B2 Ch. 53 Death’s Doorway

‘Tilly, give me your Mana!’  Kindle sent down urgently as Tilly hovered dangerously at the edge of death. The horrifying slurry that was now his internal organs had somehow been stabilized by [Resolute]. The battle between his internal flame and the juvenile Seed of Corruption had temporarily been muted, yet it had been too late.  The Prime Dirge stood before them, gravely injured, but still far beyond their power to resist. 

But with Kindle’s words came a new avenue of opposition, and a final hope flickered back to life in Tilly’s chest.  A strange pattern manifested in his Mana pathways otherwise rendered inert by whatever power the leader of the Horde emitted. Tilly’s mind locked on to the small refuge of agency and channeled all of his power into it. Far above them, Kindle wheeled into a dive, her distant speck bursting into a startling brightness. 

Warning, Your Bond has activated the Sun’s Final Descent.  This has a 77% chance of severing your connection forever, do you accept?”

The notification popped up out of nowhere and the sudden risk caused Tilly to hesitate, pulling back some of his power.  A new scream shattered his confusion as his eyes whipped back to the Prime Dirge and Amelia. Its terribly burned hand had moved through the air searchingly and settled on Amelia’s stomach.  At the sight of what it was doing to her, Tilly’s hesitance evaporated and he channeled his power even more desperately. 

A scream ripped free from her throat as its claws began to dig into her abdomen curiously, even as its voice mellowed into a warm chuckle, “Ah, I see. You saught to tuck it away?  Unfortunately dearest, flesh is something of a special-”

Tilly felt his Bond swell dangerously as it drew in all of his Mana and demanded more.  So Tilly shoved in his desperation, his longing to live, and his deep desire to be finally free of the Corruption that had poisoned almost every moment of his new life. 

The Prime Dirge jerked his bloody hand away and glared up at the approaching phoenix, now burning with azure intensity.   His disdainful frown turned into a grimace as Kindle’s burning burst into a supernova of consuming fire fifty yards above him.  Grimace turned feral as he pumped every bit of rage he had into the connection, feeling his internal state being magnified one hundredfold by Kindle's Ability.  Her fierce cry shot through the valley in defiant opposition to the being who wanted to take away what was hers.

At that moment, having poured all of himself into the bond, Tilly understood Kindle's nature.  No Pheonix died of old age, they burned ever brighter until a suitable end was found, then they crashed against that end with the full weight of their fire…

[Resolute] chose that moment to snap, withdrawing whatever system governed protection it had leveed against Tilly’s grievous injuries. He felt his Health tick down to zero like the final chime on a clock striking twelve and his perspective toppled downward as the final vestiges of strength left his body.  He toppled forward as the Prime Dirge tensed to dash away from the attack.  

‘This is not your end!’ Kindle called to him definitely through their fraying bond.

As he fell down face first, the last thing he saw, was thick roots surging up from the ground around the Prime Dirges clawed feet.  

Then blackness, followed by an incredible burning. 

…

Tilly had no idea what death would feel like, but he hadn’t expected it to be so painful. 

None of his senses were functioning, and even his ability to think was gone.  He had been reduced to a singular experience of suffering. 

Burning fingers reached deeply inside him, rooting out everything that didn't belong and he lost himself to the agony of being cleansed.

…

Thump.

Thump.

Thump

Thump

Thump

Tilly was dragged back from that endless chasm and the burning that had reached through his body like the roots of some mighty tree diminished but did not cease entirely.

He moaned in pain, as other, more mortal sensations began to return.  A relieved sigh sounded somewhere nearby,

“ -too stubborn to die…”  

With the voice came the faint tinkling of music keeping time with the heavy thumps of his beating heart. 

He blacked out again without even opening his eyes.

…

His awareness flashed again briefly to the sensation of his feet dragging on the ground as the majority of his body lay on something pliable with two rigid poles compressing the sides of his shoulders. 

Then the darkness weighed down on him again.

…

Tilly was jolted back into consciousness as his body hit the ground.  

“You are every bit… as heavy as you look,” Amelia declared above him between gasping breaths. 

Tilly groaned in response, a million pieces of information hitting him at once even as he lay face down in the rocky dirt. 

First and foremost the sensation of unspent Stat points hovered at the edge of his awareness. However, unlike other times when it had sat patiently like a paperweight in the back of his mind, the heaviness of the amount of stats that he had to allocate lodged itself in his psyche like a piece of Stonehedge. 

His eyes flicked open to the notification bell at the top of his Hud and another revelation struck him like a slap to the face.  His Debuff line was filled with all sorts of maladies like Resurrection Sickness but something that was conspicuously absent was the listing that had haunted him since his first days on the Plane. 

Corruption’s Influence was gone.  

The moment he realized this, he registered a distinct feeling of wholeness pervading his body.  It wasn’t that he felt good… He felt like he had just been run over by a truck several times.  Rather he felt, singular.  Like his body was wholly his again, and the sensation of freedom and relief was overwhelming. 

“It's gone.” He choked out through a parched throat and the drowning tide of emotion that accompanied the realization.  Those words, uttered from exhausted lips elicited a gasp from above him, and he felt long dextrous fingers reach under one shoulder and roll him over onto his back.

“You're awake,”  exclaimed a beaming Amelia.  She stood on the bank of the small rocky stream where they had arrived.

“Yeah… But I need a moment if you don’t mind.”  Tilly whispered breathlessly, weighed down by an extraordinary exhaustion. She nodded down at him, concerned. 

‘Kindle?’  He sent out… 

No answer. 

He tried to feel internally for the bond but was blocked by a complicated new network intertwined with his Mana Pathways.

