The Corrupted Ones

The Knight could see it pretty clearly now, back in the distance the Knight could see a group of around 10 soldiers with a wagon being pulled by two non-corrupted horses, the soldiers were armed with spears and in their armors the colors black and golden could be seen, the flag colors of Lady Barmintha.

— They must be caring food and other supplies, and also that horses would make our journey far easier. The Knight seemed pretty sure

— They will try to kill you once they see you, Lady Barmintha doesn't like wandering Wastelivers trying to go to Hopeville.

— That's why we are going to kill them first. The Knight looked at the Reaper

— And I thought that you were a boring person noble knight…

The Knight crouched down and took a stealthy approach, the Reaper just continued levitating being dragged by the chain around his neck, the human soldiers wouldn't be able to see him anyways, when they were around 20 meters from the wagon (which had a broken wheel, so they stopped to fix it), the Knight whispered:

— Go there and reap the souls of the greatest amount of people you can, I will follow with my sword on the other ones

— As you wish my master

The Reaper again flew to the direction of the nearest soldier at unbelievable speed, the Knight finally realized that the chain around the Reaper's neck, was as long as the Knight needed it to be.

The Reaper raised his Scythe made out of bones high in the air, and the Scythe went through the soldier's chest like it was intangible, no physical damage could be seen on the soldier, and his body simply fell to the ground, the Reaper ate the soul he had just collected.

The other soldiers all looked at the direction of the body, and one of them shouted:

— REAPER!!!

And they immediately assumed combat positions, one of them threw his spear at the direction of the Reaper.

"How they can see me??"

The Reaper wasted no time and flew his Scythe through the torso of another soldier, again the Scythe ignored the physical barrier and just passed through the soldier causing no physical damage, the soldier fell to the ground, around 5 spears were thrown in the direction of the Reaper, but he was engulfed in black flames before the spears reached him, and the Reaper reappeared on the right side of the Knight:

— They can perceive my presence.

The Reaper was panting

— They might be using a magical device to detect my presence, they might also have magical weapons that can harm me, time for you to help me noble knight

— Right. The Knight raised it's long sword, pointing it on the direction of the soldiers

— And one more thing Noble Knight…

The Knight turned it's head to the Reaper to listen

— Inside the wagon, I could sense the presence of an Eldritch Horror, hostile, extremely hostile, let's be careful

Both the Knight and the Reaper threw themselves at the direction of the enemy, the Knight stuck the entire length of it's sword on the back of a soldier, he grunted in pain, another soldier turned it's spear on the direction of the Knight trying to help, the Knight quickly removed the sword from the back of the soldier just killed, and with amazing speed and skill, the Knight avoided the spear attack and soon the throat of the attacking spearmen was torn open, unlike the attacks from the Reaper, there was blood and a lot of physical damage on the Knight's attack.

Another soldier tried to attack the Knight from behind, but got his soul quickly devoured by the Reaper, now there were only 5 remaining soldiers, one of them was without a doubt their Captain, as he had a more detailed armor and sword as well a long cape

— You Knight! What kind of honor is in attacking a group of soldiers serving your nation?! The Captain yelled

— This not my nation, and you serve a corrupted monster. The Knight replied with coldness

— How dare you speak of Lady Barmintha like that?! I shall end your heresy right here right now, and your Reaper can enjoy the show

The Captain advanced towards the Knight wielding his spear-sword, and they started to duel, The Reaper reaped the soul of one of the remaining soldiers with no effort, and when another remaining soldier tried to attack the Reaper from behind, the Knight threw a knife at his head while still dueling the Garrison's Captain.

The captain would furiously fight the Knight with anger, as for him, the Knight had offended the honor of his Goddess, the Knight noted reasonable skill and combat understanding on the Captain's performance in battle, and understood why he became a captain and all the others were soldiers, yet, he was not even close to the Knights from the Royal Guard that served the Ember Kingdom with him, having tested the ability of it's opponent and not being very impressed, the Knight decided to end the fight, the forearms of the Captain were simultaneously separated from his body with only one attack, he dropped his sword-spear, and before the captain could even scream, his head was also separated from his body.

