FINAL CORE - Chapter 100 (Patreon)

I hate heroes.

I know that historically, it’s not a popular opinion, but I just can’t stand them, Guy. Pompous assholes. You know what the problem with heroes is?

They’re always too late.

Someone can only be a hero if there’s an act of heroism involved, that’s sort of the whole title, you know? That means a problem, a disaster, has to already be in play and perhaps even have mostly resolved itself before a hero can show up and ‘save’ everybody. Can’t do no saving without a threat to save everyone from, and that threat needs time to bubble and boil the souls straight of people’s cores before it is even serious even to warrant a hero, tell you what.

And then?

Then, after the damage is done and countless eyes have been lost to the screaming darkness, then the hero can come up in his big fancy, shiny armor and his cape, that would honestly look better on me, and save the day, get the girl, and be famous and loved by everybody.

Fuck heroes.

I’d respect them more if they came earlier. Be a hero before the crisis gets here and stop it. Don’t just show up when everything is already janked.

But that’s just my opinion, Guy. Don’t listen to me. I’m weird.

~ Ramblings of a strange soul, wandering amidst an undead horde in the great north and talking to the mindless skeleton next to itself

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Jizalia

Human, Female, Master Herbalist

Location: The City, Family Home

Screams fill the night. Jizalia, waking from her sleep, sits upright in bed, her sister stirring from the commotion. Immediately, the woman runs to the window to open the locked shutters and look outside.

People are moving everywhere, not fully visible between the collage of smoke and red vapors that fill the air, wafting through the heavy rain of the storm. She can’t make heads or tails of what’s happening, but it’s bad. Screams are coming from every window, door, and alleyway as bodies of all shapes, both human and in-human move through the night.

“Sisi!” calls Jizalia, running back to the bed. “Get up, now!” She tears her younger sister to her feet and throws on her boots and a robe.

“What’s going on?” asks Tulsi, rubbing her face and looking at her sister in concern with her other open eye.

Jizalia grabs the girl’s leg, lifting it into the air, to slip her socks and boots on for her. “There’s trouble. Remember what we talked about before dinner?” asks the herbalist. “We’re going. Now.”

“Huh?” asks the girl. “But I tho-”

— Something heavy smashes against the door, and Tulsi screams, hiding behind her sister as the glass of the window breaks, sending shards flying across the room.

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Isaiah

The bell-tower rings, its chiming never stopping amidst the anarchy visible in the distance but also here, after the appearance of Perchta’s message. The people of the island run to shelter if they haven’t already, getting out of the rain by hiding in their homes or in the tower. Because of the tower’s strength and Isaiah’s presence, the rain here is pure and unbefouled by the witch’s tint, which undeniably fills the midnight air.

Isaiah stares off towards the west, towards the city engulfed by a red, permeating fog that seeps out into the landscape, covering the entire thing.

Perchta has finally made her move.

“I know what you’re thinking, chief,” says Red. Isaiah turns its back to look at her. “Well fuck you. You’re staying here,” she says.

“Red,” starts Isaiah. “Even if I do wish to go to the city, you know that I cannot.”

Red rolls her eyes. “You and I both know that there’s probably some fucky way to circumvent the dungeon rules,” she explains. “As if I can’t see your twitchy, birdy eyes jumping around in your skull as you’re trying to think of it this very second.” She shakes her head. “I’ll go with Black and White,” she says. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“No,” says Isaiah, grabbing hold of her arm as she rises into the air. “Red, I do not intend to allow you to fly into Perchta’s den, now that she has reared her head.”

Red looks down at it, turning her head. “We can probably do something for a few people. You really going to let them all die?” she asks and then shrugs. “Not that I care, but…”

Isaiah looks at her and then back to the burning city, the fires of which seem unquenchable, even in the heavy storm. “Them before you,” replies Isaiah.

“Didn’t know gods played favorites,” replies Red, lowering herself back down.

Isaiah lifts a hand to cast a spell.

“Chief. I don’t know what you’re scheming, but you can’t go,” she says, grabbing its raised arm in turn, which magic has begun to channel around and she yanks it back down.

“Red,” says Isaiah, growing impatient.

Red leans in. “‘Red’ my ass. Look, if you die, this whole island and everyone on it is fucked!” hisses Red. “What do you think is going to happen when your magic fades and all of this collapses?” she asks. The uthra shrugs. “Not that it’ll be a me-problem, because I’ll be going back to the spirit-world. You can’t go. It’s either us who go, or nobody,” she explains, nodding her head to the other uthra.

