Chapter 292: The Snake In The Shadows

I slithered further down the tunnel, following behind the blasphemers and the future faithful that they had stolen away.

It was difficult not to hiss; I wanted to let myself be known. I wanted to strike terror into the hearts of the blasphemers. I wanted to bring hope to the future faithful.

I knew that I couldn’t - not so early. The blasphemers had only recently escaped from the Great Core’s faithful, and were wary enough of their return that even I could sense it. Still, it wasn’t as if I had no options. I couldn’t hiss, but I could still prepare - and I knew that I should. It was true that the faithful were only moments away from overtaking the blasphemers, but I wasn’t them. The [Little Guardian’s Focus]es that kept them healthy didn’t work on me.

I was strong, more than strong enough to defeat the blasphemers with all of the power the Great Core had gifted me, but I was also fragile - and I’d accomplished far too much to risk the creation of a false-life. It wouldn’t be long before I gathered enough life force to undergo a proper rebirth. Then, I would be able to take more risks, with the blessing of [Transient Reanimation] to protect me from my mistakes. For the moment, I had to be more careful than that.

So, rather than hiss out my glorious ire, I silently slithered closer to the blasphemers.

[Illusion Spark]‘s new power turned me into a creature of unimaginable stealth, allowing me to slide near the blasphemers with no trouble at all.

It helped that they were more than a little distracted.

“...this wasn’t here before.”

“Skies, it’s thick. Do we turn back?”

“I’m not walking back through those skies-damned immortal monsters, hostages or not. One of them will eventually break and attack us, and then the rest will follow. Threats won’t do much of anything after that. We can only act on them once. We need the kids; that would make them think more than just twice.”

I took the opportunity to slither into position, silently passing through the place where a barrier of wind had been only moments before, released so that the blasphemers could make their noises at each other without trouble.

They likely thought they were safe from the thing that had caused them to halt, a wall of plant-flesh that had fully overtaken the tunnel ahead. They were. Even the thorns that they could throw would never be able to penetrate their ore-flesh before the barriers of wind returned. From such a far distance, there was little that the Great Core’s most leafy faithful could do.

Still, the confusion they caused gave me an opportunity, one that I eagerly sunk my fangs into.

With [Illusion Spark] hiding me, the nearby blasphemer’s unfeeling ore-flesh betrayed him. I was able to wind my way all the way up his legs without trouble, moving slowly to ensure that I wasn’t spotted; invisible or not, my own skin of ore-flesh could scrape against theirs, and the noise would alert them to my presence.

Luckily, the continued noises they made at one another were more than enough to hide any mistakes I made; by now, the remaining blasphemers had devolved into a flurry of noises that I doubted I could track even if I understood it, each overlapping over one another in a chaotic cacophony.

“...the overseer and that crazy Virtun lady are back there somewhere, aren’t they?”

“...think they’re dead?”

“...where did this come from, anyway?”

“...think it’s a monster, too. This looks like the same stuff that’s been growing all over the cavern lately. I don’t know how it got in here, but I’m pretty sure it’ll attack if we get too close. Skies-damned man-eating plants. Fuck.”

The blasphemer’s reluctance to approach the plant-flesh filled me with both pride and frustration. Pride, because even the disgusting blasphemers understood the danger that even the most mindless of the Great Core’s followers presented. Frustration, because they simply weren’t moving.

I needed a distraction before I could strike. Otherwise, a single strike could be my end.

I continued to wait, frozen and invisible near a blasphemer’s unsuspecting neck.

“...we need to push through,” one of them eventually babbled. The others seemed to respect him, looking at the blasphemer as if he held all of the answers to their problems. He did not; that was something reserved for the Great Core, and they had already lost their chance to be accepted into its light. “There’s no other option. I like our chances with these damn man-eating plants more than I like it with those immortal idiots back there - at least until we have some better hostages to work with. It might keep those idiots off our backs, even, if this all is standing between us.”

That led to a new chorus of noises, and the crowd of blasphemers shifted about.

“You, prisoner,” the same blasphemer from before snapped, pointing at one of the captive Coreless. He bent down to detach the ore-flesh string that connected the Coreless to the other captives using some other strange ore-flesh creation, then pushed him closer to the wall of plant-flesh. “You’re in luck. You get to walk in front.”

Geral tried not to tremble as he stepped closer to the strange plants that had invaded the tunnel. They weren’t a species that he had ever seen before, but he had ears to hear with. The bastards behind him had called them man-eating plants.

Somehow, someway, they’d become a problem in the city during the short time Geral had been stuck in the mines.

A problem that had even the men who burned down his home and trapped him in chains scared to enter.

And I have to go in first, he thought miserably.

Geral wondered if he should run, but he didn’t know what direction to go. With killer plants at his front and killer men at his back, it didn’t seem like there was any real way out.

At least I got to see family again before I died…

Not that he’d ever expected to see family like that. Never in his life would he have imagined his elderly grandmother somehow regrowing a good portion of her face before biting the man who’d shattered it. Now, he was struggling to imagine anything but that.

That, and the near-certain doom that waited in front of and behind him.

Still, when the tip of a spear prodded his back, Geral stepped forward. It might have been near-certain doom in front of him, but he was pretty sure the doom at his back was certain. It was just plants, right?

One of the vines, stained with strangely vibrant blues and golds, almost imperceptibly twitched - enough that he could tell himself that he’d imagined it.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t.

Behind him, the spear prodded again, digging deep enough to break skin.

Geral stepped forward.

