FINAL CORE - Chapter 139 (Patreon)

The churning of war is such a normal facet of life for some, that the grinding of sinew and bones is to the ears of one as common and mundane as the pulverizing of wheat for the miller and baking flour for the baker.

While we are not at war in this immediate moment, it is not uncommon for the ground to be soaked through with blood even in times of peace. Even if we are not formally at war, we are still in conflict with our neighbors. Unofficial skirmishes take place now, and then under the disguise of proxies, such as funded banditry and rebellion. Monsters roam the world, hollowing out mines to claim as their dens, tracking hunters in the woodlands as prey, stealing the children from their beds in villages that are distant from regular patrols.

The world is, even at peace, horrifically violent, and we never seem to realize this until it finally comes knocking at our doors.

~ Minister of War Vadrus Vilshali’s arguments for an increase in national spending on defense

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Seide

Dryad, Female, Woodmother

Location: The Destroy Island

Wild magics emanate from the dryad, with vines and overgrowth flourishing out of the sideways dangling island. The swaying trees — some floating upside down — the thick, heavy grasses, and the raining foliage all together come into motion as the magical ambiance surrounds her as she pulls the energy out from deep, deep from the core of the island.

The air moves, pressed forward by the draft of power, her hair flying wildly in the gales that threaten to throw her off the tower.

The dryad turns her head, looking at a powerful adventurer, a human wizard who has specialized in the strength of wind, whom she has recruited for this effort.

“Are you ready?” asks the dryad, looking at the leader of the only party to ever even reach floor one-hundred of the tower, an adventurer named Salvator.

He nods, lifting his hands at the same time she does.

(Seide + Salvator) have used: [Combined Spell {Cleansing Hurricane}]

The wind begins to scream. Healing magics, emboldened by the power of the island from which she draws, concentrate in the air around her in incredible amounts, only to then swirl and spin, rising up higher and higher into a glowing pinnacle upon the world — as if a new tower were being erected — as their spells combine. Petals, leaves, and ash swirl through the air, collecting magical residue with them as they float over the dead ocean and island, pressing past thousands of bodies at once, the fabrics of hundreds of robes flapping in the maelstrom.

Seide presses every ounce of power that she can out of herself, her hooves pressing firmly against the stones of the tower to hold her in place as lights of many colors — the surviving uthra — shoot in and out, pulling people from the tower and evacuating them across the dead ocean, to the landmass to the north-east.

The corrupted crusaders, all suspended either in animation in their dead, time-frozen states, or trapped on the chunks of land that they’re stuck on, falter, unable to resist the tempest — full of spring recovery, abundant.

The magical nature of the healing spell of the organic world, fused with the holy essence of Isaiah that radiates throughout this land, washes over them like fairy dust, pelting their eyes and senses with a barrage of power.

Black, oozy slime begins to wash away from their bodies, dripping, dropping, and seeping down their clothes and limbs, puddling at their feet and boots as the corruption of the witch, the tinge of maleficence, washes away, the grand healing spell rattling their bones and pressing their wounds, squeezing blackwater out of them like bursting pus.

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The Humming Man

???, Male, Chronomancer

Location: The Destroyed Island

Well, that about does it. The job is done. There’s no way for the timeline to slip away from here anymore toward any undesirable outcome, so he can just sit back and relax.

— As always.

The Humming Man hums, sitting on the outwardly jutting gargoyle he had landed on prior as he watches the results of his work unfold.

He’s not a good guy or a bad guy; he’s just a guy — a man, in fact — who, for most of the day, finds himself humming. There’s no particular reason for this. The humming isn’t relevant spiritually, magically, or metaphysically in any sense; it’s just what he, as a person, enjoys to do.

This was a long job.

Not the longest. He’s had some jobs that went on for years. This one was, all things considered, alright.

— But it’s just about that time now.

It’s been a good run. All of this was very interesting to look at, to listen to, to watch, and to observe. Not just the tower itself, but the effects it had around the world and especially in the nearby city.

Wow.

That was all so very interesting.

He leans back on the stones behind him, the tower sideways this way or that, up or down, moving with the island — as if the hands of a clock were spinning around and around and around for no other reason than that being what a clock is wont to do.

His hand is outstretched, the powerful surge of wind pressing past him, and a petal lands on his finger, wrapping around it for a moment to stop it from being blown away into the gale.

But that’s not his job — to stop it from leaving.

It is, in fact, the petal’s destiny to leave, as beautiful and soft as it is.

He lowers his finger, the wind wrapping around it, shifting and prying the single petal free from it, sending it hurtling off into the storm that forms as a grand awakening occurs.

