“The flower blooms on contact with blood,” Alarion said, relaying Centre’s guidance to the 238th over Simu. He kept his voice quiet, his eyes scanning the empty street outside their hiding place as he continued. “If you see one in the wound, you need to rip out the bulb and all the surrounding flesh to keep it from spreading. You will have only seconds, depending on your vitality. If it starts to spread, remove the limb. If you were struck in the torso…”

  Find someone to kill you cleanly.

  Centre’s advice had been coldly practical, but Alarion couldn’t bring himself to translate it. Instead, he said simply, “Do not get hit in the torso.”

  If it were up to Alarion, none of his comrades would be in the line of fire, but reality was not that kind. In his few minutes of freedom, Or’Valde had spawned a small army of fiends from the corpses left behind. Even worse, most of the newly created monstrosities remained by his side rather than running off to be slaughtered individually, implying an unexpected level of control on Or’Valde’s part.

  Alarion believed that his small band of elites should be able to kill the False Heart, but not if it were surrounded by an army of lesser fiends. He needed backup of his own.

  “Archer, you are up,” Alarion said. “Make him hurt.”

  “With pleasure, Martyr.” The cloaked warrior flashed him a crooked grin before retreating to a nearby wall. He lined himself up with the gaping hole on the far side of their hiding place—a once-luxurious gallery—then sprinted out the opening. The outline of his body blurred with each step—though not from motion. By the time he leapt onto a nearby roof, he might as well have been invisible.

  Surprise was their most significant advantage. Or’Valde had continued “screaming” from various locations around the compound, trying to trick them into a false pursuit while remaining safely hidden in the basement of one of the larger buildings. From there, it directed its minions to gather bodies, steadily growing its host without risking a confrontation.

  It had no idea they’d breached the anti-divination wards or how vulnerable it truly was. And it was about to learn why bombardment was the first stage of any subjugation.

  Though far more powerful and mana-efficient than traditional direct-damage spells, the long casting time and easy disruption of artillery magic necessitated their removal to the rear lines. This distance, coupled with the substandard accuracy of their spells, forced artillery mages to focus on either preparation or saturation to reliably strike their targets.

  In a perfect, or even sensible world, the 238th would have been given days or weeks to train for this attack. They would have prepared grid maps of the compound for ease of communication, and Alarion’s artillery mages would have practiced striking such targets in advance. Such prepared bombardments were devastating, as the revenants had shown when they ambushed Alarion’s unit on the road all those months ago.

  Without such preparation, all the mages had to rely on was Alarion’s description of relative distance, as provided by ZEKE. That would have been enough for well-drilled Vitrian regulars, but Auxilia training was far less flexible. They weren’t firing blind, but as someone standing in the line of fire, Alarion was concerned about their accuracy.

  Which was where Archer came in.

  “On My Target. Fire For Effect,” Archer said over his Simu.

  Archer was a skirmisher first and foremost. Trained for stealth and long-distance combat, he excelled at punishing enemies who made the mistake of letting him see them before they saw him. With a host of powerful ranged attacks such as [Assassin’s Shot], [Lethal Snipe], and [Double Tap], backed up by enhancement skills such as [Heavy Draw], Archer could inflict a tremendous amount of damage before a foe even realized they were under attack.

  But those skills, powerful as they were, weren’t what earned Archer his reputation or his rank up to [Bombardier]. That honor fell to an unusual skill pairing for a ranged weapon specialist, [On My Target] and [Fire For Effect].

  The former skill increased the accuracy of allies’ ranged attacks by subtly redirecting them toward Archer’s current target, while the latter increased the damage and radius of allies’ area-of-effect abilities. On their own each was useful but unimpressive, not surprising given that both were [Common] rarity skills.

  When used together, however, the pairing created an unexpected Skill Circuit. One that considered any incoming area-of-effect abilities to be ranged attacks.

  As a [Common] skill, the effect of [On My Target] was rather lackluster. Originally used for volley fire, it didn’t redirect an ally’s attack so much as it nudged it in the right direction. In most cases, a blatant miss remained a blatant miss, just one that came a little closer.

  With artillery magic, closer was usually close enough.

