Duke Kurma didn't even have a chance to speak up, before the man in black spoke up once again.
"Five."
"Four"
He started counting.
"Three."
"Two."
"One."
He was done counting. I am sure that he didn't even count for five seconds. More like two and half or three. It just showed that he didn't plan on letting Duke Kurma make a decision in the first place.
"Time up."
*SNAP*
Those two words were followed by a snap of the fingers. And then I saw one of the most disgusting and disheartening things to ever happen. Whatever that man did at that time, which I had little Idea about even on my deathbed, was suddenly amplified.
The black mist that covered the whole dome started concentrated and it dove directly into the hearts of the people through their skin. For a moment, everyone stopped the crazed drinking of water, vomit and urine. As the black mist seeped into their bodies, the black colored lines grew darker and darker.
The eyes turned complete red. There was not sign of the white color of the eyeball. At that moment, I knew they were not longer people. Whatever that made them human was gone and my thoughts were validated by what happened next.
I was watching the family with the baby. The baby who was suckling on his mother's breast's crazily, suddenly grew a few fangs, directly skipping the phase of teething. The fangs were bit deep into the mother's breast and pulled the flesh out.
Blood started spraying out, but only for a second. The baby buried its face into the torn part of the body and started sucking the blood.
The mother watched as her own child feasted on her blood. Maybe in that moment, I might have seen a tear in her eyes. I could see that she was struggling, to control urge. At least, it seemed like it, but the urge won over.
Her fangs grew slower than the rest, but they grew nonetheless, she bent forward, despite trying no to. The invisible force was pushing her, making her do it, as she bit into the tender neck of her own offspring.
She started sucking the blood of the child.
But the child didn't even resist, just like the mother didn't. He just focused on drinking more and more blood.
In the house next door, an old man who was lying on the sick bed a few minutes was bitten by his son and daughter-in-law. Both of them bit at two different parts of his body and started drinking his blood.
His body shirveled up at a visible space. I could see him struggling to get out of that bed, but the bones in his legs and arms were long damaged. The thirst for blood was making him feral, but he couldn't do anything about it.
His blood was soon up, the daughter-in-law and the son now looked at each other. They looked at themselves as their hands moved towards each other. Trying to catch a hold of each other. Once I again, I saw the reluctance between them.
However, the urge… the urge wasn't letting them go.
They hugged each other, tears running down their eyes as they bit into each other. They fell to the ground, as they sucked the blood and life from each other.
*UWAH*
That as the sound of me puking my guts out back in my room. I cut the connection between the bird and I. I couldn't take it anymore. It was way too much. The goriness of the scene as the humans, loved ones trying to consume each other was one thing.
But I had a feeling. A feeling that they didn't lose their reason completely. Maybe, my assumption before, that they lost their humanity completely was false. From their eyes and the reluctant actions, I could feel it in my soul.
They just had enough sanity to recognize what they were doing, but the sanity was not enough to control themselves from doing it.
From an infant to a high-ranked knight, no one was spared.
To this day, I cannot even imagine, what kind of torture their souls must have endured as they did what they did. Just imagine what kind of person can do it to the other person? Much less thousands of people at the same time.
All for what? Why would some do it?
I didn't know at that moment. I stood up from my own vomit and ran out of the room. I ran to the meeting room where everyone was gathered and when I saw the sight in front of me, I knew that I was not the only one that was in a sorry state because of this.
On the wall of the room, there were multiple screen projections showing different parts of the inner dome. The wall was as long as tennis court and each screen was like a decent 50 inch flat screen.
In front of that wall stood the Duke, his offspring, siblings, spouses, Dhana and Dharma.
Dhana and Dharma were standing right next to him and they were kind of surrounded by everyone else. I kind of understood why they didn't make it back to the room.
Along with them, the room was filled with all kinds of low level to high level members of the Kurma Family. And most of them if not all were puking their guts out. Make no mistake, some of them have seen a lot of disgusting and gory scenarios.
But nothing came close to this. Except for the Duke, almost everyone else showed some kind of nasty reaction to it.
Only he was able to stop himself from puking, but he was shivering in fright. His eyes were tearing up and he sobbed.
I walked to the front to reach Dhana. She looked at my sorry state and held me tightly.
"Did you see it too?" She asked.
I could only nod with my teeth clenched. After a layer of my initial disgust was gone, it was filled with anger and rage.
And I didn't know who I should direct it to.
"Why didn't you open the dome?" I asked the Duke, which seemed to have brought him out of his stupor. He looked at me and then at his own hand. There was a token in his hand. It was a rectangular plate carved out of some magical stone. It looked purple and glistening with various runic marks that floated around it.
It was the size of our average smartphone.
And that was the remote control for the array.
"I… I… was… abou…"
The Duke was stuttering as he tried to get his words out. But at that moment…
*BOOM* *CRASH*
A small explosive sound along with a crashing sound came. We all looked at the screens. The inner dome destabilized and it exploded, crashing several structures within the inner dome area in process.
It seemed like the sudden loss of life that was supporting the existence of the barrier made it destabilize.
However, that was not the only thing that happened at that moment.
From the deadbodies of the people in the inner dome area, a red colored mist flew out. It had a black hue to it, giving it a look like it was made of blood.
The mist flew out towards the core dome. The dome that was surrounding the mountain.
The man in black walked forward, along with the horse and the wolf. His steps were slow, confident, and with all the blood ridden floors along with the bloody mist that was flowing all around him as it reached the core dome…. He looked like the death itself.
No, saying death might be an understatement.
He looked like the manifestation of the cruelty in human form. And the keyword being the form. There was no way that guy was a human on any metric.
When he reached the foot of the mountain he stopped once again and the bloody mist was already all over the dome.
I had a bad feeling. I knew just from my gut feeling that this red mist was only much more dangerous than the black mist.
It was made from the blood of the people that just cannibalized on each other.
Duke Kurma looked at this and he started shivering like a kite in a storm. The token in his hand fell on the floor followed by him. He lost it.
One of the most powerful and daring people in the Daksh kingdom was on his knees.
The man in black raised his hand and placed it on the dome. The blood mist that was seeped into the dome was originally in a random pattern. To be more precise, it didn't have any pattern at all.
But when his hand touched the dome, the red mist moved towards his hand in an instant, concentrated at the edge of his palm before it started spreading into runic patterns that are spread throughout the dome.
As each part of the pattern formed, my heart beat increased ten fold.