Demonic Heritage is beginning to work, but healing comes slowly. It’s not going to repair me to a fully functional state before I make my way to the tree. As soon as I enter combat again, the trait is going to become inactive.
And it’s looking more and more like I’m going to be fighting sooner rather than later. Demonic blood flows across the land, mixed with the same oily substance that coated the demons that spawned from the spores.
Everywhere the fluid touches begins to degrade. The bodies melt away like ice cubes in magma, and the ground itself starts to lose its integrity. I avoid the fluid as much as I can, but my spine is still broken in a way that makes precise movement difficult.
Mud covers my foot up to the ankle each time I set one down, each squelching step slightly more difficult than the last.
This would be much easier if there was something dead I could Devour, but the tree’s acidic liquid is getting to everything before I can start towards it.
Nothing is attacking me just yet. It appears that Marie’s last attack has killed off enough of the tree’s creations that it’s turned to absorbing the corpses rather than sprouting more.
The city center has become an island over the course of the last half an hour. It might have already been like that, actually, but any bridges connecting it to the rest of the city have collapsed, and the river now splits around it.
As the tree starts to consume the edges of the island, destabilizing the earth, the entire structure starts to slip into the water. Soon, the river will claim all of what used to be the liveliest part of this city.
And not long after that, the tree will claim the river. The place I stand on will not be intact in three hours.
Unless I do something about it, that is.
Earlier, Marie was attacking the tree. I assume she was attempting to prevent the advancement it underwent where it shifted from birthing demons from spores to eating the corpses of its spawn and spreading the oily fluid. If my dream-vision from my actual successful class evolution was correct, she’s aligned with the UCC, the organization that created me and the organization that evidently keeps other things like me contained.
Why is she no longer assisting?
I mull it over as I take step after step, careful to move in a way that avoids irritating my fractured spine. Each step I take sees me sinking deeper and deeper into the mud. Water and tree-fluid alike laps away at the dissolving land, reducing its integrity. Behind me, the rocky beach begins to slide into the river.
Walking is a pain. Not just a literal pain—Pain Resistance takes care of that. It is awfully inconvenient to ensure that my spine doesn’t further break. The potential of my bones sliding further apart and breaking through my skin is quite present. While I’d probably live, it would be an impediment to my combat abilities.
I wish I could get some kind of passive healing that has requirements other than “kill and eat your enemies.” Killing is just fine, but eating them is significantly harder when the tree’s already doing it.
The oily fluid oozes across the ground like it’s a living thing, which it very well might be. Oddly familiar red-and-black strands of power rise from the fluid, reaching towards my bloodied legs. Every step I take coats me in the stuff, each shin-deep step leaving my legs dripping with iridescent oil. It’s surprisingly warm, and it moves even though it’s stuck to me, like the liquid is a living, breathing being.
It tries to Devour me, but just like my Devour doesn’t work on living beings, its magic meets a barrier at my flesh.
From the increasing malicious pressure in the air, I think that the tree is well on its way to producing fluid that’ll be capable of actually killing things. Even now, the tree’s… sap? Sap sounds like the right word. The tree’s sap burns a little bit where it sticks to my legs. Acidic? Venomous? Whichever it truly is, my resistances seem to be doing enough to keep it from dealing actual damage beyond making my bleeding skin particularly raw.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Earlier, I would’ve said fighting the tree was a 50/50 deal. With Wraithfire in my hands, it would’ve been entirely possible to turn it to cinders, even with whatever inbuilt resistances demons get. The quest that pushed me towards this tree in the first place even told me to “burn it all down.”
Now, though, I’m entirely out of wraithfire. What do I have? Blood magic? Knives? That does nothing to
Buildings collapse into the muddy ground, the sap swallowing them whole along with everything else. This entire region is utterly unrecognizable now.
I walk in a hellscape. Earth roils, dragging ruins into the earth to be consumed, and the air itself remains aflame where I and other demons ignited it earlier.
Wait.
My wraithfire is still burning.
Because of the subjective hour I spent in Sierra’s Time Dilation, my skill’s run out before the fire it produces can finish burning.
I have a very stupid idea.
