FINAL CORE - Chapter 73 (Patreon)

It never stops.

The churning machination of horrors never stops spinning, the wheels, covered in the gore and blood of the young, never come to rest.

Every hundred years comes a great crisis that rocks our world to its core. Before the breaking of each new century, people gather together in great masses. The economies boom as people train for war and for destruction. Magical technologies advance and the grit of many souls becomes too rough to frictionlessly sustain peace amongst all living beings.

— And then it comes.

It comes in many forms, the crisis. It comes in the shape of a goblin-horde. It comes in the shape of the horrific nightmare we call the demon-king. It comes as the deep, harrow flames of revolution that covers the landscape. It comes as ash.

And of those millions of people who prepared for war, who prepared for the night to come, most will simply vanish before it ever even begins.

The power of a true crisis is beyond anything that any society is able to fully withstand the brunt of. The wave comes and totals anything.

Only through the help of the gods, through the help of chosen souls who we title ‘heroes’, have we been able to survive.

As does the darkness come with certainty every hundred years, so does a chosen soul rise from the rubble to pull us out of the nightwash.

The hero. Sometimes, it is a single person, bestowed with incredible power. Sometimes, it is a group of five people, who we dub a ‘hero-party’.

We don’t know how the choice is made by the heavens.

But we know in gratitude that it is so.

~ Of the one-hundred year crises

________________________________________

Crusader Legionnaire Nostrae

Human, Female, (Priest + Warlock) Advanced-Class Inquisitor

Location: The City, Castle Dungeon

The man laying on the table screams like a howling animal, his chest, heaving to pull against his limbs, which are strapped to the table with metal shackles.

The wet wood beneath him hisses as the hotly glowing, metal poker — shoved down through his solar-plexus and through his core, reaches the table beneath his squirming gestalt. The man screams, froth leaking down his mouth on all sides.

Nostrae, sitting on the table too, on his lap, leans over, holding the top of the skewer with both of her hands. They’re bare and the hot metal hisses, scalding her as well. But she doesn’t feel it anymore. Her scarred skin is too thick after doing this for so long.

The woman leans in closer towards the writhing man, tilting her head as she looks at the slurry of spittle, mucus and blood, which is leaking from his face.

She slowly leans in, pressing her tongue out towards it.

— The door opens.

She freezes, her tongue still extended out.

“You’ve been asked for,” says the man by the door, simply then stepping outside and closing it again. “By Cardinal Schweig.”

Nostrae lifts her eyes to look at the rest of the face of the man on the table, lifting a finger to touch his forehead.

His chest heaves as he tries to catch his breath.

— She lunges forward, grabs his head with both hands, holding it down as she bites off his nose.

The woman rises back up off of the table and yanks the poker out of his chest and then throws it to the floor where she found it. Nostrae grabs a small fabric towel from the side of the room, holding it against her mouth as she spits out the piece of him.

Every once in a while, she likes to take a new piece.

Nostrae drops the nose into a jar that is full of several fingers and toes — and other such things.

She lifts a hand over the man.

(Nostrae) has used: [Heal] on herself.

Restored: 100%

She sighs in relief, lowering her burn-scarred hand again.

The woman takes the stained towel and stuffs it over the man’s bleeding face.

(Nostrae) has used: [Heal] on (Walundra)

Restored: 100%

A priest’s healing magic can only restore health-points. It isn’t capable of restoring physical damage, such as a lost limb or appendage. That’s more of the avenue of druids. But her magic will cause the wound to at least grow closed like normally healing skin would do.

— And grow closed it does, the flattened, missing stump on his face mends itself featurelessly shut, weaving itself through the fabric of the towel that becomes a part of his face, fused with the skin.

It looks better this way.

Nostrae considers grabbing the towel and just yanking on it. But she’ll save that for later.

As she turns to leave, she does take a moment to stick a finger in the new hole in the man’s chest, which has grown closed.

____________________________________________

Perchta

Human, Female, Witch

Location: The City, A Small House

“Sit still!” barks the witch, holding an uncorked bottle in her hand.

The little green slime that had been trapped inside of it flops and globs around, squishing and touching all manner of things as it curiously feels its way around the home she’s renting — for free. “Get over here!” she yells.

The slime falls off the table, splatting flat. It quickly pulls itself back together, frantically squishing about. It begins to inflate itself up, trying to appear bigger than it really is, in hopes of scaring off the witch.

“I caught the damn thing before I moved because I felt bad for it,” says Perchta. “This is the thanks I get!” she snaps. Perchta points at the glass in her hand. “Get back into the jar!”

— The slime inflates itself a little more, growing as large as it can, which isn’t that large, actually.

A man laughs from the side. “It’s afraid of you, Pipi,” he says.

“Me?” asks Perchta. “Why would it be afraid of me? I fed it and saved it.” She slams the jar down onto the table. “JAR!”

— The slime does not oblige.

“You have to learn a gentle touch,” says Witch Gauden. “Watch.” The scraggly, large man bends down to the floor. His beard presses against the stones as he looks at the slime from up-close.

The slime wobbles menacingly, holding the air inside of itself.

Gauden inhales a large, heavy mouthful of air, inflating his cheeks.

The slime quivers.

— He blows out the air against the slime. It shakes for a moment, and then it releases the air in itself too.

He inhales again and the slime reinflates itself again. They do this a few times.

After a minute of repeating this, the slime settles down. Gauden holds out his dirty hand and the slime simply crawls onto it, as calm as could be.

“What in the seven hells was that?” asks Perchta.

