FINAL CORE - Chapter 105 (Patreon)

It lives amongst us, the monster with too many faces. It is grotesque and twisted and takes on as many shapes as it has eyes, teeth, and mouths — all in overabundance. Its body seems to contract inwardly and outwardly as it shambles; its meat is dense and supple, rippling as the many marrow-filled bones beneath it move in ambling coordination.

Each of its thousand faces contorts and shifts into expressions that can only be called a mockery of God as it smiles and snarls, cries, howls, and sings all at once in a never ending chorus of abundant befoulment. It has more tongues than there are snakes in the world, with feet that stamp out the lights of dull candles, shining meekly in the darkness.

It lives within our homes and our cities. It finds itself sitting at the tables with us, dining with merry laughter. It plays with our children in the parks of the city, and it squares off with the men at the rallying ground, readying themselves for combat. It climbs, slithering into the highest thrones and it slinks its way, reaching and groping as it makes its way into cold beds, promising to fill them with warmth, most abundant, as a smile comes over the presented face of the ten-thousand more behind it.

Beware, traveler; if you find yourself staring in a mirror at night, not knowing who it is that you’re looking at, then understand that you are the monster with too many faces.

You must find one and stick with it.

And all of those others, you must bury in the darkness and never let them be seen again.

This is how you become an actualized person, confident, strong, and loved.

~ How I beat my Marrowgold Dust addiction and how you can too

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Rorate

Dark-Elf, Female, Fighter + Field-Medic

Location: The Spirit-World

Rorate stands in the mist, holding an old sword she had picked up from the ground. It was likely a possession that belonged to someone who didn’t make it.

The dark-elf looks around herself, staring through the mist at the regions of the world that she isn’t familiar with. However, her countless hours of research, of studying the old tomes that she had bought from adventurers in her pursuit of knowledge in order to be a better priestess to Isaiah tells her as much that this is the spirit-world.

She looks down at the thick, red cord that plunges through her chest and runs off into the distance, linking her to the star on the horizon that she marches towards.

A goal.

Rorate walks forward.

If this really is the spirit-world, then she can’t help the others. They’re all likely on different layers of it, each confronted with their own individual troubles.

But this is no different than life is usually, no?

The priestess of Isaiah holds the sword firmly in her grasp as she marches towards the tower.

They now all have a goal, something that they can work towards. She knows that the others are going towards it too, so even if they are separated now in body and spirit, the ties that bind them remain strong, present on another layer that is as real and as tangible as the red string of fate.

She says a silent prayer to Isaiah beneath her breath, walking through the fog and past the many bodies that lie littered around the street.

Some of them — a good number of them, in fact, have black strings that are tied to her.

She looks at them as she walks.

They’re people who she hurt, who she killed, in that old life of hers before she found the tower, before she found a way to try and redeem herself.

The corpses shift, twitching and spasming, the strings pulling slightly taut as they begin to stir.

Rorate decides it would be best to keep going before they wake up from their deep sleep.

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???

Human, Female, Monk

Location: The Spirit-World

Without emotion and without fear, she walks through the misty streets, following the beacon of hope that is Isaiah.

“So how is it?” asks a voice. “Working for the thing that killed us?” The shieldswain.

“Must be pretty nice, right?” says the orcish necromancer.

She ignores them, walking onward with a focused gaze.

“What is my name?” she asks, waiting for a reply to come from any one of them. It’s silent as they walk; no answer comes.

The spirits of the dead are often said to be vengeful. But she knows that these are not the real spirits.

Those men, the geomancer, the necromancer, the shieldswain, in reality their souls moved on after death to return to the cycle of reincarnation, as will her soul also do upon her eventual passing. There, in the well of souls, they will gestate for a time, before returning to the world as something new and different.

These images here, these entities, are just lost, malevolent spirits, masquerading beneath masks of compassion and familiarity.

— Something tugs on the red string, and she stops, turning around to look at whoever tried to stop her.

(???) has used: [{04} Savannah Crush]

Her good fist collides with the shieldswain’s head. His neck arches back at a sickly angle, his eyes looking up towards the lightless sky.