My next step has a purpose. I activate Blood Echo again, giving myself enough material to Shape Blood with. The crimson Evelyn supports me in my agonizingly slow steps for an instant before I start manipulating it instead, creating a platform that just barely supports my weight.
Earlier, I was worried about running out of magic power. Now, though, the swarms of demons are dead. I have a single enemy, and I can afford to burn all my power on that.
I ride a writhing carpet of blood, directing it towards the nearest still-burning patch of air.
Around me, the landscape continues to disappear. Trees fall along with the buildings, slowly but surely revealing the most direct path to the base of the tree, which is practically glistening now. There’s still a couple hundred feet left to the trunk.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I send myself flying straight into a patch of wraithfire.
Not my entire body, of course. That’d be stupid—I don’t want to inhibit my ability to see while I’m attacking the tree.
The sensation of the basic fracture of my spine and the deep lacerations that I’m holding in with Shape Blood pale in comparison to the pain that ignites my arm, but it’s much weaker than it was the first time I was hit with it. A combination of my increased resistances and this fire originating from me, probably.
My arms catch quickly, but without an intelligence to guide the flames, they don’t spread any further.
They do, however, start to eat away at my flesh and my soul all the same. It does so at a significantly reduced rate compared to before, but it does damage nonetheless.
I activate Shape Self, creating more arms and tentacles, each of which I feed to the flames.
Shape Self advanced to level 5!
Two sub-arms remain untouched by the wraithfire. I use them to draw twin knives. Though I probably won’t actually be able to do anything, Knifefighting is extremely valuable as a predictive skill.
I wonder how I look right now, wielding a dozen flaming limbs that extend further from my body than my arms can. To some, I might look like an angel of vengeance.
I chuckle at the thought. To some. To who? Marie teleported Sierra and presumably Adrian away, and given the sound, I think it’s safe to assume that much of Ravendale has been wholly overrun by demons.
Pushing the thought aside, I advance.
My soul is suffering, but I can’t allow that to distract me right now. Now, all that matters is winning the fight. Soulless will keep me alive. I’ll manage the rest on my own.
Shape Blood carries me at surprising speeds, my recent enhancement to Magic (Power) evidently assisting it. Two hundred feet becomes one hundred, then fifty, then twenty.
Just as I’m ready to launch myself towards it, oily black wood splits apart in half a hundred locations. Dark branches explode outwards, turning the lower half of the tree into a pincushion in seconds.
I arrest my momentum with Shape Blood, but the branches grow faster than I can stop myself and they lash into me. The first one stabs straight through my gut, while the second slams into me lengthwise, sending me flying back. I manage to graze both sets of the branches with wraithfire, and they catch, but the tree simply snaps them off, cutting them off and allowing the dead branches to trace a path of fiery death to the ground.
At least my skill prevents me from falling all the way down. I think another major fall might be enough to actually kill me.
I cough, and blood comes up, speckling my face and chest. Shape Blood helps me push it off, but it’s a bad sign.
More branches appear with every second, clustering around the tree like a second skin. They don’t stop moving, and I see the tree’s roots slithering through the ground, breaking the earth apart even more.
I grit my teeth. My resources are gradually depleting. The wraithfire is on a timer.
I’m on a timer. If I can’t resolve this soon, I’m going to bleed out and die. No amount of hemokinesis can stop that.
The smart play would’ve been to leave a while back, but up until just about a minute ago, I was defending Sierra. Up until about a minute before that, my damned programming was interfering with me.
Now? Now, I don’t think I can escape with my life.
Why did I save Sierra? Why? I’ve gained nothing but life-threatening wounds and a promise of death. I don’t even know why I chose to do so in the first place. Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to abandon her earlier?
What’s done is done. I can’t change anything.
I decide to make a token effort at retreating. It’ll mean that this entire venture towards the tree was for nothing, but I’d rather live to fight another day.
As I make my way to retreat, however, the city under and around me begins to rumble.
Roots punch through the ground, rising from—not the city center. My eyes widen as I see roots rise straight through broken buildings, from beyond the river. I watch as they sprout straight through the water.
I watch as roots sprout from outside the city boundaries. Off in the distance, lit only by the tree’s own radiance, I see the train tracks we came in break, shorn apart by the tree’s growth.
I make it less than a hundred feet before the roots start growing over the city.
