The pain hit him all at once. Not the psychic attack of the still recovering boil, but the collected impact of injuries that should have already killed him.
New Condition! Internal Organ Damage – Major. [Survivor's Endurance] has taken effect. The secondary effect of [Survivor's Endurance] has taken effect. [Internal Organ Damage – Major] has been resisted due to user's VIT score. Condition reduced to [Internal Organ Damage – Moderate] [Internal Organ Damage – Moderate] – 40% Malus to all physical Attributes. 10% Malus to all mental attributes. Reduced healing speed of all conditions by 25% until this condition is fully healed. Time Until Healed – ~623 hours.
It wasn't the closest he'd ever come to death, judging by the severity of the condition the system imposed upon him, but it was a close second. He had bullet wounds, stab wounds, a somewhat rotted arm, and substantial damage to his internal organs. But he was alive. Somehow.
Alive and in pain.
"Alarion, t-talk to me," Bergman said, kneeling over him as he writhed in pain.
"Spell," Alarion reminded him urgently. "The mind spell."
Bergman took the reminder like a slap in the face. Were his cheeks not still flush from adrenaline and rage, Alarion was sure the young man would have blushed as he began chanting:
"By whispered words and binding creed, My mind is mine in thought and deed. No lie may root, no fear may grow, Within this warded mind, I know."
Once secure in his own mind, Bergman turned his attention to Alarion, casting the same spell with a modified chant. As it settled onto him, Alarion felt the pressing vines of corruption receding from his mind, pushed out by a will not his own. It wasn't a pleasant sensation; if anything, it felt as though he were replacing one invader for another, but given the choice of occupants, he was in no position to judge.
Due to the effects of [Whispered Ward] your WIL has been increased by 60%.
Bergman looked drained, as if an entire day had passed in an instant. His shoulders sagged, and he briefly swayed on his feet before he grew accustomed to the side effects.
Like Alarion's solar affinity, Bergman's enhancement magic was quite powerful, but that power came at a steep trade-off. With his spells, Bergman could sacrifice one attribute for another, strength for agility, intelligence for endurance, and so forth. When casting such spells on himself, the trade-off was relatively modest; a 10% loss for a 50% increase was not uncommon, as he'd explained it. When casting on others, however, the cost was substantially higher and continued to rise over time.
"T-Thank you. A potion now." When Alarion tried to reach for the slender vials on his bracer, Bergman pushed his hands away.
"No, none of t-those. You n-need the good stuff."
From a hardened pouch on his belt, Bergman produced two flat-bottomed flasks, each filled with a small amount of red liquid. It was potent, the crimson fluid sparkling as it was exposed to air, and gently poured down Alarion's throat.
The effect was immediate. His HP shot up to full faster than he'd ever seen, with the least of his conditions, such as his open wounds, healing in seconds. The more severe injuries, most notably his arm and the internal damage, remained in place, though the former had healed over substantially, its condition degraded to minor. Sadly, the same could not be said for Alarion's potion toxicity.
New Condition! Potion Toxicity: Moderate Survivor's Endurance has failed to take effect. Potion Toxicity: Moderate – 22% Malus to all Attributes. Time Until Healed – ~6 hours.
"Thank you," he mumbled as he forced himself to sit up. Healing or no, he felt as though the fiendish army had trampled him. He could move, even fight to some extent, but his capabilities would be limited at best.
"W-what are friends for?" Bergman asked with a timid smile. The potion had been more than enough to trump his damage and conditions, leaving the young man fit to fight, but not eager for what was coming next. "Where a-are we?"
"The outer chamber, I think," Alarion said as he struggled to his feet. Their [Flare] spells lit the surrounding room, its sickly purple walls pulsing in time with a grim light from further up ahead, close to where Alarion's dagger had finally landed. There was a large well in the center of the room, and the slick floor sloped toward it at all angles.
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"I-It did all that from the outer chamber?" Bergman paled.
Every fiendish nest was different, but they all had some things in common. There were nurseries spread throughout, hollowed out spaces coated in inflamed red flesh that served as the birthing ground for new fiends and the dead. Well-established infestations would have dens, areas devoted to the housing of particularly powerful fiends, typically along the only path to the boil.
Further down was the outer chamber, the birthing room for revenants and the feeding chamber for the boil. The fiends would carry dead things to this room, throwing them into the pit where the boil would devour or reanimate what remained. Whether the room was in physical proximity to the boil or not, though it usually was, the outer chamber typically had a strong connection to the boil, allowing it to exert a good portion of its influence against those inside.
Then there was the inner chamber. The cloister.
