Of Ice, Death & Monsters

15 Days Ago.

Flashes of emotion welled up in my mind.

Regret, longing… Pain. Running away? No, a self-perceived slight of weakness and cowardice. I felt someone try to run, trying to escape. Someone far off… Someone lost.

For a moment, I wish I were back in that strange Godhead that Peter manifested. Such a power would be so wonderful here. To see and even interact with memories. I could only scarcely view and imagine them at best, and at worst, all I could do was feel.

But, feeling shall be enough for me to understand. Someone who desired to run away but now regrets it with all their heart and soul. Such a case of many who came into the life of a Mage, and many still in other walks of living.

For a time still, I regretted ever becoming a Mage. I wanted to learn more, but the only thing I truly understood was that we know so little of the world. All Magick, and yet it was still simply a small portion of reality as a whole.

I learned, however, that regret is simply the pain of realizing your Destiny. And like all pain, it shall wash away, bit by bit. Some pain stays, like infections, and those need to be cleansed by another.

So I focused, I poured my own love and joy around, amplifying them with the Caretaker’s power.

“Come forth, take my hand, Dela. Do not be afraid. You ran for this moment, and the many other moments that shall come! You shall become one of the heralds of a new and better world. There is no need to fret, no need to regret. You lived and breathed for a chance of renewal, of life! And therefore that’s what I shall grant you!”

I latched onto her Fae nature, even if I didn’t understand it; I knew it from the other tales of faeries from across the world. They center on Depravity, on the sense of whimsy, joy, and most of all… Excess.

The excess of death, of pleasure, of pain, and of life. It was that part I could connect to, that I could understand the most. I latched onto it and brought it out into the forefront, wrapping it around myself and the others around.

Immediately, a bright flash of white erupted around my body, radiating an enormous amount of what I could only call the energies of life.

‘Bring… Back… Life… Save… The… Saunne’

The land itself spoke to me. It was then that I realized that I was right! I was the spark to bring back life, and this shall be my first showing. The land might be decaying, and the spirit of nature might be dead.

But all was not lost, as long as I held onto this lifeline, onto this sliver.

I grabbed at the light, merging and amplifying the effects of its power and then…

My vision cleared, and a miracle was revealed. The swamp around us transformed. From decomposing grass and rotten trees to a verdant garden and a healthy canopy.

The pungent aroma of death was lost, now replaced with the perfume of flowers that wafted throughout the air. It was as if I were walking through paradise. One of my own making.

Dela looked around. I noticed her mask had cracked a bit; perhaps she knew, perhaps she didn’t care. “Beautiful, was this you?” She turned to me, and I nodded.

Derek and Topher stared at the ground, both in awe as they touched it with their golem. “Amazing, I feel like I’m ten years younger!”

They both laughed in joy, but now was not the time of merriment. I looked straight ahead at the lake of maggots where the Chuma stood over. She stared toward me, both with curiosity and with disgust. Her aura radiated with the seemingly sickly green energies that filled this swamp before.

Over the mountains, the Beda has taken flight. Black and tattered wings spread out across her back as she soared through the air, growling like a lion ready to hunt their prey.

“Now then, everyone, take positions. As we have practiced before… And begin!”

I snapped my fingers, Derek and Topher flew through the air like jet planes, ramming into the Beda. Dela unsheathed a long white sword akin to a mix between the stem of a flower and a fang. On its blade were several thorns that began to spin around like a chainsaw.

I dashed towards the Chuma with Dela by my side in response, thousands of maggots erupted from the lake, screeching, moaning, and blasting us with their own bodies and biles of filthy acid like bloats of fluids.

In response, I waved my hand, summoning a Heat Thrower. I amplified its power as it activated. All of a sudden, thousands of flaming sprites appeared amongst the maggots, turning them into a sea of flames as they began to internally combust.

Dela then grabbed at the bile, moving like a speeding bullet as she threw it back towards the lake of flaming maggots. Instantly, they all began to bloat, curdling like spoiled milk as they expanded much too quickly for their bodies to handle.

I sped up, rushing not to the Chuma, but rather to the quickly inflating ball of flaming maggots, grabbing at their flesh before implanting it with Entropic Field Grenades, before manipulating it to be tossed towards the accursed spirit before me.

The massive maggot ball exploded in a mixed inter-spirit cacophony of bile, flame, and ice, and more importantly, organized chaos. The entire explosion, thanks to the numerous enhanced grenades, had all its contents directed toward the Chuma, creating a literal beam of flesh, fire, and cold that doused her body, carving a road throughout the forest.

But silence could not last forever; the hand of the Chuma came forth from the ground like a sprouting plant, grabbing at my leg with immense strength as I felt it begin to weaken. Luckily, thanks to the bodysuit and my own powers, I managed to kick the hand away as the Chuma climbed out of the ground without any visible injury.

They raised their hands high up, overhead, a cloud of plague manifested around both Dela and me. Boils, pus, clots, and more bubbles in a deluge of disease that she coated herself and us with.