Over me.
The stars wink out one by one as the tree’s newest network of branches block them out.
Fuck.
I appear to be trapped.
Slightly more than inconvenient, then. My one remaining enemy is proving to be a thorn in my side. In a lot of sides, really, but mine is the only one I presently care about.
I sigh. If I can’t escape, then there’s only one path.
Objective updated: Burn it all down
The Flowering Demon has begun to absorb the city. Kill it.
Reward: Advance any two skills to their next tier
My next step forward is taken with the knowledge that this is likely to be my end. Wraithfire continues to burn, but it feels cold against my altered skin.
Once I die, even the most powerful healers in the world won’t be able to restore me. Even if a god itself came down to put me back together, my soul is beyond saving as it is.
At least I’ll go down fighting for a ghost of a chance.
I hiss in irritation when I take another step forward and the fracture in my spine worsens. The pain is a distraction that I can ignore, but the way it paralyzes one of my legs is something I can’t.
Despite it all, I advance. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s that.
I stare towards the tree. It dwarfs me in size, power, strength, flexibility, and everything that matters.
But I won’t back down. If my legs fail me, then I’ll use my arms. If those fail, I’ll propel myself with my blood, and if it breaks through my magic, I’ll latch onto it with all the strength I have remaining.
I will not go gently into the night.
I take another step—and my vision turns bright green.
The sound that follows is growing familiar. Lightning.
Not just any lightning, either.
Marie’s lightning.
I’m half-ready to stab the origin of the skill when an even more familiar voice graces my ears.
“You do not know how much I gave up to be here,” Sierra grumbles. I don’t look, but I hear the intake of breath when she realizes my current state. “Evelyn…”
“I’m alive,” I say, finally swiveling my head to look at her, irrationally worried like she’ll disappear if I stare her head on.
It’s her. She’s really here.
She came back for me.
Sierra holds up her wrists, revealing two dull brass rings around each of them. They glow dimly with some magic that I can’t identify. “This probably means nothing to you, but… alright, it doesn’t. You need medical attention.”
“I don’t suppose your aunt will be willing to bring us back out?” I ask her.
Sierra laughs, a short, harsh sound with no humor to it. “Of course not. Trial by adversity, she claims.”
“Then—“
The tree cuts me off. Branches explode from the ground underneath us, crawling up our legs and pulling, trying to sink us under the muddy earth.
Sierra reacts instantly. Blue magic surges forth from her hands, and the sheer force of her spell shatters the wood holding onto us. A platform forms under us, and we rise together, avoiding the initial onslaught.
She’s looked better. Sierra looks like she hasn’t slept in days, though I know for a fact she was passed out just minutes ago. Her fancy clothes are muddy and torn, and she’s bleeding.
And she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I need to kill the tree,” I tell her.
“Then let’s get you to it,” she says, not even bothering to suggest the idea of running. She knows me well enough by now to know that’ll just be a waste of breath.
Sure, I would’ve preferred to evacuate moments ago, but with Sierra on my side, I stand a chance. I still have a fiery package I’d like to deliver.
“Can you break open a path?” I ask. “I can’t attack from range. My skill’s run out of power.”
Sierra raises an eyebrow, then chuckles. “Of course you’d set yourself on fire. Of course.”
“Can you do it?”
“Of course I can,” she says. “I’ll carve you a way.”
She brings her hands together, taking in a deep breath and closing her eyes. Blue light surrounds her as she inhales, coalescing behind one of her closed eyelids.
“Ah, gods damn it all,” she curses, whispering just quietly enough that I don’t think she intends for me to hear it. “Why’d you have to go and steal my heart?”
When she opens her eyes, one is bright blue, reflecting the magic she’s been wielding.
The other is the crimson of a raging fire.
“Magic is about balance,” she says, her voice ever so slightly unstable, as if any moment she might break down into crazed fervor. “I showed you the Blue Mage. The give and the take. Now, though I’ll pay for it, I’ll show you another way. Light balancing dark, water balancing fire. Polar opposites.
She raises her left hand, and twin streams of pure darkness and blinding white light explode forward, annihilating everything in their path.
“Behold,” she says with a sense of finality, “Sierra Jade, the Red Mage.”
