Chapter Three Hundred And Sixty Two - 362
The Mender fairly flew up the steps ahead of him, robes gathered in her hands. She was older, but spritely, and somewhere around her Journeyman Formation as well according to his Eye.
"Please, this way."
She led him up another flight of stairs that twisted around the interior of some tower, until it opened up into a narrow hallway stretching back along the length of the priory. Midway across, the hallway opened up into a large vaulted chamber, and Felix could even see rows of small pews arrayed far below. They crossed the distance, soon moving through a large door on the opposite end and into another set of far wider corridors. Eventually Felix ended up at a large set of double doors made of carefully crafted dark wood, polished to an impressive shine.
The Mender hesitated before them, hands on the latch. "What you will see is to stay between us. Do you understand?"
"Of course," Felix said. His curiosity soared as the woman nodded curtly and opened up the door.
Within was a sparsely furnished chamber containing two simple armchairs, a throw rug, and a large, four-poster bed. Two other Menders, both women and both Human, looked up sharply at the intrusion. Pit warbled, his attention caught by the display and something else.
Danger, he sent.
"Dahria, what is the meaning of this?" one demanded.
"How is she?" his guide asked. "I've brought aid."
The two women looked Felix up and down, but he didn't care about their scrutiny. Every ounce of his attention was fixed on the figure on the bed, currently wrapped in soaked linens. She was a Gnome, four feet tall at most, with long white hair that was matted to her forehead in a mixture of sweat and blood. Her eyes were closed, brows furrowed and teeth bared against a terrible painand for good reason. Her torso was split with ugly, blackened gashes each weeping blood and pus and filling the room with a fetid stench that struck Felix as familiar.
Pit chirruped in disgust.
"What did this?" he asked. His Manasight traced flows of black-green necromantic Mana unfurling from the wounds, like smoke off of a fire. "This is...a monster?"
"Yes," said one of the attendants stiffly. "Can you help her or not?"
Felix was already pulling out vials from his satchel, sorting through Mana, Stamina, and Health Potions. He had a few other things in there, tinctures and solutions that he figured might come in handy on their journey, but none were immediately applicable. At least not as far as he could tell.
Voracious Eye!
Name: Alessandra Kartez, Prioress of the Blessed Fen
Race: Gnome
Level: 63
HP: 322/1268
SP: 22/435
MP: 14/874
--
He cut off the rest of the information. "Her Health has dropped to a quarter of her total, and her Stamina and Mana are all but gone. Does she have a Status Condition?" he asked.
The Menders exchanged looks before answering. "Dustborn."
"What's that? I've never heard of it." He selected one of each major potions he had, and uncorked the Mana first.
"Her flesh will lose water until all that remains is dust," Dahria explained.
"Jesus. Okay," he tipped the Mana Potion into the Prioress' mouth. She drank greedily, though her eyes never opened. Felix Eyed her, watching her Mana tick back upward by two hundred points. He uncorked the next, a yellow Stamina Potion, and did the same. Only when both totals were comfortably above two hundred did he try the Health Potion. It went down like all the rest, pushing her Health back up toward five hundred points. He could even see some of the woman's minor cuts and abrasions heal over...but the jagged wounds across her chest remained.
Then she started convulsing.
"Whoa! Hey!" Felix leaned forward, holding the Gnome's body down with a single hand. Her head still snapped around until the Menders reached over and each secured her shoulders and skull. "What's happening?"
"This is worse than any I've seen before!" one of them grated out, straining to hold the Gnome woman still.
"The dust is fighting back!" Dahria half-wailed. "Please! Do you have anything else?"
Felix gaped at them all, thinking as fast as he could. Ideas flashed through his Mind, medical concepts he barely understood from back on Earth and things he'd picked up on the Continent, but nothing made sense enough to try. He licked his lips, almost tasting the foul stench from the woman's wounds, he
That smell. His cores quivered in realization, and that darkness inside him roared in hunger. Oh god. I know that smell. That flavor. But it shouldn't...how?
Pit shrieked in defiance and rage. He knew the feel of that rot all too well.
Felix reached up and placed his hand over the Gnome's weeping wounds, feeling the Mana burn against him just as the blackened rot stabbed up into his flesh.
"What are you doing! You'll become infected by its vile Skill!" someone cried, but he paid them no attention at all.
"This isn't just some monster Skill," he said. The rot crawled up his hand, spreading like a darkness in his veinsFelix gritted his teeth against it.
Chthonic Tribute!
