Chapter 90: The Hunger Within

Chapter 90: The Hunger Within

Feed...

The word echoed inside of Sky’s head.

It wasn’t a voice.

Hunger.

The feeling of gnawing, ancient and bottomless hunger that threatened to devour everything around it.

It was in his soul, twisting, and choking him, trying to fill itself up - but where was the prey to be found?! The cold, gnawing void that threatened to swallow him whole, to consume him and drain every bit of energy out of him, leaving him motionless and numb in its wake.

Sky clamped his teeth together, trying to fight against the intrusive feeling, his muscles twitched, but not at his command. The root wrapped around his torse constricted tightly, and a low grinding noise emitted from his plating.

[ARMOR: 3/5]

Sky’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets, a single bead of sweat rolled down the side of his head as the translucent text blinked in his peripheral vision:

It’s draining my armor?

No!.

Something was off.

Sky could feel it, but the root wasn’t trying to crush him. It didn’t even want his body, rather some strange, alien substance - something that the root was consuming. Sky’s armor, and specifically, the runes on it, were unraveling, slowly being devoured by the root’s parasitic nature. That, and the sheer force of the constriction, were responsible for the damage, but the tree, that giant tree in the heart of the grove, was doing something far worse. It was draining that strange aura out of him. His mana, his very life force and spiritual essence.

A wave of numbness passed through his chest, and for a moment, Sky thought that his heart had stopped beating. Instead, a dull, heavy thud replaced his heartbeat.

Sky’s Soul Core shuddered violently, and a powerful force tried to pull him toward the tree. The connection between the two wasn’t physical, but magical, and the force it was exerting on Sky was enough to twist and break the arrays within his core, throwing him into a blind, panicked rage. The tree was trying to consume him, to pull all of his essence into itself, and the only thing saving him now was unconsciousness.

"Sky!"

Vesper’s voice rang out, but it didn’t reach Sky. The young warrior struggled through a thick fog of numbness and pain, trying to make sense of the colors. That was when he saw it - a flash of gold. BOOM! There was a loud explosion, and suddenly the dim, gloomy atmosphere of the grove was lit up in golden light. The sheer force of Vesper’s spell pushed away the oppressive feeling of the forest with the force of an explosion, sending the root around Sky’s torse flying and exposing his chest.

Sky barely managed to support himself, panting heavily to catch his breath. A familiar, almost instinctual feeling of panic welled up again as his lungs tried to convulse, desperate for oxygen but denied, the very moment he inhaled.

Vesper ran to his aid, her [Holy Scepter Blade] radiating light with every step she took toward him.

"Can you move?"

Sky nodded, wincing as he tried to get up.

"Yeah..."

Sky looked at his hand, his fingers trembling as they curled into a fist. Their skin was pale, almost transparent, and the feeling of numbness still resonated inside. He was almost certain that his skin smelled of the burning wood that filled the grove as bits and peices of that pale root hit the stone and crumbled into dust and ash.

"It was trying pull your soul out," a young woman said.

Sky turned to look at Chloe and let out a moan. His head pounded at the sight of her, those heavily reinforced mechanical gauntlets and the worried look on her face as she ran some sort of scan over him.

"I was afraid of that," Chloe said, frowning slightly as she turned toward the giant tree.

"It’s not feeding on flesh," Vesper said, narrowing her eyes at the massive trunk, the deep groan and thrum that resonated from deep inside vibrating against their very bones.

Chloe’s visor glowed bright blue as it overlaid the complex and multi layered schematics of the great tree. "It’s feeding on souls."

The entire grove seemed to hold it’s breath for a moment, and then Vesper knelt next to Sky, who was still catching his breath.

Sky slowly rose to his feet, wiping a bit of dust off of his chin. "Then these?" A massive, countless amount of bleached bones, both singular and in large skeletons, littered the area around the tree roots.

"That’s what it ate," Chloe said, almost whispering.

"The creatures. The Awakened. Everyone." Vesper’s expression hardened, the golden light now burning inside of her in a focused beam of righteous fury. "Then we burn it."

She stood, drawing her blade with a flash of white light. "Enough," she whispered.

A massive amount of golden energy gathered at the end of Vesper’s weapon. It rolled up her arm, constricting tightly around her shoulder as she focused the energy into the blade. Sky felt his skin tingle where the electricity crackled, illuminating the room in a burst of bright light. It pushed the shadows back, revealing the countless, grotesque faces that were embedded into the bark.

Sky took a step back as Vesper finally released the gathered energy. The sheer force of it blew him back, as a mass of white light rocketed from the point of impact and crashed through the grove.

BOOOOM!

Dozens of pale trees were uprooted and thrown from side to side with the sheer fury of the strike, not to mention the dozens more that had their trunks bisected by the energy. Roots lashed at the air as they tried to rearrange themselves at the base of the great trunk in a last ditch effort at defense, but the beam of light tore through them, and finally the monster tree itself.

The mighty trunk gave way as its bark split open, revealing the mass within the wood. Then the tree screamed.

It was more of a sound of hundreds of people in excruciating pain, a horrible screech and wail, but regardless, it was unmistakably a sound, and the walls of the great underground fortress shook with whatever magic had reinforced them.

"Did that... help?" Sky asked.

Chloe turned to look at the tree, her fingers flying over her datapad.

"It worked!" She looked over the data a bit more. "But not enough," she said.

Sky followed her line of sight, watching as the tree began to heal itself, the damage to its vast body knitting together at a near impossible rate.

"So we’re just getting in the way until we figure it out?" Sky grunted.

"More or less," Chloe replied.

A large bundle of roots shot out at them, faster this time.

Sky ducked and rolled, feeling the residual numbness in his legs recede, replaced by the powerful feeling of adrenaline - his feet were still slower than he’d have liked, but they were enough. He rolled under one of the bundled roots as a hot line of friction ran across his side.

He pushed off the ground, twisting his body, barely avoiding another tendril, and slashed through three more with the same motion.

Black, corrupted energy swirled out from the severed roots, evaporating in the air with Vespers light. "There has to be a way to kill it!" Chloe said.

Sky turned his attention back to the tree, watching as she tried to parse through the information. "What about this?"

Chloe pulled up a secondary display and magnified an interesting part of the tree’s structure. On the outside, everything seemed fine. The layers of bark, the energy fields were similar across the board. But then she opened it up, revealing a single, relatively small patch of completely solid black.

Sky followed her gaze and frowned. "The core? "

"The core of the tree," Chloe said.

Sky frowned. "It’s all connected."

"Yes," Chloe said, zooming in closer once more. "Everything else is connected to this."