Sildra’s chest heaved as she struggled for breath, the exertion of the day having worn her down to a nub. Her vision was blurry and her head pounded, but there was no time to relent. Another monster was closing in, this one some sort of feathered biped that looked sort of like a bear. It lumbered closer, completely unconcerned about the field of corpses it had to wade through to reach her.
[Lunar Judgment] slammed into it, silver fire igniting along its limbs and consuming it utterly. It only took a few seconds for the monster to collapse, and the fire kept chewing it up until there was nothing but a blackened skeleton left. Fortunately, the spell worked so completely that the normal smells associated with burning bodies didn’t linger in the air.
Blinking, she cast another glance around the field. Her skills were telling her there were no other monsters nearby, but the moon wasn’t up yet, so its range was limited. Just because she couldn’t feel a monster didn’t mean there weren’t any. But nothing with fangs and claws was moving, and she dared to hope the horde was finally dead.
There were three druids in their group and six guards, all of whom were hunters or warriors of some kind. When the monsters had started to swarm, they’d tried to fall back to their camp, but that had proved impossible once even more monsters had attacked from the opposite direction. They’d been forced into a fighting retreat that ended with them making their last stand in a large, open field.
“Everyone still alive?” she yelled between breaths.
No one answered, but if they were as exhausted as she was, that wasn’t much of a surprise. Still, someone should have been able to muster the energy to respond. Worried and weary, she turned to gather her disciples and their escort, only to pause in shock.
There, in the center of the field, was a massive creature. It looked like a giant flower, except with thick, root-like vines coming off the stem. Each vine split into small, finer roots at the end, and those roots were burrowed into the heads of her team. Sildra could see the roots flex under a hunter’s scalp as it wormed its way deeper.
“Get the fuck away from them,” she snarled, staggering a few steps closer as she summoned up more moon fire. It was still out of range, but it shifted her friends around to create a barrier of human bodies. Then a hunter lifted his bow and nocked an arrow. His eyes were blank and his movements jerky, but he was as quick as always.
The arrow slammed into her arm, tearing through muscle and missing her chest only because she threw herself sideways just in time. A wave of numbing cold radiated out from the injury, practically paralyzing her whole arm and making it hard to breathe. Shit, it can tap into their skills. That was definitely an [Ice Shot].
There was no time to waste. She needed another twenty feet to get the plant in range and she had to do it before her own companions killed her. Another arrow struck the ground next to her, this one from the other hunter, and she saw with growing horror one of the druids lift her hand to start channeling mana.
Sildra wasn’t going to make it. She was running empty from having slaughtered close to a hundred monsters already, and even if she’d been fresh, she wasn’t sure she could take on eight other people and the monster controlling them at once. At this rate, they’d kill her before she even got close.
But maybe I don’t need to get close to the main stalk. It’s a plant monster. It has roots. Please let them be close to the surface.
[Lunar Judgment] had grown tremendously as she’s gained power, to the point where it didn’t need someone to be touched by moonlight to work on them, but it could only penetrate into homes or caves a limited distance. Striking something underground was going to be even more difficult. If she could go deeper than three feet, she’d be surprised.
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There were no roots within range, at least not any belonging to the monster. Sildra scrambled to her feet, ignoring the freezing arrow still lodged in her arm and sprinting at a diagonal in hopes of crossing a root or just getting close enough to fry the monster where it stood.
Another arrow hit her, but this one was an [Entangler] and, instead of stabbing into her, it burst into thick, springy vines that clung to her, winding their way around her limbs and sending her back to the ground. She nearly blacked out as a new wave of pain rolled out from her arm, but she’d put enough points into physical over the last ten levels to keep herself conscious.
And there it was, the root, just beneath her and slightly to the left.
“Burn,” she told the monster.
Then she pushed every last drop of mana into sending a line of moon fire up that root to the main stalk of the monster. The last thing she saw before she passed out was a plume of silver behind her friends’ heads and its vine-like limbs thrashing wildly as it died.
* * *
[You have slain an elite puppeteer flower (level 34).]
[You have been awarded 2 decarmas.]
Feels like it should be worth more than that, Sildra thought to herself. The notification was the first thing she’d seen upon waking, and while she was relieved to know the elite was dead, she was more than a little bit concerned about the rest of her team. The fact that someone had cut her loose from that [Entangler] and healed up the arrow wound meant they were probably fine, but she needed more than guesswork. She needed to know.
Struggling upright, she slowly pulled herself off the bedroll they’d laid her on and crawled out the tent flap. There was a small fire going, with four people huddled around it. Another one was off to her right, staring out into the darkness, and a sixth person was a few hundred feet away. She could only see him thanks to her night vision.
“Where are Sanders and Autmin?” she asked.
“Archdruid! You’re up,” Vestus said. He was her disciple with a focus on healing and plant husbandry, probably the one who’d patched her up.
“Dead,” the other disciple said bitterly. “That elite got its roots through their skulls and into their brains before you killed it.”
“Gods damn it,” Sildra breathed out. “Where did that horde even come from?”
“It’s not the only one,” Vestus said. “We’ve been in communication with the rest of the circle. Elites are popping up all over the country. Whole cities are being besieged by armies of monsters controlled by dozens of elites. Monster hunters are reporting that small villages they’ve been dispatched to are already overrun and gone by the time they get there. It’s chaos everywhere.”
Sildra looked up at the sliver of moon hanging in the night sky. Morgus, what does it mean? And what can we do to help?
* * *
In an ancient necropolis, miles below the surface world, two liches were quietly panicking. “It’s breaking the seals,” the first one moaned while wringing its skeletal hands.
“Why is it waking up now! It’s been quiet for thousands of years,” the other said.
“It doesn’t matter why,” a third lich joined in. It had a commanding tone, one that the other two instantly responded to. “What matters is how we stop it. I’ll reinforce what I can out of the remaining seals. You two go wake the rest of the cabal. It’s going to take all of us to even slow this thing down.”
All of them were thinking the same thing. Slowing it down was a possibility, but that only delayed the inevitable. In the past, when the beast had rolled over in its sleep, they’d been able to keep its prison malleable, to make sure nothing snapped or broke. This wasn’t a gentle shifting, though. This was it waking up and trying to stretch, then finding itself with not enough room and doing something about that.
“Just go,” the elder lich told its two juniors. “And stop wasting mana powering all those ridiculous soul traps!”
Wordlessly, they both teleported away to begin the arduous process of waking up the other ten liches that formed their cabal. Each awakening was a ritual, and not one that could be performed quickly. Against a catastrophe like this, time was the real enemy.
Then again, even if the whole cabal was awake, the elder lich wasn’t certain it would be enough. They’d been faithfully holding the seals on this prison for millennia, but they all knew that it was only by divine decree that the beast was contained. If the gods had revoked their blessing, there was nothing any of them could do to keep it from breaking free.
They could slow it down, sure. They might even wound it on its way out. But it would make its way to the surface, and it would begin feeding, and woe unto every living being up there. Anything with even a hint of essence in it was in danger of being devoured.
In the end, it would be a kingdom of the dead and nothing more. And there was nothing any mortal could do to stop it, nothing except pray.