Felix seized the rot crawling up his arm, tearing it from his flesh and following it back along toward its source. It coiled deep within the Prioress, rooted so fully he was almost afraid to rip it free...but his Tribute did not stop. The corruption yanked from her Body and Spirit, a visceral net of putrid blackened-green lines and throbbing brown Mana, clear even to normal eyes. The Menders hissed in terror, and at the crimson blood that followed the corruption's emergence. They hunched forward, trying to step the tide.
Felix couldn't pay them any mind, however, as the corruption was wrenched forcibly into his channels.
It screamed into his core space, a knot of twisting Essence that lashed out at everything. An ill-Intent seemed baked into it, so similar to one he'd faced before but also distinctly different, like distant, murderous cousins. Felix's Will bore down on it, holding it all in place as he guided it down into the abyss between his spinning cores. That darkness roared in excitement, a vibration of greedy glee that almost made Felix stop...but the alternative was to let the corruption take root in his own core space. He wasn't having that.
He fed it into the abyss, letting the corruption yowl as it was consumed utterly.
A spasm rippled his cores, spreading outward from his abyss. Then a current of potency flooded in all directions, setting his red-gold and blue-white rings ablaze and sending streamers of light up and into the Divine Tree atop it all. Essence bloomed atop his Tree's branches, filling out the already crowded "foliage" with a thicker and more opalescent display.
You Have Consumed The Essence Of A Primordial!
Primordial Bloodline Detected!
Divinity Detected!
You Are Protected From Its Curse: Dustborn!
You Have Absorbed A Small Amount Of Its Essence And Significance!
Chthonic Tribute is level 83!
The Song of Absolution is level 83!
Felix hurled himself back to awareness, his Body still perched over the Prioress and the Menders all staring at him in horrified confusion. He blinked, leaning backward, and Eyed the Gnome.
"She's...she's fine now," he said, a small hitch in his breathing. The potency of the Primordial's touch still burned at his core space, like a bad case of acid reflux. He pulled out another Health Potion. "Give her another one of these, and she'll be fine."
Dahria took it from him with shaky hands, as if afraid he'd...what? Attack her? Felix frowned and released his hold on his Affinity, letting his sense spread outward like a swirling wind. Fear was there, but as the Menders looked at the Gnome woman's recovering complexion and now easy breathing, hope wormed its way across it all.
"What...what did you do, boy?" Dahria asked.
"Saved her life," he said. More than that. The way that corruption was spreading, it reminded me of the Revenants. Pit made a retching sound in his Spirit at the thought of them.
"But how? You tore the sickness from her like...I have never seen such a thing," Dahria continued. "You cleansed her curse."
"I've had practice," Felix said, distractedly. Where had the Primordial come from? The desert? "How did she get this way? This is important."
"At the battlements. The Caleph Pass. We Menders came to heal the Knights and Paladins alike after the recent monster surge," she explained. "A second attack occurred while we were still there."
One of the other Menders spoke up. "Knights and Paladins wear armor to protect them from the undead scourge, but we wear none. It inhibits our mobility and...and some of us were not fast enough to escape. The undead swarmed the walls, a larger creature at their head. Man-shaped, too thin to be alive, it was a horror." She looked down at the Prioress. "Our Lady threw herself in front of its dire attack, absorbing the worst of it and driving it off with her power."
"She saved all of us," said another.
"And the creature? This thin man-thing?" Felix asked.
"It fled, back into the wastes. And we retreated back here, focusing on healing the Prioress and the others," Dahria said.
"Wait." Felix's stomach dropped. "Others?"
Felix was led down the hall, toward a closed off room where those injured at the wall were sent to recover. It was sequestered from the rest of the priory, a place of restorative quiet, Dahria said.
"Not everyone injured at the battlements was so bad as the Prioress," she explained as he hurried down the hall. She fought to keep up, and he lingered only enough for her to give directions. "None of them were as affected as she. Most only had broken bones and suffered bloodloss. Why are you in such a hurry?"
Felix didn't answer as they came upon the thick door, noticing an array warding against sound on its wooden surface. He wrenched at the door, feeling it resist him at first. He had to put his full strength behind it, tearing the entire thing from its frame and tossing it behind him. The stench of blood immediately assaulted his senses, a rotten copper tang, equaled only by the screams.
"The door! Blind gods!" Dahria exclaimed.
