MLiW Chapter 1-5 (Patreon)

Third-Person Point of View

Draka was slowly bleeding out. Ogrim Doomhammer’s guards were all loyal to the shadow council and they had decided to kill Durotan and Draka. Even with the ambush, Durotan and Draka managed to kill most of the assassins, if they hadn’t struck with poisoned weapons at the start they might have won. But both began to feel their bodies grow sluggish, the poison strong enough to kill a mammoth let alone an orc.

As she hugged her two sons to her body the assassins left them for dead. With a hair’s breadth of life, the poison from her body was expelled. Wounds began to knit together magically through divine energy as her son who had somehow come out uncorrupted by the demonic magic glowed with light. No one would be aware of what he did, Draka unconscious and her two sons too young to really remember what happened.

The healing had done nothing more than slow their mother’s death. They’d have still all frozen in the mountains if a group of humans didn’t stumble across them. Aedelas Blackmoore pulled his weapon from his scabbard as he dismounted his horse, looking to see if this was an ambush or not. He was always careful of deceit and betrayal. That was why he had only taken his trusted servant with him on his hunt.

Scanning the area and realizing it was only the aftermath of a battle, he kept his sword drawn just in case as he started to search the bodies. It looked to be a fight between two groups of orcs, Aedelas almost smirked at the sight of the green skins killing each other. What drew his attention was the only female orc and the two bundles she had tucked in her arms.

“What could be so valuable she would shield them from the elements with her own body?” Aedelas whispered to himself. His servant Tammis still on his horse keeping watch as well. Tammis couldn’t fight but he could spot for his master all the same. Aedelas was still fearful it was a trap, that was even more solidified in his mind when he noticed the woman was still shallowly breathing.

He poked at one of the bundles with his sword, undoing the covering and revealing it was nothing more than an orc babe. It was hard for him to get over their ugly green skin, the blade nicked the young green orc and he began crying. Aedelas couldn’t help but smirk as he picked the boy up. “Wow, look at the lungs on this little guy.”

Aedelas held the swaddle precariously so he wouldn’t touch the little orc's blood. Still with his famous smirk on his face, he leaned down and picked up the other bundle expecting to see another ugly green baby. He undid the cover before he sat in shocked surprise at the sight of a brown-skinned orc. The first thought Aedelas had wasn’t that the baby was uncorrupted, it was whether to drop him because he might be diseased.

The brown orc was much smaller than the other baby. ‘Was this one sickly? Did it have a disease? Was that disease contagious?’ Is what Aedelas thought. Tammis noticed the difference. “That’s a pure orc, my lord! Very rare, most of the ones that came through the portal were tainted by demon's blood.” The thought of ‘rare’ ran through Aedelas’ head as he wondered how to take advantage of the two.

Until the brown-skinned one began to glow. The tiny wound of the green-skinned orc began to heal as the brown one began to sweat before falling back to sleep. Aedelas’ eyes grew wide at the sight of instinctive healing magic flowing through the veins of an orc. One part of him wanted to kill the boy, someone that powerful could cost him but… If Aedelas played things perfectly… He could become king.

Tammis asked. “What about the mother milord?” Aedelas had almost forgotten about her. She was riddled with wounds. A particularly bad wound on her leg meant she would no longer be able to walk. ‘Was it even worth taking her back if she was just going to be useless?’ That is what Aedelas thought. He looked over her body again.

Lecherous, is a word that many might describe Aedelas as. Many whore houses refused to serve him as he was a mean drunk and was too rough for normal women to deal with. It meant only the slaves, peasants, or serfs, people who couldn’t refuse him, were left to deal with his lustful intentions. If she lived and he got drunk, the man was enough of a pig to sleep with an orc just out of curiosity.

He loaded her onto the back of his servant's horse as he held the two young boys in his hands. Plans were being made in his mind as they made their way back to Durnholde Keep. He separated the mother from the children, at least until Tammis’ daughter Taretha told them that the babies needed milk and couldn’t eat meat yet. Draka was healed to the best of the healer's ability. The wounds inflicted were meant to maim and cripple and that’s what they did to her. She could barely walk, let alone fight as a warrior.

