Renato sat propped against the mountain of flesh that had stopped writhing, his head in his hands.
The sheer flood of information made his head feel as though it would split. By comparison, the stench of blood and rot around him was almost bearable.
The filth coating his Plate Armor rapidly lost its vitality, shriveling and turning black. Renato raised a hand with difficulty, tore a limp piece of rotten flesh from his Pauldrons, and tossed it to the ground.
Renato had destroyed the mountain of flesh in the center of the courtyard, a mass of countless human bodies forcibly fused together. Crisscrossing cuts covered its surface.
Those were the marks left by his wild slashing when he had been on the verge of madness.
His memories were fragmented. Renato only remembered throwing himself at the mountain of flesh with the last scraps of his will after killing Benjamin. His mind was blank when it came to what happened afterward.
Even Renato found it unbelievable that he had retained the barest shred of awareness in that state, rather than going utterly mad or becoming Dakoul's puppet.
Maybe the Mind Flayer Cerebrospinal Fluid I drank back then helped? It permanently reduces psychic damage. Perhaps Dakoul's gaze counted as a psychic assault too?
The strange phenomena caused by the Ritual vanished. The sky returned to normal, and the moon reappeared.
Faint hoofbeats and battle cries sounded in the distance. Patches of white light were gradually advancing from the outskirts of the Slums toward its interior.
Of all the times to show up, they had to wait until it was over.
Renato braced himself on his sword's hilt and tried to stand. He could not stay here. Whoever the reinforcements were, he, a marked "Chosen of the Gods," had to leave the scene