Chapter 286: Hunters And The Hunted

“She made it inside,” Needle announced to the other Coreless. There were a few whoops, intermingled with bursts of [excitement] and [satisfaction]. “There’s two guards still at the gate. No visible change in wariness.”

Ignoring the interplay between the faithful and disciples, I focused on my task. It had been difficult for the Coreless to demonstrate to me what they wanted to do, but I eventually understood. More than that, I approved. Because, defying my previous punishment for the very same act, the blasphemers had continued to do what they so loved to do.

They had attempted to defy the Great Core. Even worse, they did so by capturing some of the weakest of its followers and using them against the faithful. The tiny Coreless, as powerful in faith as they tended to be, were all but useless in a fight. Even I might be able to overpower one in pure physical strength, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I was particularly weak in that respect.

All in all, I was furious.

Only the knowledge that I could only bring those I personally killed back from the dead kept me from simply slithering towards the blasphemers. If I did that, the tiny Coreless would almost surely die. And every lost member of the Great Core’s faith was an unimaginable tragedy. Especially when they still had room to grow into so much more. I had already noticed that the tiny Coreless who bore my [Little Guardian’s Totem]s were slowly becoming infused with mana in the strange way that the Coreless all seemed to - and they did so more noticeably than the other faithful, probably due to their smaller size. Or maybe it was just a result of still physically growing while connected to the Great Core’s power.

Either way, I refused to lose them to the blasphemers. They would survive. They would thrive. And they would bring glory to the Greatest of Cores in doing so.

I pulled at the threads of time around me, gathering them up in preparation. Before, the faithful had avoided planting seeds too close to the place that the blasphemers defended. Now, however, we were doing the opposite. I just had to wait for the right time.

…it hadn’t come yet.

I hissed impatiently, taking a break to look towards the nearest Coreless. They were making noises among themselves, but I struggled to follow even more than I normally did. Not all of them were of the Great Core. It would have bothered me, normally, but I recognized a few of the faithful at their head.

I could feel the [conviction] in their hearts. They would not have brought a group of the faithless without reason.

“...are we sure about this, Ewan?” one of the faithless asked. “I know they keep refusing us entry, but this seems extreme. Surely there’s a more peaceful way. We can keep protesting. It’ll work.”

“I s’pose you’re right,” an older male Coreless, a faithful that had come with the faithless, answered from beside him [acerbically]. “How many people you reckon we’ve had shouting at their doors at once? Skies, we probably only need one or two more, and then they’ll see the light.”

“Kel may be a bit of an ass, but he’s right. We wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.”

“...I still don’t feel great about it. I know we agreed that a simultaneous protest at home to help tie up the guards and prevent reinforcements here would save lives in the end, but…”

“But you’re worried that I’m wrong about what’s in there.”

The faithless twitched, looking away. “This is all just a lot more than I expected,” he said, motioning towards the rows of faithful that waited for their signal. I turned to look at them, and those who noticed bared their teeth [eagerly] in my direction.

The lines of faithful, recently blooded in battle against the bad-things, looked dangerous - but not to me. Many of them had formed the image of snakes upon the second skin covering their chests, each colored with paste formed from crushed plant-flesh. Others had gone a different direction, applying the paste to their very flesh. Their fangs were readied before them, sharp and lethal.

I loudly hissed my approval, receiving an outpouring of [excitement] from the faithful and startled jumps from the not-yet-faithful.

“...Skies, are we sure that thing is safe?”

“Don’t you be lettin’ anyone hear you askin’ that,” the same older male faithful from before drawled, the noises he made long and drawn out. “Look at all this,” he said, hands motioning towards the plant-flesh around us, as well as the tree-nest that we were currently housed in. “None of this was here until just now. It’s all new, all free. That earns more’n a little goodwill, I’d think. Not to mention everything else that snake you’re so scared of offers.”

I let the noises of the Coreless wash over me, more concerned with the growing tangle of time that I was wrapping my coils around. [Verdure Parasite], by now, had many sources of plant-flesh to draw from. The faithful had been working hard alongside me, nurturing their growth and renewal.

Soon, I would have to draw from all within reach; I would need to move fast, to grow fast.

I let myself fall into the connection I held with the Grateful One’s [Little Guardian’s Totem], riding along in her perspective so that I could more easily know when the time to act had arrived.

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It was always an odd sensation, sliding into the skin of one of the Great Core’s faithful. Feeling them move, while I simply watched from somewhere hidden within, unable to direct those motions myself. It was even stranger in the case of the Grateful One. Of all of the faithful, her motions were the most distinct. More controlled than the others, as if each step she took was exactly the same as the last. It was oddly comforting; unlike with some of the others who I had observed in the same way, with such little variation to pull at my attention, it didn’t take long for me to tune out the sensation of walking on legs.

I followed along as she walked beside one of the blasphemers. Her nonaggression would have been confusing if I hadn’t felt the repressed [revulsion] and [anger]. But, with the link between us, it was easy for me to understand what she was doing.