Years passed as Draka had fulfilled her purpose of raising the children until they could be weaned off her milk. Aedelas got drunk and tried to force himself on the female orc… It didn’t end well for him as even as crippled as she was, she almost killed the man and left him nearly impotent with a well-placed strike. He managed to survive and beat her to near death before selling her into slavery. Female orcs were rare and many would purchase her for the same reason Aedelas saved her life.

The children were young enough that they barely noticed their missing mother. Only faint memories of their mother would remain once they grew up. They both would know their true names. The green-skinned orc, Go’el, was strong like his father and Aedelas began to raise him as a gladiator and general. A general who would be solely loyal to him. He could set Thrall off into the wilds where he would become the leader of a warband and as they conquered lands the green-skinned boy would give him the land to lead as king.

The brown-skinned orc, Drek’thane, was sickly like his mother and named after the seer of their village. His name was shortened to Thane by most and he had begun his training as a priest at a very young age. His weak body made it difficult for him. He rapidly adapted and proved his intellect even at that young age. Aedelas almost treated him as a second son and his daughter treated the two orcs like she would her real brother.

Slowly they grew up, learning more until Thrall’s first battle in the gladiator’s arena. He had easily won, even at the age of ten he was the size of most full-grown men. He was trained to be a soldier the moment he could walk and could use a blade like it was a part of his arm. His brother Thane healed the minor wounds, but every battle grew harder and harder.

Thrall began to fight many battles in a row, first two, then three… Five, until the match he was to take part in, was a ten-round fight. Thrall managed until the ninth round before he was almost killed. Even still he had injured the ogre so much it was deemed a tie, but he couldn’t take part in the tenth round. Thrall had assumed it would be like always, that his brother would come in and heal him back up, that Aedelas who he had grown to see as a father figure wouldn’t treat him with scorn.

A severely injured Thrall was almost beaten to death as Aedelas bet Thrall would win everything and it cost him his money. Thrall knew that it was his time to flee. He planned his escape and the moment he came up with a plan, he’d tell his brother Thane as well. It would be weeks, maybe even months but Thrall planned to leave Durnholde Keep.

Chapter 02

I woke up like any other day before remembering that my lord had almost killed my brother last night. He was so drunk he bet that Go’el could win ten rounds in the arena. Aedelas wasn’t a very smart man. The most someone had ever won in one day previously was five rounds… Which was Go’el just days before he doubled the number to ten, which put him against even harder enemies to defeat.

My heart skipped a beat at the memory of my brother struggling to breathe and I almost failed to cast my healing prayers as his body was suffused with the healing magic. Years of hard lessons and punishments for failure were the only reason I was capable of casting them while under duress. I healed him back up, he would need weeks to recover fully… But the look in my brother's eyes, the disappointment in his father figure.

I had never seen Aedelas as anything more than he was. He was a snake in the grass and I had more in common with his servant's family than him. He had put all his effort into raising my brother and only used me to save on the cost of hiring an actual priest to help keep the gladiator’s arena running smoothly. I knelt down as I began my morning prayers, my connection strong enough to feel the faint strengthening in power as I did so. 

For as long as I could remember I could heal. It was only through the lessons and learning faster than the other priests. Some of the priest seminarians were still seminarians while I surpassed them becoming a full priest. Other priests looked at me as some kind of freak because of my strong connection to the light. I just did my best to ignore them and continued my work and training as a priest. I couldn’t help but smile as Taretha walked in with my lunch in her hands.

As ‘sickly’ as I was, I was still bigger than most human men. Thrall was 7’6” with no indication that his height was going to stop while I was 6’6” with no indication that mine was going to keep increasing. I didn’t move as I kept praying and watched from the corner of my eye as she patiently waited for me to finish. A fondness grew into interest and general love for Taretha.

I didn’t know what the feeling was, but the love I felt for Taretha was more than I felt for anyone else including my brother Thrall… Well, it was a different love for him. I knew I was supposed to love him, but we were just in two separate worlds. Thrall was set for greatness, even I knew that and I was… An above-average priest.