Now there was only one soldier remaining, a young and inexperienced recruit, he begged for his life while crawling on the floor, The Knight and The Reaper were side by side slowly approaching him, when the private hit his back on the wagon, he quickly opened it's locker, and the door slowly opened, the recruit laughed and run to the front of the wagon, were the horses were:

— Good luck fighting that fuckers! The recruit took one of the two horses and rode far away, both the Knight and the Reaper assumed combat positions, expecting what was inside the wagon to come out

The whole atmosphere of the place changed, the wagon was actually a cage, a cage for whatever they were transporting to Hopeville, soon there was no doubt, it was an Eldritch Horror, it was a Corrupted Human Being, from the cage crawled a massive centipede-like creature, they couldn't see how long the creature was since a part of it was still inside the cage, but they could see the hundreds of paws that the centipede thing had, they were hundreds of human arms, the creature raised it's torso like a snake ready to attack, so they saw that the torso of the creature was full of hundreds if not thousands of eyes, all from different shapes and sizes, from where the creature should have a head, there were dozens of long flesh tentacles that would crazily shook in all directions, and a massive hole full of layers and layers of teeth served as the creature's mouth, the creature did not screamed, but instead sang, a song that was strangely beautiful and distorted.

— Don't look at it Knight! Looking at Corrupted beings damages the sanity of mortals. In the Reaper's case the sighting would not directly damage his sanity, although it would make him equally uncomfortable as anyone

But the Knight couldn't stop looking to the abomination, it's song was mesmerizing, it reminded the Knight of the voice of Princess Karmellia, the princess that the Knight had served before the Penumbra, and the horrific melody of the song would remind the Knight of the songs that Princess Karmellia would sing when alone and feeling lonely.

The Reaper punched the Knight in the face as hard as he could, creating a big dent on the Knight's helmet, but taking the Knight out of the trance.

The Knight almost immediately recovered consciousness, the creature stoped singing and screamed a loud high-pitched noise while attacking the Knight, the Knight almost could not dodge the first attack, but the second came so unexpectedly fast after first one that it was impossible to dodge, the Knight was hit in the left shoulder by one of the mouth tentacles of the creature, it entered the Knight's left should, easily penetrating the extremely rusty armor, opening the skin like paper and going through the muscle fibers like rape, separating the veins from the flesh, the Knight could not judge yet if bones had been broken, but the Knight knew he was bleeding, bleeding a lot, the Knight fell to the ground, it's sword fell too far from it's hand for a defense to be made, the centipede thing raised it's body to finish the Knight, but most of it's tentacles were cut of before they could reach the Knight, they were cut off by the Reaper's Scythe, undoubtedly saving the Knight's life, "Interesting" the Knight thought, "it seems that the Reaper's Scythe can interact physically with Corrupted beings"

— Are you okay master?? Said the worried Reaper looking behind and standing in front of the Knight as barrier between he and the Centipede Creature

— I already had many injuries far worse than this, this is nothing but a scratch. Said the Knight getting up and taking it's sword from the floor

The creature screamed again, they would need to end it as fast as possible, otherwise the Knight would completely lose it's sanity

The Reaper flew to the direction of the beast, sticking his Scythe on the creature's torso full of eyes, the creature screamed in pain, the Knight followed by cutting the creature's left legs, that were actually human arms, the Reaper pulled out his Scythe with all his strength, creating a massive hole on the creature's torso, he then spun on his own axis and stuck his Scythe on the creature's lower jaw, and started pulling the beast to the direction he wanted, like pulling a leash on an animal that wanted to stay where he was, while the Reaper was pulling the beast, the Knight jumped onto the Corrupted's back, and started to stuck his sword on the animal's back each step the Knight took, individually separating it's vertebrae one by one, when the Knight reached the centipede's "head", the Knight jumped with it's sword on the Corrupted's head, using all it's weight to enhance the attack, the Reaper pulled his Scythe out of the creature's jaw, removing it, then he did the same as the Knight and the creature stoped moving.

They kept stabbing the creature's body over and over on all regions possible for the next minutes, to make sure it was dead, when they were sure, they stoped, they were both extremely tired and panting a lot, now they were looking at each other.

— You saved my life… even tho I'm enslaving you. The Knight said surprised

— Yes, a little thanks would be great! Said the Reaper trying to breath

The Knight removed it's helmet in front of the Reaper, revealing to be a woman

She had white skin with freckles over her nose and cheeks, and dark blue eyes, a color that the Reaper had not seen since before the Penumbra, she looked young, maybe in her late 20s even though she probably looked much older than she actually was, judging by the visible stress and lack of sleep in her face, she had short light brown hair, although it probably looked much darker than it actually was, judging by the amount of dirt in her hair, she had a boyish haircut that could easily make her be mistaken for a boy, her face carried some scars and bruises, her haircut had many imperfections tho, and the Reaper concluded that it was poorly cut because she would cut it with her sword, and cut it for practical not aesthetic reasons

— My name is Vanwë of Dreadwood, what's your name Reaper?

The Knight said, now without the helmet, the Reaper could clearly hear her voice

— My name is Novaherian, but you can call me just "Novah" nice to meet you Vanwë of Dreadwood. Said the Reaper completely astonished by her wild beauty, suddenly, the ideia of using that leash didn't sound that bad to the Reaper.