The spirit falls over, and she turns around back forward, her eyes affixed to the light of Isaiah.

It is the only thing that is real.

There is only Isaiah.

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Tulsi

Human, Female, Classless (Child)

Location: The Spirit-World

She doesn’t know what to do.

Obviously, she would think about going back to the house. But that’s dangerous. That’s where the monsters were. She doesn’t know what happened or where everyone went. But she feels confident that going back there is a very bad idea.

Tulsi walks down the streets, crying silently to herself while holding her own body.

Jizalia said that they were going to the north, right?

— The girl looks towards the city gate, visible in the distance over the rooves of many houses.

Maybe she should just… leave by herself? Maybe she should start walking to the north. That makes the most sense, doesn’t it?

Jizalia is smart. She’ll understand that she didn’t go back to the house because of the danger, and she’ll understand that she agreed to go to the north. If she goes that way, they might meet along the way or, in the worst case, they’ll meet up there, in the northern city.

It seems like the best plan.

The girl turns her head, looking at the star off in the distance, not sure what it is.

“Tulsi?” asks a voice from behind herself.

Tulsi turns around, looking at the face of her mother. The woman had vanished without a trace months ago. “…Mom…?” asks Tulsi, her eyes going wide. The woman kneels down, holding her arms open and gesturing with her hands for the girl to come over. “Is that you?”

She jumps forward, her feet already running to the person.

“It’s me, Tulsi,” replies the woman, smiling with a nod. “I was so worried about you.”

“Jizalia said you were dead,” explains Tulsi, arriving in her grasp and looking up at her face, her lips quivering as she starts to cry again.

The woman smiles softly, nodding to her. A hand lifts up and runs itself over the girl’s hair.

“I am,” replies her mother.

The woman’s face melts, her jaw falling slack as her eyes peel downward, her open throat, the inside of which is nothing but a black void, filled with thousands of skittering, sharp legs that press themselves out towards her.

Tulsi screams, her mother's melted eyes falling on her dress, thousands of spiders crawling out of them.

They weren’t eyes. They were brood-sacks in her sockets.

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Rorate

Dark-Elf, Female, Fighter + Field-Medic

Location: The Spirit-World

The sword cuts through the air, slicing through a man’s chest, who stumbles backward exactly as he had done in life, clutching the sliced wound that runs along his neck and through his torso.

“You killed us,” says the man, black, fetid pus pouring out of his wounds.

— Something yanks on the string, pulling her to the side. Rorate swings the sword, catching her footing. The blade lops off the hand of another spirit, the appendage flops to the ground, and she watches its fingers twitch, just as they had done when she killed that woman in her past.

The spirit holds its handless stump in a panic, but instead of acting it out, its horrified face turns to look at her instead. “I had a family. You stole me from them!” howls the spirit.

— Something yanks on the string again from another direction. Dozens of bodies shamble in the mists. Rorate stumbles, catching herself and barely landing right-side up again.

Something grabs her shoulder, and she turns to look at the ghost of a young boy.

During a longer pursuit, she and the other bandits had, on her orders, blown a carriage right off the road and into the river.

It was only later, during their plundering of the thing, that they found a trunk that a boy had been hidden inside by the panicked occupants of the carriage. He had drowned inside of that locked box after it fell into the river.

He opens his mouth, and nothing comes out except water that runs down his body.

This had been the final incident that made her stop. It was the final thing she had to see before she realized the road she was actually on and where it would lead. She’s not a good person. She can dress as a priestess and spout all sorts of things about forgiveness and faith, but can she really?

It’s easy for her to forgive herself. Maybe it’s selfish, even.

But the dead can do no such thing.

She kicks him away, losing the sword as she stumbles and falls, dozens of shadows, mangled and horrified, amble towards her with arms, reaching, and open mouths, full of nothing but screams and wordless horror.

“Forgive me,” she prays, clenching her eyes as water collects around her palms, feet, and bottom as the dead encircle her.

“I already have,” says a voice that cuts through the mist. Rorate opens her eyes.

The light of the sun fills her eyes, a great radiance fully enveloping her with the heat and warmth of a presence so abundant and powerful, that she feels as if she were nestled in the bosom of the great creator.

