My scale-flesh quivered in anticipation. My mouth watered in the overwhelming need to taste the Lesser Core on my tongue. The urge had been growing for a while now, only cast aside due to the distraction of the disciples fight. Now, back in my own body and moving ever closer to the source of my hunger, it ca in full force; like the bite of a bad-thing or the heat of fire-water, it was impossible to ignore.
Impossible to ignore, too, was the knowledge that it wasnt just anticipation sending tingling vibrations down my scale-flesh.
No, the fear wasnt sothing that I could pretend didnt affect - even if I wished it didnt exist at all. So part of it felt wrong, like it was a sacrilegious emotion that I shouldnt have let myself have. I was the Great Cores chosen - no, created - Champion. My faith should have been stronger than this.
I should have been fearless, my emotions unassailable with the assurance that my origins brought ; I was nowhere near it.
I was afraid.
Terribly, terribly afraid.
My body trembled again, causing the ore-flesh wrapped around to scrape against stone. I was buried in the rubble that marked the entrance to the lair, waiting for my opportunity to move closer. The useless moving-wall remained open and defeated, its battered corpse forming an inviting path that most would have taken.
I, however, was more careful than that. Even if most of the Lesser Cores defenses were provided by the Little Puppeteers and those stolen by the spore-mist, it wouldnt be all of them. Yet, at the sa ti, the Lesser Cores defenses wouldnt be undefeatable either. It was crippled by its nature - both as an innately inferior Core and one that didnt create bad-things that could move about easily. Whatever traps lay within could likely be found, given enough ti.
The wall-crack vibrated around again, the motion stronger than before. Not from , but from sothing else. The rubble that ford my chosen passageway shifted about, pinching at my flesh. It was the sa tremors that had unbalanced Will and nearly cost him his life; they were becoming more common, more noticeable.
Just another thing to urge onwards, to tempt into slithering through the Lesser Cores lair and throw caution aside - because whether the Lesser Core or sothing else was the cause, I doubted that it was anything good.
Despite that, I waited until it finally happened. The gem within my mouth pulsed again, shadowy tendrils shoving themselves down my throat. My flesh beca ethereal - and I went straight through the wall, eschewing the need for any real passage and urging my spore-roots to push as quickly as they could.
It was more effective than I expected. Between the near-weightlessness of my shadowy form, the increased speed provided by the ore-flesh clasped around , and the strength of the vigor-infused spores themselves
I shot through the solid surface with only a hint of resistance, finding myself in the Lesser Cores lair - yet far further inside than I had wanted to be, gliding through the air as if held afloat by wings.
Looking down, I could only pray that the gems effect wouldnt fade before I touched the ground.
Still, the temporary flight gave a chance to look around the Lesser Cores lair in more detail, secure in the fact that I was all but invulnerable until I wasnt - whenever that happened to be. Hopefully not anyti soon.
The lair was eerily quiet, though I wasnt sure what else I could have expected. Being bad-things ford from plant-flesh, a creation of the Lesser Core was unlikely to be anything but quiet. They didnt growl or snarl or roar; they just waited silently in the way that plant-flesh did.
What I certainly hadnt expected, however, was what else I saw. Looking back, the destruction of the moving-wall should have been a sign. Useless as they were, moving-walls didnt destroy themselves.
They just stood there helplessly while other things destroyed them.
That sa other had swept their way through the Lesser Cores lair, a flurry of death and destruction. Ruptured and rotting plant-flesh was strewn across the room, flung about in the course of the battle. It all led to the center of the lair, to a single figure and two sources of light - one wrapped around the destructions source and the other atop an ornately carved pedestal.
The Lesser Core and the Coreless that had co close to defeating it.
The gem within my jaws started to sputter, shadowy tendrils losing their hold on my flesh. I bit down a little harder, hoping that it would help eke out just a tiny bit more of its power. Maybe it did, but it hardly helped. I was forced to the ground quicker than Id have liked, spore-roots bringing back down again only monts before I was brought fully back into reality.
Luckily, the battlefield that was the Lesser Cores lair was safer than I had expected, cleared of most dangers before I could even arrive.
The dead Coreless had made sure of that. She was the sa size as The Grateful One, for all the destruction that she had caused. Giant compared to , of course, but smaller in the way that Coreless females tended to be. Her body was covered in the sa type of ore-flesh as the corpse outside, marking them as allies, the only difference being the innurable skin-mouths that lined her waist - each filled to the brim with sothing or another, the items bulging out ranging anywhere from a thin skin-sheet covered in markings to small circles of ore-flesh. Even the gem set into her chest was the sa, though this one had survived the fight almost entirely unscathed.
The Coreless herself had not.
A single glance was all it took to see why. The slender tip of a darkwood root had thrust upwards from the ground like a spike - and then thrust through her body, too. The Coreless had her hand pressed against the Core itself, her body held upright by the root that had ended her life.
Touching victory, but tasting death.
It was a morbid reminder to not be overconfident; the Core, lesser though it may be, had a powerful Guardian. One that had been able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I froze in place, spore-roots holding steady. I wasnt sure how the darkwoods attack had been triggered, but I knew that an attack would kill just as surely as it killed the female Coreless. More surely, in fact. I knew my strengths, and survivability was far from being one of them.
Still, I was light. Light enough that, frozen in place as I was, whatever thod the darkwood used to detect her - if one even existed and it hadnt been just poor luck that had brought about the Coreless death - was unlikely to notice . For at least a short while, I was probably safe.
The ground trembled again, the echoing sound of fracturing stone more prominent than ever. With my scale-flesh pressed against the ground as it was, I could get a faint sense of where it had co from. Whatever was causing it was, fortunately, elsewhere within the many-nest - which ant that it could be dealt with later.
Later, when the Great Cores victory had been secured at last.
I just needed the shadow-gem to activate again so that I could move safely. I was almost certain that the Coreless had done the sa, avoiding most of the Lesser Cores bad-things through the captured mana of another. Even whole, the gems power wouldnt have been perfect; if it had been, I wouldnt be surrounded by the remnants of battle. The Coreless could have phased past any danger without even triggering any of the bad-things defenses.
Clearly, that didnt happen. Even if it had, she would have still been forced to materialize herself in order to grab the Core - that part, based on the way that she had died, had happened. Then, just when she was at the cusp of victory, she found defeat.
I wouldnt let the sa happen to .
My mind beca sharper, razor-focused on the gem held within my mouth. Its oily scent-taste filled my senses, bits of shadowlike mana occasionally slipping out of the cracked surface. It wasnt enough to shift my body into shadow, more of a tentative touch than the forceful conversion that I was waiting for. Everything began to fade, lost in the midst of my patient concentration. In the back of my mind, I noticed the ground trembling again. It was distracting, rubbing against my scale-flesh almost incessantly.
Then, finally, it stopped and I could focus again.
A wave of [FEAR] ca from the Coreless of the many-nest, a flood of [PANIC] that shattered my concentration.
At the sa ti, the gem activated itself again, reforming in the image of a near-weightless shadow.
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