Chapter 755 - Easier than it Should Be

Zeke crushed the man’s throat, then tossed him aside.  He didn’t even know his title.  Just that he was head of the Temple of the Sun, as evidenced by his once-fancy robes and elaborate scepter.  And the fact that everyone there seemed to defer to him. 

Looking down, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of regret.  Fires raged all around him, hot enough to weaken even the old stone of the Temple of the Sun.  The timbers above cracked, sending ashes and bits of burning wood cascading down to the mosaic floor.  They were new.  Probably part of the repairs the city needed when humans resettled the Radiant Isles. 

Soon enough, the roof would collapse.

Zeke glanced down at his hands, seeing blood and ash.  He struggled to feel guilty, even after killing so many.  Thousands already, and there were more to come.  He could practically feel the city’s response to his attack.  They would all need to die as well. 

Shaking his head, Zeke turned from the throne and stepped over the body he’d dropped.  Most people would have stopped to loot, but Zeke had less than no use for whatever wealth the Temple had managed to accumulate.  He’d made his choices.  His plan was established.  He no longer needed to pretend, and as such, he didn’t need money, either. 

Finally, he could just do what he’d come to the Mortal Realm to do. 

It wasn’t enough to just kill the members of the Temple of the Sun.  He needed to do so in such a way as to ensure that fear would linger for generations to come.  If he did it right, then no one in the Mortal Realm would ever worship Shar Maelaine again.

And that meant shock and awe.

Thus, Zeke’s attack on the Temple of the Sun.  Once everyone was dead, he intended to tear the entire place down.  He wouldn’t stop there, either.  He couldn’t.  The second he gave them an inch, they would take the entire rope. 

So, he turned toward the door and strode through all the blood and guts.  When he walked through, he found himself confronted by three knights in shining armor.  They screamed for him to halt, but he didn’t break stride.  The first fell before a contemptuous backhand, every bone above his waste broken into tiny shards.  The second fell, separated from his spine, which remained clutched in Zeke’s hand.

The last turned to run.

He got two steps before Zeke grabbed ahold of his helmeted head and crushed his skull.  It took less than three seconds to kill all three, and he’d not even pushed himself.  If he went down that road, the realm might not survive.

And contrary to his nature, he didn’t want to kill everyone.  Just the worshippers of Shar Maelaine.  Everyone else could live.  In fact, he hoped they did.  If they could manage to spend the rest of their days in happiness, Zeke would be satisfied.

Assuming he bothered to check, which was extraordinarily unlikely.

Over the next few minutes, he encountered more knights, but they all fell the same as the first few.  It was such a shame.  It seemed as if the Temple of the Sun had a monopoly on elites, probably in an effort to maintain control.  But that meant that wen Zeke finished his task, the realm would lack real protection. 

Many innocents would die.

Zeke wanted to care.  Part of him surely did.  But he couldn’t let that deter him from his task.  And by that point, he’d grown extremely skilled at ignoring emotions he didn’t want to feel. 

Gradually, he scoured the Temple of the Sun for adherents to the Sun Goddess.  The body count rose well past the hundreds and into the thousands, but Zeke never stopped.  With his senses, no one could hide.  With his power, they could not resist.  He descended upon them like a divine reckoning.

In a way, that was precisely what he was.

The only caveat was that he was no god.  No – he was beyond divinity.  Outside the Framework.  He was more. 

Even with his immense speed, it took an entire night to purge the entire Temple of the Sun and its surrounding campus.  By that point, the main building had collapsed.  The outbuildings soon followed until Zeke reigned over a ruin.  Smoke twisted into the sky, obscuring the sun. 

And the next level down, a thousand guards and other soldiers had gathered. 

Fortunately, the civilian residents of the city had already begun to stream into the wilderness.  Out there, many would perish, but if they remained in the city, they would all surely die.  Zeke would make sure of it.

Once the temple was destroyed, Zeke made his way to the ramp leading down to the next level.  There, he found his way barred by the army of soldiers. 

They were all nervous, and rightly so.  He was just one man, and he’d spent the knight slaughtering the city’s – no, the realm’s – elites.  If he wanted to, he could do the same to them.  They knew they didn’t stand a chance, and yet, they stood their ground.  Zeke could respect that kind of dedication.

Besides, they weren’t his target.

“Leave,” Zeke bellowed, his voice loud enough to be heard dozens of miles away. “Phoenix Reach is marked for destruction.  Anyone who remains in this city by sunrise tomorrow will be destroyed alongside the city.  Resist me, and you will be killed.  Stay out of my way, and you will survive.  My only quarrel is with the so-called Sun Goddess.  If I find anyone worshipping her, I will kill them and tear their cities down around their bodies.

“You want to fight a goddess?!” asked the captain.  His armor shone in the dawn light, and his pike looked extremely sharp. 