Demonic Heritage is beginning to work, but healing comes slowly. It’s not going to repair me to a fully functional state before I make my way to the tree. As soon as I enter combat again, the trait is going to become inactive.
And it’s looking more and more like I’m going to be fighting sooner rather than later. Demonic blood flows across the land, mixed with the same oily substance that coated the demons that spawned from the spores.
Everywhere the fluid touches begins to degrade. The bodies melt away like ice cubes in magma, and the ground itself starts to lose its integrity. I avoid the fluid as much as I can, but my spine is still broken in a way that makes precise movement difficult.
Mud covers my foot up to the ankle each time I set one down, each squelching step slightly more difficult than the last.
This would be much easier if there was something dead I could Devour, but the tree’s acidic liquid is getting to everything before I can start towards it.
Nothing is attacking me just yet. It appears that Marie’s last attack has killed off enough of the tree’s creations that it’s turned to absorbing the corpses rather than sprouting more.
The city center has become an island over the course of the last half an hour. It might have already been like that, actually, but any bridges connecting it to the rest of the city have collapsed, and the river now splits around it.
As the tree starts to consume the edges of the island, destabilizing the earth, the entire structure starts to slip into the water. Soon, the river will claim all of what used to be the liveliest part of this city.
And not long after that, the tree will claim the river. The place I stand on will not be intact in three hours.
Unless I do something about it, that is.
Earlier, Marie was attacking the tree. I assume she was attempting to prevent the advancement it underwent where it shifted from birthing demons from spores to eating the corpses of its spawn and spreading the oily fluid. If my dream-vision from my actual successful class evolution was correct, she’s aligned with the UCC, the organization that created me and the organization that evidently keeps other things like me contained.
Why is she no longer assisting?
I mull it over as I take step after step, careful to move in a way that avoids irritating my fractured spine. Each step I take sees me sinking deeper and deeper into the mud. Water and tree-fluid alike laps away at the dissolving land, reducing its integrity. Behind me, the rocky beach begins to slide into the river.
Walking is a pain. Not just a literal pain—Pain Resistance takes care of that. It is awfully inconvenient to ensure that my spine doesn’t further break. The potential of my bones sliding further apart and breaking through my skin is quite present. While I’d probably live, it would be an impediment to my combat abilities.
I wish I could get some kind of passive healing that has requirements other than “kill and eat your enemies.” Killing is just fine, but eating them is significantly harder when the tree’s already doing it.
The oily fluid oozes across the ground like it’s a living thing, which it very well might be. Oddly familiar red-and-black strands of power rise from the fluid, reaching towards my bloodied legs. Every step I take coats me in the stuff, each shin-deep step leaving my legs dripping with iridescent oil. It’s surprisingly warm, and it moves even though it’s stuck to me, like the liquid is a living, breathing being.
It tries to Devour me, but just like my Devour doesn’t work on living beings, its magic meets a barrier at my flesh.
From the increasing malicious pressure in the air, I think that the tree is well on its way to producing fluid that’ll be capable of actually killing things. Even now, the tree’s… sap? Sap sounds like the right word. The tree’s sap burns a little bit where it sticks to my legs. Acidic? Venomous? Whichever it truly is, my resistances seem to be doing enough to keep it from dealing actual damage beyond making my bleeding skin particularly raw.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Earlier, I would’ve said fighting the tree was a 50/50 deal. With Wraithfire in my hands, it would’ve been entirely possible to turn it to cinders, even with whatever inbuilt resistances demons get. The quest that pushed me towards this tree in the first place even told me to “burn it all down.”
Now, though, I’m entirely out of wraithfire. What do I have? Blood magic? Knives? That does nothing to
Buildings collapse into the muddy ground, the sap swallowing them whole along with everything else. This entire region is utterly unrecognizable now.
I walk in a hellscape. Earth roils, dragging ruins into the earth to be consumed, and the air itself remains aflame where I and other demons ignited it earlier.
Wait.
My wraithfire is still burning.
Because of the subjective hour I spent in Sierra’s Time Dilation, my skill’s run out before the fire it produces can finish burning.
I have a very stupid idea.