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Jizalia

Human, Female, Master Herbalist

Location: The City, Family Home

The herbalist reaches into her bag by the bed, pulling out a fistful of some clumpy powder that she throws across the room towards the window as hard as she can. It strikes against the wall, exploding into a puff of smoke that drifts down past the broken window. A large hand slides back out over the broken glass, pulling itself away immediately as the powder comes close.

(Normal)[Esmira-Schwarz Powder]

A clump of ground up, dried, sticky powder made from the nodules of the Esmira-Schwarz root.

Effect: Acts as a strong monster repellent

Use Cases: [Poison][Warding][Other]

Secret Use Cases: [Summoning]

Value: 17 Obols

 Jizalia grabs her sister and runs through the small house to the other window in the back, wrenching it open and looking out first before climbing through and quickly pulling her crying sister out after her.

“Sisi, quiet!” she hisses, covering the girl’s mouth, and looks around the city, which has fallen into anarchy. Rain falls down over them.

— The door inside of the house breaks open as something strikes against it, and she runs with the girl in tow.

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The Humming Man

???, Male, Chronomancer

Location: The City

The Humming Man hums, ducking down as a tumbling carriage rolls down the street, its broken off wheel careening over his head as he dusts off his boot, looking at it for a moment, before rising back upright, adjusting the straps of his bag, and walking on through the chaos.

He looks to the left and to the right, watching as fires burn all around him. Monsters lash out of the shadows, grabbing hold of the people they can snatch and tearing them into the flames and the darkness.

— Something shrill shrieks next to him, and he turns to look at a young girl, thin as a wraith, surrounded by the limbs and bodies of many others, as she howls, holding a low-level iron dagger in her hands and stabbing down over and over into a gnashing corpse that doesn’t ever cease its efforts to devour her.

He spins, doing a small pirouette, and leaps over a puddle of blood, landing next to her and gently nudging her arm as she swings down, guiding it away from the torso or the undead and towards the eye-socket.

The iron-dagger breaks through the skull and the undead dies, as far as is possible, at least.

Panting, heaving, she looks around herself with fearful eyes and then jumps up to her feet, scurrying off into the fire-lit darkness like a little mouse.

The Humming Man continues to hum his tune, walking down the road as he heads towards the exit to the city.

It’s getting to be just about that time where he has to get back to the tower.

He looks up towards the sky, watching the black rain for a time.

As the Humming Man, it’s his job to set up events to transpire just the way that his clients would like them to. However, he does have a large degree of personal freedom in the matter, and, even then, there are a few rules and regulations. Nobody is truly free from bureaucracy, not even him.

He turns his head, looking down an alley that two sisters run through.

Fate is a very curious thing, even more so when one has insight into its many strange connections and connivings.

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Jizalia

Human, Female, Master Herbalist

Location: The City, Family Home

 The door next to them breaks open, sending a stream of flaming, screaming bodies running out of the house and into the rain. Jizalia yanks her sister, bending down another road, stopping as a huge, hulking man in black, midnight-tinged armor throws a guardsman through a wall, blood spraying everywhere as the man is impaled on a broken beam.

Dozens of men and women in black robes stand by him.

The giant turns his head towards them, an eye glowing in the moonlight that shines above their heads, and she breaks off, running in a new direction as she works her way through a maze filled with seemingly endless literal dead ends.

This is why she likes being outside in nature.

Her sister is still screaming, but she just yanks her in a new direction, breaking through to an alleyway that allows clear sight of the night sky, and of the moon that has changed its shape. Clouds have come to cover the glow of the full-moon, obscuring its visage in the most unnatural way, giving it the look of a crooked, smiling face with gnashed teeth that she can see with perfectly clear vision.

The witch’s moon haunts the night.

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Isaiah

It cannot go by itself, and yet, in its protectiveness, it cannot allow its children to go either. It is too dangerous for all of them.

Isaiah exhales, calming itself as it had learned from the monk whose name it has yet to learn.

If it cannot interfere directly, then it will still do what it can nonetheless to stop this horrific waste of life. It will not sit by idly.

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Perchta

???, Female, Witch of the Blackwater

Location: The sky above the city

Witch Perchta hovers in the air, the rain pelting down all around them as she flies, looking at the anarchy below.

This is it. Finally.