She was waiting for her chance - for the opportunity to begin an ambush.

I could feel the plant-flesh sifting around in the skin-mouth at her back, ready to grow at a simple command. It took a particular effort of will to keep myself from forming my own ambush with an eruption of growth, ruining my disciple’s careful planning, but I refrained. Things needed to be just right; a perfect coil that led to a deadly bite.

There would be no mistakes.

“...just up ahead,” the blasphemer was saying, the noises infected with a slight tremble.

My disciple bobbed her head, our shared vision moving up and down briefly. The repressed [anger] that I could feel within our connection began to coil, like the tension before a strike. I tensed along with it; I may not have understood what the noises of the blasphemer meant, but I could at least feel the growing readiness of my disciple.

The time would soon come.

My disciple and I, in our shared perspective, stepped through a moving-wall. It was guarded by two shining blasphemers, their ore-flesh sparkling with mana. I would have hissed in derision at the pathetic sight of one of my age-old enemies if I’d been able; the moving-wall was so weak, so useless, that it required the aid of two additional blasphemers to do the very thing it was designed to do.

Protect. Defend. Block.

The blasphemers, just as useless as the moving-wall itself, could only watch as my disciple demonstrated the weakness of their design. With a simple touch, she forced it to surrender. The moving-wall swung inward, shying away and abandoning its duty.

My disciple entered the innermost sanctum of the blaspheming Coreless, and I saw them. The smallest of the Coreless. The ones that we were looking for. They were smaller than even I expected, with the sunken cheeks that came alongside an inability to hunt for food. They were dirty, too, more than the tiny Coreless tended to be.

My disciple’s body started to tense, but only started - with an impressive control over her own body, there was only enough time to faintly notice what it had tried to do before it had been halted. Even that was only noticeable to us. To the watching blasphemers and the humiliated moving-wall, there was no sign that anything was amiss.

No hint of the burning [rage] that began coursing through my disciple’s veins - nor that of mine.

She moved her head back and forth, slowly looking over the numerous tiny Coreless. Her working hand started to undo the threads of the giant skin-mouth at her pack, the other dangling limply at her side. I noticed the glow peeking out from within, the light of numerous Little Guardian’s Totem]s spilling out from between seeds of plant-flesh.

“...this is all of them?”

The blasphemer who had accompanied her inside stiffened, seeming to not know what noises to make in return. His hand started to nervously tense around the rod of darkwood and shining ore-flesh that he carried by his side, though he didn’t go so far as to bear it - as if something within him understood that he should be nervous, but he didn’t trust that instinct enough to act on it.

He should have trusted it. Instead, he bobbed his head. “Yes, ma’am. It’s more than enough to keep the miners in line, I assure you. There won’t be any problems with this year’s delivery.”

My disciple sighed. “Excellent,” she said, dropping her skin-mouth. The impact of the fall forced the overfull skin-mouth to vomit, its meal of plant-flesh and Little Guardian’s Totem]s spilling onto the stone.“That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

The blasphemer bared his teeth nervously, eyes shifting to the vomiting skin-mouth. He seemed unsure about what to do, alternating between baring his teeth and closing them again.

My disciple lunged forward, pulling free the fang at her side. I reacted as quickly as I could, having already felt the coiling tension within her body, and caused the plant-flesh to burst into life. [Verdure Parasite] did what it did best, forcing the seeds to bloom with overwhelming speed. By the time my disciple’s fang had removed the blasphemer’s head, slipping between the gaps in his ore-flesh, the first bits of plant-flesh had already grown to fullness.

I directed their growth backwards, entangling the moving-wall and blocking the entrance of the startled duo of blasphemers behind it.

The group of little Coreless, startled, did what little ones did. They shrieked. They screamed.

“Sorry kids,” she grunted [sympathetically], trying to shake dead blasphemer flesh from her fang, where the death mana within it had tried to fuse with the newly formed gore. “I know it’s scary, but I’m here to help, promise.”

Whatever noises she made, they didn’t work. The tiny Coreless continued to wail, unable to understand what was happening.

“Skies, I didn’t plan for this part,” my disciple muttered. “How do I calm them down? I was never that good with kids.”

While she made noises to herself and the littlest Coreless, I continued to twist streams of time around the nearby plant-flesh, working to turn the area into an unassailable nest. One worthy of the Great Core, that no amount of bad-things or blasphemers could break through.

Then, with a disorienting jump, I pulled my perspective back towards my own body. The faithful and the faithless were still making quiet noises at one another, but my sudden hiss - enhanced by [Sound Shaping] to carry to every surrounding ear - forced them to stop.

“Is it time?” one of the faithful muttered under their breath, their connection flooded with a mixture of pure [hope] and fiery [aggression].

I pulled at [Illusion Spark]’s stores of light, giving my faithful the signal they were waiting for.

It was time to hunt.