The Bargainer 5 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

-VB-

The Bargainer
Chapter 5

-VB-

I arrived at the city that once offered to make me their god. I once rejected them because I never had a need for a city, but now I did.

I stepped out of the portal not as myself but as the Beast that Rends, the title the people of this city gave me in both awe and fear for what I did to their would-be enemies. Though the people of this city and this world as well as many abroad did not know, the form of the Beast that Rends was the same Battle Wolf that I used to beat the shit out of the Nightmare that chased after me in the Blue Exorcist universe. With this form, I appeared no more than half a mile from the gates and made my way steadily towards the main gate.

It took a minute, but the soldiers manning the walls saw me.

When I reached the gates at the end of my leisurely stroll, the gates groaned deeply as they opened. On the other side of the opened gate was a procession of nine priests who have donned upon their heads the skinned wolf pelts. They threw their bodies down to the ground in prostration.

“Welcome back to Saath!” nine priests proclaimed simultaneously.

I let my wolfish lips rise up in an obvious smile.

“It’s good to be back,” I crooned with a double-toned rumble that had the people there trembling. “Rise up and tend to my wants.”

The priests quickly stood up and got out of my way, four to my left and five to my right, and followed me just a step behind - for a given definition of a step for a hundred foot tall wolf-monster like myself. “Tell me, how has the city fared since I’ve been here?” I asked the man who looked like the lead priest.

“It’s been two years for us, Your Holiness,” he replied back just a tad louder than he normally spoke. “We have done the best to follow your words, however, there are many enemies who would see us cast down.”

“Oh?” I asked. I came before to Saath more as a mistake, but when I saw that they were under attack, well, I just did what I felt was the best and fought for them. Of course, it was after staying three days in Saath - before that attack happened - that I came to finally be able to utilize my Transformation better than before. It was really sentimentality from the happiness of my accomplishments and the desire to test myself that led me to defend Saath.

It’s proven to be a good sentimentality, though, because I now had a city more than happy to be my base of operations.

I hummed as I allowed myself to return to my human form. When I did, I changed not to the “wandering steampunk wizard” outfit that I favored but one I prepared for this specific occasion and really for the sake playing up my “godliness.” I only had a bear fur pelt around my waist and down, covering up my modesty, and lacked a shirt. In its place was a series of light blue tattoos that existed as the result of a series of rituals I conducted with myself as the benefactor. These tattoos, a single system consisting of nine different tattoos, worked to make me impervious to all physical harm below a certain threshold and made me extremely resistant to all forms of “minor” magic.

Minor, in this instance, being that these magicks did not alter the state of reality, which was a thing “higher” tiers of magic often did.

Together, these two features made me look the part of the human form of the Beast that Rends.

As we came upon the central center of worship, a rounded ziggurat, and took my first step upon it, I turned around.

The priests and their retinues all came to a stop and knelt.

“Do you truly accept me as your god?” I asked them as I, instead of climbing, sat down on the second step, which was knee-high for me.

“YES!”

“Even if it means that I will not have you worship any other god?”

“YES!”

“Even if I tell you to pick up arms and follow me to war?”

“YES!”

“What about farming?”

That actually caused the priests and their followers to falter.

“In a very close future, something like the Century of Blood will happen to another world I visited,” I told them, which was a fact that they already knew; the priests had tried to follow me when I had left this city last time, and I told them that they couldn’t follow because I could not take them to another world. “No, it will make the Century of Blood seem like a minor skirmish. It will be a war that will have gods, goddesses, warlords, and entire worlds burn,” I crooned, playing up the part of the “god of hunt” that they have made me to be. “It will be a glorious hunt that will pit hundreds of thousands of deities to death.”

They all shivered at that.

“But the world that it would take place will have its own people. Some of whom are my followers -” the first lie I told them. “-and I do not wish for them to die, and they number far more than you. When that war breaks out, I must lead them to safety before I join the Hunt. So tell me, will you be the safe harbor for your brothers and sisters in another world? Will you be the granary that will feed them? Be the fort to house them? Be the hearth that warms them? Be the anchor that keeps them sane when the War of Heavens breaks out?”

It was not the lead priest who spoke up. It was a minor one, if the fact that his wolf pelt was not even of the best quality. “I-If it’s your will, then Saath will rise up to the occasion!” he pledged.

The high priest quickly followed. “Saath will follow you wherever or whatever you do, Your Holiness!”

“Good~” I crooned. “Because I have gifts that will help you transcend the boundary between mortal and half-gods.”

The priests could not take their eyes off of the jingling vials filled with the blood of an Entity.

“Some will fail to join me in the Hunt. Some will rise to the occasion. Who wishes to try first?”

Ah, the sweet scent of power.

It’s intoxicating for them all.