The dead all around her scream as a rushing, hot wind fills her ears and her body falls backward, clutched tightly in a familiar grasp.

“…Isaiah,” says Rorate, her eyes going wide as the entity pulls her to itself, wrapping its wings around them as an explosion of light cascades around them, mixed together with the buzzing of thousands of wings. “How?”

Isaiah looks at her with its golden eyes. “Friends make many things possible, Rorate,” it explains. “Even those who are only with us in spirit,” says Isaiah, opening its wings as thousands of fae buzz around, cutting through the darkness.

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Isaiah

It may not be able to leave its dungeon territory as a dungeon core. However, the spirit-world is out of bounds, as it were. It just so happens that it had a connection to the broader spirit-world, one more intricate than just the floors above the first hundred of the tower.

Isaiah looks down below itself into the fae-kingdom, the entrance of which was on floor one-hundred and thirty of the tower. It took a little bargaining to allow the gate-keeper to let it enter through the secretive fae world. But it is nothing that it can’t stem for the sake of its chirping young.

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Tulsi

Human, Female, Classless (Child)

Location: The Spirit-World

Tulsi screams, stumbling and fighting her way out of the creature’s grasp in the same second as light crashes down all around them, the ground almost rupturing with the presence of something good. Streams of sun-rays shoot through the cracking roads.

The ghost screams, covering its face in agony as the light touches it.

Tulsi turns and runs in panic, taking her chance to sprint towards and out of the city gate.

The light from below engulfs her as she leaves.

And as strange and abrupt as it sounds, as she exits the city and the fog, finding herself returned to the day as it was before, she is oddly sure that there is a higher presence in the world.

She felt it.

It saved her.

The girl turns to run to the north, sure that she’s going to meet up with her sister there.

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???

Human, Female, Monk

Location: The Spirit-World

Fae cut through the air, thousands of buzzing wings shooting this way and that way as they move through an impossible number of doors into the spirit-world.

They go out of their way to blast magic at the ghosts, destroying and disrupting them.

She looks over her shoulder, staring back at the silhouettes that are falling apart. They aren’t her real colleagues. But they were somebody once.

The monk turns to them, making a praying gesture with the only hand she can move well, the heavy beads rattling as she bows her head.

“I hope you find peace,” she says, as the spirits are destroyed.

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Scholar Anderwal

Human, Male, Scholar of the Witches’ Sect

Location: The Spirit-World

“Incredible!” says Anderwal, beyond excited as his hand flies through his book, his eyes never even looking down at the sketches he’s making as he takes in everything there is to see.

The spirit-world.

No living human has ever seen it like this before, have they?

“This is amazing,” says the scholar, beyond lost in his fascination. “Witch Spillaholle!” says Anderwal, looking at her with excited eyes. She’s flown back down to the fountain where they started.

The woman looks at him and then turns her head, staring off into the fog. She lifts a hand, playing with a strand of hair as she stares into the distance. “Please settle your energy, mister Anderwal,” says Spillaholle. “Your energetic glow reminds me a little too much of Perchta,” she explains.

Anderwal clears his throat. “My apologies,” he says. He got carried away. It’s dangerous to get too excited near the witches. It’s lucky that Perchta wasn’t the one he was talking to. She can snap in an instant. Spillaholle is rather patient. He shouldn’t test that, though. “I was taken aback by the sight.”

Witch Spillaholle stares off into the distance, her head turned, but her body faces towards him as she pulls on the strand of hair rather strongly for some reason. It might be a tick. He makes a note in his section of behavioral observations. Spillaholle doesn’t usually show such things, but he supposes that this is a unique situation.

Fascinating!

This research is going to go far. It’s ground-breaking!

“P-Perhaps I can show you some other things,” mutters Spillaholle. Her foot slides back and forth over the stones. “Mister Anderwal.” She looks at him, her strand of hair so tightly wound around her finger that her hand has risen all the way from below her shoulder up to her cheek. “If you’d l-”

“SPILLIEEEEEE~” cries a voice from the fog, cutting her off mid-sentence. Spillaholle winces, turning her head to watch as Perchta drags herself out of the mist, having found them.

