Back inside the inn, Lucien sat beside Magnus as they listened to the innkeeper's morbid tale.

"Six months ago, three people came to the village claiming that they could help us become a mighty and prosperous town if we worshipped a goddess called Nurhia. They had brought with them several wooden carvings of this goddess which they distributed to every family in the village. Most of us, of course, refused because we had our own deities whom we were loyal to."

Artemus had his eyes closed, resting with his tipped back over the chair. Lucien would have suspected him asleep if the anti mage wasn't cupping a glass of warm water on the table. Sebastian had insisted he get some rest but the anti mage had refused to do so. If Syryn had been there with them, the alchemist would have told Lucien that it wasn't the first time that Artemus was pushing himself to exhaustion despite being told to rest.

"But after a couple of days, we started noticing something strange happening to the families that worshipped Nurhia. Everything they touched seemed to turn into gold, though I don't mean that literally. Farmer Kob, an old widow without children, was one of the first to accept the goddess into his home. He was blessed with a wife the very next day when he rescued a woman who was lost in the forest."

Sebastian raised his brows but remained silent. If the villagers knew anything about magic, they would have known that fortune of any

kind was neither so cheap nor easy to obtain.

"The same good fortune fell upon the village elder who had been sick from a disease that left him bedridden. He can now walk around as if transformed back to his youth again."

"So everyone started worshipping Nurhia?" Sebastian asked.

The innkeeper nodded. "The idol... It's in the drawer. Let me bring it to you."

Good things never came without equivalent sacrifice. Sometimes it was money, a sacrificial animal or two, maybe even another human life. All four listeners were already making their guesses as to what had happened for the innkeeper's son to be murdered so terribly.

"This is Nurhia," the man's face was grim as he placed the wooden idol on the table.

How the villagers could have accepted such a strange-looking idol baffled Lucien but then he remembered what Syryn had done a long time ago. Even so, the golden idol had been less horrifying to look at. Nurhia was straight up a demonic-looking thing carved out of ebony. The dark wood itself wasn't cheap to obtain so it surprised him that anyone would freely give away idols carved from precious wood.

"Why does it look so..." Sebastian was at a loss for words. The carving made it obvious that it was a woman but she had eyes all over what should have been a face. Her legs were splayed open, revealing another eye in the centre where one would have expected to see lady parts. She had heavy swollen breasts above a slim stomach where a symbol was carved. And in her cupped hands, there was a flower whose petals resembled the shape of a woman's nether regions.

"Perverse?" Lucien finished for him.

"Yeah, but I was also going for evil."

"I thought the same when I first laid my eyes on it," the innkeeper conceded. "But I was blinded by the prosperity that it seemed to bring for its worshippers."

"I'm goin' ta make a guess now," Sebastian told him. "Bad things started happenin' after a while."

The innkeeper's expression changed as he recalled what had happened to farmer Kob.

"The newly married farmer had an argument with his wife. It was over a small matter but Kob was like a mad man. While we were all preparing to sleep, he.. he hacked her to death with his axe.

We heard her screaming but were too late to save her. When Kob finally came to his senses, he was struck unconscious by a heart attack that claimed his life."

The innkeeper poured himself a cup of cider with shaky hands. "Cider?" He looked around the table. There were no takers. He licked his dry lips and drank a mouth full of the liquid before continuing his story.

"The next day, those three people appeared again, telling us that Nurhia required a sacrifice every week. If we disobeyed, one of the villagers would randomly die in lieu of the sacrifice we didn't make."

The innkeeper looked at the wooden box on the counter where his son's head was being kept. It had all been too good to be true. If only he had listened to his son when the boy had told him to run away from the village.

"What kinds of sacrifices?" Artemus finally opened his eyes to ask.

"Animals. At first, they were satisfied with taking our chicken. Then they began demanding bigger animals; dogs, cows, goats, deer if we could hunt them down. But they got greedier. Animals were no longer good enough to satisfy Nurhia, she wanted human lives."

Lucien's gaze was on the ebony idol of Nurhia. A demoness was what he guessed she was. The town was lucky then because Lucien had been deprived of his kill by Traxdart and was itching to murder something else.

"We didn't believe it at first but they made good on their promise. Every week, one head would be found. We never could locate the rest of the body. The villagers were afraid and some of them tried to run away but they were caught and murdered by Nurhia's priests. My son wanted to flee as well but I stopped him because I was afraid of what would happen to us if we were caught."

What a nightmarish situation they were stuck in, Sebastian thought. Knowing that every week, one unlucky soul would end up dying if the villagers didn't proactively murder someone.

"Why didn't any of you attempt to kill the three men who brought Nurhia?" Artemus asked.

"Because they are powerful mages! Eight young men lost their lives, died horribly when they attacked the priests. There's nothing we can do but kill each other till there's no one but the evil idols left in the village..."

The silence that followed his words was heavy with the thoughts of his listeners.

"You're all livestock," Lucien observed after a few seconds. "Herded by demons who are growing stronger with every life they feed on. If it's any consolation to you, rejecting the idols wouldn't have saved any of you from the death that hangs above the villagers." Because the demons would have preyed on them in other creative ways. Death was their ultimate objective but Nurhia was also feeding on the pain and distress that she caused the villagers. The demons could slaughter the villagers wholesale but it wouldn't give them the same power and satisfaction enabled by slow torture and feeding.

"Demons?" The innkeeper asked. "That's what they are?"

"Yep. And they're probably aware that we're here." Lucien pointed to the idol of Nurhia. "Have they asked for you to murder the patrons that stop at your inn?"

The man nodded. "They have. We don't get a lot of people passing by this place so the opportunity never arose."

"Ah, so it's like that," Sebastian said as he listened to the footsteps outside the inn. Even if the innkeeper wasn't a murderer, the less conscientious villagers wouldn't hesitate to kill the strangers since that would spare their family members from the same fate.