My next step has a purpose. I activate Blood Echo again, giving myself enough material to Shape Blood with. The crimson Evelyn supports me in my agonizingly slow steps for an instant before I start manipulating it instead, creating a platform that just barely supports my weight.
Earlier, I was worried about running out of magic power. Now, though, the swarms of demons are dead. I have a single enemy, and I can afford to burn all my power on that.
I ride a writhing carpet of blood, directing it towards the nearest still-burning patch of air.
Around me, the landscape continues to disappear. Trees fall along with the buildings, slowly but surely revealing the most direct path to the base of the tree, which is practically glistening now. There’s still a couple hundred feet left to the trunk.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I send myself flying straight into a patch of wraithfire.
Not my entire body, of course. That’d be stupid—I don’t want to inhibit my ability to see while I’m attacking the tree.
The sensation of the basic fracture of my spine and the deep lacerations that I’m holding in with Shape Blood pale in comparison to the pain that ignites my arm, but it’s much weaker than it was the first time I was hit with it. A combination of my increased resistances and this fire originating from me, probably.
My arms catch quickly, but without an intelligence to guide the flames, they don’t spread any further.
They do, however, start to eat away at my flesh and my soul all the same. It does so at a significantly reduced rate compared to before, but it does damage nonetheless.
I activate Shape Self, creating more arms and tentacles, each of which I feed to the flames.
Shape Self advanced to level 5!
Two sub-arms remain untouched by the wraithfire. I use them to draw twin knives. Though I probably won’t actually be able to do anything, Knifefighting is extremely valuable as a predictive skill.
I wonder how I look right now, wielding a dozen flaming limbs that extend further from my body than my arms can. To some, I might look like an angel of vengeance.
I chuckle at the thought. To some. To who? Marie teleported Sierra and presumably Adrian away, and given the sound, I think it’s safe to assume that much of Ravendale has been wholly overrun by demons.
Pushing the thought aside, I advance.
My soul is suffering, but I can’t allow that to distract me right now. Now, all that matters is winning the fight. Soulless will keep me alive. I’ll manage the rest on my own.
Shape Blood carries me at surprising speeds, my recent enhancement to Magic (Power) evidently assisting it. Two hundred feet becomes one hundred, then fifty, then twenty.
Just as I’m ready to launch myself towards it, oily black wood splits apart in half a hundred locations. Dark branches explode outwards, turning the lower half of the tree into a pincushion in seconds.
I arrest my momentum with Shape Blood, but the branches grow faster than I can stop myself and they lash into me. The first one stabs straight through my gut, while the second slams into me lengthwise, sending me flying back. I manage to graze both sets of the branches with wraithfire, and they catch, but the tree simply snaps them off, cutting them off and allowing the dead branches to trace a path of fiery death to the ground.
At least my skill prevents me from falling all the way down. I think another major fall might be enough to actually kill me.
I cough, and blood comes up, speckling my face and chest. Shape Blood helps me push it off, but it’s a bad sign.
More branches appear with every second, clustering around the tree like a second skin. They don’t stop moving, and I see the tree’s roots slithering through the ground, breaking the earth apart even more.
I grit my teeth. My resources are gradually depleting. The wraithfire is on a timer.
I’m on a timer. If I can’t resolve this soon, I’m going to bleed out and die. No amount of hemokinesis can stop that.
The smart play would’ve been to leave a while back, but up until just about a minute ago, I was defending Sierra. Up until about a minute before that, my damned programming was interfering with me.
Now? Now, I don’t think I can escape with my life.
Why did I save Sierra? Why? I’ve gained nothing but life-threatening wounds and a promise of death. I don’t even know why I chose to do so in the first place. Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to abandon her earlier?
What’s done is done. I can’t change anything.
I decide to make a token effort at retreating. It’ll mean that this entire venture towards the tree was for nothing, but I’d rather live to fight another day.
As I make my way to retreat, however, the city under and around me begins to rumble.
Roots punch through the ground, rising from—not the city center. My eyes widen as I see roots rise straight through broken buildings, from beyond the river. I watch as they sprout straight through the water.
I watch as roots sprout from outside the city boundaries. Off in the distance, lit only by the tree’s own radiance, I see the train tracks we came in break, shorn apart by the tree’s growth.
I make it less than a hundred feet before the roots start growing over the city.
