“Two out of three,” Alarion murmured, his eyes trained on the massive—and still growing—fiend outside the window.
“What?”
“You were right on two out of three. The plan is stupid, and the garrison is mobilizing. But we cannot leave it to them.”
“Why not?” she protested.
“Because they are treating the merchant as their cordon, not the estates. They are not going to rush in to fight it, and at the rate it is growing, we will lose most of the quarter before they act.”
Or the whole upper-city. That had been the plan all along, hadn’t it?
Though Centre claimed ignorance as to this new transformation, ZEKE’s [Infinite Library] had been somewhat more forthcoming. Apparently, it was possible, though rare, for a False Heart to transition into a True Heart. The circumstances were complicated, and hadn’t been met as far as they could tell. It seemed as though Or’Valde had brute forced the transformation.
Without a Place of Power to feed it, the mutant tree would die off within a matter of days. Or’Valde would die even faster, but they had no idea if its death would kill the False Heart, or just return it to its natural state. In the meantime, it continued to grow, firing ever more and ever larger needles into the surrounding city. A solid roof was protection enough—for now—but the sheer weight of the spines would start collapsing them within a few hours.
If they didn’t start punching through first.
Even with Williams screaming at the garrison to act, Alarion couldn’t afford to wait. A stupid plan was better than no plan at all. Though Witch disagreed strongly.
“Better them than us.”
“Why did you even volunteer?” he asked, angrily. “This-“
“Is too much for us!” she scowled up at him, lifting a hand away from Bergman to push a stray crimson lock out of her eyes. “Fighting fiends? Sure. Part of the job. This? What even is that?!”
“Just a big fiend.”
“Mm, right. Just a really big fiend, he says.”
Before he could reply, the simu in Alarion’s ear crackled to life. “Archer, on station.”
“Understood. How are our mages?”
“We’ve been better, Sir,” an unfamiliar voice replied. “A few of us felt too safe outside the estates. Two dead, one grievously injured. But… I think we can break that. We certainly can’t miss.”
“Do not just rely on Archer,” Alarion warned. “It is not enough to just hit it; you need to group your shots, or we won’t reach the core.”
“It was a joke, Sir.”
“Mm,” Alarion grunted. Mothers, he was tired. “Hit it, Archer.”
“Shot is flying.”
Alarion peeked outside the window, hoping to catch the arrow in flight, but he had no such luck. Between the dark of night and the ever-present smoke of the still smoldering estate, it was impossible to catch an arrow in flight.
But he saw the tree’s response just fine.
The bark split open in long vertical slits, revealing the pulsating, hole-filled flesh beneath. A second later, the air was filled with the whine of thousands of needles, followed by the thunk-thunk-thunk of their impacts.
“Are you clear?” Alarion asked.
“Clear, I’m not staying out in that,” Archer confirmed.
From what they’d deduced, the tree had two forms of attack. The first—the attack that had injured Bergman and killed several others—was a sort of pollination. It fired tens of thousands of needles into the air, coating its surroundings in deadly poison and creating new minions of anyone unlucky enough to be hit. The second was responsive, a targeted burst it fired whenever anything struck it, or came too close. It was smaller in scale and in volume, but no less deadly if it landed.
As far as Alarion could tell, Or’Valde was gone, either dead, disabled, or rendered unintelligent. The tree acted automatically and predictably, firing whenever its weapons reset. Every minute for the pollination, and every fifteen seconds for the retaliation. That gave them a window.
Blowing a hole in the side of the tree might open the core up to attack, but the damage from an artillery spell wasn’t likely to break the core on anything but a direct hit, and like a True Heart, this thing healed fast. If they wanted to kill it, they’d have to treat it like a True Heart.
Tear it open, hold it open, and hit the core as many times as it takes.
A few seconds passed, then Archer spoke in his ear again. “On My Target. Fire For Effect. Are you sure about this, Martyr?”
“Not really.” Outside the window, he heard the telltale crack of wood as the tree fired its next pollination wave. “Forty-Two seconds.”
It would take most of the artillery section ten seconds to cast, with roughly eight seconds of flight time. Ideally, they’d hit the tree right as it exposed its fleshy interior. Every bit helped.
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Alarion calmed his breathing and gave Witch a reassuring smile as she came to join him. She scowled in return, but couldn’t hold it for long. “This is really stupid.”
“You said that.”
“It bears repeating,” she told him, the pair listening intently as Archer counted down the seconds. “Don’t die, okay?”
“Would you believe that this is not the stupidest thing I have done?”
Her laughter was lost in a string of explosions and the hard impact of fresh needles striking the roof. By the time she spoke, he was already gone.
“Did we-“
“Nice big hole, and I can see red,” Alarion grinned. He wasn’t talking about the anger, revulsion, and self-recrimination the Heart was already trying to force through Bergman’s mental shield, but the glint of red buried deep in the tree’s fleshy insides. “Witch, hold the door.”
He heard chanting behind him as he ran and saw the air around the wound shimmer as [Saverath’s Force Trap] took effect. She’d warned him that the spell wasn’t nearly as strong from the outside as it was from the inside, but it didn’t have to hold long. Thirty seconds, at most.
Wounded but far from dead, the tree lashed out at Alarion as he ran. A solid wave of death streaked toward him, and he threw Echo to meet it. Grown to its full size by the time it reached the incoming threats, Echo tore through the needles in its way without effort, and Alarion teleported to grab it long before he was in any danger.
He hung in the air for half a second, waiting for the unexpected—for the hidden card Or’Valde held in reserve. But there was nothing. He threw Echo and flickered again, rapidly closing on his target.
