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Arcanist - Chapter 55
🕑 Added 2025-03-24 15:57:36 +0000 UTCEdric breathed in the stench of the wicked about him, took it in and worked the spit in his mouth, swallowed the poison whole as the inner flame stirred with the taste of the shadows. The Blessed Father’s flame took hold of his body, and then he was off toward the swarm, golden sword clasped tight in his hands.
Wind whistled. Men growled. Shadows screamed. The ground broke underneath his armored feet. Edric gave in to the thrill, every muscle of his being vibrating and trembling with the zest. The world faded and he was left alone here, alone in a stretch of dark with only shadows to keep him company.
He grunted as a Shrieker came stabbing with nails sharper than steel, ducked under it and stretched his hand out, felt his fingers wrap around something soft and sticky. Pulled at the creature with all his strength, the thrill rising, the snap of the soft bones seeping deviously into his mind.
‘Ding’ You have managed to defeat [Shrieker - lvl 196]!
Another one poked a curious head from beneath his feet, peering up at him with half its body still deep under the ground. Edric dodged the twisted bastard’s nails as they came up toward his crotch, reached down at it with his free hand and yanked at its hair, pulled it stumbling across the hall, pushed it a few steps ahead to see the expression in its face.
It was blank, as ever. These creatures were nothing more than lingering ghosts of someone’s memories.
He stabbed the sword right through the edge of its hanging chin when it looked like the Shrieker was about to shriek. That’s what they do when you give them a chance for it. Shriek and scream and cry. About a bloody deal as any shadow over the Broken Lands, and the answer was always the same.
You kill them, and kill them more, until the others rise up and you cleanse them too. The practice of it scarcely changes.
But the thrill… That was one thing Edric didn’t want to change.
He caught a stray Shrieker aiming for his boys behind, thumped a loud way across to announce his presence, slowed down when the creature decided to turn to him. Radiance washed off of him and spattered over the creature, coated it in holy lights, burnt it till it clunked down on its knees with dark smoke coming off from all around it.
Edric cleaved its neck clean from its body to make sure it stayed silent.
There were more. There was always more in these ancient crypts. He was beginning to suspect something insidious was at work here, but couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. The Wretched Mother had its court wide in the Broken Lands. The attempt to bring back the Weeping Horror, though?
That was a fool’s errand, to Edric’s thinking.
Her minions wouldn’t dare to show their presence in Haven’s Reach, not when the Divine Orders had their measures against such a pointless effort, and not when there was still discord among the Forsaken.
Unless they started stitching those holes.
Edric shook his head. The Ancient Ones served the Tainted Father on the surface, but the Church suspected after the last breaking of the world they had gone to their own ways. Some decided to lure the helpless to their cults, some others took to the human ways to wait for this Era to pass.
You stare too much, then you start seeing things that are not there.
Blessed Father’s fire burned a soothing song over his heart, spread gentle warmth down his arms and into his muscles. Brought back a sudden calm to his churning mind. A safe patch for any Templar about to go astray.
Somewhere back over the ground something stirred.
Then came a sharp cry.
“Healer!” Edric turned swiftly to the back, his ears popping as the Shrieker’s cry echoed across the dark passage, stabbing at his mind like fine needles through simple cloth.
His inner flame rose defiantly in response, sending the Blessed Father’s strength up his chest. He floundered a step before fixing his stare toward the Healer, and paused at the sight. Blinked round to see if his mind was playing a trick on his eyes, but nothing changed.
The tiles were alive with movement.
What is going on here?
Edric watched as the broken tiles ground themselves into waist-high sharp spikes, coated with flames burning over their surfaces. Dozens of them jutting out of the ground around the healer, and dozens more reaching from the ceiling toward him as though servants heeding to their Master’s call. Gravel rained down upon them as their tips sharpened.
They stabbed at a single Shrieker trying to attack the healer from underneath his feet. One by one they caught the creature from the edges of her arms, of her hands, of every strand of its hair. In moments she was riddled like a hedgehog, fixed tight upon the dirt from every visible part of her body.
The Shrieker’s mouth parted wide open, rotten teeth visible in its mouth, breath wheezing through its cracked lips. Another shriek was coming, and the healer was too close to the creature to come out alive from this one.