Witch Spillaholle, sitting upside down on one of the rafters, flips a page in the book that she’s reading. It was some random book that was on the shelves here. “Slimes communicate aggression through self-inflation,” says the witch. “However, in the wild, they run into common things that they perceive as threats continuously.” She flips a page. “It would be wasteful to do this dance every time,” she explains. “So they remember other things that they’ve sparred with before. After a few encounters, they imprint on the perceived threat and stop viewing it as such, to save themselves the effort of fighting it anymore.”

“Huh?” asks Perchta. “But this was like… twenty seconds long.”

“Slimes are not intelligent creatures,” replies Spillaholle, looking over at Gauden and the slime. He’s laughing as it crawls around inside of his long beard, eating all of the crumbs from indistinct years past that have collected in it over time. “It counted enough encounters to mark him off as an understood creature. The time isn’t relevant. It is simply a matter of numbers.”

“Slimes are dumb,” sighs Perchta, shaking her head. “I wanted a familiar, but I guess this isn’t the one for me.” She sets the jar down, shaking her head. “You can have it, Gaudi,” says Perchta. “I think I need something more… I don’t know, fresh. Something lively and fun and not as dumb as a sack of rocks.”

“What about a chicken?” suggests Spillaholle.

“YOU KNOW THAT I HATE THOSE THINGS!” shrieks Perchta, pointing at the woman on the ceiling.

“Thanks, Pipi,” says Gauden, stroking his very clean beard.

— The slime drops out of it, landing on his fingers, wobbling in satisfaction.

Perchta sits down on the chair with an arm over the back of it and leans back. “So?” she asks. “What are we going to do?” Perchta nods to the window. “With that message popping up, something big is happening,” says the witch.

Spillaholle flips a page of the book. “We will simply make something large happen as well,” says the witch.

“As well…?” repeats Perchta, thinking for a while. “As well… ‘Well’?” she mutters to herself. The witch jumps to her feet. “— FOUNTAINS!” she exclaims, having come to some great revelation.

“Fountains?” asks the other two.

Perchta smiles.

___________________________________________

Isaiah

A ticking runs through the tower and through its core, shaking its ribs together with the soft beating of its heart. Isaiah stands at the foot of the bed and croons its head as it looks at the dryad.

The creature that they had dug out of the mud and the filth doesn’t stir. She doesn’t blink or move. She doesn’t mumble or groan. She simply lays there.

— The nature of Isaiah’s magic at the time of recovery for the creature was simply that it was too weak to be of critical substance.

The broken bones, while mended, were not mended as straight as they would have been within the confines of their true growth within nature’s grace. The methods of healing that they had available were too crude to restore anything more than a semblance of dignity to the being. Even if the light returns to her eyes, in the state she is in, she will likely experience nothing but incredible pain.

Isaiah had deeply underestimated the depravity of the witch. It had begun a feud with her, but it was blissfully unaware of what repercussions others would suffer because of this act.

It grabs the dryad, the blanket draping over her, as it lifts her up and out of the bed.

There was little it could do back then. But perhaps, there is something that it can do now. Power does not only let it protect those who it cherishes. Power allows it a second chance at reaching down to those who it has failed.

Isaiah carries her out to the very-big-tree, setting her down on the grasses to lean against it with her back.

It lifts a talon, holding it against the tree.

NEW (Seasonality) Ability - [Growth]: 

Allows a targeted plant to grow according to the amount of energy you invest into it.

(Isaiah) has used: [Growth]

A soft, summer-shine yellow glow encapsulates its hand, rising up the very-big-tree. Its boughs and crown shake as the tree, already large, begins to grow larger and larger still. Its trunk lengthens and widens as it begins to lean somewhat off of the tower.

But the roots, dug in deeply into the stone and now even deeper still, hold it firm.

It is a good tree.

It turns its head, looking at the extended roots that now push in, breaking into the hot-springs atop the tower.

Isaiah picks up the dryad and walks over to the hot-springs, wading into them as it holds her in the hot, steam waters.

[Upgraded Area]

A quaint, ornate and private hot-spring. Roots of a powerful, magic-collecting tree seep in the waters.

Level {1} Effect: While resting in the water, slowly restores all drained HEALTH, STAMINA and SOUL.

Level {2} Effect: The healing vapors in the steam reduces all stacking status: [Ailment] by {01} stage.

Level {3} Effect: The collected magics of the tree, leaching into the water will restore physical damage.

Isaiah stands there, half-submerged, holding on to the body to keep it up above the water that soaks into her skin and hair. It feels crackling and popping in its hands, as her rough, dented bones begin to pop back into place and shape. The fused joints begin to undo themselves, her elbows and knees falling as slack as they ought to be.

Isaiah watches, observing the effects that power can have on the redemption of the body and soul.

It cups one hand into the water and then makes a fist above her head, letting single droplets of the water drip down into her mouth.

— For it to have been weak for so long, to have ignored the boon that these gifts could bestow for so long… Is that not a sin in and of itself? The wasted opportunity to do good, to help, to heal, to save.

How much suffering is there in the world not because of it, but because it hadn’t been strong enough to guide life towards another destiny?

Isaiah lowers her down beneath the water, holding her there for a moment and then lifts her up from her baptism.

— The dryad screams.

Isaiah lets her.

She screams and screams and screams, hacking up water and filth from her lungs and throat by the choking mouthfuls. Her cries travel across the roost and move to places far off and distant. More so, they travel through Isaiah, moving through its core as would the shrill cry of a chick, before being violently torn from its nest by the claws of a predator. It is an indication of deep misfortune on a level below harrowing anguish.

Isaiah stands there and holds on to her and listens dutifully to the scream that never stops, intent to take note of every detail that it has to imprint.

This is the voice of a chick that it has failed to nurture, to keep safe.

There will be no more like it.