It clashed against my own aura of life and purity as I stood my ground, trying to figure out a way to actually deal with such a power if I couldn’t blow her up.

In the meantime, Dela twirled, dancing as if she were in a ballroom with her sword, swinging it around like it was her partner.

“Splendid life.”

“Oh bountiful joy.”

“Give us your blessing of hope.”

“Allow yourself to birth eternal spring!”

Three, five, seven, ten. Sacred numbers hold power, and this power grabbed at my blessing of life and amplified it. All at once, creation became unstable, and flowers grew from the ground so quickly that they bent over and shoved their buds into the ground.

Trees knotted strangely, strangling themselves with their own branches. Even bugs began to grow rapidly before dying from being crushed in their shell or suffocated by their own body.

The horrors of life, however, reached even the diseases and plagues. They blossomed into something horrific, merging together into a plague that ate… Other plagues, consuming each other in a desperate bid for survival, infect themselves with ghoulish perversions, only ending when one survives.

Then, as all cannibals do, the plague ate itself, completely exploding in a mix of the spirits of life and death, shrouding the air above in sparkles.

Without even looking up, I could see that Derek and Topher were fighting against the Beda. They shot at her first, opening with a barrage of bullets that ran through the air like a hailstorm. The Beda, however, reached out in time, causing misery not to the two now Fae, but rather to the bullets, literally causing their spirits to falter and fall, literally depressing them.

The two, in response, pulled out the Cold Throwers, freezing the monster of misery in place with the spirits of frost as they then began to bombard her with autocannon fire, shattering her body into nothing more than mist and ice.

However, even from such a state, the Beda emerged from the mist and Ice. It grappled Derek’s unit, crushing its arms with her bare hands, ripping the metal off like it was a feral beast.

Topher, in response, tackled the Beda, both of them plummeting into the forest together.

In the meantime, the Chuma I was facing grabbed an old bone off the ground, snarling at the two of us as she spoke.

“Frailty comes for all.”

Dela rushed in, she swung her chainsaw like a sword, trying to behead the Chuma, who ducked and continued

“Collapse in judgement.”

This time I pulled out my own Cold Thrower, trying to freeze her in place but she transformed most of her body into plagues of air, rushing away as she left her head and the hand holding the bone, on.

“Behold Bone Frayer!”

The bone carried with her suddenly transformed into a large, deathly black scythe that emanated disease. She reformed quickly, dashing back in as she slashed away at the spirits of cold, causing them to decay and fall off before rushing to me.

Dela tried to block it with her sword, but the scythe cut through it, causing it to decay rather quickly before falling onto the ground like a wilted flower.

Using bullets or really any form of physical force would be a huge waste. Which means I would need to borrow a trick from Peter.

I grabbed the Chuma by the wrist, if I felt pain I would have probably screamed out, but instead I could feel my hands age, getting weaker with touch, which did not bode well if I were to grab her scythe.

She was the plague, and I was life. She was born to destroy what I herald. But life finds a way. Life always finds a way. Medicine, quarantine, sanitary practices, and vaccines! I was no practitioner of medical arts, but I am now a life-giver.

I held my grip on her wrists tight as she tried to bite me. I moved away, still holding her while grabbing a flower off the ground, crushing it in my hands. Flowers were seen as ancient medicine, and even now contain many healthy qualities.

It didn’t matter what kind of flower it was. For what I gave it was the spirit of healing, of medicine, and they were compatible enough.

With great strength, I shoved the flower down Beda’s mouth, attempting to heal her. As soon as the flower found its way in, she screamed in pain as if being burnt alive, her wounds healing as smoke poured outwards.

Dela realized what I was doing and began to sing in rhyme, dancing alongside her song as she used the flower as a focus.

“Plague, disease, and rotting in filth shall cease. A remedy for all illnesses, now that you shall feast!”

Instantly, Chuma began to follow a violent, radiant gold, sparkling as if she went through an arts and crafts store before completely imploding in on herself. The filth that was her body expelled outwards into the sky, raining across the Saunne in a glittering show of green and black.

I didn’t waste any time and neither did Dela, we ran straight to the forest where the other three went, but before we could enter, Derek and Topher were already rushing out with their golem units in tatters as if they went through a war zone.

Right behind them was the Beda, snarling like a serpent as it jumped out, its bony claws trying to grab hold of them.

I sped up to it, grabbing the Beda by its bony throat. Obviously, physically killing it won’t do anything, so if it were misery, I would give it joy! It used my memories of my husband against me, so I shall do so in kind!

Date nights, movie nights. Walking in the park, arguing over dinner, over politics, over literature. Making up, then making out afterwards. Sick days together, accidentally forgetting something important at home, and getting back while missing something very important!

Precious moments, precious memories, all of them poured into the beast of misery as it glowed a bright gold before much like the Chuma, it exploded as well in a bout of sparkles and glitter.