Taretha split the sandwich in half as she poured the soup into a small bowl for me to sip at while she kept the other half and we ate in companionable silence. I had saved her brother from a misfired crossbow bolt that punctured his lung a few years ago, since then I was greeted with these daily meals allowing me to stay inside the chapel for that much longer.

We finished and I began to make my rounds around the barracks. Taking care of the human soldiers first, none had anything truly terrible wrong with them. The occasional cold or hangover is what I handled here. Making my way into the orc encampment I began treating the much more severe illnesses the thralls had… I really hated the name Aedelas gave my brother but no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t convince Thrall to go by his orc name.

Out of sheer stubbornness, he refused to go by any other name than the one Aedelas gave him. I just saw it as what it truly was, how Aedelas viewed him. He would always be a thrall to him, even if he became the warchief. One of the thralls was whipped so severely his bones were showing from his back and Thrall thought that the man who led these people didn’t have anything to do with their treatment. He was the one who put in this system to keep the orcs calm and docile.

I just sighed in frustration, there was nothing I could do besides heal them the best I could. How many had I saved? How many were sold to someone else that would have died? How much money did I save Aedelas who bought more slaves? How did I stop all of this? I may have been stronger than a normal human but that didn’t mean much when they outnumbered us three to one and were far more armored than us.

That was if we all worked together as well. The thralls were broken, some beaten so badly they couldn’t even work. Others were left in a pillory for so long that they went insane and became so afraid of being punished they would actively fight anyone in the same room who was attempting to break a rule. We might have been able to get half of the thralls on our side while the other half were crippled or would actively fight against us so they wouldn’t be punished.

It meant it was impossible to escape, at least for most of the thralls to escape. I could but, without my brother coming with me I didn’t see much of a point. I was taken care of for the most part, had a higher ranking position than most of the human slaves let alone the other orcs, and was the surrogate son of a family closely tied to the ruler.

We finished the rounds, and Taretha came along for the entire process. She had become a pseudo priest, she didn’t have the connection to heal but she knew enough that if I did leave she would make herself useful as the doctor of the keep. There were other healers and priests, but none were as learned about ailments as she was. A healer might be able to heal a wound, but did he know how to lessen the pain of shingles? What about curing scurvy?

That was wishful thinking though. Of leaving here and finding my true place alongside other orcs… As often as I had that dream, there was one I had just as often. Becoming loved and appreciated by the humans in this keep. To be seen for my abilities and not my skin color… I wanted… I wanted Taretha to be mine. She kept away from Aedelas but from what I heard, he was growing more and more dangerous after an incident over ten years ago.

Injured to almost impotence, the man only had the one vice of drinking to fall back onto. It made him far more angry at his situation and he took that out on anyone around him. The more beautiful the women, the worse their treatment became. We made our way back into the chapel. This was the only time we could have seen Aedelas if he wasn’t actively looking for us as we had to pass right by the keep's entrance.

I breathed a sigh of relief as we made it passed the entrance without seeing anyone but the guards. Sometimes he’d be outside with a smile on his face, others with a teeth-filled frown as he swayed back in forth from the drunkenness. I made my way into the basement, that was where I lived. A small single-sized bed with a bookshelf with books given by the church was all I possessed.

Even then the books belonged to the church, not me. The blanket was so ragged it would rip if I pulled it with any force. It was still mine. Taretha would normally bid me farewell before making her way home. Today was different. As I sat on the edge of my bed, she gave me a soft smile before she started to shed her clothes. “Thane… I’d like… For you to take my virginity from me, please.”

Chapter 03

She undid her bra letting out a pair of breasts I had imagined over and over again in my mind. As much as I wanted to do this, I was scared. Scared because there was no door to this basement, anyone could come down and catch us… If they caught a human girl with an orc, there was a good chance that both of us would be killed.

As nervous as I was, I couldn’t stop my body's natural processes as I felt myself grow hard at the sight of her. So hard that it rubbed painfully against my pants struggling to get free. I moved in a daze as I undid my bottom and my rather large penis popped out. Large in terms of human standards at least, rather small compared to other orcs.

