may look unfair, but those people have no power to stop him because this kingdom was ruled by money and power." 

He aggrievedly stated, clenching his jaw.

"BASTARD!" 

Khalid had affirmed with his arms crossed on one another, leaving the others muted in silence as they hesitated to look at his face.

"T-then...G-ga-garion *Cough!*...Garion, don't you have anything to say?" 

Reinhardt has spoken, wearing a cautious smile on his face, stuttering that makes them all feel anxious towards Khalid, who's sitting in front of them, unknowingly letting out a charcoal-reddish aura of a murker.

"M-milord, I think you should calm down!" 

Garion had forewarned without expecting the blunt yet cold reply of his solemn tone of voice.

"I AM CALM." 

He replied, but his words were different from his actions, which made them look at each other and laugh robotically before Garion continued to speak.

When he began to speak, all their ears and eyes were locked up on him as he stated crisp information about the cursed soul that also entered Khalid's body in the past months, leaving him in a hopeless state of life that looked like death had abandoned the likes of him. 

It was just like in a saying let the death chase after you rather than you chasing after death because the more you chase it, the more it avoids you, and that word made Khalid continue living his life just to face the death he had longed for...

"Continue." 

He had stated.

"Well, to be frank about the situation, I-I am—no, I am about to say that the verendus were once souls that were cursed; they were trapped on their desires, and that's what gives them power." 

Garion hesitated while holding a sleeping child in his arms with a faint smile painted on his face, looking at the child in his embrace, but there was this look of wretchedness on his gaze, an intense feeling that Khalid may not feel but clearly can see through him.

"Verendus is not the only cursed soul that was created by the demon; it was like a yin and yang; there was lightness and darkness, and that was the Verendus and Corypheus." 

His words made their eyes and ears widen as they felt the chill crawling on their bodies, except for Khalid, who was quietly listening as if they didn't expect that the cursed soul was not working on its own.

"Well, those two use goetic magic; they're both cursed souls after all, but the difference is that the verendus is a dispiteous curse that will manipulate your mind to eat your soul so that it can own your body, just like what happened to Dal." 

He added as he continued to speak.

They could immediately imagine the things that Garion had been saying out of his mouth as they pictured a woman crawling on the ground while she was tenaciously holding a cross in her hands, trying to get away from the nefarious being behind her with a hideous appearance.

She cried and begged for mercy, but instead the pain and agony she felt and the red fluid flowing out of her body just made the being let out a playful laughter like a maniac while holding his face as he watched the woman scream for help, but all the people around her were already lying on the floor, bathing with each other's blood while their inner organs were no longer attached to them.

"That's right, beg for the God you worship, state all your sins, and let's see if he can save you." 

His voice gave a fright to the woman crawling on the floor who was reciting a holy orison in front of the hideous-looking being.

She prayed and pray until her voice cracked and her throat turned parched but nothing happened until the verendus slowly reached her face with the blood covering his thin yet sharp-looking hands, it made her freeze in terror but it wasn't enough to let down her faith towards the God she worships that even in her last breath she holds the cross tightly on her hands while the verendus mercilessly slaughtered and enjoy the feast of the woman's flesh, slowly opening his mouth wider, forcing it to be ripped in half just so he could completely devour her head that's even the red fluid like wine with iron like smell splatter all over the place that was painted in nothing but white leaving the woman's head crushed in tiny pieces as it continues to destroy all the statue inside the building where the people it had killed and eaten has worshipped before their souls detached on their bodies.

It left them with cold sweat streaming down their faces while they turned white in range before Garion continued to explain thoroughly.

"But... that's indifferent to the Corypheus; it could have possessed you, but you have the right to control it. The problem is that most people who were possessed by this kind of curse ended up dying, especially if the power they held was incompatible with theirs." 

He absurdly stated that which made Khalid form a smirk on his face while staring at Garion in amusement.

"Have you encountered them?" 

He bluntly asked Garion, which made the others' attention focus on him.

"U-uh..uhm… I didn't Milord." 

He stuttered as if he were ambivalent about his answer.

"Yeah, that's right." 

Khalid smiles as they continue the clandestine meeting with Garion, giving specific information about the cursed souls until it's ended.

Hours swiftly passed, and the aurora of the murklin slowly visited the land where a child could be seen sitting at the window blankly staring at the sky as if he were in his world, completely devoured by his thoughts, leaving the others who were sleeping soundly in their rooms while his mind continued to run around in circles, remembering the bibbler scuttlebutt that made him restless.

"Thanks to those commoners, we could still have fun in this situation. Bahahaha!" 

The man shouted in a ghoulish tone as he laughed in joy.

"What kind of bastard abandoned his people for money?" 

He mumbled into the air when he suddenly heard crashing noises behind the door that was connected to the living room.

*Grr...argh!*

A muffled muttering could be heard as he saw a silhouette of a man letting out a billow of smoke from his body that as soon as he walks towards the scene, it drop a bomb on Khalid as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing, leaving him with a bleak expression, quietly watching the situation that was too baffling for him to understand as he slowly perceive the lies he had believed that made his thought turn blank leaving him with an jetlagged expression without any emotion on his glaucous colored eyes, standing towards the big built man that was psychomachy talking to him self while his body continous to let out an incandescence of light acting like a vad beast that's about to lost it self as he immensely keeps on panting, catching his own breath, sizzling on the cold-chilly night where the moon was nowhere to be found but a man who was standing beside the torch transforming into a hideous beast while biting his own tongue to cease the noise from coming out of his mouth,leaving the wooden floor tainted in a red liquid like paint from his mouth.

"Garion…."

Khalid's voice has carelessly come out on his own, calling him with such amity from his tone that made Garion stare at him with a petrified look in his eyes while his eyeballs shaken, staring at the little boy biting his lips with a lethargic expression painted on his face.

"…..Care to explain?..." 

He had spoken with a dismal tone in his voice.