This is the tale of the tragically inclined young man who unfortunately becomes an apostle of the God of Death while all his friends become servants of the good Gods!
This is a story of how his peaceful childhood comes crumbling down in the utmost b...
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We were all staring at it of course, how could we not, it was humongous and dominated the space.
It demanded our attention.
Many soldiers vomited at the sight of it. Some cried out in dread and some fell to their knees in defeat. A few even passed out. In all honesty it was very un-soldier like, but I couldn't blame them.
In front of me was a 50 meter high spiraling staircase. That in itself would have been a very unique sight here in the forest, the horrible part was that it was built entirely with bodies.
I could see bodies of scarfed soldiers and bodies of townsfolk bent and intertwined to form this horrible structure. In some places hands of limbs stuck out and even worse sometimes faces stuck out. Some had twisted smiles, those were the scarfed soldiers and some had faces filled with fear or despair, those were the townsfolk.
Even worse, a horrible smell emanated from the structure, one that rivaled even the bloodiest of battlefields. Even I had a hard time keeping my composure and Zera who stood beside me was staring at the structure with eyes full of fear. I softly called out to her.
"Hey Zera."
"... y-yes?"
"What in god's name are we looking at?"
"It seems to be a structure of... bodies, a lot of bodies."
"How many would you estimate?"
"Based on the size and what I can see, I'd say nearly five-hundred bodies. My guess is it's all the scarfed soldiers and the rest of the missing townsfolk..."
I took a deep breath as I put my sword back into its sheath. It didn't look like we would be finding any more survivors. We were both still staring at the structure, I ordered the soldiers to search for survivors just to give them something to take their mind off what they were seeing, I doubted they would find anyone.
"Why would they do this?"
Zera's eyes hadn't left the structure but she responded with a theory.
"I read about a similar practice back in trainee school, although ... I don't know if it fits this."
"Tell me, we must determine the purpose."
Zera nodded.
"Back in the early times of the Empire, the Empire army once came across some nomadic tribes near the border. Usually this wouldn't be anything worth noting but these tribes had an unusual practice. The practice would involve sacrificing people and using their bodies to make structures."
"Mmm, did the Empire determine the purpose?"
"Yes, those tribes usually had very powerful magical weapons. It was determined that the sacrifice was being done to embed the power from the sacrifices into the weapon resulting in magical weapons with powerful capabilities."