If she was an orc she might have let out a small giggle at my size but the shocked gasp that came from Taretha’s throat led me to feel proud I could do that to her. Hard life left my body hard, hard muscle from hard work. I had never had the bulky muscular look of other orcs. My toned muscular physique trained through constant work was impressive enough for Taretha to eye me up and down before she took off her bottoms. 

Her naked body was perfection, the slightest hint of freckles speckled all over her body making her more unique than the perfectly pale flesh I imagined in my mind. She had also been raised the same way as me, a servant’s daughter of the lord who had to put in as much work and effort as her father otherwise she’d be deemed useless and possibly sold off to another noble.

It left her body thin, not emaciated. It didn’t serve Aedelas to have servants who were too weak and feeble to do work. The slaves and thralls on the other hand… Well, she wasn’t a slave or a thrall which gave her food on the table most days, even if it was bland compared to others, at the very least she could keep her belly full. Blonde, slightly longer than shoulder length hair curling up and away from her body. She made her way towards me.

I had never seen a naked woman before. The very few times I was around when the prostitutes were brought in for the guards someone noticed me and kicked me out of the room before they got all their clothes off. Most of the time it was by force as they struck me for ‘being a dirty orc’. Other than the ones that Aedelan brought in, the ones who left injured there weren’t any other women inside the keep except Taretha.

She placed her knee between my legs as she leaned forward toward me. My hands moved on their own and groped her breasts. Once again, I couldn’t believe this was happening. How many times had I dreamed about this exact situation? How many times had I pictured her naked in my mind? All of those times didn’t hold a candle to the actual sight of her naked in front of me.

Her breasts were on the smaller side, but that was to be expected from someone who had to do a hard day's work every day. Hard work kept her slim and made it impossible for her breasts to grow more than the bare minimum. I couldn’t help but notice the lust in her eyes as I wondered now. How many times did she imagine the same things I did?

My large hands covered her breasts completely as I began to knead them. The soft moan that left her lips made me wary to continue, the moment we were found out was the worst possible outcome for my life that I could think of. I looked around before finding a wooden spoon for her to bite down on. It might not stop the moans but any way to lessen the sound was absolutely necessary in my mind. I pulled her close, as inexperienced as I was I just wanted as much of her naked body to be pressed against mine. My hand reached around her back while the other reached down to grip her perfect ass.

I might have pictured her naked from the back as often as the front because of her round and supple ass. She sat in my lap once a year ago and that single interaction left me hard countless times as I kept remembering it. The few times I was caught masturbating I was beaten and tossed outside the chapel for doing something so disgusting. I had lost count of how many times I caught the other priests doing the same though.

The lack of women in the area meant that many would find reasons to interact with Taretha. The only reason she wasn’t assaulted was her father's position beside the leader of the keep. The only reason this was happening now was because no one was eating in the kitchen or had seen her come down. Even with the spoon gripped in her mouth… I wanted to kiss her.

Her hands were roaming over my body as they slowed down and she noticed mine had stopped exploring hers as well. I gulped as I decided that the risk that she would call a stop to this was worth it as long as I could kiss her just once. Our eyes met as I moved closer and closer. She leaned into it tilting her head slightly as our lips made contact. The spoon made our first kiss harder than it should have been but my hammering heart had somehow calmed down after the kiss.

It was as if my body finally knew she liked me as much as I liked her. It was clear up until that point but it was one thing to know it and a completely different thing to feel it. I knew she liked me, she would have to in order to visit me every day and stay by my side but… It was a completely different thing to know she felt the same way I did for her.

I had gotten carried away as I pulled the spoon out of her mouth and really dived in. Our lips smacked together more and more roughly as I started to suck on her bottom lip while she sucked on my top. I don’t know who did it first but somehow our tongues got involved. Our bodies moved instinctively like two people who had done this a thousand times in their minds. She ended up beneath me with me kissing her like my life depended on it.