As the heart of the boil, there was no place where it was stronger. Or more vulnerable. For whatever reason, none of its creatures ever entered the cloister itself. They would defend the entrance with everything they had, but they would not, or could not, chase an Awakened who went inside. At an equal rank, most Awakened could endure the mental attacks of the boil and finish it off, as Alarion had thrice before. But as he had learned, each rank for a boil presented a difference in kind as well as potency.
"Where are the g-guards?" Bergman asked. "Did they r-really empty everything to attack us?"
"Seems that way. Those four were probably meant to hold down the fort," Alarion said. He let Echo grow to full size and then tested his wrist. Even healed, it was no good with his reduced stats. He'd be too slow to fight with both at full size. "We should hurry."
'If there is nothing here s-shouln't we c-catch our breath?"
"Not unless you want me to drop dead," Alarion said, double-checking his Status. "The miasma here is outpacing my HP regeneration."
HP – 2621/2621 [-0.186/sec]
"Oh! T-then maybe we should g-go back? I am sure the others will have cleaned up by n-now?"
"We should hit it while it is wounded." When Bergman's expression turned sour, Alarion asked, "ZEKE, how far away are they?"
They waited a moment for a response that never came.
"ZEKE?" Again, nothing. Alarion reached for his wrist and tapped the bracelet twice, concerned that Higgins might have damaged it. "ZEKE?"
"Be of me," the machine said suddenly. "Be of me. Be of me. Be of me."
"Kotone!" Alarion said sharply.
"Yes, Miss! Yes, M-
"Store him, now," Alarion said sharply. The insect creature bobbed once, snatched ZEKE's bracelet, and vanished.
He felt stupid. ZEKE had been complaining the moment before the attack. He was just as susceptible to the boil's influence, and Alarion had done nothing to protect him. Stupid. And angry.
"Let us get this over with," Alarion said as he stalked toward the pulsing red light. Whatever his reservations, Bergman followed closely on Alarion's heels, leaning down to toss Alarion his [Spell-Storing Dagger] as they passed near where it had struck.
The ground squelched with each step. The purple flesh-stuff beneath their feet was sticky and warm, like walking through tar. It smelled of death and disease, but as they closed on the narrow passageway that led to the cloister, Alarion noted something unusual. Cinnamon. Earth. Apples.
It smelled like home.
"Enough!" Alarion swore at the thing as he stabbed Echo into the flesh-lined passageway. There was a rumble in his mind, a cry of pain and vibration. Then the smell dissipated, replaced by the smell of corpses and rot. Bad enough this thing existed at all without it violating his mind.
As they grew closer, though, it was clear the thing had not given up the fight.
Alarion heard whispers from voices he thought he'd long forgotten. He heard his mother calling him for dinner, his father laughing at one of his stunts. He heard Atra and Aina. He heard Elena saying that she was proud of him, though he didn't recall her ever saying those words.
He was certain that, without the warding, the assault would have overwhelmed him. It would have turned him into a gibbering idiot, or shut his mind down entirely as it had done to Kali. He could see Bergman getting angry next to him, but also growing increasingly pale. The attack was more than mere whispers; it was an assault on the psyche, an attempt to fundamentally break it. People who succumbed to the boil's mental pressure would be subsumed over time, their bodies slowly absorbed and digested by their fleshy surroundings, until little remained.
Much like the ones ahead of them.
"Oh, mother," Bergman whimpered at the sight of them.
There were eight of them chained to the walls of the hallway, four men and four women. Their desiccated bodies remained upright, subsumed into the walls in some places and left exposed in others. They'd been nude when they were chained, their bodies painted with blood and fiendish ichor. The patterns were unfamiliar, but they were so uncomfortable to look at that Alarion felt his eyes sliding off them time and again. He would stare, trying to make sense of a particular rune or symbol, and then he was staring at the wall, wondering what had happened.
But ultimately, they knew what had happened.
"This is how they did it," Alarion said, smashing one body with his mace. It revolted him, but that was not why he turned to violence. This knowledge needed to be lost; it needed to be gone. No Vitrian scholar needed to come into these caverns and learn the secret of how to force a boil into existence. The people who already knew, the people who'd done this, needed to be hunted down and killed like the dogs that they were.
Bergman agreed without a word passing between them. Together, they ruined the markings, smashing, burning, and erasing them in every way they could. Even with the urgency of the task at hand, it was a necessity they could not ignore, a compulsion that-
"It is trying to delay us," Bergman said.
"We can kill it as soon as we..." Alarion argued. Then he looked at what he'd done. The bodies were pulp, so thoroughly obliterated that they did not even look like bodies anymore, let alone anything used in a ritual. He checked his Status and frowned.
HP – 2118/2621 [-0.186/sec]
It had been nearly forty-five minutes. If Bergman hadn't stopped him, the miasma certainly would have.
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