Over me.
The stars wink out one by one as the tree’s newest network of branches block them out.
Fuck.
I appear to be trapped.
Slightly more than inconvenient, then. My one remaining enemy is proving to be a thorn in my side. In a lot of sides, really, but mine is the only one I presently care about.
I sigh. If I can’t escape, then there’s only one path.
Objective updated: Burn it all down
The Flowering Demon has begun to absorb the city. Kill it.
Reward: Advance any two skills to their next tier
My next step forward is taken with the knowledge that this is likely to be my end. Wraithfire continues to burn, but it feels cold against my altered skin.
Once I die, even the most powerful healers in the world won’t be able to restore me. Even if a god itself came down to put me back together, my soul is beyond saving as it is.
At least I’ll go down fighting for a ghost of a chance.
I hiss in irritation when I take another step forward and the fracture in my spine worsens. The pain is a distraction that I can ignore, but the way it paralyzes one of my legs is something I can’t.
Despite it all, I advance. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s that.
I stare towards the tree. It dwarfs me in size, power, strength, flexibility, and everything that matters.
But I won’t back down. If my legs fail me, then I’ll use my arms. If those fail, I’ll propel myself with my blood, and if it breaks through my magic, I’ll latch onto it with all the strength I have remaining.
I will not go gently into the night.
I take another step—and my vision turns bright green.
The sound that follows is growing familiar. Lightning.
Not just any lightning, either.
Marie’s lightning.
I’m half-ready to stab the origin of the skill when an even more familiar voice graces my ears.
“You do not know how much I gave up to be here,” Sierra grumbles. I don’t look, but I hear the intake of breath when she realizes my current state. “Evelyn…”
“I’m alive,” I say, finally swiveling my head to look at her, irrationally worried like she’ll disappear if I stare her head on.
It’s her. She’s really here.
She came back for me.
Sierra holds up her wrists, revealing two dull brass rings around each of them. They glow dimly with some magic that I can’t identify. “This probably means nothing to you, but… alright, it doesn’t. You need medical attention.”
“I don’t suppose your aunt will be willing to bring us back out?” I ask her.
Sierra laughs, a short, harsh sound with no humor to it. “Of course not. Trial by adversity, she claims.”
“Then—“
The tree cuts me off. Branches explode from the ground underneath us, crawling up our legs and pulling, trying to sink us under the muddy earth.
Sierra reacts instantly. Blue magic surges forth from her hands, and the sheer force of her spell shatters the wood holding onto us. A platform forms under us, and we rise together, avoiding the initial onslaught.
She’s looked better. Sierra looks like she hasn’t slept in days, though I know for a fact she was passed out just minutes ago. Her fancy clothes are muddy and torn, and she’s bleeding.
And she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I need to kill the tree,” I tell her.
“Then let’s get you to it,” she says, not even bothering to suggest the idea of running. She knows me well enough by now to know that’ll just be a waste of breath.
Sure, I would’ve preferred to evacuate moments ago, but with Sierra on my side, I stand a chance. I still have a fiery package I’d like to deliver.
“Can you break open a path?” I ask. “I can’t attack from range. My skill’s run out of power.”
Sierra raises an eyebrow, then chuckles. “Of course you’d set yourself on fire. Of course.”
“Can you do it?”
“Of course I can,” she says. “I’ll carve you a way.”
She brings her hands together, taking in a deep breath and closing her eyes. Blue light surrounds her as she inhales, coalescing behind one of her closed eyelids.
“Ah, gods damn it all,” she curses, whispering just quietly enough that I don’t think she intends for me to hear it. “Why’d you have to go and steal my heart?”
When she opens her eyes, one is bright blue, reflecting the magic she’s been wielding.
The other is the crimson of a raging fire.
“Magic is about balance,” she says, her voice ever so slightly unstable, as if any moment she might break down into crazed fervor. “I showed you the Blue Mage. The give and the take. Now, though I’ll pay for it, I’ll show you another way. Light balancing dark, water balancing fire. Polar opposites.
She raises her left hand, and twin streams of pure darkness and blinding white light explode forward, annihilating everything in their path.
“Behold,” she says with a sense of finality, “Sierra Jade, the Red Mage.”