My dick felt a sudden pressure around it as I looked down to see her tiny hand trying to line it up with her slit. It felt surreal, like this was a lucid dream and there was no way someone actually wanted me to have sex with them. No, not just have sex with them but be their first, the person they chose over everyone else. I bucked into her hand drawing a gasp from her as I reached down and put it at her entrance.

Once again, I might have been glad I was a bit smaller than the average orc. There was no way an average orc would have fit inside her if she was this tight for my smaller equipment. We sat there slowly growing accustomed to the feeling of each other. Her growing more and more comfortable with the feeling of herself being spread apart, me trying my best to not orgasm as her insides clung to every inch of me inside her.

Finally, we grew comfortable enough to begin moving without her wincing in pain. The foreplay was enough that she had already cum, I might have as well but through the fugue of kissing hadn’t realized it. The ropes of cum on her stomach were the only proof I did. As I drew closer to my first orgasm inside her. She couldn’t help but scream out before stifling it as I released in her. As we both heavily breathed, making eye contact like two people truly in love, my heart sank when I heard Aedelas speak. “Oh… So this is where you both were. Well, it’s good to see that you two have found love in the last moments of your lives.”

Chapter 04

The fight between us was mostly a blur, it was just unfortunate that Aedelas picked today to not be completely drunk. I still landed a good hit on his crotch, my mind immediately going to the worst when it involved him. I got lucky, his previous injury had flared up again from my strike but as I beat him he called out for help and the guards came running in.

A fight broke out and I wished I was bigger and stronger. The unfairness of a three-against-one fight as I blocked an attack another flew in my blindspot striking me, the rain of blows quickly leaving me beaten. The only reason I was left alive was because both used maces instead of swords. My body was beaten and bruised but I didn’t bleed out. Aedelas wanted to humiliate me, that was the other reason I was alive.

Each of the two guards held one of my hands as they raised my badly beaten body up to watch what he was about to do. Aedelas had the same smirk on his face that he normally did, but it was twisted to an ugly sight never seen before. There was madness in his eyes as he hated me for what I did. He had Taretha by her hair as she was down on her knees.

“I was just going to kill the two of you but you’ve pissed me off. I’m going to take her, then my men holding you are going to take her. Then the rest of the barracks is going to take her. Since she’s slept with an orc, I’ll even let the thralls have a time with her. All with you watching, unable to do anything until the very end. Then I’ll have your brother kill you for your treason.”

Tears leaked from my eyes as he spoke. I couldn’t look at him anymore. The man had clearly gone insane. I could only look at Taretha who looked broken to me. She knew there was nothing I could do, or anyone could do to save her now… And I knew it as well. He pulled down his pants before attempting to stroke himself hard. It just wouldn’t grow, his flaccid thumb size penis almost made me feel bad for the man if he wasn’t such a useless human being.

He grew angry at his inability to as he yelled out, spittle flying from his mouth. “Don’t you dare say anything!” I could only laugh at his impotence. He was truly as pathetic as everyone thought he was, the warrior who gained this position having died at some point and been replaced by this pathetic loser. The only reason he was still in charge was no one else wanted to run this backwater shithole.

My laughing drew his ire from the both of us to just me as he quickly closed the distance and began striking me. I couldn’t help but keep laughing. It was painful but the more I laughed the more infuriated he got. Whatever attention I could draw away from Taretha I did as he beat me over and over again, hurting his hands just as much as he hurt me. My healing magic is the only reason I wasn’t beaten to death most likely.

He finally caught on to what I was doing as Taretha managed to put on her bra and bottom and turned towards the staircase before he turned around and caught her. “No you fucking don’t you whore! You were meant for me! I told you to come to me tonight and you end up in his bed instead! The reason I couldn’t get hard is because of how disgusting I find a human who slept with an orc!”

That was a complete and easily seen-through lie. The man couldn’t function as a man anymore. I had kicked him into being a eunuch. I couldn’t help but start laughing again, trying to draw his attention away but he knew it was all an act by now. With a sinister smile on his face, he spoke. “Fine, I might not be able to do anything. But my men are more than willing to. You, trade places with me and make it as violent as possible.”  Fury was all I could feel by then. Molten hot unadulterated fury at the pathetic man who had no right leading another let alone a garrison of them.