  The first wave of detonations blew in the gallery’s remaining windows. The shockwave from the second was so intense that a damaged section of the roof came down atop them. A wave of dust and debris flooded the street, choking Alarion’s lungs even through the scarf he had pulled up over his mouth. The third rocked the building’s foundation, sending its occupants crashing into the basement.

  The fourth finally made Or’Valde scream—in rage as much as pain.

  “Is everyone okay?” Alarion asked, to a chorus of acknowledgments. It would take more than a collapsed building to harm Awakened of their caliber, though the collapse was inconvenient.

  “I might not be,” Archer warned as his allies worked to extricate themselves. “He is on the move. I think… yeah, he sees me!”

  Scorched and torn from the bombardment—though still very much combat capable—Or’Valde’s new body was not what any of them had expected. The False Heart shared superficial similarities with its minions but lacked the humanoid silhouette. The thick joints of its knees were inverted to support an enormous upper body, its arms so long that it frequently used them for balance during its assault. The left arm was a twisted mass of needles, but unlike its spawn, Or’Valde complemented those weapons with a long, curved blade of bone that protruded from the back of its forearm.

  It swung that blade with reckless abandon, assaulting the empty air and tearing through stone, tile, and wood whenever it overcommitted. Its body was already riddled with arrows, with new shafts appearing every instant—as if from magic—but Or’Valde did not seem to care. It only attacked and attacked and attacked, alternating between blade and needles almost at random.

  Until finally the air bled.

  A twisted smile spread across Or’Valde’s too-thin face as castoff spattered onto the street below. But it was short-lived.

  “Savareth’s Force Trap!”

  The air flashed blue-white as the bone blade finally struck something it could not tear through. The impact knocked Or’Valde off balance, but the fiend quickly struck again in frustration. When the barrier refused to yield, it raked the blade across the shimmering field, searching for its boundary, but instead of an edge it found a second wall, then a third and a fourth, trapping it in on all sides.

  Safely behind the barrier, Archer dropped the resource-intensive stealth skill and threw Witch a thankful wave as she emerged from the ruined building, the diminutive girl tucked under one of Kali’s arms like a sack of potatoes.

  She looked less than pleased but could barely spare the attention to stand—let alone crawl out of a building—while maintaining the barrier. Her index and middle fingers were crossed over one another, their tips pressed against the sides of a metallic cube that shook with each new assault against her arcane construct.

  An instant later, a gray phantom flickered free of the ruins. Covered head to toe in dust and debris, Alarion blinked several times to clear his eyes. He didn’t like what he saw. “Bergman, can you-”

  “A-Already on it,” the boy answered, coughing heavily to clear his throat before starting into an incantation. While Bergman was a secondary healer at best, Archer was in dire need of immediate attention.

  The veteran’s left arm was nearly severed; the white of bone glinted with each flicker of the nearby conflagration. But just as troubling was the gaping hole in his opposite hip, the self-inflicted response to one of Or’Valde’s needles. Neither wound was life-threatening, but both would impede his effectiveness, and they would take time to heal.

  Time Or’Valde was not interested in granting them. Though it lacked the magical acumen to dispel [Saverath’s Force Trap] outright, the fiend’s continued assault proved the spell was not as impervious as it initially appeared. Whether an intentional act or a quirk of fiendish biology, each punch and slash was infused with mana aligned to the Moon and Decay affinities—magic that was quickly eroding Witch’s barrier.

  “I can’t hold it,” Witch whispered.

  “That is okay,” Alarion said. Trapping Or’Valde until his body decayed had always been a long shot, but it had still been one worth taking. “I will keep you safe.”

  [Error – Duplicate Quest]

  [Merging]

  Hold the Line.

  Description: The parasitic colony Or’Valde will not last long. The only question is whether you and your allies will be alive to see the end of him.

  Success Conditions: Kill Or’Valde. Alternatively, survive until the colony collapses.

  Failure Conditions: The death of Bergman, Witch, Kali, or Archer.

  Reward: One Ancient Wyrd Box.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Penalty: Gain the [Broken Vow] – Major, status condition.

  “No one is safe, Mar-tyr,” Or’Valde mocked, the shimmer of magic showing cracks as he struck it again. “Magic bray-kes. Flesh rips. You die!”