Anderwal watches as Witch Spillaholle’s face and posture go through a gigantic shift of emotions and positioning all in the manner of one second as the other witch appears back on the scene, clearly distraught about something.

Absolutely fascinating.

He’s going to need a whole double set of pages just to jot down this one shift of expression. This night alone is going to give him work for months. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever catch up.

Scholar Anderwal flips a page in his sketchbook as Witch Perchta grabs Spillaholle, the red strings that tie them together bundling into a sort of knot until Spillaholle manages to keep Perchta an arm’s distance away through great effort.

It would seem that the tower has broken through even Witch Spillaholle’s assault on the city, entering the spirit-world with its own manipulation of divine magic.

The man scribbles, his pen almost ripping through the paper as he tries to capture every detail. Generations of scholars will be frothing at the mouths for this information all across the world.

The man flips the page again, as the last two had already been filled out with running, furiously scribbled ink.

— Inside of the page of his journal there is a pressed, white flower.

So that’s where it is. He thought he lost it days ago. Anderwal smiles, picking it up and looking at it. He holds it to his nose to smell it, expecting the usual, faded fragrance of an old, familiar flower.

Instead, he is unexpectedly met with the smell of perfume.

The man is somewhat surprised and looks at the odd curiosity, spinning it around in his fingers before looking back up at the witches. Perchta is doing an odd war-dance, flailing around with her arms as she half-runs in a circle and half lets out her rage while telling her incoherent story about the tower and how it ruined her life.

Witch Spillaholle meanwhile, simply stands there in silence, a sideways glance of her eyes looking his way.

Anderwal stops, looking at her and then at the flower.

Oh.

The man adjusts his arm, turning his hand holding the journal away, to look at the red string that is snaking out of its body, hidden, down below many of the others where it is out of sight of any jealous eyes, and it quietly creeped up along the leg of Witch Spillaholle, like a snake climbing up a tree.

Anderwal nervously gulps.

This might be a problem.

“What do you think, And-man?!” asks Perchta, grabbing him and snapping him out of his thoughts. Anderwal blinks, quickly placing the flower into his journal before she can smell her friend’s perfume, and closes it.

Anderwal looks at the witch, holding his robe, and then around the darkness. “If I may make a suggestion, Witch Perchta?” he asks, looking back at her. “If holiness is what’s bothering you, then why not fight fire with fire?” he suggests, pointing over his shoulder towards the cathedral district, where thousands of crusaders remain.

Perchta’s eyes go wide as she realizes. “Of course!” says Perchta, straightening back up. She beams, turning her head. “Spille, this guy is a genius!” says the witch, looking back at him as she realizes what his plan is. “Andy boy, you dirty schemer. Keep this up, and I might just fall heads over tails for you!” says the witch. She winks and blows him a kiss, then runs off at full speed towards the cathedral district, taking off into the air a moment later as she vanishes into the mist.

Anderwal gulps a second time, looking nervously at Witch Spillaholle, who is standing as stiff as a statue in the winter.

This is going to be a real problem.

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The Humming Man

???, Male, Chronomancer

Location: The Forest Outside of the City

The humming man hums as he strolls down the road, looking up at the island off high up in the distance.

It’s been a while, and this has all been a lot of fun to prepare. Thousands of little notches here, bits of string there, a stumbling stone placed here — all metaphorically, of course. But he has been working tirelessly for months now, setting up thousands and thousands of minuscule interactions all across the city that are now finally cascading into one another, leading up to the grand result that he has been assigned to achieve.

It’s not always so easy as to take a big stone out of place and to let something fall apart. Often, these delicate situations need countless micro-nudges so that everything falls perfectly into place when the time is right.

Others might think it is just fate or luck.

But what they often do not see is the sheer amount of work behind it all. Fortune favors the bold, it’s true. But this is because the bold are the ones who get noticed by his clients.

He hums, stretching himself as he walks.

The tower has a lot more stairs than it used to have when he was there last time. He’s going to have to warm up a little before he gets there.

A chill moves through the air, making him shudder.

It feels like winter is going to be here sooner than usual this year.