I bellowed in anger as he took the guard's place holding my arm. Why was this happening to me? I couldn’t help but cry out in rage as Aedelas struck me in the face. Trying to make me feel the pain he felt but I couldn’t turn my focus away from her. I cursed them all as I began to shout. “Is this what the light is!? Taking care of those who don’t deserve it while letting the truly pure suffer underneath them! I forsake it then! Give me power! Give me the power to kill them!” 

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Third-Person Point of View

The rapid corrosion of such a pure light had never been seen before. Even the gods became aware of the light rapidly turning into shadow, not just shadow. Thane was becoming even darker, the man was rapidly turning the light he controlled into the void. Many gods began to fight over the very soul of the man. His body rapidly began to shift between light and darkness as he was almost ripped apart. The first to give up was Bwonsamdi. He just noticed the presence of the other gods and decided the fight wasn’t worth it.

An’she and Mu’sha(Elune) were next. The sun and moon god and goddess couldn’t waste their power on someone who wasn’t solely focused on them. Taking out one of the void lords attempting to overtake the body as a farewell to the rest of the gods. N’Zoth was the next to have his tendril broken and his connection to the man destroyed. It was just too costly to pay for a pawn that so many other gods were fighting over.

Ysera and Alexstrasza didn’t really know why they were fighting, the connection so faint the small help fighting the shadow and void expelled them from the orc. With the expelling of the final traces of the void god, Lo’sho was left mostly depleted as they only wanted to help stop him as well. It only left one connection left, a truly unforeseen connection. One of the newest deities who only had the rumblings of sentience that no one would have thought would have won the battle was left.

Lo’sho, the second moon and younger sibling of An’she and Mu’sha. The deity still hadn’t decided on their sex, only being classified as a child deity until that point but the moon felt the love between the two and the hatred the man felt when they were separated. Lo’sho disliked that feeling, and even with their minimal power, they decided to fight until the end. It almost pushed them back into the non-sentience they had but… Lo’sho decided a few things with their sentience.

Lo’sho decided she was a girl, smaller than her sister and while her brother was the sun and daytime and her sister was the moon and nighttime. She decided that her aspect would be love. The first love god of Azeroth. The last thing she decided was, that she had chosen that the man they had all fought over was to be her champion.

As Thane’s body began to fill with light energy from his newly formed connection of light through the goddess Lo’sho, there was still a connection they didn’t notice. Lo’sho was a god, but she was new at this and even the more experienced gods or even N’Zoth didn’t notice the other connection. The titan Eonar looked at the new love deity with fondness as she left her champion a small gift that he might never even call upon.

Chapter 05

I felt my body was almost torn apart with power for a brief moment that felt like it went on for several lifetimes. One moment it felt like I was about to be ripped apart, the next I was filled with new knowledge and power I previously didn’t have. Gigantic golden wings shot from my back that launched the two holding me away as my wounds began to heal automatically.

With shining golden eyes, I lifted my hand into the air as I felt the weight of the light materialize into a one-handed spear. The room was completely silent besides the sound of my wings flapping as I hadn’t broken eye contact with the man who was attempting to do something unspeakable to someone I loved. I tossed the spear and it became an ethereal light that dug into the man. As it did so it burst into a wave that damaged my enemies and healed my allies.

Taretha wasn’t that injured, only had scrapes and bruises from how they roughly handled her but her wound healed while the man’s wound looked false. He fell over dead but there were no visible signs that anything had happened to him. I held my hand back up and felt the spear reform in my hands. I spun towards the two remaining threats in the room.

Aedelas betrayed himself as most people would steer clear of him, especially when he began yelling. I had no doubts if he yelled for help more people would come. That was why I attacked him first. He hadn’t deemed me a real threat, I had training in priestly ways but my teachers had avoided teaching me anything offensive for this very reason.