“Stop!” Edric yelled at him. “Don’t let it scream—“
Edric was about to make for him when a tremor nailed him to the ground. Another spike rose from the side, sharpened itself dutifully before being hurled toward the Shrieker.
Right into its opened mouth.
Uh…
Edric winced involuntarily when the sharp tip of the earthly spike drilled into the creature’s throat, drilled halfway in and got stuck there, stuffing every inch of that rotten mouth while leaving no room for a scream. Not even for a breath, for that matter, which was no doubt uncomfortable for the creature.
There it burned. Silently, desperately. Even when it managed to break a couple of the spikes with its sheer strength, others rained down at it and filled the openings. It was like watching a mad beast being controlled by masterful beast tamers, toyed about purposefully to let it spend itself.
That creature… Is level 170.
Edric shifted to the side and swung his sword round to catch a sneaky Shrieker coming at him from the back. The tip of the sword squelched into the flesh, burned a painful hiss across, ripped out its core and sent it spinning to the side. A mere nuisance from the scene happening before his eyes.
Back on the healer, he once again checked him with the Identify.
[Arcane Healer — lvl 100]
Still a pre-trial kid, and a healer at that. Am I supposed to believe… this? Who is this man?
Edric was a Level 225 Templar, having completed the Second Trial of the Sun’s Path some years before. For him dealing with the Wicked was a job, something he had to do on a daily basis. It was no wonder then that the Divine Class-Path of the Sun’s Church gave him the means that made him a natural foe of these damned creatures.
The inner flame, the sword, the armor… He was a warrior fashioned by the Church’s hands to act as the sword against the Tainted Father’s minions, a weapon to be used to cleanse the evil. Shriekers and Hollows were the least of his concerns when he was out for duty with his boys.
Even then every year Templars died in the Broken Lands fighting the good war. Died in the hands of dwellers like they meant nothing. A wrong step or a miscalculated raid… then even a Shrieker could take a Templar. A Sacred Artifact wouldn’t make a difference when you let a dozen of them swarm all over you and scream into your face.
Priests and Mages were worse. Fickle as ants, for one, and they couldn’t do anything when they didn’t have scores of men caring for them. The mere sight of a sword too close to their pretty faces would be enough to scare them shitless. Facing a Shrieker in some forgotten crypt, on the other hand?
That was unthinkable.
Yet this man did it. Did it in silence. He hadn’t cried for their help, nor did he scuttle away from the chaos and take shelter behind their golden lights. No. He wanted this. He volunteered to join their group and offered his service without expecting anything in return.
Why would anyone sane in mind do such a thing?
But then, Edric thought, the man had a special class. Nobody sane in mind would pick a special class unless they had something of an excuse. And Edric wanted to hear that excuse in part since he was curious, and in part since he wanted to see how useful this healer could be in the future.
He was staring at the healer and thinking to himself when the young man leaned closer to the Shrieker. It was still alive, still breathing, but by how its limbs grew weak at each second it wasn’t long for this world.
“No,” Edric said sharply. “You can play all you want, but I won’t let you touch that creature. It could be dangerous—“
The healer smiled him a simple smile as if he expected it, looking eager like a hungry fox. “Just a little operation, captain. I want to see the inner workings of this creature. I want to find out the truth of the matter, as my Master used to say.”
“Truth?” Edric scowled. “What truth? There’s nothing to see there—“
“Why, there is!” the healer nodded knowingly. “You just have to know where to look at.”
Nails scraped against the ground as a pair of Shriekers came bounding across from the passage, aiming at the Healer. Edric took one look at them, then turned to the young man, feeling like a nail stuck between two tiles, cursing to the fact that he’d been a prey to his curiosity once again.
We’ll talk about that truth once I’m done with this.
He growled furiously as he hauled the sword up and faced the incoming Shriekers.
......
Valens breathed. He could feel the sheer strength of the Templars handling the swarm of Shriekers at his back. His sound vision picked every one of them. Mountains of muscle, but beyond that, they breathed in the chaos of the battle. Expected everything as though they had eyes on the back of their heads. Filled every inch of opening the other Templars gave to the shadows, and made the Shriekers pay the price.
They didn’t need him.
