Chapter 287: Gate Crashers

I slithered forward, following in the wake of the Great Core’s faithful as they advanced on the nest of the blasphemers.

The faithful moved with a practiced efficiency, their steps sure and unwavering. If only they could slither, then nothing could stop them. But, even so, it was a display worthy of the Great Core. The air thrummed with the weight of their [conviction], the thump thump of their travels shaking the stone below us.

At the edges of the faithful were Coreless with a different task than their kin; they dropped seed after seed as they walked, taking turns at driving cracks into the ground through which they could plant themselves. It made our advance slower than it otherwise would have been, but it was a necessary delay.

[Verdure Parasite] caused the new lines of plant-flesh to bloom, outlining the path that my faithful traveled. There wasn’t enough time for a true plant-flesh forest to form; I was forced to settle for plant-flesh only tall enough to encumber or restrict. Even so, I knew that it would help keep the blasphemers from escaping, and that was all that mattered.

This den of blasphemy needed to be purged, so that all who opposed the Great Core could see what came of their defiance.

I hissed, the sound only briefly interrupted when not-Needle appeared to pluck me from the ground.

“There you are,” she said. “Almost lost you behind all of these feet!”

The world blurred and, before I could guess at where we were going, we were beside the rest of the disciples again. Not-Needle was getting faster by the day, far faster than she had once been. Like the rest of the Great Core’s Coreless, her faith was resulting in rewards. The mana that coursed through the [Little Guardian’s Totem] around her neck, connected to all three nearby [Little Guardian’s Focus]es, had a notable impact on her mana-enhancement’s growth as time went on.

I almost wondered if some of the other faithful, those newest to the Great Core’s light and who possessed no real power before joining with the true faith, would eventually begin to manifest their own enhancements.

“...think she’s okay in there?” I heard the-female-who-was-not-Needle making noises at the other disciples, having stopped beside them. They were gathered in a half-circle, watching over the marching faithful. Needle had a needle-fang pressed against her needle-spitter, eyes sharp and ready to defend any faithful that needed it. An unnecessary gesture; with the power of the Great Core behind them, even the least of the faithful was more than a match for any number of disgusting blasphemers.

Still, I gave a hiss of approval for her zeal. Necessary or not, it was good to be prepared to strike down blasphemers at a moment’s notice.

“She’ll be fine,” the Unrepentant One grunted. “Girl’s gotten dangerous, even without all of our…advantages. With them, I wouldn’t want to be anyone standing in her way.”

The-female-who-was-not-Needle nodded after listening to the noises of her fellow disciple, though she remained ever so-slightly [troubled]; not enough that I worried for the state of her [conviction], but enough that I felt the need to reprimand her.

I hissed, forcing more power into the nearby plant-flesh with [Verdure Parasite] in a display of the Great Core’s overwhelming might. Stalks of greens and browns and golds and blues thrust towards the ceiling of the cavern like biting fangs, moving quickly enough to startle the faithful in charge of seeding them in place.

“I suppose so,” not-Needle replied as she peered at the new growth, her [trouble] easing. “It’s still dangerous, but not like the old days.”

That seemed enough to assuage the majority of the disciples’ collective concern, allowing them to turn their minds back toward the most important of tasks - the punishment of blasphemy. First, the-female-who-was-not-Needle glanced around, turning her head to take in the growing lines of plant-flesh that crept towards the enemy. Already, the two that stood watch at the moving-wall had grown alarmed enough to run, the first of them fleeing back into the mouth of the moving-wall in search of allies.

The blasphemous moving-wall never swallowed him; instead, it burst apart in a tide of greens and browns and golds and blues, shimmering plant-flesh lined with thorns and burrs and vines and spores, each finding root within the wooden flesh of the blasphemers’ already-defeated ally. A new mouth formed, fashioned from the plant-flesh that the Grateful One had fused into the moving-wall. It opened wide, bark-splinters forcing themselves into the shape of fangs, snapping the fibers that held themselves together as they shifted into place.

And around the new, better moving-wall slammed shut.

“...creepy,” the Unrepentant One muttered, a hint of [revulsion] creeping through our connection.

From my place on the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s shoulder, I hissed sympathetically. It was revolting. From this day forward, we would all have to live with the knowledge of what we had done. What horrible abomination we had created.

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A moving-wall that had found purpose, illuminated by the light of the Great Core. I hissed again, unsure whether to be disgusted that I had become allies with such a thing, or amazed by the Great Core’s strength, to turn even such a useless, abominable being into something greater.

The Great Core’s first moving-wall convert hissed with me, a susurrus of twisting branches, crackling leaves, and gnashing false-fangs.

“...and now we have to walk into that. Great.”

