The Distinguished Mr. Rose Chapter 135: Chapter 134: The Final Lord

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Chapter 134: The Final Lord Those of other lands were not alarmed by the Evil’s arrival, for in their ignorance they believed all demonkin to be the same, the same unintelligent creatures that which so mindlessly thrashed about with only differences in size forewarning of their potential danger. It was natural that they thought this way—they who had only ever heard of man’s fight against the hordespawn through tales and secondhand news. But the Franks were different. The moment they beheld that terrible heart whose form once gave sustenance and feed for the revival of their despicable past lord, a seizing horror crept into them. They had seen it, oh yes; their eyes could never forget the visage of its dripping, pulsating ooze as it thumped and thumped in the chest of a monster, the very one who reduced the capital to rubble. How could this be? How could this possibly be? This Evil they thought slain, forever gone and never to return, was now ominously floating in front of the Demon King whose knees were drawn to its chest in an infantile huddle. The warriors of other lands noticed not the Franks’ caution. They rushed in, ready to slay it just as they had countless others. But when their blades approached, the heart trembled, and it released a terrible wave onto all those on the battlefield. The Frankish knights and priests had grown accustomed to it. In their many campaigns against the Great Evils, they had developed a resistance to that whisper which so ceaselessly plagued the mind and corrupted the soul, and it was because of this that they knew horrifyingly well what was about to occur. The tragedy they had no chance in stopping. The heart’s temptation burrowed into the people’s mind and clouded their vision. They were not prepared; they dropped their weapons and whimpered pathetically before collapsing on the floor. What did they see in those quaking eyes? A will thought unbreakable, a company of fellows they could trust. It all disappeared to make way for a landscape of their deepest, most reviled fears: the fears which, unique to them all, invoked a primal submission they were helpless to resist. Perhaps in the mind of a bug hater, they were surrounded by an endlessly skittering swarm of roaches. For one deathly afraid of fire, it now consumed them, burning and burning until their flesh charred black. Those with exceptional fortitude such as the continent’s five lords and their respective elites were not overtaken by the Evil’s lull, but nonetheless they had to halt their previous assault, for soon their fear-addled subjects stood trembling up and began to lash out at their neighbors. They screamed. They sobbed. They begged someone, anyone, to save them from their nightmares. The one silver lining amidst this sea of terror, Lucius supposed, was that the heart failed to summon Pepin’s soul back from the dead. >[The Heart of Fear scours the land’s records. It searches for the one most feared by the people!]< >[ERROR! ERROR! The designated target, Pepin the Short, has been erased from the celestial array. No souls can be summoned. As a result, the Heart of Fear adopts a new form]< The heart wriggled and squirmed, its rank oozing muscle steadily expanding by the second, stretching, until a hideous hand broke free from within and ripped its way out with a pained, tortured gasp. Blood drenched the newborn fiend’s body. Like the Lips of Refusal, it had a humanoid form, but instead of a pale unblemished skin this one was covered all over in malignant growths as if it were a living tumor given animation. “When will this end, my misery, my torment? Just another pawn meant to be trodden on, a sacrifice for that monster over my shoulder. I cannot escape it. Never. It follows me always, delighting in the fear wrought of my own consequences. Ah, I am so afraid. I am terrified. How miserable would it be, if even in death I am forced to serve?” The remaining sane members of the army did their best to control the masses overwhelmed by fe