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74- New Gods, Old Magic
🕑 Added 2025-09-09 20:55:46 +0000 UTCArthur Decius—The Forsaken Lands
Arthur kneeled before the imposing figure of the Paladin captain in charge of the scout camp. Braum was a grizzled man crisscrossed with facial scars and just into the second tier of his holy class. He was by far the strongest person the church had risked in the profane, forsaken lands so far in this crusade. And right now he was looking at Arthur with barely restrained rage, fists clenched, and his voice more of a rumble than any normal speech.
Braum hauled Arthur to his feet by the front of his armor, shaking him slightly. “What the fuck happened! I gave you fifteen men! You came back with seven! Eight men died, including a holy priest!”
Arthur met his gaze. His own rage was simmering just enough that the torches in the tent flickered dangerously. “We lost—that’s what happened!” Arthur shouted back through gritted teeth.
Braum slapped Arthur with a thunderclap of force, nearly knocking him unconscious. “Bah…Stay here and guard the camp, our glorious inquisitorial lantern,” Braum said mockingly and gestured sharply at the other two full paladins in the tent, who immediately set about gathering their weapons and packs.
“I’ll go and kill this godless weasel myself.” He pulled a cape over his shoulders and picked up a sword that burned with an inner fire from its place on the altar of Rembrandt in the tent. “Let’s see how the forsaken Paladin fares against a real warrior of God instead of whatever you really are…” Braum said with a sneer towards Arthur.
Arthur stood there heaving for a moment; the man's words stung more than the blow had. Once everyone had filtered from the tent, he raised a hand towards the powerful holy relic the paladin's sword had rested on. Nothing happened; he couldn’t draw power from it. Hell, he couldn’t even feel any divine light radiating from it. To him it was just an engraved stone square other than a faint warmth when he touched it.
For not the first time, Arthur wondered where his powers were coming from. Was it really not a gift from Rembrand? Was he just an adventurer with an unusual, flashy class masquerading as a holy warrior for a god that didn’t even know who he was? Arthur knelt at the altar and prayed fervently, begging for there to be an answer this time.
The torches in the room brightened slightly as light coalesced over the altar in front of him into a scintillating spiral that reached up towards the sky that he could suddenly see as clear as if he were on a mountaintop. Something above looked down on him fondly. It reached a shimmering hand made from twilight and the glimmer of stars down past him and took hold of the altar. The altar shattered before Arthur spectacularly.
The spiral of light rose in pitch and power as it consumed the fragments of Rembrand's holy artifact almost angrily. Arthur was frozen half kneeling in the face of a divine projection. “You...you aren’t Rembrand…”
The being of twilight smiled, “No child, I’m his replacement...and you are to be my reaper.”
Vraxious – The Forsaken Lands
Vrax overlooked the river with a sigh of relief. As fun as exploring had been, the last half day of exploration had been a bit rough by his standards. Finding a nearly fourth-tier mimic within walking distance of your house was a bit disheartening. Vrax was still planning to go back to the zoo, though he couldn’t just not. Besides, the mimic seemed…mostly chill if you just didn’t kill the lures? Vrax shrugged and focused on scouting.
From his overlook he could see the rolling hills that held the broken-down windmill he had gotten his Devourer swarm from. Straight ahead where the strangely crystalline willows just across the river. That side of the river was positively teeming with those very sharp predatory butterflies he had seen before. Must have just hatched; going to have to be careful of those, they might be able to dig through my armor.
There were two things that were giving him no small measure of pause at the moment, though. One was the large dark shape swimming up and down the river like a real-life leviathan. Whatever the hell it was, it was so big that the river overflowed by several strides every time it prowled by. Alright, I guess I will be crossing the rickety-ass bridge, not swimming. Vrax looked pointedly at a bridge made of logs and prayers that zig-zagged from one side of the river to the other. It looked like Bogarts had made it.
The more pressing matter was the three golden armored men sitting on fucking warhorses in the dead center of the clearing near the windmill with a five-stride-long golden and white banner flapping in the wind beside them. Vrax didn’t need to identify them to know that those guys were probably very high-level paladins here to challenge him to some very fatal, very “honorable” duel.
You know…if you guys catch sight of me as I'm disappearing into the grove, I bet you would come running after me like the zealous, overconfident idiots you are. After that last ass whipping, I'm sure you guys are some of the best they have out here. How would you fare if you were to say...run into a Spriggan that seems to be made of resentment and old magic?
Vrax darted down the side of the building and vaulted through ruins until he reached the edge of the log bridge. It rocked precariously as the creature in the river rushed by again, washing a small wave completely over the top of the bridge. Damn, I'm glad I'm already an agile fucker. Vrax ran across the slippery surface; the wood formed into slightly pitted footholds as he barreled across it. Gods above, I love that talent.
Vrax made straight for the edges of the forest on the side that faced the paladin trio standing in the open like a bunch of cocky idiots. You know it would be wonderful if something just decided, "Oh, sweet lunch," and grabbed those guys from the field, but I doubt I'm that lucky. Vrax looked around; he needed a way to draw their attention without getting any closer.
The most obvious choice would be to just melt a few of the crystalline willows and holler a bunch, but that wasn’t really his style. The willows themselvesare awfully reflective... The way their branches draped down like crystal chandeliers reflecting the lights' rays gave Vrax a fun idea. The last few trees he had made into adapted monstrosities had been almost comically effective, if slower than hell.