Cots were over turned and blood painted almost every surface, along with so many corpses. Ten or so men and women scrambled from the far end, only now noticing the opened exit. They were bloody and limping and ragged with terror. That hit him too in a wave of Affinity, along with a mindless, aggressive Need.
"Help us! They're killing us!"
"The others! They've changed!"
Behind the sparse survivors were six figures, each one of them twisted and skeletally thin. Their faces were half scaled over with a bone plating, and their hands ended in long, vicious claws.
Voracious Eye!
Name: Dustborn Wraiths
Type: Primordial Spawn (Lesser)
Level: 47
HP: 2344/2344
SP: 3225/3289
MP: 0/5632
Lore: Having succumbed to the Dustborn curse, this unfortunate person has become spawn of the Primordial's ancient Will. They are needlessly violent, filled with the urge to destroy all living things they encounter.
Strength: More Data Required
Weakness: More Data Required
His Eye picked the same information from all of them, though their levels, Health and such varied. Beside him, Dahria gasped.
"They look like the creature from the battlements!" she whispered.
Felix stepped into the room, his Eye travelling over the survivors. "Do you see the Dustborn condition on them?"
Dahria shook her head. "They're all fine, but hurt. I have to help them!"
"No," he cut her off. "Stay here."
"There are too many for you to face alone! You will die!"
Relentless Resolution!
Felix burst from his standing position into a full sprint, crossing the distance between him and the survivors in moments. He wove among them, Eye flaring. "All of you! Get to the door! Now!"
He skidded to a stop among tumbled and shattered cots. With a stomp he dismissed his greaves and vambraces, letting them retract into silver rings around his ankles and wrists. His Garment flowed and shifted, dissolving the cloak from his shoulders and the tunic from his chest, until all he wore were a loose pair of trousers.
The Wraiths skittered forward, limbs angled strangely. Behind, he felt the survivors near the door, but not enough had passed through.
Stone Shaping!
Intent and Affinity sounded his Skill, and a wall of stone slammed down a dozen feet in front of the door, cutting off the exit for himself and the Wraiths. The survivors were safe.
"Finally. Some alone time."
Sovereign of Flesh!
Scales rippled across his skin as his muscles bulged and grew and his bone structure snapped in viscerally unpleasant ways. Fangs grew into his mouth and Felix spat out his normal, flat teeth onto the ground and flexed his new-grown talons. The Wraiths were unfazed, except to charge him with greater ferocity.
With a roar, Felix rushed forward.
"Felix!" Vess shouted in the open-fronted halls of the priory. She could still see the inner courtyard, but thankfully the groans of the dying had faded into the troubled sleep of the mending. Mostly. More people still poured in, but the Menders had things under control. As under control as one could be, given the circumstances. "Where did he go?"
She had stepped away when the injuries had eclipse her ability to address them, and had decided to go find her friend. He had been hefting water for the Menders, but though she saw a plethora of water, there was no Felix.
"Oh, Zara! Have you found Felix?" she asked, spotting the Naiad.
The woman shook her head, the age lines on her face somehow enhancing her ethereal beauty. "No."
The frustration boiling off the Naiad was almost palpable, and Vess had to fight off a smile. Not so easy when you cannot just Mark us to keep track, is it?
Perhaps that thought was unkind, but Vess had been more than a little disgusted when she discovered that Felix and herself had both been Marked by Zara. It had been a way to keep them safe, or so the Sorcerer had claimed, but it had also been a violation.
As it was, Vess was only slightly concerned at not finding Felix. He was a grown man and had a good amount of common sense. It was not as if he would tear the priory apart or any such thing. "He will be fine on his own, I am sure," Vess said.
Zara's mouth pinched. "I'm sure."
"Hey!"
The two of them turned and stared across the courtyard. Evie ran up, with her leathers and knives and chain slung across her shoulder, moving fast but blowing hard. She skidded to a staggering stop. "Found you. Gods, that was a long run."
"Evie? What's wrong" Zara asked. She waved off a Mender who had come toward them, scroll in hand.
"Been," she swallowed between pants. "Been lookin' all over for your sorry faces."
"Has something happened?" Vess asked, looking beyond her friend through the double doors. The city seemed the same as it had hours ago.
"No no. It's fine. Probably. We're about done, got our food and stuff, and we're gonna do somethin' about the way outta here" She frowned, stopping her flood of words. "Where's Felix?"
"We were just searching for him, actually," Vess said. "Help us as you tell us more. What do you mean by 'do something'?"
Evie flushed a bit and opened her mouth to explain.
But that was when the priory exploded.
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