  Staring up at his opponent, Alarion drew two knives from his bracer and moved both, along with Echo, briefly behind his back. When he brought them out again, he smiled broadly up at the monster. “You have had bad luck at my guessing games. Want to try again?”

  “You may-kuh fo-ol of Or’Valde!?” It spat, slamming its head against the barrier hard enough to draw blood. “Or’Valde will wear you, Mar-tyr!”

  “I think I am a little short for your taste,” Alarion shot back. It was a terrible taunt, and he knew it. But he needed to say something to keep the beast mad. So long as it was angry at him, it would focus on him.

  The fiend scoffed, bracing itself as Alarion threw the daggers.

  Or’Valde’s thought process was easy to read. Alarion needed to close the distance, so he’d have to teleport. He was vulnerable when he teleported, so he was throwing extra knives to confuse his opponent. Alarion would jump to the closest of the three, eager to get in an attack of his own when the barrier fell. It was arrogant, stupid, and perfectly matched what he knew of the boy.

  Those assumptions blew up in Or’Valde’s face—almost literally—in the form of Alarion’s [Spell-Storing Dagger] loaded with [Empowered Solar Burst].

  Thrown clear of his rooftop perch by the detonation, Or’Valde failed to entirely evade Alarion’s follow-up attack. Isha landed hard on the fiend’s right shoulder, shattering bone and bursting two parasites.

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 101]

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 127]

  “Fooled you again,” Alarion taunted, chasing Or’Valde down the pitted and scarred roadway as the fiend scrambled to regain its footing. “Did I kill all the clever ones earlier?”

  “Shut up!” Or’Valde shouted as it swept at him with its blade. It was a telegraphed counter, but not nearly as obvious as the burst of needles it fired at him partway through the swing.

  “Really?” Alarion smirked after dodging the projectiles with ease. “Maybe next time pick a body with more than one-”

  The smirk on Or’Valde’s face and a slight flick of its wrist were all the warning Alarion needed. He twisted on instinct, narrowly avoiding a death blow as one of the beige spines came rushing back toward its owner. Stopping just before impact, it rotated in the air and lanced out at Alarion once again.

  He dodged it twice more before doing so became untenable, forcing Alarion to fall back on his magic. “Solar Burst!”

  Alarion’s spell vaporized the incoming spine, and several others from the follow-up burst Or’Valde had just fired, but it did little to deal with the underlying problem as Or’Valde took control of another and sent it speeding toward his target.

  “… This ward shall stand while I still speak.”

  A spiral of ink intercepted the projectile, then swooped around Alarion to block it again as it lanced in from another angle. The process repeated twice more, Bergman’s words always one step ahead of Or’Valde’s needle as Alarion resumed his offensive.

  He’d dropped the pretense of provocation, letting sword and mace speak for him as he struck and parried, dodged and countered. Or’Valde was fast and getting faster, his movements becoming less sloppy with each exchange. It reminded Alarion of his early duels with Kali, though from a different perspective. Or’Valde wasn’t getting better at reading him; it was getting better at controlling its own body.

  Bout by bout, Or’Valde was gaining the upper hand, and Alarion was running out of tricks. [Near and Far] had reached its limit, and [Foresight]’s effectiveness was fading as Or’Valde grew in power. Whatever hope Alarion had of outlasting Or’Valde’s host body was guttering out fast.

  Luckily, Alarion had been buying time in more ways than one.

  Kali’s fist struck Or’Valde’s exposed cheek with a crunch of wood and bone. The fiend had seen the attack coming, but with Alarion pressuring him he’d had to make a split-second decision between sword and fist.

  He’d chosen poorly. The last time Alarion had seen Kali’s [High Tension] in action, it sent Alarion to the infirmary with enough broken bones to feel a twinge of sympathy for Or’Valde.

  “Took you long enough,” Alarion panted. The strike had thrown Or’Valde into—and then through—the wall of a nearby building. Neither of them was stupid enough to chase him into the cloud of dust and darkness. Not unless ZEKE warned that he was back on the run.

  “I told you, it takes two minutes.”