They can’t see me yet; I think I have time. Vrax settled in next to a willow just a row inside from the edge and carefully nestled up beside it after dodging a few deceptively stunning butterflies. He paused for a moment, watching the butterflies’ deadly forms flitter by. “You next, little guys,” he whispered to the butterflies before starting to make a personalized welcoming party for the Paladins.
Vrax channeled [Adapt Life]. The first thing he did was a slow and steady systemic reconstruction of the interior of the tree; it was the same technique he had used to make sunshine. Facsimiles of muscle fibers made of plant matter, Vrax used what he had learned over the last few months of practice streamlining the process and removing much of the subtlety they could contain.
Mana [168/204]
Its muscles were now just either all the way on or frozen in place; it removed much of the fine motor control he could achieve with a creation but made it vastly stronger. Who boy, this thing is going to look fucking insane when it moves. I need to make sure it doesn’t rip its own fucking limbs off.
Vrax moved on to the bark, breaking it into thousands of hexagonal patches with just a bit of space in between them so the tree maintained flexibility. The bark was changed to be the same crystalline sap that gave the trees their unique visage. This sap is damn strong, nearly as tough as steel. I need to use this in some of my other plant-based critters. Vrax stepped back to take a look.
He hadn’t changed its actual shape yet, but it was looking freaky already. The sap was nearly transparent, so right now the damn tree looked like it was made of white muscle fibers that shivered beneath a sheet of hexagonal opaque glass armor.
[Mana 120/204]
Now of course let's go ahead and make those sharper. Vrax began shaping each of the trailing branches, giving them just a bit more length so that they hovered just an inch or so from the ground. Then he focused on the beaded sap on the branches, changing it from a rounded natural occurrence into demented tiny blades. He made them stubby at the base and obscenely sharp along the edges. He was hoping that would be enough, that they wouldn’t just explode the first time they hit something at the speed he expected this thing to whip itself around.
[Mana 100/204]
Alright, let's go ahead and make it hungry. Vrax’s face settled into that malicious mad mage smile of his, thankfully hidden beneath his helm’s arguably worse fanged smile. Vrax poured in mana while focusing on the images of the tree laying low; anyone who would dare tread near its brethren willows and using their corpses to feed its family.
[Mana 99/204]
Wait, what the fuck? That was way too easy... I mean, this is the edge of an ancient, warlike, druidic order, but still…Vrax hurried his efforts; he was worried the tree was going to go full murder mode in the middle of him adapting it if a squirrel got too close. Alright, you need to be able to see. Vrax went ahead and added an uneven cluster of eyes that ringed all the way around the top of the trunk. They were beady things the size of his thumb; the moment they were added, they started darting around in different directions looking for prey.
Alright, I'm sure I'm going to deeply regret this, but I need it to be able to attract their attention. Vrax slowly formed the facsimile of a lung attached to a rudimentary organ that should work like a voice box, or at least let the creature make noises; he wasn’t super sure on how well it would work. The second it finished, the tree began a slow, unending, heavy heaving breath that continued for far too long before it gasped air back into the small slit below its eyes. Eghh...that's a bit weird, but okay, I can work the kinks out when there aren't paladins chilling in the next field. Alright, buddy! Who wants to be the smartest murder tree I have made yet?
Torvald Glenn—The Ravenous Grove
Torvald rocked back and forth as his bear friend trundled forward into the scorched cobblestones just outside of Vrax’s dome. He leaned forward from where he was seated on its shoulder to squint at the horrors ahead. “Dude, Vrax, what the fuck did you do to this place while I was gone…”
The ancient glass dome was practically covered in yellow climbing vines that had fist-sized eyes; the eyes all followed Torvald and his mount hungrily as they approached. A tree slightly off to his side opened an eye briefly before settling back onto a literal pile of golden armored corpses.
“No, like seriously, Vrax, what the fuck happened while I was gone?” Torvald said to the bear while adjusting its mark of Vurune he had wrapped around it like a collar, "If that fell off, he was fairly certain they were utterly fucked."
They lumbered up to the market; the foliage here was all taking a decidedly twisted turn for the worse. Bushes trembled as they walked by; the scraggly, thorny patches of weeds in the alleys looked more like fucking snakes than any kind of normal plant, and the entire place practically buzzed with barely restrained violent intent.
Torvald pulled to a stop in the auction courtyard, eyes locked onto a twisted shrine that warped the very air around it slightly. His brows creased in concern. “Is that fucker even here?” He muttered to himself before calling out, “Hello Vrax! You around here somewhere making something awful?” He shouted into a cupped hand.
A shrill voice called out to him from the second story of the building ahead. “Hail there, mighty warrior! Might I have a moment of your time? You and your glistening muscles are the single most resplendent thing I have seen in this godforsaken forest in years!” Torvald looked up in surprise at a pair of hopeful-looking eyes peeking at him over the edge of a roof.
Comments
jollybane
You arn't incorrect XD
Austin Gibbs
As a general rule I feel that the next reasonable action to hearing a cheerful unknown voice in a murder forest should be immediate violence or retreat. Lol I want the power up for our boy but the way you built the world probably shouldn't be able to get that for at least one more chapter.
ChildConsumer
YIPPEE! symbiote time!
