FINAL CORE - Chapter 103 (Patreon)

Vampiris Sanguis

The tales of vampires as creatures that lurk in the darkness of nightfall are as old as we can trace back all of our forefather’s written records of the world. Vampires are undead monstrosities that sustain themselves from the blood of the living. Vampires, as vulgar animals, are not picky about the source of the blood that they desire.

A person is turned into a vampire if they are cut, bitten, or otherwise infected with the spit or bodily fluids of another vampire. Within seventy-four hours, the victim will succumb to their symptoms, devolving into a monster, which we colloquially call ‘ghouls’.

Ghouls are the lowest stage of a vampire’s existence, maintaining their human form in the same way that a zombie might. Ghouls are mindless, incredibly agile beasts that only exist for the hunt. They primarily sustain themselves on the flesh and blood of the living.

During this time, the entity will slowly devolve, its body essentially melting down into itself as the muscles sag and the bones rot from the inside out, until the ghoul is nothing more than a strange, shambling heap of meat that cannot hold itself upright any longer.

It is during this phase, that the ghoul will then begin to cocoon, as it were, laying as an rotting, feted clump of meat that rearranges itself, growing new limbs and extending old ones outward into the horrific monstrosities that are vampires in their most common life stage.

Vampires are anything but human, existing as masses of shapeless flesh with dozens of arms for legs and a neck as long as a full man’s height. They have no eyes, but teeth by the hundreds instead. They become incredibly potent, highly deceptive, yet still heartless killing machines that exist only for the purposes of hunting, though with much more cunning than in their previous stage.

It is only after an uncertain time that this stage then too falls into a new cocoon cycle, to later emerge as the higher vampires, who walk amongst us in the night, dressed in the skin of men and women.

It is assumed that out of every thousand victims of the ghoul sickness, only one survives long enough in its mindless hunt to reach the adult stage of an elder vampire, but even then, their numbers are thin, as vampire society is highly contentious, killing just as many of their own if not more than the church’s hunters ever might.

~ Of vampires, Leid Lusco’s Tome on the Undead

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???

Human, Female, Monk

Location: The City

— Glass cracks, the crackling of the noise spreading through her ears as if she were standing on the edge of a lake, the cool waters of which were freezing over in the heart of winter.up

The monk looks over her shoulder, her vision filled with the vividly contrasting colors of spring that cut through the fire-filled night.

A magical, prismatic wall of holy-magic cuts through the air behind her, the rock having smashed against it inches from her back, the blurred image of a giant shadow standing beyond it, as if it were the looming night she could see from within the confines of a warm home through the thick windows.

Hands reach down, grabbing her and pulling her to her feet. She winces, her bad arm and leg both being moved. The red uthra flies in, landing down and grabbing Orange, helping the crying uthra up. “Come on! Move!” says a familiar voice. She looks at the priestess of Isaiah who has helped her to her feet, Rorate. Rorate turns her head. “Scion!”

(Scion) has used: [Feather Hail {Isaiah}]

— The wall of holy magic crumbles apart, the flat pane of glass melting and pressing itself together into a floating array of one thousand glass feathers that immediately launch forward, throwing the rock back against the giant, knocking its chestplate straight out of its body together with the heavy stone and launching them both across the plaza. It separates from its arms and legs, which drop down to the ground. Slime flies everywhere as hundreds of the glass feathers shoot forward, cutting holes into the gooey monster as it tries to crawl out of the armor’s many pieces, trying to piece itself together into one coherent mass within the hailstorm of shattering glass.

“What are you doing here?” asks the monk as Rorate lends her a shoulder. The priestess looks at her, slowly starting to walk off with her held against herself. She looks over her shoulder, watching the giant fail to repiece itself under Scion’s attack. Slime splashes everywhere, the puddle not able to collect itself together anywhere without being blasted by a new spell by the other priestess of Isaiah.

“Isaiah sent us,” replies Rorate.