Tilly considered lifting his jacket to see what had become of his side, but even thinking about the motion caused his bone-deep weariness to grind him further into the ground.  So instead he mentally pinged open the notification window and his vision was filled with a torrent of messages.

…

Igor Level 86 Vampiric Mesmur. 

Igor was tired of waiting.  

Yes, he had fed well on those who had come back from the wall fattened, but too weak to resist.  But the juiciest prizes were the plump little warriors that had thinned out all the weakest of the Horde.  He could almost taste the hot burst of blood that would wash down his throat as he burst their succulent necks.

But Father was too close to breaking through the Bloodless city’s shell, and he had changed their orders.  Now he wanted this prize for himself too…  They would be stuck here for days yet, fattening cattle further until he came and took the best bits for himself, just like always. 

In frustration, he once again strained against the bonds of Father’s will.  It was this very Ability and the impotent rage that accompanied being bound to another's will that inspired his own class to evolve so long ago in those days of endless fighting and hunger. Now as had become his habit,  he flexed against the iron will binding his actions, always chafing at their presence in his mind.  

Abruptly, they snapped.

He wondered for a moment if he had finally done it, finally become strong enough to free himself, but he quickly quashed the thought as he watched an involuntary shiver run through the ranks of the assembled fodder in the Horde here. 

They had all felt it.

The implications were profound, but greed surged as the new opportunity presented itself. Instead of worrying about the future, Igor allowed himself a long slow smile.  The expression pulled at the lines of unhealing wounds that marked his face and caused them to weep dark, rust-colored liquid through his sopping bandages.  This time he would be the first to taste the sweetness of their prize.

A roar sounded off to the side, and Igor’s moment of sublime satisfaction at the death of the being he hated most on the Plane was cut short.  With a grimace, he turned to find Dimitrov charging into the ranks that always kept a wide birth around him, feeding with abandon.

The Pit cursed fool!  Igor would need to capture his mind temporarily to make him useful.  Left to his own devices, he would ruin everything.   New howls of confusion and rage rose all around him as the stronger of the rabble started to realize something had changed. 

Out of time, Igor dashed forward with all of his considerable speed until he was face to face with the giant progenitor of all the Fleshbags in the Horde.   Dimitrov’s beedy dark eyes shone with little more than animal cunning as it turned to snatch at its next bite. 

Igor channeled his Mana and his eyes began to glow with the undeniable power of his greatest Ability. But the moment the giant pig recognized him, he squeezed shut his eyes and dashed forward with startling speed. 

The command on Igor’s lips was choked off as a hand the size of a Knight’s shield suddenly constricted around his whole body.  Igor’s shock at his opponent’s cleverness only lasted a second, and he snarled in outrage as Dimitrov’s serrated maw gaped open eagerly. 

A deep and violent refusal to be relegated to food gorged up in Igor's throat, and he screamed, activating everything he had.  Blood Sacrifice boiled away much of his stored reserves to overcharge his mana-powered Abilities. He then used Terrifying Wail and  Demand Subserviance simultaneously, hammering his will against the little shelled nut that was Dimitrov's brain.  

The giant’s gaping maw snapped shut, inches from Igor’s face, and the lines around his eyes deepened as he screwed them further shut, somehow still resisting Igor’s power. Igor reached for Mesmurize once again, this time imbuing it with every sliver of his hunger.

“Open, King Piggie.”

Mesmerize did not need eye contact to work, in fact, Father almost never bothered with it.  It did make the initial binding more effective, however, and Igor had to fight an uphill battle of wills as Dimitrov’s eyes slowly opened against all of his considerable, desperate strength. 

As soon as Dimitrov’s little black irises found Igor’s gaze, the hand around him relaxed.  The once restrained Horde began to break up into internal conflicts all around them but Igor just smiled into the face of his new thrawl.   Unfortunately, the hold would only last as long as he had Mana to fuel it, and Igor briefly thought about using Mana Siphon to drain this idiot before heading to the wall and veritable feast that lay beyond. 

Then horns began blaring their annoying calls in the distance.   Not from the walls… No, this call was as familiar as it was frustrating.  Somehow, the weak imitations of their kind had arrived on the field.  Igor mentally commanded Dimitrov to lift him above the milling chaos that was now the Horde, and there on the horizon was a line of Pretenders, hiding within those pitiful metal shells they were so fond of. 

‘You will not take this from me!’ Igor raged internally against the sudden threat to his prize. His eyes darted back to the wall before returning to the advancing cavalry, and quickly formulated a new plan. 

“Take your ilk and destroy the Pretenders,”  he demanded through his mesmeric link, lacing his voice with Enrage to eliminate any hesitance in the powerful thrall. Igor jumped down from his perch as the giant howled in rage, eyes glowing red under the Ability’s influence.  Dimitrov lumbered toward the distant charging Knights, building into an unstoppable sprint. At the sound of his call, the rest of the Fleshbags in the Horde howled in response and left behind their smaller squabbles to join their leader. 

Blood Sacrifice, followed by so many other abilities had almost drained Igor dry.  With the last of his Mana, he channeled Mass influence and bellowed out the call to attack, briefly blanketing the Horde with a desire to follow his directive. He didn’t care which way the Horde went as long as it spent its fury usefully.  

All around him, the Strigoi race, now free of the influence of its progenitor, worked itself into a furious charge.  Some joined Demetrov, but most of the rest charged the wall, finally free to take the reward that had been dangled in front of them for so long. 

Igor pulled up his cowl and joined the throng building into a final charge against the wall, activating Mana Siphon to drain all the pitifully small mana wells around him, restoring a small portion of what he had just spent to win the day.