jollybane
patreon
76-Blood And Ash
🕑 Added 2025-09-15 19:28:01 +0000 UTCMarcus, Warrior of Rembrand—The Forsaken Lands
Marcus’s trembling fingers pulled back on his bowstring again; the world bent and warped around him, flashing glimpses of ash and blood straight into his mind. Before reality was torn away from the world beyond the blackened junction. All hope extinguished in a moment, leaving only the charred ground, the forsaken paladin, and the creature from nightmares of old.
Braum rushed forward straight towards the Spriggan, his sword burning with energy. The forsaken paladin prowled behind his profane ally, each step made with exacting purpose as he angled towards the black tree, whispering of pain and loss to Marcus and the men beside him.
Marcus angled his shot after the paladin; it flew straight, a beautiful strike unbound from gravity and friction, blessed by his class. It never reached the man. He raised his hands, palms upwards, like he was summoning the dead, and the charred ground was breached by a glade of trees reaching towards the sky as if denied light for eons.
His blow struck a tree, and he lost sight of the man. Marcus swung his shaking hands back towards the Spriggan. It was gone, and the once clear ground was now a tangle of fresh green life covered in bits of ages-old ash scattering cover all about. “Fuck…” Marcus whispered, shuffling towards one of the new trees. Braum was spinning slowly in a mostly clear space ahead of him, looking for his opponent.
Another archer took cover next to Marcus, nodding to him and wiping the sweat off his brow. Marcus was about to ask him if he had eyes on anyone when suddenly it was there between them. The creaking face of the Spriggan curiously looked into the wide eyes of the archer next to Marcus. One clawed hand reached out and slowly pushed into the man's chest.
Marcus tried to run, but the ground at his feet was slithering up his legs in a wet, rotten tangle of roots. The Spriggan looked at him with a cocked head and then whispered to him, “Keep the flesh ready for the children.” The man next to Marcus gurgled at him in a bloody cry, unable to speak past the claws in his lungs.
The Spriggan turned back to its quarry; it opened the clawed hand, splitting the man's chest open and exposing a still-beating heart with the crack of bone and spray of flensed flesh. It made an almost fond noise as it stroked the still beating heart. Marcus thrashed against his bindings; they were winding up his arms and chest now. He could feel the roots beginning to push into his flesh.
Marcus held back the sobs as he watched a man he had traveled with for weeks, his face a mockery of humanity in its sheer anguish. The Spriggan delicately reached over to one of the man's struggling arms that was clawing toward its face and grabbed it, twisting with a sudden crunch that exposed his bone. It repeated it with the other arm with a quick snap and then went back to its task, unbothered by the man's struggles now.
Marcus tried to yell for help, but the roots dove into his mouth and throat, stifling his cries; he gagged around the rotted plants, barely able to breathe. The Spriggan drew a hand upward, and a small branch of jagged charred wood slowly rose up from under the archer next to him, piercing through his body up and up until its jagged branches held him aloft, his heart still hammering madly. Marcus’s eyes locked with the dying man for a moment.
He tried to fight back; he squeezed his eyes shut and bit down onto the rotten roots, choking as he chewed through the mucous-covered root. He retched over and over between bites, briefly blacking out as his body was losing the battle for air. When he came to again just a few heartbeats later, he could breathe again; he had been moved. He and several other archers were held by roots and branches. Marcus felt hope blossom; he could see Braum squared off with the Spriggan now.
Braum glowed with divine purpose as his well-practiced footwork had him practically dance into range with the Spriggan, throwing two short but devastating strikes. The blade extended farther than it should have in a golden glow so bright it was blinding white, turning the trees they fought amongst to ash with each missed swing. The Spriggan weaved around him, moving in ways no living thing should move, avoiding the blows by less than a handspan and always staying directly next to Braum, toying with him.
He sliced three more times so fast Marcus only saw one unified golden blur followed by a radiant circular burst of fire from his body that reduced strides around him to nothing but ash. When the light faded, Braum stood in raining embers next to a filthy, rotting cocoon of wrapped leaves where the Spriggan was a moment ago. The cocoon smoldered and steamed at the heat it had been exposed to but stood strong. The Spriggan suddenly ripped free, birthing itself from the side of the cocoon in a rending shower of slime.
Its first claw strike was deflected past Braum; the second was stopped short. As Braum prepared for the third, the thing was suddenly gone from the still smoldering battlefield. Marcus froze; he could hear it again. It was whispering to another man bound in roots like him just a stride away. Its words trembled with madness: “Yes, yes, your turn soon, don’t worry.” Marcus couldn’t see it, but he could hear the man’s choked response followed by screams and the sound of flesh slowly splitting apart.
Braum looked towards the cluster of bound men, horror evident on his face. A snap of bone behind Marcus made him gag out a fearful sob; he knew he was going to die here. This thing was pure evil. Braum began running towards Marcus. Marcus felt the Spriggan reach agonizingly inside of him, the clawed, bladed hand tearing through the flesh and bone of his spine as it whispered to him.
Words lost meaning in the face of the all-consuming violation and fear he felt as the creature probed around inside his chest, grabbing for something. Marcus had one last horrible moment of clarity as he felt its claws on his heart. There was a sharp tug inside him, and the horrible, all-consuming pain blessedly started to fade.
Vraxious—The Forsaken Lands
Vrax weaved through another of the malformed tainted sapling clusters the Spriggan was impaling the still-living warriors on; he was skirmishing with a few on the edges that tried to join the frankly insane brawl between the creature and the doomed paladin captain. Even Vrax could tell as absolutely as that man's power was, this thing was toying with them; it was over level two hundred, and it had only used two skills so far.
