Turning away from the ruined bodies, the pair continued toward the cloister. The hallway narrowed as they walked, terminating in an iridescent membrane that covered the entire path. Alarion cut through it with ease, and the thin flesh peeled back of its own accord once punctured, revealing the beating heart of the infection.

It was suspended five feet off the ground, with muscle and tendons suspending it from the ceiling and anchoring it to the floor. It pulsed like a heart, but looked nothing like one. Alarion had been told it looked more like a tumor, a disgusting mass of black, grey, and sickly green, run through with veins and arteries that pulsed with each ripple of the similarly diseased walls and floors.

Bergman looked like he was going to be sick, and Alarion could not blame him. He had been sick the first time he'd cut his way through to the heart of an infestation. The thing before them was an offense against nature, against reality. That people were responsible for it was so much worse.

"C-can we kill it from here?" Bergman asked. He was breathing slowly and steadily through his nose, his eyes locked firmly on the heart. "I am n-not sure my ward will h-hold."

Alarion shook his head. "It is like a fiend, the meat doesn't matter, only the core. An Empowered Solar Burst might expose the core, but your poems won't do much more than scratch it. We need to cut it down, carve our way past the outer layer, and then keep hitting the core until it breaks.

"W-what if we..." Bergman trailed off as he realized he had no clever solution. "Together?"

"Let me go first," Alarion said, handing Bergman his mace. The boy sagged a little under the unexpected weight, but stood tall as Alarion turned back toward the heart. "If I struggle, you can pull me back out with the hilt wrap."

Bergman nodded, and Alarion steeled himself. He could already feel its power pushing at his mental defenses, probing and attacking them. Whatever damage Alarion had done no longer mattered. It would come at them with everything it had. He had to hope that Bergman's ward would be enough.

Alarion crossed the threshold, and the boil roared to life.

Be of me!

The command was direct and powerful. No more games. No more riddles, no playing on his vulnerabilities. It had ordered him to turn back, to open his throat into the pit in the outer chamber and let his body be reborn as something new. And it almost worked. His step faltered, his eyes glazed over. Then the compulsion waned, its attempt to storm his mental fortress beaten back at the gates by the power of Bergman's magic. He took a step forward. Then another.

Be of me!

This time, he was ready for the order. It struck him like a blow, but it did not move him. It did not stop him. He took another step, then another. Alarion felt as though he was wading through the ocean, with wave after wave crashing against him. Any one of them could have been enough to trip him, to take his legs from beneath him and drown him in the undertow. But none of them did.

The heart screamed, its command growing more intense but paradoxically weaker. It was afraid, and that fear came across in its orders. This wasn't Kali, leading from the front and earning obedience through power and dedication. It was Dimov, making increasingly childish demands as things did not go its way.

The boil was a pathetic thing. It was deadly and ruinous, but it was weak. It was a diseased wretch, waiting to be excised.

Alarion raised his good arm and cut through the ropes of flesh that bound the heart to the ground. It screamed inside his mind, its orders gone in place of obscenities. These were painful, not in their content, but in their volume and power. The boil was spending itself, burning its future potential in a desperate gambit to survive, and Alarion's defenses were cracking.

"That hurts!" he growled up at the thing, cutting through two more fleshy connections. Behind him, Bergman was chanting a spell, his violent wit carving through two of the connections on the ceiling. The tumor sagged, swinging and bouncing on its last remaining connection as Alarion lifted his blade overhead and carved it down from the ceiling.

It hit the ground with a wet plop, an ignoble fate for such a detestable creature.

"I need your hands, Bergman."

Reluctantly, Ivor crossed the threshold. Instantly, the young man winced, flinching away from the mental blow. But he pressed on, crossing the room far faster than Alarion had managed.

"It regenerates incredibly fast, but it can not heal if the wound is kept open. I will cut, you pull." Bergman grew a shade paler at the idea of touching the hideous thing, but he rolled up his sleeve and got in position. "When we reach the core, it will spend everything it has to stop us. Do not stop for anything. Even if I fall, you need to keep hitting it until it breaks. I will do the same. Agreed?"

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Yes," Bergman answered without hesitation.

They exchanged one last look, then they began cutting.

Their first attempts were an abject failure. Alarion had experience with boils of the first and second ranks, but this was another beast entirely. Its flesh sealed the moment it was punctured, squirming back against Alarion's knife as he held it in place. They struggled to do any lasting damage until Alarion lost his patience, activated [Lucky Strike] and carved off a thigh-sized chunk of meat.