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Isaiah

“Look at it,” hisses the voice. “Look at it. Look at it. LOOK AT IT!” screams Witch Perchta.

Isaiah’s body lurches, shuddering, as the needle drives further, having pressed through its back, boring its insides to it outsides, black blood streaming down its legs, its wings unable to work.

“It’s gone now. It’s all gone now,” says the witch, delightedly, into its ear. “Everything you made. Everything you found. Everything you touched,” says the voice. “- is gone.” Debris float all around the nothingness, trapped in the rift between time. The sky above is still torn, the opening between here and the spirit world still available to reach — but one would have to fly there to do so, given that the tower is no longer standing upright.

The ocean below churns, swishing and swaying in the heavy winds.

The clocktower ticks, the handle moving now past true midnight and on to the day thereafter.

“Your stupid tower. Your stupid cultists,” she hisses. “Your stupid island. I took it all. It’s dead. Destroyed.”

Isaiah turns its head away from the horrific desecration of everything it has built over this past year, turning to look at the melting, globular, demented face next to its own that sports hollow eyes beaming with demonic delight.

Having seen everything there is to see, Isaiah smiles a warm smile.

“You’re wrong, Perchta,” says Isaiah, lifting a hand.

— A needle cuts through it, severing it, the white palm falling down and disappearing into the waters below.

“And what’s that?” asks the witch, large needles cutting into Isaiah’s back, slicing off the wings like a cruel child would pluck from a fly.

Isaiah’s stump rests itself against its chest, smearing it full of a torrent of blood. “Faith.”

Perchta laughs, howling now louder than ever before with any of her screams of anguish and wrath, and then tears off Isaiah’s wings, throwing them into the ocean.

“Fat lotta good that’s doing you, shit for brains,” mocks the witch. “The gods don’t give a shit. They never did,” she scornfully says. “Not about you, not about anyone.”

Isaiah’s vision blurs as blood pours out of its broken, mangled body.

“No, Perchta,” agrees Isaiah. “In that, you are correct. We are alone.” It lifts its gaze and its other hand, looking at the oozing, twisted face of a person who has become something other than what they were. Perhaps, long, long, long before Perchta became a witch even, she was someone else, just as she is something other today than she was yesterday. Who is to say?

“Then give me a laugh before I keep going,” she says. “Because I’m cutting out your tongue next and then your eyes,” she warns, or promises more, perhaps. “What else?”

“Others,” replies Isaiah. “I still have faith in people,” it explains. “We are alone. But we are alone together.”

“Are you stupid?” asks Perchta. “Everyone is -”

Perchta looks down, realizing only now that the black void of an ocean is bridged by light.

Hundreds of priests and paladins, free from the curse of the witch-water cast rows and rows of magical barriers, glassy and prismatic, all across the surface of the water to make a grand bridge that spans across the endlessness. “What the -?” Perchta turns her head, looking at the loud, roar of thunder that emerges on the horizon as a man rides in from the back, charging on a mount with a lance in hand that glows with the power of the eye of God.

Isaiah’s remaining hand touches the side of Perchta’s face.

“Our season has ended, Perchta,” says Isaiah. She looks back its way, the two of them staring at one another for a time. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

(Isaiah) has used: [Seasonality {Temporal Shift: Winter}]

A bell rings in the air, from the church tower, but not from the church tower. Its gongs reverberate throughout the air, stemming not from a physical plane but from a metaphysical one — as a chime that circles the world.

The hero’s strike.

The air fills with crackling, the temperature dropping in an instant as the last of Isaiah’s magic pulsates through its body and out of its arm, pressing into the face of the beast who it holds. The water stiffens, with spiderwebs of ice shooting out in all directions at once in an instant, spreading down the body of the monster in less than a second like arcs of lightning, and the liquidized mass solidifying all around in an instant.

“NO. NO!” yells Perchta, turning just at the last second, another needle shooting toward Isaiah’s face, freezing before it reaches it.

And then, the world erupts into a radiance so vivid, so bright, so magnificent that all of the darkness brought on by witchcraft and fear, all of the terror and malignancy in the air, all of the warped, corrupted magics that break the sky, the stars, and the moon — all of it washes away in a great wave of purifying, resplendent light, the likes of which are seen only on the world at the end of the deepest nightmares.

The ice breaks, shattering into fairy dust. The two of them falling apart from one another and in whole.

Isaiah closes its eyes.

It thought that it was, thinks the entity, responding to its own question.

It was good.

It was a good year.

And then there was nothing.