Whatever ability had secluded them from the outside world, giving it an almost freakish omnipotence; from what he could tell, it knew exactly where everyone was right now, cover or not. And the rotten plant life it was summoning almost trivially. Other than that and its jarring speed, it hadn’t even shown what it could really do.
Vrax ducked as a warrior swung a blade towards his helm, narrowly avoiding the blow. He countered with an upward stab, putrid miasma flaring past the tip of his spear. The blow caught the man's chest plate and slid up into his throat, rotting it out in a sudden gout of black and red; the man slumped forward nearly onto Vrax.
Vrax cursed and whirled towards two more approaching warriors. That fucking Spriggan is taking most of the attention, but it keeps fucking catching them and pulling them apart bit by bit instead of just ending this fight. I can’t keep this up much longer; I’m going to have to use some of my garden and pray they don’t piss off the Spriggan. Vrax glanced back to make sure things hadn’t changed. Sure enough, the cruel creature was slowly pulling the heart from out of a man's back while sickly staring at Braum and laughing madly. Braum didn’t even close the distance before a forest worth of dripping roots rose from the ground like a wave, entangling him and dragging him away from the Spriggan and its dark work.
Vrax turned towards the two men in front of him; they couldn’t see the almost sorry expression on his face. With a gesture the ashy trees rotted down to their roots in a circle around him like melting wax. The mangler tree surged upwards from the rot, catching them both in its dozens of pincering branches with the clatter of breaking bones. Yeah, sorry guys, these trees work almost as well as sunshine. I'm going to keep one on me from now on.
The men's screams suddenly stopped as the tree ripped its branches apart abruptly, splattering their remains nearly all across the junction. Its single eye rolled side to side until it found another man peering from behind a tree and began shuffling towards him.
The Spriggan finished with its latest prey and flashed over to Braum. He was struggling to his feet in bursting flashes of golden light that turned the binding roots to ash and dust. The roots almost immediately swarmed over him again, but he was slowly working his way to his feet and had managed to get his sword free.
Braum focused once more; this time the heat from his sword coursed outward in a slowly building orb of annihilating heat like a dawning sun melting plant and metal alike as his armor ran at the intensity of the power he summoned to free himself. The distant trees cast long, deep shadows before starting to smoke.
Vrax dived down behind the stone wall as the forest all around them began to be set alight by the overwhelming skill. Even his armor was starting to smoke where the rays of light peeked through the crumbling wall. The light suddenly winked out. Vrax peeked over the wall; Braum was looking down at his chest. The Spriggan was behind him, smoke trailing from its body, its hand thrust through his back, clutching at his heart.
Molten golden armor streamed down into a puddle at the feet of both figures as the Spriggan leaned in close and whispered something to Braum. It took its free claws and ran them across Braum's cheek, and then it wrenched out his heart with a pop. It turned to leave as Braum fell to his knees.
To Vrax’s astonishment, Braum struggled back to his feet, a healing glow blowing through into the wounds from his hands in pulses like a beating heart. Holy shit, that is one hell of a skill. I wonder if it actually heals him or just keeps him going. Braum gritted his teeth, fishing out a healing potion that actually glimmered with power before unstoppering it and gulping it down.
The Spriggan slowly turned back around, its head cocked curiously. Its creaking voice was barely audible over the screams and sobs scattered around the battlefield. “Your wounds may knit, warrior, but your soul will find no rest. Your god can’t see you here. But I can.” It was another jarring moment where the Spriggan seemed far too lucid, its voice holding a measure of absolute certainty.
“Men in gold came the day my children were burned; men in gold spilled rivers of sap.” The Spriggan's voice started turning into that maddened howl again, each word coming out of it harsher and more feral than the last. “Men in gold slashed, men in gold cut!” The air started pulsing with each of the Spriggan's words; the ground around them trembled at its growing rage. “Men in gold died choked and cried out for their god. MEN IN GOLD!” There was a sudden pause followed by the sound of flesh being pierced as dozens of sharp branches sprouted from the ground all across the junction, violently impaling every single holy warrior left standing, lifting them into the air like dark, still writhing effigies.
The Sprigged held up its hand towards Braum, spreading its fingers wide. The wound in his back erupted outward as a mighty tree began growing at an impossible speed. Roots tore from his guts, spilling him open; branches sprouted through his skull, and finally the trunk ripped what was left in half. To Vrax’s utter horror, the man was still alive; roots trailed all across the fragments of his body, twitching as a heart of wood and flesh pulsed powerfully, refusing the man death.
The veil of shadows encompassing the battlefield faded away as the Spriggan stared at Braum's still twitching remains, pointlessly gasping for a breath that would do nothing. All was silent now except for whimpers and the gentle chime of distant willows.
I need to get the fuck out of here. When it's done, I might be next. Vrax fled, silently scurting through the ash away from the atrocities still being committed behind him.
Comments
Demolition D
TFTC!! 😶 That is one very Angry Tree. If the Ents in Lord of the rings were this cool, they wouldn't have needed an army of men to even fight Sauron.
jollybane
Oh lma nvm now i see the emoji! XD
ChildConsumer
"Marcus tried to yell for help, but the roots dove into his mouth and throat, stifling his cries" 🤨
jollybane
that's incredibly accurate
Austin Gibbs
Honestly I'm on the rage Bushes side. If im understanding it, would be the equivalent of being a Nique nurse and a Catholic priest bust's into your ward kills all the kids then cripples you personally to the point you can't leave.
Apoca
It's too much even for Vrax...