  “A long two minutes,” Alarion frowned.

  Like most truly powerful skills, [High Tension] came with considerable trade-offs. Activated quickly, as Kali had done in his duel with Alarion, the skill sapped the Godborn’s HP and Stamina at roughly 1% per second, a truly unsustainable rate meant only for last-ditch, decisive strikes. Activated more carefully, over the course of two minutes, the initial drain was reduced to a much more sustainable 0.1%. Sadly, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The more Kali exerted himself, the heavier the drain.

  “Well, good news. I can fight like this for about two long minutes,” Kali said. “Less if he hits me.”

  “Archer?”

  “Witch took over the healing, but I don’t think he’s shooting anytime soon.”

  “Just the three of us then.” Alarion could hear the clash of fighting in the distance, and shouts of orders in his ear. The rest of the 238th—under Dimov’s leadership—was acquitting itself well against the fiends that survived the barrage. It was only a matter of time until further backup arrived. At worst, they had to keep Or’Valde busy until then. “Are you done cowering?”

  A fresh burst of needles streaked out of the dark building in response. They clattered harmlessly off Echo’s blade but still delayed Alarion’s counterattack as Or’Valde leapt out of the half-ruined structure, blade swinging for Kali’s throat.

  Or’Valde was a bad match for Kali. As a hand-to-hand combatant in a world of swords, the Godborn’s fighting style was all about getting close to his opponent and either bullying them with repeated strikes or, ideally, bringing them to the ground where he could dismantle them with his prodigious grappling skills. Neither was viable against the False Heart. With instant death all but dripping from his hand, Or’Valde was happy to get in close and would have been delighted to wrestle.

  But enough power could overcome even the worst matchup.

  Though comparable in rank and rarity to [Near and Far], the sacrifice-driven power of [High Tension] was on an entirely different level—especially when used on someone so close to Rank III. Kali moved like a blur, not only dodging each swipe from Or’Valde’s wicked blade but retaliating with a punch or kick of his own. He was faster, stronger, and more at home in his skin, meeting every one of Or’Valde’s advantages with overwhelming power.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  “Gi-ve heem to me!” Or’Valde shrieked in pain, rage, and even fear as the two Awakened laid into him from either side in an entirely unfair exchange. Or’Valde was a match for Alarion—probably even his better—but trapped between the two of them, with Bergman supporting from a distance? It was a brutal sight.

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 111]

  Alarion smiled in grim satisfaction as a sweep of his mace left half of Or’Valde’s head splattered across a nearby wall. It didn’t stop the fiend—Alarion wasn’t even sure if anything short of destoying the False Heart’s core would end the battle—but it hurt him. As did Kali’s next jab. And the dark slice of Bergman’s [Razor Words], which severed its right arm just above the wrist.

  “Ee-nough!” Or’Valde screamed, driving his attackers back with a reckless swing of his arm. “Lah-stuh cha-cha….ch-an-ce, Mar-tyr,” Or’Valde’s already twisted voice was raspy and broken, each word choked out like a man struggling to remember how to speak. “Bri-nnguh me sen…ter. Or ci-ty… scr-screams.”

  “Just die already,” Alarion said, severing Or’Valde’s left arm with one final swing.

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 96]

  “Is… it… dead?” Kali asked, each word punctuated by a heavy breath. The Godborn was in terrible condition, his once porcelain-white skin now almost entirely black and blue.

  Alarion answered with a spell. “Solar Burst!”

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 122]

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 88]

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 103]

  You have slain [Wyrd Parasite – UCL 68]

  The burst of sun-aligned mana incinerated most of the False Heart’s remaining skin to reveal sickly yellow-brown muscle, gleaming pink bone, and the crimson core that was the only thing that mattered.

  “Needles!” Bergman cried, alerting the two of them to the danger moments before it—or Alarion—could strike.

  Acting on instinct, Alarion threw himself through the nearest window, narrowly avoiding a sudden hail of projectiles as every needle Or’Valde had fired suddenly returned home.

  Once he’d found his bearings and checked himself for wounds, Alarion took cover next to the window and shouted, “Kali?”

  “I’m safe. Barely,” came a voice from across the street. “Bergman?”