“Skies,” Geral cursed, placing a steadying hand against the nearby wall. The stone shook in a concerning way, vibrating enough to make him fear a spout of null-water would escape from beneath the surface at any moment. The world roared again, a crash somewhere else in the mines sending a small crack through the stone. This time, a small trickle of null-water did come out. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much Geral could do about it.

He, like nearly everyone else nearby, was a little tied up. The manacles chaining his legs to the other miners were just as taut as they always were, making him more liable to trip than to actually get anywhere useful.

“What was that?” one of the guards, a brute of a man named Jerac, growled irritably. None of the miners replied; they knew better than that. It wasn’t worth the risk of inflaming the man’s rage. Jerac, more than many of the others, had an extremely excessive view on venting negative emotion. He’d already shoved poor Estelle into a stream of null-water just the other day, when Estelle’sarms had refused to raise a pickaxe any longer.

It was the reaction to that act that had been the most chilling. Jerac hadn’t even been punished; not really. Just a minor tongue lashing.

To Geral, that just made things even more clear. None of them were expected to survive this. They would die in these mines, either worked to death or strangled to ensure silence once everything was said and done. But what else were they supposed to do? Even if Geral believed that, there were still the children to think about.

Truthfully, they would struggle to resist even without the threat of endangering the children. If they could have resisted, they never would have been captured in the first place. The mana-enhanced arms and armor that the guards carried made them all but impervious to any attempt to fight back.

“It’s just an earthquake, Jerac,” one of the other guards replied sardonically. “You ever heard of ‘em?”

Jerac bristled. “I know what a skies-damned earthquake is,” he snarled. “That don’t feel like one to me.”

Geral took the moment for what it was - a blessed reprieve from the neverending back-and-forth of pickaxe and stone. He let his arms fall lax, one eye kept carefully on the distracted guards, ready to spring back into action the moment any of them turned their attention his way.

It was only then that the hissing started. It was a wooden, eldritch thing - like a pair of trees that learned to speak through the splintered caress of one another’s branches. Every so often, a loud crunch broke through the susurration, as if those same trees had gone to war, turning that splintered caress into an even more splintered bite.

One of those times, Geral could have sworn he heard a scream resound alongside it. He shivered.

“Still think that’s an earthquake, fucker?” Jerac grunted, his face red with vindicated anger. He whirled in the miners’ direction, sending a jolt through Geral’s arms as his pickaxe found itself raised without any conscious direction - the automatic reaction a result of what was only a short time trapped within the mines, but felt like an eternity nonetheless.

“You lot have better keep working,” he growled, one hand rubbing at the shaft of his windspear and idly activating its enchantments. The ceiling of the tunnel shrieked, a new gouge forming on its surface, and Jerac nodded in satisfaction. His implicit threat completed, the man turned back towards the previous target of his ire. “You’re coming with me, and I’m gonna shove your face in the corpse of whatever skies-damned monster is making that noise when we’re done with it. Earthquake, my ass.”

The other man shrugged, surprisingly lackadaisical. Confident in his weapon and arms, Geral assumed. They were effective. “Could’ve just been the earthquake that let whatever made that hissing noise in, you know - and when we find it and it doesn’t make the ground quake, I’ll make sure to shove your face in its corpse.”

Jerac chuckled darkly, throwing a rude gesture at the other man that received one in kind. Then, with the air already startling to whistle as it formed a shield round their glowing sets of armor, the two set off towards the source of the sound.

“Those skies-damned assholes are at it again,” another guard loudly swore the moment the two stepped out of sight, irritated enough to be heard over the occasional crash of metal against stone - occasional only because, unlike the two that had just left, the remaining guards seemed to be taking the turn of events much more seriously. Seriously enough that Geral and the others were getting away with a more lackluster effort than they normally would. He was pretty sure that, like he was, everyone else was both too interested in whatever was going on and too grateful for the brief reprieve to force themselves to work harder than they had to - even if that ran the risk of being noticed for slacking off.

“Of course they are,” one of the more charismatic of the remaining guards, by the name of Ilian, sighed. He pointed at two more guards, motioning towards where the aforementioned assholes had gone. “Follow them. If they need it, help them out. If there’s anything more going on that we need to worry about, run back here and let us know.”

It didn’t take more than a moment for the two to nod in affirmation and dash off in the direction of the others.Geral had noticed that the others seemed to defer to that particular guard, even if he didn’t have the kind of explicit rank that would make them do so. He wasn’t sure if the man was particularly competent or simply likeable; to Geral, none of the guards could ever be considered likeable, and he didn’t have any real way of judging how dangerous any of them were.

With their mana-enhanced gear and training, each and every one of them was too dangerous to even consider fighting against - they’d already proven that when they first assaulted Geral’s home Tower.

Through it all, Geral and his fellows’ pickaxes kept falling down - and the eldritch hissing never stopped.