Chapter 291: The Faithful I Have Become

I stayed as far back as I could, along with my disciples. It was a strange thought, but we were all in much more danger from the blasphemers’ attacks than the newest of the faithful.

Especially me.

With [Transient Reanimation] already active, though with enough gathered life energy that I was hanging over the edge of a proper rebirth, I was only an unlucky strike away from turning everything I had accomplished with the Coreless of this many-nest into nothing but a false-life. My ore-flesh might protect me from a glancing blow, but not from the numbers that were coming. The blasphemers’ mana-enhanced ore-flesh was powerful, and there were more of them in one place than ever.

A shocking number.

A thick stream of wind howled down the length of the tunnel, tearing into the faithful and forming a mist of blood that only grew and grew. I flicked out a tongue, able to taste it even so far from the front. My disciples shifted [uneasily].

“I know that we agreed to let them handle things themselves when they asked, but…” Needle started, making [worried] noises at the others.

“They can handle this,” Will responded more [confidently]. “This has meaning to them. It may seem insane, but they need this - need to see what, together, they can accomplish.”

I stretched upwards as the disciples continued to make noises at one another, trying to see over the crowd, but the blood mist was too thick. Instead, secure in the knowledge that my disciples would keep me safe, I plunged into the invisible connections that led into that same mist.

I became one with the faithful.

I became an ancient female, once-withered flesh replaced with something stronger, and walked forward.

I became a scarred male, grunting as a burst of air tried to place new scars upon my flesh.

I became many more, my mind-self slithering between the many faithful of the many-nest, all moving as one beneath the Great Core’s light. Together, we advanced through blood and agony alike.

I leaned against a wall of stone that blocked my path; pushing, straining with everything I was worth. Flesh, weaker than the faithful’s will, tore itself apart. It restored itself, and then tore itself apart again.

Then I was among the blasphemers, striking left and right with a fang of ore-flesh. The air pushed back against me, foiling my fang. I sent it in again, [aggrieved], with the full weight of my body behind it.

Fang struck against ore-flesh. Sparks trailed in the air, whipped into the vortex that the blasphemer had conjured. He recoiled, surprised that I had reached him at all, and placed a hand against a gem encrusted into the ore-flesh. Suddenly, the winds twisted even more violently around us, sharp and threatening.

The faithful that I embodied chose to ignore it - ignore the [pain], the [worry], the [fear]. I could feel their emotions shift rapidly, as if accelerated by their own personal fast-spot. Until, finally, it settled on [faith].

They threw themselves bodily into the next attack, trusting in the Great Core to see them through. This time, with the full weight of his body behind it, we pushed through the wind. Our fang slid between two plates of ore-flesh and bit deep into the blasphemer’s side. Hot lifeblood spilled over our flesh. The blasphemer screamed, trying to pull away, but others of the faithful crashed into him from behind us before he could escape.

We buried him with our bodies.

First, the ore-flesh was stripped away, pulled apart plate by plate - and then the flesh itself. He screamed, but my Coreless never stopped. One after another, the faithful’s fangs ripped the blasphemer’s life away, until there was nothing left but blood and sinew.

We stood back up, [bloodlust] rising.

I wished I could taste the air. I wanted to catch the scent-taste of terror they exuded, carried along by the very winds that the blasphemers had tamed. I wanted to feel the moment that they realized their mistake, captured as a single breath on my tongue.

The blasphemers broke.

I felt it happen through the faithful I had become; it was a subtle thing at first, hidden beneath walls of ore-flesh and shouted orders. Their winds lost cohesion, turning from a dangerous thing of interlocked currents into lone barriers, easily toppled by the strength and tenacity of the Great Core’s Coreless.

In the next few minutes, the battle turned from a brutal struggle into an all-out rout. Only the sheer number of the enemy Coreless kept things from ending immediately; there weren’t nearly as many of them as there were the faithful, but the mana-enhanced ore-flesh that they carried made them individually more powerful than my own Coreless.

I wanted to hiss at the thought; it felt wrong, blasphemous. And yet, it was still true. The faithful were, even now, not as strong as the blasphemers with their advantages. My disciples would have been able to handle them, of that I was sure, but this was a battle not meant for them.

Like hatchlings, the faithful needed to practice fending for themselves. The disciples must have understood that, too. I knew that, if they wanted to, they could throw themselves into this fight and end it almost instantly. Distracted by the horde of the faithful, the blasphemers would struggle to react to the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s speed, to Will’s skill, to the Unrepentant One’s strength, and to Needle’s needle-spitter.

The disciples did not move to assist, even as I could feel their [desire] to do so. This was not their moment.

It belonged to the faithful.

I brought my attention back to those very same faithful, letting myself become them once more. I slipped from body to body, a serpent slithering through the wall-cracks of the mind. I became a broad-shouldered female with a shattered jaw, her teeth regrowing even as she screamed in [fury] and [pain]. I became a limping male, throwing himself forward into a waiting rod of ore-flesh, catching it with his body and tearing it away from the blasphemer who wielded it. I became the Great Core’s Coreless.

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I became [vengeance].

The blasphemers died. Some fell beneath sheer weight, dragged to the ground beneath piles of Coreless whose bodies refused to stay shattered. Others were ripped apart while standing, their precious ore-flesh peeled away piece by piece until the faithful found the softer flesh beneath.

The tunnel became slick with blood of blasphemers and faithful. Wind shrieked in every direction, its controllers lashing out wildly. It tore chunks from stone walls, strips from flesh, and bits from bone. It was indiscriminate, just as likely to flay an ally as an enemy. Yet, only one side truly suffered for it.

