Drip-Fed

Reysha’s dagger repeatedly stabbed into the stomach of the Shapeform. The creature’s teeth clacked, an unnervingly rhythmic sound for a being whose life was getting cut out of its chest. Its open wounds were meaty red and bloodless.

One attempted bite was its last. The creature stopped moving, what little remained of its biological processes shut down. Reysha whipped her hair back, the short style she had switched to on Alarshus having since grown out considerably.

Around the Ragressian, the battle petered out. This scouting force of Shapeforms would have been crushed by the demon host alone. With the Inevitable in tow, their fighting strength much outperformed that of the reduced beings.

‘Good to have them on our side,’ Reysha thought, watching as the demons tore into and tasted the low-definition meat. The insides of the Shapeforms were every bit as alien as the outsides. Various organs had melded together into odd-coloured chunks. What had been the many-folded intestinal track of an animal turned into a degenerated, straight line from maw to exit. All of it was strangely dry. The difference between muscle fibre and fat had been reduced to colour, red and white, and nothing else.

“Foul, so foul,” Snarlesh lamented as he gorged himself on the flesh.

‘They don’t make for a coordinated force,’ the redhead thought. While one demon sunk his teeth into a carcass, three others were still struggling with a foe. What Apexus had observed before remained correct. It wasn’t that the demons were any stronger or faster and they certainly weren’t smarter, it was just that they were evolved to meet Parasytes and their minions head-on. ‘Maybe sending those knights was a waste of life from the start?’

“Follow, this way, follow me,” Bulubu said and led the Inevitable to an overhang.

The landscape they were now in had once been a craggy, wavy grassland. Now, it was a nonsensical arrangement of fuzzy green ‘moss’ and rock formations that had been turned into alien geometry. Boulders had been turned into octagons flowing into hexagons flowing into pyramids. Entire hills were degraded to cylinders with 90-degree slopes.

Finding the source of the corruption between these formations had been difficult. Through sheer insistence, the lesser demons of the host had stumbled upon it. Much like their regeneration, so was the scattered search process effective towards this foe specifically.

The Black Root was located in the centre of an open field, tucked away between the rises and falls of the breaking land. It was a terrible thing, an excursion of void energies just material enough to burrow through their world of matter and magic. It was blacker than the blackest night, defying the idea of depth, reaching up into the sky like an upside down tree. Around it, space contorted, stretching as it was drawn into the all-devouring surface of the un-growth.

Three Parasytes stalked the surrounding space. They had nothing in common physiologically, except for the cluster of teeth-petals at their centre. One was a gorilla-esque giant, lumbering forwards on its four limbs. The second resembled a mixture of snail and octopus, leaving a slimy trail of acid behind it. The last was a sphere, its bottom parted into a maw from which black tendrils spilled, their tips beset with starlight.

“Spark Eater,” Bulubu hissed.

“I thought it’d be… you know?” Korith made a gesture with her offhand. “Bigger. More… aaaaahhh!”

“It’s the terror of us all.” The Jitter shook its entire being at Korith’s lack of respect. “As agreed, agree we did, you will take it. We will face the others.”

“Any reason to wait?” Reysha asked.

“No.”

“Gotcha, wanna do the thing, big guy?”

Apexus gave her a short nod. The three women of the party took a wide step back. Bulubu followed their example with some confusion. Even with the distance gained, the raw power of Apexus’ wings caused a gust of wind that made the unsteady demon tumble.

The humanoid chimera gained height. Up in the air, he could feel the unnatural draft from the Black Root. Air was drawn into it at a slow and steady rate, sucked into the pitch bark.

Below, Bulubu screamed. The demon host leapt off the side of the slope. Weaker ones shattered on impact, then dragged their regenerating bodies forwards, following in the wake of their stronger leaders. Korith, Reysha and Aclysia managed a much more graceful descent with the help of their items and abilities.

The Parasytes positioned themselves between the nexus of corruption and the attackers. The Spark Eater was to the right.

Apexus gave himself to the draw of the Black Root and of gravity. He dropped, soon reaching the maximum velocity allowed by air friction. His will was strained, preparing himself for the impact.

The Parasyte may have seen him coming, but even the alien mind had its limit. Ironskin hardened his legs, further adding to the catastrophic force of the impact. Like a rod from god, Apexus slammed into the soft body of the spherical Spark Eater. The side gave in. His feet sunk in deeper and deeper, stretching the membrane of the creature. All of his momentum came to a gradual halt.

The rest of the party was beginning to wonder if Apexus would bounce off. Just as it appeared all the kinetic energy had been neutralized, the membrane tore. The insides of the Spark Eater gushed outwards like a bursting grape. Gaseous blackness spread upwards, devoured sparks sparkling within a void nebula. Sharp tendrils of crystallized nothing formed and flew towards the party members like animated arrows.

“That big and aaaaah enough for ya?!” Reysha yelled as she wove through the multitude of attacks.

“Yes!” Korith managed to shout back. A tendril scratched across her cheek. The cut glowed, blessed by the golden flame of the Armour of the Phoenix, and began to close already.

Confident in the protection her plate provided, Korith coiled the muscles in her legs then leapt into the alien cloud. Though she couldn’t see him, she knew that her beloved was somewhere in the midst of the nebula – as was the core of the creature.

Apexus was executing a flurry of blows. On all sides he was surrounded by darkness, the nebula fully enveloping. Flashes of stolen light served as distractions and nothing else. It was his other senses that allowed him to persist, to weave through lightless rays of annihilating anti-matter. Though the Parasyte’s nature was alien and silent, in the end even they had to oblige the laws of the reality they invaded.

Every attack displaced air. Every motion was fuelled by magic. Every shifting of weight made the ground tremble. Apexus trusted these senses, dancing elegantly between the attacks. Yet, it wasn’t until he felt Korith approach that he found a way to go on the offensive.

Trustful coordination saw the humanoid chimera grab the leaping kobold’s weapon. On instinct, Korith clutched the shaft tighter. It and her were whirled around, used as a living projectile by the Monk. Simply knowing he operated with reason, Korith did what naturally came through her. Once hurled, she swung her hammer with all of her might.

She struck the central node, the flower of chitinous petals. Its impact on the ground scattered the nebula around them. Reysha and Aclysia spotted the opening immediately. A lance of solar light seared through the air, striking the Spark Eater as it consolidated new power. Shockwaves rippled through the air as the Parasyte’s control slipped.

Korith and Apexus were upon the creature. Tendrils of black sap grew from within the flower of chipped teeth. The two frontliners of the party took the impact, grabbed the masses and stretched them, all to open a gap between them.

Rune Blade in hand, Reysha emerged from Stealth. Ki surged through her muscles and joints. The Parasyte was rising, recovering quicker than she could close the distance. With two metres still between them, she brought down the weapon. The Overplayed Spellslicer turned a futile cut into a travelling wave of consolidated mana. It met the Parasyte, emerging from the other side of the creature’s core as tumbling particles.

A moment later, the Spark Eater’s separated halves limply dropped back to the ground.