“I do.  But that battle will not happen here.  The realm cannot sustain itself under that much pressure.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because she targeted my companions,” Zeke said.  And it was the truth.  He might’ve convinced himself that he’d come to the Mortal Realm for any number of other reasons, and most of those were viable enough.  But in the end, he just wanted Shar Maelaine to suffer.  Not for the hardship she’d inflicted upon him.  Rather, he wanted her to feel the consequences of targeting his friends.  He’d long hated her – going back to when she’d sicked Lady Constance on him and his friends – but until recently, he’d only wanted to kill her.  Now, he wanted her to suffer.

And the best way to force that upon her was to take her worshippers.  Not kill them.  No – that was too easy.  He wanted to poison the well for generations to come.  And he intended to do the same in the Eternal Realm. 

Only then would Zeke confront her in the Etheral Realm.  Only then would he kill her.  Perhaps it was petty.  Certainly, it was a misuse of his time and power.  He should have been focused on the wider picture.  But there was a part of Zeke that remained human, and coming to the Mortal Realm had reconnected him with that humanity.

In a way, at least. 

He still felt apart, but at least he remembered when that wasn’t the case.  That had to count for something with him.

Thankfully, only a few of the gathered warriors attacked him.  Zeke killed them in moments, cutting off anyone else who might’ve had similar ideas.  The captain soon guided his people away. 

“Captain,” Zeke said, and the man turned to face him.  “If you shelter priests or knights of the Temple of the Sun, I will kill you.  That goes for anyone I find.  Anyone who worships Shar Maelaine will die.  If I have to chase them, they will die slowly, and I will visit my frustrations out on anyone in my path.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He nodded.

“Good.  Now go.  You have less than a day to evacuate the city.”

Then, Zeke sat cross-legged in the middle of the ramp.  He closed his eyes, resting his hands on his knees.  Vaguely, he could sense people running away, though with the cocoon he’d woven around himself, his senses were extremely dull.  He didn’t dare push too hard, either.

Night fell, and the evacuation continued.  Phoenix Reach was no small city, and the flight of its entire population was not quick.  Still, the threat of death was motivation enough that they didn’t tarry.

Of course, a few enterprising knights of the Temple of the Sun attempted to end that threat by attacking him.  It did not go well, and soon enough, Zeke found himself once again surrounded by bodies.  He wasn’t certain whether the warning those corpses represented had warned other attackers off or if the remaining knights had simply abandoned their duty, but he didn’t really care one way or another. 

So long as they ceased worshipping the Sun Goddess – and more importantly, stopped forcing others to do so – he would let them go on their way.  Assuming they never strayed into his path.

At dawn the next morning, Zeke pushed himself to his feet and surveyed the mostly empty city.  Not everyone had evacuated.  Many of the old and infirm had remained in place.  There were plenty of cynics, too.  Some opportunistic looters as well.  But the vast majority of the population had already escaped into the wilderness.

That was good enough.

Zeke took a deep breath, then cocked his arm back.  Callibrating his strength to the peak of what he could manage without breaking the cocoon, he punched downward.  His fist connected with the ground, completely disintegrating the flagstone road.  The impact rippled outward, tearing through the surrounding buildings.  They collapsed in an instant. 

Meanwhile, the earth buckled and flew into the air as his punch – simple though it was – dug a massive crater that looked like the site of an asteroid strike. 

But Zeke was more concerned with the punch’s penetrative power.

It went deep.  So deep, in fact, that it caused a rippling earthquake.  He could practically see the labyrinthine system of tunnels collapsing in on themselves.  The tiers supporting the city fell next. 

And in the center of it all was Zeke.  He ended up among the rubble, buried by hundreds of tons of rock.  It didn’t take him long to dig himself out, though along the way, he found more bodies than he’d expected.  More people had chosen to stay than he’d thought.

A shame.

But not one he could change. 

Once he reached the top of the broken city, he wasted no time before descending.  He had other cities to destroy.  More of Shar Maelaine’s worshippers to kill.  And he didn’t want to be at it for years.

So, he leaped down the slope until he reached flat ground.  That was where he found a surprise.

Hundreds of men and some women had been stripped down to nothing and tied up.  They were still alive, but they were all covered in so much dust that they looked grey.  Kneeling next to the first of them, Zeke asked, “Who are you?  Why are you bound?”

“Fuck you, heretic!” the man spat.

That told Zeke all he needed to know.  Apparently, the people of Phoenix Reach had taken his threats seriously.  As a result, they’d taken the hunt for Shar Maelaine’s worshippers upon themselves.  The result was right in front of him.

“Are you a priest or a knight?” he asked.

“We all serve equally under the Sun –”

Zeke ended the man by stomping on his head.  His skull practically disintegrated under his foot.  With a sigh, he moved on to the next.  And the next after that.  Over the next few moments, he killed them all.  He took no real joy in it, save what came from knowing just how much the loss would hurt Shar Maelaine.

That served to soothe any minor vestiges of guilt he might’ve felt. 

With a shake of his head, he turned to the south and, without further delay, continued on his way.  He had three more cities to destroy before he could move to the Eternal Realm, and he had no interest in wasting time on meaningless emotions.