The second wave was harder to dodge. With less distance for the shots to travel, his margin for error was thin. Worse, the pressure was building in his mind, with jumbled words and phrases leaking through Bergman’s magic and Alarion’s formidable WIL. There were many reasons he had to be the one to make the attempt, and his mental resilience was chief among them. Of the rest of the 238th, only Bergman could have withstood the fiend’s mental intrusion.
But with one more teleport, he was through. It had been too close for comfort, but the fiend wouldn’t get another shot.
“Drop it now!” Alarion ordered as he launched Echo toward the gaping wound and reappeared inside, nearly slipping on the blood-soaked guts. It smelled foul—like a charnel house dipped in shit—but Alarion fought down his revulsion and chanted. “Solar Burst!”
The world rumbled around him as he scorched its innards with its most hated Affinity, but the physical reaction paled in comparison to the vile expletives it stabbed into his mind. Most raced past too quickly to acknowledge as anything more than an assault, but one repeated just enough for Alarion to hear it clearly.
Mar-tyr!
“So you are in there,” Alarion said, slashing Echo through burnt meat as the fiend tried desperately to hide its core. “Die properly this time. Solar Burst!”
He cut and burned and cut again, digging through flesh as the pulsing mass pulled the core ever inward, delaying the inevitable. It was too slow to outrun Alarion.
But fast enough, he realized, to buy Or’Valde the time he needed to seal the hole behind him.
Fo-oled you.
The walls erupted with needles, peppering Alarion from every conceivable angle. He flickered on the first impact, negating most of the damage with [Dimensional Evasion], but there was nowhere to go.
Alarion couldn’t count the impacts from the small needles, a dozen on his arms and legs alone. They were weaker than normal, and they would struggle against his VIT, but he could already feel them moving inside of him. They were crawling toward his veins, his bones, rooting themselves so deep that nothing would get them out. He didn’t need his Status to confirm it, but he looked anyway.
New Condition! Fiendish Bloom – Fatal.
[Orphan’s Fortitude] has taken effect.
[Fiendish Bloom — Fatal] cannot be resisted with user’s current VIT score, due to severity.
Fatal. That sounded about right.
“You could have closed the hole at any time, right?”
The laughter in his mind was all the answer Alarion needed.
He let out a sigh of relief, and the laughter stopped. “If you were not such an arrogant prick, there is no way I could have killed you.”
With that, Alarion clenched his right fist and poured a bit of mana into the item he’d earned from the last fiendish Heart he’d killed.
[Alarion’s Refusal]
Once per day, the user may reject a condition inflicted on them by an outside source (such as Geas, Poison, Curse, Paralysis, Fear, limb loss, etc.), so long as the source is no more than one rank higher than the user. Conditions rejected in this fashion are removed entirely. Any damage resulting from the condition is healed, as are conditions caused by the rejected condition, such as blood loss. The user becomes immune to that condition for the next twenty-four hours.
Alarion hadn’t been sure that the ring would save him, not until he’d had a chance to ask Archer to check his notifications and make sure that the System recognized it as a condition. After that, the only questions were whether they’d be able to open up a big enough hole and if Or’Valde was stupid enough to let him in.
Of course, if Alarion had been able to shove the ring onto Bergman’s finger the moment he’d been hit, he would have, city be damned—but the item’s requirements made that impossible. So instead, he settled for the next best use.
Making himself immune to Or’Valde’s only remaining weapon.
The budding stems wilted and dissolved inside him, his bone and flesh reknitting wherever the Bloom had done damage, though it did not heal the wounds caused by the needles themselves.
No matter. He had thousands of HP for Or’Valde to chew through.
Stop!
“Void Crush,” was Alarion’s response.
Mar-tyr, no!
“Void Crush.”
Leave!
The tree’s guts moved beneath him as a gap opened behind him, but Or’Valde was not getting rid of him that easily. Alarion buried Echo into the meat, clinging tightly to the hilt until the spasm was spent. Then he got back to work.
With no more weapons at his disposal, the fiend fell back on the only one he had. Flesh warped and twisted, dragging the core further and further toward the body’s centre, while at the same time peppering Alarion with endless waves of needles—trying to drive him out.
The damage added up a few hundred at a time, steadily driving Alarion’s HP downward. 75%. 50%. 25%. The fiend must have had some way of tracking Alarion’s vital energy, because he felt its terror when the number dipped into the negatives.
It was funny, in a dark sort of way. With skills like [The Best Offense is Persistence], the only thing Or’Valde had done was speed up its death.
“Enough running,” Alarion grunted as he yanked the head-sized crystal from the wall and threw it to the floor. The body rumbled, and the floor around the crystal began to sink, but there was no escaping.
His first blow with Isha cracked the gem, the second sent chips flying.
Copy of a copy! Be of me!
The voice this time was different. Stronger. The will of the fiend itself, somehow boiled up to the surface, rather than the parasite inhabiting it.
Alarion struck the core one last time and felt the life go out of the world around him. It was as unsettling as it was familiar. Something that big shouldn’t die like a person.
But it did.
He fell to one knee, regretting it immediately as a dozen needles droves deeper into his flesh, then snapped off entirely. He looked ridiculous, covered nearly head to toe in punctures. Sudden weakness washed over him as [Indomitable Resilience] pushed his HP out of the negatives and applied the difference as new internal conditions. They were nothing major, especially compared to his last set of injuries, but he’d be hurting for days.
But he was alive, and Or’Valde wasn’t.
[Quest Complete – Hold the line]
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