As the spear plunged into his chest it became ethereal again, for a brief moment his face lit up like a torch before he fell over dead. The information put in my brain told me that the more light is shown when stabbed the darker the person. This weapon would never harm someone innocent no matter how much I tried. That meant that he and his guards were considered evil enough to be struck down by the light.

A fitting end to them if I do say so myself. With one guard left I wasn’t sure whether to attack him or not but the choice wasn’t left to me. The man lunged at me with his mace and my body moved instinctively to pierce his chest. The flash of light wasn’t as strong as the other two but it was still enough for him to end up dead. Thoughts began to race through my head as my heart hammered in my chest.

I began to vomit at the sight of the corpses before I thought up several plans and tossed them out when they didn’t make much sense. I closed my eyes, sat down, and looked at the new arsenal of spells and abilities I had gained by becoming the champion of Lo’sho.

Character Name: Thane

Class: Champion

Level: 01

Race: Untainted orc

Stats

Strength: 25

Agility: 17

Stamina: 24

Intellect: 19

Spirit: 27

True path of light- Gain access to both priest and paladin spells and abilities. Gain two skill points for priest on even levels and paladin on odd levels starting at level ten. 

Power word: Bravery- 10% to all stats for 1 hour.

Blessing of the moon- 10% regenerating shield, 15% movement speed, 20% armor, and 25 to all resistances for 1 hour.

Holy guidance- Passive- Innate feeling on where you’re needed to help the light the most.

Avatar of Light- 7-day CD- Take on the aspect of light, 200% increase to stats, and strengthen the effect of all priest and paladin spells for 7 minutes.

Sanctified land- 12-hour CD- Sanctify the land in a thirty-foot area around you. All holy magic is 50% more effective while all undead have their stats reduced by 50% and demons by 25% while inside the area. Sanctified land lasts one week but sanctifying the same land seven times makes the effects permanent.

Seal imbuement- Apply a seal to your weapon that will last until it is replaced or removed. 

Lover’s bond- Gain a full bar of rested experience after embracing a lover. Lovers have an increased affinity with the light and can become priests and paladins more easily.

That was a lot of new information to take in. I was really only stronger for the next seven minutes, otherwise, I wouldn’t get much in terms of power out of my bonuses as they leaned more towards support and fighting the undead. I make a plan as I rush over and grab Taretha by her shoulders. 

“Wait for me to grab everyone's attention before you leave. When you exit the chapel turn and head towards the wall. If you follow it to the bush near the back there is an exit I had dug for the last few years. You should be able to fit and then replace the bricks back up so no one knows you were here. I… I have to take my brother and leave otherwise they’ll kill me for killing Aedelas.”

She tried to stop me. “No! We can figure something out for you to stay. There has to be something.” Tears filled her eyes again as she knew that wasn’t possible but had to say it anyway. I passionately kiss her before I speak again. “You know there’s no other choice. I just want you to not get caught up in all this. If anyone asks, you were keeping an eye on me for Aedelas.” I kissed her again before I moved to leave. 

She stops me again. “Wait… Your mother is alive.” It felt like I was struck by a war hammer at the news. What did that mean? My world began to spin but with nerves of steel, I clamped down on my emotions. Now was not the time to panic or think. It was the time to act. I head out towards the castle.

The two guards posted were far enough away that they hadn’t heard all the commotion and the few priests inside the chapel must have left when they heard all the shouting. I hadn’t realized but the wings poking from my back from the avatar of light were now hidden and would only reveal themselves if I wanted them to be seen. Since I didn’t they weren’t there but I still had a few minutes of the power boost before I lost them.

The guards tried to stop me but I yelled at them. “Aedelas said he hurt Thrall real bad and if I don’t hurry he’ll die. Do you want Aedelas’ best gladiator to die on your watch, huh?” My words thoroughly placated the guards as I entered the castle's basement where he was locked down. Thrall didn’t need to look at me before he knew I had the same plans as him. With a barely imperceivable nod from him, I smacked the guard over the back of his head knocking him out. I hurriedly unlock his cell before I tell him. “We got about three minutes left until I lose my power and become far more useless in a fight. Before then we have to get outside these walls.”