The faithful healed, and the blasphemers could only bleed.

One attempted to flee outright. I slithered between connections, becoming the Coreless that caught him; a young female whose face I vaguely recognized, and whose fingers had occasionally brushed my scales. She crashed bodily into his back, landing with enough force to send the escaping blasphemer tumbling across the stone floor. The blasphemer shouted, pulling an ore-flesh fang from his side and driving it into the faithful’s neck.

I could feel it catch in her throat, like a meal that refused to go down. I hissed in concern as the faithful wobbled, her vision growing hazy - and then it reasserted itself, clearing sharply. The female ripped the fang from her throat, spitting out the remnants of her forced feeding onto the blasphemer’s chest.

The bloodied fang came back down.

Geral watched in fascinated horror as the dagger came back down. The guard screamed once, and then the bloodied woman struck again - and again, and again, and again. It punched through the gaps in the armor with wet crunches that he could viscerally feel. The man tried to push her away, hands scrabbling weakly at her shoulders, but she only climbed higher atop him like some starving beast.

Around them, the battle continued to devolve into slaughter.

The glowing horde crashed into the armored guards without fear for their own bodies, heedless of wounds that should have killed them many times over. Windspears screamed through the tunnels, splitting flesh with a momentary touch, but they just kept moving. Torn muscles built themselves back up again. Broken limbs straightened with sickening pops. Skin crawled shut over exposed organs.

Undying.

The word repeated itself over and over in Geral’s mind.

What in the Skies happened out there?

Another one of the guards was dragged down screaming, disappearing beneath crawling bodies. Another tried to retreat, only for an old woman to push past his barrier of wind and slam bodily into him - hard enough to crack his helmet against the tunnel wall.

Grandmother Corinne.

Her face was streaked with blood, some hers and some not. The guard, visibly dazed, struck her across the face hard enough to shatter teeth. Geral had felt those blows before, and never wanted to feel it again.

Grandmother Corinne didn’t even flinch; she bit his hand, teeth regrowing around the flesh.

Geral felt sick.

Geral felt elated.

Around him, the prisoners stared with similar expressions, horrified fascination battling against desperate hope. More than one had begun openly weeping. Others shouted encouragement towards family members and friends fighting amongst the glowing horde.

He saw the moment where Illian’s attention turned away from the battle, locking onto the chained men and women in desperation. He witnessed the realization, the understanding that there was still a way out.

Illian lunged.

“Move and they die!” he roared, the sound reverberating against the walls. It echoed with a voice of command that Geral would have once wished he could have; he was significantly less impressed by it when it came accompanied with a spear against his throat. Geral tried to bring his pickaxe to bear, but a quick press of the point and a whispered warning forced him to drop it.

His eyes darted around, catching sight of a few other guards that had taken the opportunity to grab their own hostages - each and every one was a prisoner that had been calling out names into the crowd.

Proof that out there in the glowing horde was someone they knew, someone who cared about their continued life.

The horde came to an uneasy stop, pausing only moments before impact.

Illian cackled, the sound reedy and distraught. “That’s all it takes, huh,” he remarked, already backing away with Geral in the direction of the backside tunnel. “If you fuckers know what’s good for you, you’ll piss off before I start to remember your faces. Go home.”

From as close as he was, Geral could hear the strain in the man’s voice. He was trying his best to act unafraid, but the bravado was so thin as to be transparent. Little good that it did. The man was rattled.

“We’ll be merciful and forget about this,” the guard blatantly lied. “Now fuck off.”

I hissed within the silence of my mind-nest, watching the faithful be brought to a halt when the others were threatened.

“If you ever do something like this again, we’ll start by tearing off fingers,” one of the final remaining blasphemers shouted something that I couldn’t understand. My faithful, on the other hand, certainly did. They focused on him, refusing to press forward even as he held a fang to the wrist of a ragged Coreless. The other few blasphemers quickly took to the same idea, retreating from the faithful and placing fangs against a group of dishevelled Coreless. Even I, without understanding the sounds of the Coreless, knew what that meant. My faithful were stuck, trapped between zealous [vengeance] and [caution] for the future faithful held hostage. They looked around, uncertainly, even as the blasphemers began to back their way into the large-tunnel opposite them.

Like that, the blasphemers gave ground, retreating step by step, the faithful left [unsettled] and [unsure].

I, on the other fang, wasn’t worried at all. They moved slowly, restricted by the ore-flesh strings that held the ragged Coreless captive, and I knew exactly where they were heading.

There was no escape in that direction. I slithered across another connection, reappearing in the small-cavern of tiny Coreless, and began to observe the area from my disciple’s eyes.

Outside, [Verdure Parasite] had never stopped, the moving-wall that led into the small-cavern covered by an impenetrable array of plant-flesh from both ends. But that alone would never be enough. Not for me. After their latest threat against the Great Core’s future faithful, the blasphemers deserved a more personal touch.

The faithful had proven their mettle, only brought to heel by their unwillingness to needlessly lose the lives of the Great Core’s future faithful. They had done enough.

I would handle the rest.

I slithered down the tunnel, cloaking myself in [Illusion Spark]. It pulled at the light around me, warping it enough to give my scale-flesh the coloration of stone. Unsatisfied with that, and unwilling to allow any chance of the blasphemers catching sight of me before their death, I pulled at the thought-light.

I fed power into one of my oldest abilities.

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The light around me dimmed, absorbed into my scales with more power than ever before, and I vanished.