The heart did its best to heal the wound, but once the soldiers had their foothold, they did not let go. Bergman wrenched the edge of the wound back, preventing it from growing back into place as Alarion carved away more and more flesh. It was time-consuming and challenging work, made even more perilous by the thick miasma and the constant mental bombardment, but it took only minutes before they caught their first glimpse of the glossy black orb hidden deep within. It was about the size of Alarion's head, a shimmering bit of onyx that looked almost pure amidst all that diseased flesh.

They cut for another ten minutes, carving away flesh until the crystal was on full display. They could have removed it from the mass of flesh, but doing so would have been counter-productive, as it would have built a new shell within seconds. Better to leave it attached to its torn-up 'body', trying in vain to heal that which they'd dissected.

"It should only take a few hits," Alarion told Bergman as he retrieved his mace and hefted it high. He'd been saving all his mana for this.

"Empowered Void Crush!" he shouted as he brought the weapon down hard on the crystal. Flesh vanished into the void as his mace bounced off the crystal as if he'd struck solid steel. There was not so much as a blemish on the boil's true heart, let alone a crack, but it made its displeasure known.

There were no words, no orders, or riddles. Its final gambit was pain.

"Agh!" Bergman screamed as agony cut through his defenses and sent him to the ground, desperately clutching at his head.

You have suffered minor psychic damage. HP -42.

It was more than the mere sensation of pain. The boil was overloading their bodies, triggering every receptor it could. His body reacted to this infinite threat, tensing and convulsing, straining against every limit in a desperate gambit to make the pain stop. The boil could not sustain the attack for long, but its effect was already apparent as blood vessels burst on Bergman's arms and neck.

It was a powerful act of desperation, one suited for men like Bergman who were rarely on the receiving end of punishment.

But Alarion had known pain. Of every sort.

[Endure Through the Pain], his upgraded version of [Fight Through the Pain], not only reduced the effect of conditions while in combat, but it drastically increased his pain threshold as well. He wouldn't be laid low by such an attack. To the contrary, the only thing it did was trigger [The Best Offense is a Good Offense], increasing his damage as he brought his weapon down again.

"Empowered Void Crush!" This time, a chip came off the flawless surface. Though barely the size of his thumbnail, Alarion took it as a sign. He could do this. He would do this. He would kill this monstrosity.

"Void Crush!"

"Void Crush!"

"Void Crush!"

When he ran out of mana, he called on his [Simple Mana Reserve] and continued the assault. When even that MP was spent, he struck with the mace alone, leveling blow after blow against the world's imperfection as it retaliated with wave after wave of unadulterated pain. Bergman had blessedly lost consciousness during the assault, his shallow breathing punctuated by the occasional whimper.

Alarion's good arm was on fire, his muscles railing against him as he lifted the mace and brought it down, lifted the mace, and brought it down.

The True Heart fared no better. It had chipped and fractured under the impacts, a V-shaped furrow carved into it by the sharp edge of Alarion's mace. A hairline fracture ran from the bottom of that furrow to the midway point of the orb, growing with each new strike. It wouldn't be long now.

Stop! Mercy!

Alarion snorted in derision. The very idea was comical. He lifted his mace and brought it down.

Please!

He struck again.

This time, the plea came not with words, but a flash of unwelcome memory. A pleading face. Desperate eyes.

Alarion screamed with rage and brought his mace down.

The sudden relief was like nothing he'd ever felt. There were no voices in his head, no unwelcome intrusions. He was alone, and the abomination was dead.

They'd done it.

He collapsed, not even caring about the disgusting mess of flesh and sinew that he fell back upon. It had taken everything he had, everything Bergman had. But they'd done it. He could rest. Alarion lay there for who knows how long, lying atop that squirming ground until his chest stopped heaving and the aches in his body stopped screaming in protest.

"Bergman?" he asked.

When there was no reply, he begrudgingly shifted, gathering an elbow beneath his body. The other boy was lying on his side, not far away. He was breathing, but he looked terrible, his face an angry shade of red and purple, with blood leaking from his ears. Alarion touched his own ear and found it wet. His eyes and nose had suffered similar damage, and he realized there was blood in his mouth. He wondered how much damage he'd actually taken.

"Status," Alarion said. But before he could review any of the information, he heard something.

Footsteps.

"Who is there?" he asked. When no reply was forthcoming, he pushed up off the floor and stood on unsteady legs. The footsteps were closer now, boots making a sickening sound as they sank into the fleshy ground. Not a fiend then, but a human. Or a revenant.

He was in no condition to fight, but he took up a position beside Bergman, mace held level in front of him as he waited for the newcomer to reach the mouth of the inner chamber and reveal themselves.

"First my life, and now my purpose," the thing that was once Sierra said as she stepped into view. "What more will you take from me?"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.