But this one was different. This one was alone, still trying to pass through the tiles. Almost like a silent understanding, the moment Templars saw that he could handle this thing, they let Valens deal with this particular creature. He could feel their surprise at the sudden shower of spikes. Captain Edric still stole glances at him in between his moves.
A little arrogant, are we? Now, focus.
Right. Valens shook his head as he felt the creature’s nails. They were harder than steel, with icy cold skin underneath, stretching in a body of rotten flesh that was coated in shadowy tendrils.
A Lifeward seeped into its body even as the creature wriggled under the earthly spikes and tried to scream, but Valens sent more mana to the spike he’d stuffed hard into its throat and fixed the cracks along its surface.
I’ll do the speaking from now on.
That done, Valens kept his touch over the icy hand of the creature. Its body was a marvel, an ethereal cage of fleeting lights, of shadows coming in and out, coiling around the veins, pumping filthy mana across its being. There wasn’t a lifeline here, nor a working heart but only a fog being pumped out from the chest cavity.
Scowling, Valens directed the Lifeward toward that area, expecting any moment to hit that invisible barrier beyond which the dark nothingness awaited.
It wasn’t there. The invisible mana threads coursed down freely into the creature’s core, painted a bleak, but full picture in Valens’s mind. He saw walls coated in shadows with worm-like beings squirming all over them. Thousands of them in a wriggling mess of lines, full of death mana that kept the creature alive.
Disgusting, but interesting nonetheless. What are you hiding there, I wonder?
There was only one way to find out.
Lifesurge threads followed as the Shrieker struggled yet again with all its strength to break the earthly spikes. It managed to crack quite a few of them, and some others splintered into pieces, but Valens had enough mana to keep the creature nailed on this right exact spot for hours.
Still, it’s best to speed up a little.
Lifesurge threads hissed against its filthy skin. The Shrieker’s face twisted up in a painful frown as they wormed through the veins, tearing through them swiftly across. Valens blinked at the efficiency of the lifemana scalpels as even the Inferno’s flames had struggled to restrain this terrifying creature.
He didn’t know what to feel about that, but then, he wasn’t about to complain either. Instead, he directed threads toward the chest cavity, sweat dripping down his chin. It was too hot here and close, the air growing closer still as the Templars fought and crushed into the swarm.
Focus.
Apathy came back to him and settled over his mind. That was when he began carving pieces out of those shadowy walls. Tiny worms tried to bite into the Lifesurge threads, got burned like moths that got too close to the flames, got devoured before they could break Valens’s strong hold over the spell.
He carved them with painful precision, the Shrieker struggling, its terrible breath wheezing weakly through the block of earth jammed into its mouth. Foul saliva dripped down from the edges of its chin, nails scraping in mad fury to get rid of the tight hold over them.
Valens poured more mana into the spell. A notification blinked. Then came another one. He was too focused on the chest cavity to pay them much heed. He needed to learn, to see what this creature was made of.
Heavy seconds passed as Valens carved a big enough hole over the shadowy walls to peek through. The expected darkness awaited him beyond the boundary. A deep stretch of nothingness sucking at his very being.
Lifesurge threads filled into that area. Flushed the stretch with lifemana, Lifeward following after them. Wave after wave. He could feel the Shrieker’s grip around the blocks slipping. The precious source used to fix broken people was now cleaning this wicked abomination.
Just as the way it should work. Just as it should be.
Why, then, did Valens not feel anything? He was sending waves of mana into that darkness, but it felt as though he was pouring cups of water over a dried lake to bring it back to life. Pointless. A meager effort that didn’t make much sense, now that he thought about it.
Something rammed into the ground, hard. Walls groaned and gravel rained down upon them. The Templars shifted to tighten their circle, their frequencies growing restless and heavy.
I need to finish this.
Valens breathed in as he refocused on the creature’s inner core, and was about to send more Lifesurges into the area when he came across something.
The dark nothingness wasn’t empty anymore.
There was an enormous eye staring at him.
.......
Comments
Myrdin
I wonder if Valens didn’t move into another world, but rather to a distant future. His class title of an ancient, and the ancient laran language would indicate it
ReadingObsessed
Think that's why her symbol is an eye?
BubblyGhost
Beauty is in the eye of the. . .shrieker chest cavity?
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