She sighs, presumably knowing that she should have thought as much herself. “Heal me,” says the monk. “I’m not going back,” she explains, looking around the city. “There are still people here who need help.”

Rorate looks at her and shakes her head. “Yeah, you’re one of them,” replies the dark-elf, holding a hand against her chest. “We can’t heal this kind of stuff here. We need to go back home.”

(Rorate) has used: [Field-Medic: Reassurance]

A soft warmth moves through her body, taking the edge off of the pain that she feels in her bad knee and arm. The monk winces as something else moves her. Red flies in, yanking her collar forward. She hisses through her gritted teeth.

“Fuck you for making me come here, dick,” says the uthra, looking her in the eyes.

“Don’t be mean, Red!” says Orange through her own tears, holding on to Red as she carries her off through the air.

“Fuck you too,” says Red, flying through the night with Orange held in her grasp, as they shoot off towards the tower, leaving the ‘humans’ behind to walk their way out through the city.

Scion runs after them, catching up and watching the area. She whistles.

— Black, Gray and White shoot in from the streets, grabbing the three of them.

The monk looks back down over her shoulder, looking behind them as, in the fires and the smoke that obscure her vision of the plaza they leave behind, a shambling, strange silhouette pieces itself together, rising to its feet once more like a body reshaping itself out of broken ribs and sinew.

They rise into the air, flying off over the city, being carried by the uthra, and the sight of the creature vanishes in the darkness. She’s sure that in her last second of vision, it is looking up through the smoke after her.

She wonders as they go, as they escape, if she did better this time?

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Isaiah

Isaiah watches, its hands held behind its back, with tense posture and stiff eyes, waiting for its children to return to it. It had not wanted them to go, but there was no other way, was there?

It tilts its head, staring off into the distance, wondering if this feeling of uselessness is natural for a parent to feel when its children are off in the world by themselves, out in the reaches of danger of claw and fang, away from the protecting wings of their elders.

It will have to do more.

It may be that it cannot leave the island to help directly, but it can do other things, can’t it?

Isaiah lifts up off of the tower, shooting up high, high into the air, up towards the reaches of the sky. It lifts a talon up towards the clouds, spinning a finger around in a circle.

This foul rain stains the land, covering it in the stench of witchcraft. It is an abomination against nature, against the goodness of soft clouds and sky-water, which would come to nourish the soul of the world on kinder days.

Isaiah has used: [Sacred Water]

It channels its magic into the clouds, filling them with holy energies that they transfer into their rains, polluted and blackened.

(Isaiah) has used: [Forbearance {Rain}]

The storm intensifies now more than ever, the water violently shaking within each droplet, as the magical forces of holy energy and witchcraft press against one another, tearing each rain droplet asunder into dozens of smaller ones, shifting the rain from a pelleting storm to a strange, soft fog of volatile magic that sinks down over the world, obscuring and quenching everything in a dense mist that falls from the sky.

A little holiness will do the world some good.

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Witch Spillaholle

???, Female, Witch of the Red-Strings

Location: The City

What nonsense.

Witch Spillaholle floats up high in the air, her stiff, simple dress billowing in the winds of the storm as she lifts her gaze, staring up towards the fog that descends down over her. It seems that the enemy has used its magic to twist Perchta’s spell against her.

This is well and good.

But it is nonsense for her to be here, no?

The woman, hovering in the air, lifts her hands as the mist drapes down over her body, covering her as if it were a shawl, laid over her as if to hide the shame that she feels for having been driven into action from her usually preferred state of distant composure.

Witch Perchta is her own creature. She accepts her existence for being what it is. That is all well and good. But the reason she is up here is more complicated than that. It’s ridiculous and quite unbefitting of her title and position.

She looks down at her sleeve, staring at the dried, pressed white flower that she has hidden, pinned to the inside of her folded cuffs.

The great witch of the east, it would seem, has fallen for the human trap of over-extending out of her comfort zone in order to impress someone. How fully unnecessary this is. She could be down on the ground, reading instead.