She flies around in a tight circle, overjoyed. Finally, she and her friends are going to get rid of these annoying humans and that stupid tower who ruined her retirement, and they’re all going to live in a big, happy, perfect world.

The woman, hovering in the air, clenches her fists and kicks her legs in excitement.

— Suddenly, it gets very bright.

Perchta stops, turning her head. “What the hell…” mutters the witch, looking at the night sky, which has turned aglow. She covers her eyes as it gets brighter and brighter.

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Jizalia

Human, Female, Master Herbalist

Location: The City, Family Home

Jizalia grabs her sister, pulling her behind herself as they’ve run into a corner, a group of people with bloodied knifes and axes before them. She lobs a fistful of the last of her powder, striking the face of a man in a black robe. But it doesn’t bother him. He’s not a monster, she realizes.

They’re cultists. People.

The woman looks around, looking for a way out. But the walls are too high. There’s nowhere to go.

She reaches for the little herbalist’s knife she carries with her. It’s hardly a weapon. But she can maybe get one of them and give her sister a shot.

Jizalia lifts the knife and screams as the man before her lunges forward, the axe in his hands glinting with red.

— Both of them are met with a flash of blinding, intense light breaking down from the black sky towards their middle. She stumbles back, protecting the girl, as a prismatic, glassy orb condenses together from the glow. All around the city, hundreds of such beams shoot down from above, piercing the darkness of the heavy clouds and striking down towards the streets, which are overflowing with smoke.

The orb, suspended in the pillar of light, cracks and rattles as if it were an egg in a nest, suspended in a sunbeam. An arm breaks out, thin, and covered in armor. Then a second, then a third, and then a fourth. Arms break out in the hundreds in an instant, as if they were a span of wings consisting of a thousand feathers. Legs break out of the entity’s shape, containing a mouth full of endless rows of inwardly facing beaks that act as teeth.

The indescribably horrific being, made up of pure light and holy energy, releases a surge of power from itself as it lands, breaking the stones and the walls all around them.

— And then it shrieks, lunging forward and dragging monsters and robed men alike into its maw, swallowing them in just as countless amounts. Its victims unable to escape from its fingers, as abundant as the droplets of the rain and the clicking, clacking teeth that shred into their flesh, chewing them down as it swallows them as would an octopus.

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Perchta

???, Female, Witch of the Blackwater

Location: The sky above the city

 “No. No. No NO!” yells Perchta, grabbing the sides of her hair as she looks around the city where hundreds of elementals have appeared, interfering in the hunt. “YOVEL!”

“It’s the new guy,” says Yovel, who is already next to her. The dungeon-core hovers with its hands behind its head.

“What?!” shrieks Perchta. “Yovel!” she yells. “How can that ugly flying rat do anything?!”

Yovel tilts its head, shrugging as it looks over to the tower. “I gotta hand it to them,” says Yovel. “Love you Perchta, but you made an oopsie.”

“A what?!” She grabs it. “Yoveeeeel!” yells Perchta, shaking the dungeon-core.

Yovel points at the tower, off in the distance. “You wanted a dungeon-break, goo-brain,” says the entity, almost laughing as it looks to the east, at the glowing tower, shining with light amidst the pitch black night. “You got one.”

Perchta’s eyes twitch as she looks over at the tower, emanating a golden radiance.

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Isaiah

 [DUNGEON BREAK INITIATED]

• ALL OF YOUR DUNGEON’S MONSTERS WILL FLOOD OUT INTO THE SURROUNDING AREA.

 Isaiah watches as lights flood the sky, entities from the spirit-world shooting out into the darkness, out in all directions as they purge free and return back into the mortal-coil. Ghosts and angels flood the night around the tower, shining as if to replace the cloud-obscured stars as they fly towards the next greatest source of spiritual energy in the area, the city.

Down low, on the bottom of the tower, thousands of monsters leave. Holy-imbued golems and priestesses march in formation with monks and crusaders, born of the tower’s magic. Slimes and drakes and great wyrms crawl and fly, their roars shaking the black rain as it falls.

It will not place any of its children in danger.

But it also will not abandon the people of this world, as its old gods had done prior.

This is a new age, a new era.

Isaiah holds firmly onto its golden sword, inky water running down its pristine surface that remains untarnished, as does its white, marble-hewn body.

The age of clawing, miserable darkness will come to an end. As does one season give way to the next, so, too, must this foul, wretched era.

— This, now, is to be the good age of Isaiah.

And it will be ushered in by the sword.