  “I’m g-good.”

  Poking his head around the windowsill, Alarion knew they were not good.

  Or’Valde’s body—or what was left of it—knelt in the street, covered head to toe in its own weapons of war. It was healing, slowly, a few of the needles already lying in the dirt after being pushed out by newly repaired tissue. But that was not his concern.

  It was changing. Growing.

  And screaming.

  The already inhuman fiend was becoming something else entirely, something more in keeping with its plantlike qualities and the corrupted arm lying dead in the street. Muscle split and tore as the fiend grew, its legs fusing together and digging into the earth like roots. Bone snapped as Or’Valde let out a scream of unimaginable pain, then grew silent as it lost the ability to scream.

  Alarion needed to kill it.

  Now.

  Echo struck the trunk of the twisted tree with a dull thunk, barely able to penetrate a few inches of the dense wood. Isha fared no better, each life-ending impact doing little but tearing away bits and pieces of flesh-bark as Alarion tried to carve his way back toward its core. When that failed, he turned to magic, burning through HP and MP with repeated casts of [Solar Burst] and [Void Crush]. Those made a dent, but neither was enough. Not nearly enough.

  If only he’d swung when he had the chance.

  Your fault.

  Maybe he could use his bare hands?

  Alarion tore at the tree, ripping and pulling, prying away the hideous biological flora in his desperation. A thing like this couldn’t exist. He needed to kill it before it was too late. Before everyone died. Because it was his fault.

  “… Within this warded mind, I know.”

  Due to the effects of [Whispered Ward], your WIL has been increased by 65%.

  “W-What?” Alarion murmured quietly, shaking his head as the fog of rage and self-loathing lifted away. “Ivor?”

  “-get to cover!” Bergman shouted, half pulling, half dragging Alarion away from the tree. And not a moment too late.

  Wood cracked like thunder as the now-towering tree split open in a hundred places and filled the sky with its payload of death. Needles flew by the thousands, aimed at everything and nothing as they shot into the sky and rained down on everyone below. Alarion heard screams through his Simu as a few poor souls failed to heed Bergman’s order in time.

  Then there was silence.

  “What happened?”

  “I-I don’t… know,” Bergman gasped. “It t-turned into that and you w-went mad. I t-thought that it might be a p-psychic attack like-”

  “Bergman.”

  “-a T-True Heart, so I t-thought-”

  “Ivor!” Alarion shouted, pointing at his arm.

  The flower growing out of Bergman’s forearm was unnaturally beautiful. Its stem and pistil were blood red, its white petals perfectly formed and silken smooth—for the half second before Bergman tore them from his arm.

  “No. No, no, no.” Ivor repeated the mantra as he tore at the wound, ripping at his own flesh until he saw the bulb beneath. Its bloodstained tendrils already buried deep in the bone.

  He stared at it for two shaky breaths, then thrust out his arm.

  “Do it!”

  Alarion didn’t hesitate. Bergman didn’t scream.

  “Witch, Ivor needs attention,” he said over his Simu.

  “If you think I am stepping out in that, you are out of your-”

  “You will, or I will tie the noose myself when this is over,” he snapped. She was scared, they were all scared, but the sooner Bergman got real attention, the better. Pressure and [Mend Other] had stemmed the worst of the bleeding from the severed arm, but Alarion was a poor substitute for a competent healer. “Tell me where you are, and I will have Kali tear you a path through some buildings. Assuming…”

  Kali was quick to answer, though his words were labored. “Yeah… I think I can manage that. But High Tension took everything else out of me. I am no good to you in fighting that thing.”

  “You could not help anyway,” Alarion told him, the reassurance more insulting than he intended. “I hit it with everything, but only the magic scratched it. Archer, how is the arm?”

  “Attached.” Alarion winced at the poor choice of words, suddenly thankful Bergman had lost consciousness from the pain. “I’m no more useful than the sergeant.”

  “Can you fire a shot?”

  “To get the mages on target?” Archer asked. There was a pause as the man considered the possibility. “I’ll pull it with my feet if I have to, Martyr. The thing is big enough, it isn’t like I’ll miss.”

  “Good man,” Alarion said as he relayed the plan.