Her spider-white hair hangs heavy, soaked down against her nape from the weather.

The woman just doesn’t know what to do with herself.

She lifts a finger, flicking the condensing water off of her skin as if it were sweat born of heavy, panting breaths as she thinks of the person she wants to impress, for reasons that are, in and of themselves, nonsensical.

(Spillaholle) has used: [Curse {Crimson Revelation}]

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Red

Uthra, Female, Worker {7}

Location: The City

Red flies through the sky, eager to get out of this human shithole as fast as she can. Orange is clinging to her. The rain changes, the heavy storm of corrupted waters shifting to a mist that is intermingled with Isaiah’s touch. She sighs in relief, feeling the familiar waters touch her face.

The uthra looks down at the city as they fly. The monsters down below, thousands of creatures in states of hunger and rage, scream and retreat to the shadows, crashing into houses and holes beneath the streets as they fight one-another in a desperate attempt to get out of the holy-water that burns their skin and eyes.

— A color shift comes over the sky.

Red flies, looking back over her shoulder as arcs of some strange magic move through the visually full night, red ropes, thick cords that are each the size of a tree shoot out into all directions, whipping and lashing through the sky like a hydra’s many heads and from them dangle down smaller strings, falling through the air like the cut cords that belong to a  marionette’s master.

“The fuck is that?” asks Red. “Black, fucking move!” she barks as one of the red strings comes from above and pierces straight through him.

Black blinks, looking down at the string and then touching it.

His hand goes through it. The uthra looks back at her and shrugs. “I think I’m fine?” he says. The uthra blinks, looking around himself. “Red? Guys?” he asks. “Where’d you go?”

Red flies over to him, grabbing his shoulder with her free hand.

— A string pierces through her too, and she looks down at it and at her empty arms, which had been carrying Orange a second ago.

Orange and Black are both gone. Everyone is gone.

Confused, Red floats in the air, looking around herself at the empty night, the color of which has left and faded out entirely, except for the red strings that span across everywhere, cutting into the sky, going through houses and doorways, like the strands of a confused spider’s web.

“The fuck?” asks Red, looking around herself. “Orange!” calls Red, her voice vanishing into the night. “Black!”

No response.

She looks around herself.

The string on her chest, intangible as it is despite her best efforts to pull it out of herself, pulls taut.

Red looks down at the weight attached to the bottom of it.

“Hey, Red!” says an excited voice. “Red! Red! Is that you?” asks the woman. Red’s eyes go wide as she stares at the laughing face dangling down below her. The entity, a creature made entirely out of gemstones that have taken the shape of an animal, points at itself. “Red! It’s me! Emerald!” says the dungeon-core, whom she knows to be dead, excitedly. “Wow! Look at you!” she says. “You’ve ah… huh… well, I think you looked better as a ruby, honestly,” says the entity.

“Emerald…?” asks Red in disbelief as she stares at the core she had once worked for.

“Hi, Red! It’s been a while, huh?” starts the core, going on a whole ramble about the afterlife that she immediately starts to tune out as a new voice comes in.

“…Red?” asks the other voice. The string in her core pulls to the side, a knot forming as it ties itself together into a new end, connecting to another presence that she also knows to be dead.

“Maroon…” whispers Red beneath her breath, looking at the entity of an old color that forms back together into a whole before her eyes. Her old partner, who had died together with the Emerald core. “You’re dead… What the fuck?” The uthra floats back a bit, the strings pulling taut as she moves, pulling the weight of the other two along with her.

Maroon lifts his eyes, looking at her, and she feels a thudding in her chest, where the string begins to tightly wind itself together.

“Red…” says the man, holding out a hand to touch her face.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” screams Red, swiping his hand out of the way as she looks around herself, more and more strings coming into place, as faces of everyone she knows who has died begin to form in the mist, each one of them tied to her with a knot that slowly begins to drag her down out the air from their weight that pulls against her.