Chapter 43: Monster
Out of the deep darkness of her eyes oozed squirming tendrils reaching toward him. Sharp nails scraping at the ground, crying in a shrill scream that dinned in his ears. His skin prickled with fear. His heart thumped hard in his chest. Everywhere in his body there was a slimy, sticky feeling that seemed to be getting worse.
The young woman was close to him, hissing through yellow teeth, rot dripping from the tip of her black tongue. She cackled with mad, raspy laughter. She snapped her head round, and her neck cracked, and bones jutted out of her ribcage, tips bloody and sharp like daggers, inching ever so closer to his chest.
He couldn’t do anything. Apathy was there for a moment and gone after a labored breath wheezing out of his lips. The Resonance was riddled with cries and pitches too strange for him to recognize. The woman’s song was gone, veiled under a being so sinister, so unalive that Valens couldn’t recognize her anymore.
“Who are you?” he croaked, mouth dry with dread. He tried to kick himself away from the woman, but the steely hold of her hands fixed him in his place. He sank into the muddy ground. Knee-deep now and too spent to flail. His shoulders popped. Pain flooded over the Resonance like streams through a broken dam.
Everything hurt.
He reached for Apathy, the ever-relieving web, to gain control of his mind. It wasn’t there. All he found was a deep, dark nothing. Dawn's lights were gone. The songs of the world quieted.
And the shadow loomed larger still.
Lifesurge threads bloomed over his hands. Lifemana cuddled him tight and spread gentle warmth across his skin. The shadowy tendrils hissed at the touch of them, squirming like worms faced with dangerous acid. Yet they pressed on, thousands of them, tiny jagged teeth biting into his flesh.
His mouth parted with a silent scream. He peered into the darkness itself, an abomination wicked beyond logic. Immaterial. This was nothing like facing a Skeleton or an Oarfang. There was nothing for him to face here.
But he could protect himself. Do something to alleviate the pain stabbing at his core. Another Lifesurge roared alive, and the threads of it curled around his heart, down through his veins, pouring in waves over his legs. His toes twitched. Sensation slowly returned as he nursed his body back to health. Getting rid of this ominous influence, inch by inch, he claimed back control as he raised his head and gazed at the pair of black eyes.
No more the Healer. This called for the Warmage who had no regard for the empty oaths.
Thousands of worms over his skin, a thick shroud that threatened to drown him. Inferno lashed at them quick as a whip, stabbing into the dark tides like lights of the morning sun. His chest heaved. The heat of his own spell filled his brain with blinding pain. He blinked. He breathed. He felt Apathy there over his emotions, the broken net picking itself back from the pieces.