I bid my [Spore Puppeteer]ed plant-flesh to hold steady as the captive Coreless reluctantly entered, managing manually what was normally done by recognition of the [Little Guardian’s Totem]s that the Great Core’s Coreless all carried - something that I could only do so easily because I was within view. Plant-flesh could form a worthy domain of the Great Core, but it did not make for a particularly intelligent one.

I held them back with my will, even as vines tried to curl and thorns to bristle.

In the next moment, the blasphemers’ second skin of ore-flesh spawned third skins of wind; air rushed around them fast enough to rustle the plant-flesh around them, nearly provoking them to attack despite my wish for them to hold steady - but the Great Core’s most leafy faithful were stronger than that, holding out for a later strike.

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Fortunately, I was safe from its touch after the brief moment it spent stretching past me - a moment which [Clinging Grasp] was more than enough to outlast.

From then on, I simply waited inside a bubble of howling wind, still resting on my chosen blasphemer’s ore-flesh.

The leading captive Coreless continued to move forward, and the blasphemers cautiously followed. Mixed in between them were the other captives, ore-flesh clanking loudly with every step, looking frantically left and right with every step.

Geral was alive.

Geral wasn’t sure why.

The men behind him probably couldn’t see it, but he could. In the distance, the strangely colored plants faintly twitched, as if responding to their approach, but they always settled down before they got there.

Waiting.

Watching?

I waited.

I watched.

The blasphemers continued to advance, driving deeper and deeper into the plant-flesh. Behind them, I urged the wall of plant-flesh to continue growing, spreading further down the tunnel and towards the disciples and faithful that I had left behind.

It wouldn’t reach them, but it would certainly make it far more difficult for any of the blasphemers to get away. By the time they made it that far, if they made it that far, they would be tired. Prey.

It was ahead of them that was a little more worrisome. Worrisome enough that I knew I would need to act soon. It wasn’t because I thought the tiny Coreless would be in danger. These blasphemers would never be able to put them at risk; they had already been accepted into the Great Core’s light, blessed with [Little Guardian’s Totem]s to keep them safe.

I just didn’t want them to have to meet the blasphemers in the flesh. I could imagine it now, the [fear], [horror], and [revulsion] that it might cause. The tiny Coreless would be kept up at night, unable to forget how disgustingly close a blasphemer had come to them.

It had probably been different, before they had truly been blessed by the light of the Great Core. But now that they were among its faithful, I was sure that the very sight of the revolting creatures would be enough that they would wish to claw out their eyes - and while that was a reasonable reaction, they would only grow back to be clawed out again.

I would need to save them from that fate.

Geral felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, prickling in that way they did when something subtle was afoot. In the past few minutes, he’d stopped noticing the near-invisible twitching in the plants that waited ahead. That should have been relieving, but it only made him think that something was coming.

Something dangerous.

It happened all at once; a vine lashed out in his direction, wrapping around his wrist and pulling him deeper into the surrounding foliage. It was almost impossible to resist, but somehow less frightening than Geral had expected. When he fell, it seemed as if the bush that he found his way into adjusted itself, bristling thorns angling themselves away from the man falling into their embrace.

Somehow, he landed without any injuries at all.

Elsewhere, the other captives were similarly dragged away, kidnapped by an impossible forest that had suddenly become alive. Only the guards were relatively unaffected, protected from the supernaturally mobile plantlife by a combination of metal and air.

Unaffected that was, until one of the guards dropped his spear with a terrified scream.

[Death - Wither] dripped from my fangs, plunging into the blasphemer’s neck. I pumped it through as fast as I could - though not too much. If what I was about to do was going to remain hidden, then I couldn’t make things obvious.

Mana-Infused .̸̠̑/̷̧͖̮͚͐̕.̵͙̣͍̩̜͉̏/̸̩̖̐ͅ.̸̮̙̰̖̜̾̽͌̌̽͛̾͐/̸̛̗̘̼̳͕͔͕͚̈́̈̑̅̑̚.̴͉͉͌̃̊͆̈́̄͘.̶̱̔̌̓͊̚/̸̜̞͉͙͔͖̬̇͋͜.̵̘͔͇̘͇̄̓̃͜/̵̧̺̼͖̠̮̩͚̒͒̑̂̈̿̃͠ D-

As soon as I felt the blasphemer’s soul attempt to escape into death, I twisted it. It was a difficult thing, made harder by the relatively low amount of death mana that I’d used to kill the blasphemer. With so little to work with, the connection between us was thinner; still, I made the blasphemer’s soul mine anyways, bringing it forcefully under the light of the Great Core.

It almost felt like it burned under that light, soul-stuff blistering as it attempted to slither away from its touch. It likely did, so repugnant in its blasphemy that the Great Core’s glorious light itself could manage to feel unimaginably painful and wrong.

The thought-light flickered.

Condition Met.

Core Skill - [Transient Reanimation] Activated.

Applying Reanimation.

Reanimation Complete.

In that same instant, black mist spilled from the once-blasphemer’s pale and exposed flesh, though it was a miniscule amount compared to what there might have otherwise been - with such a low amount of death mana, there wasn’t much fueling the Great Core’s newest minion’s not-life. It made him weak, more susceptible to injuries and death than others I had created with [Transient Reanimation]’s strange secondary effect, but it also made him harder for the others to detect.

With a thought-hiss, I had the once-blasphemer bend over to pick up his fang again, even as the other blasphemers turned to stare.

“Idiot,” one of them spat, shouting loudly to be heard over the roaring wind that constantly surrounded them. “If I die because you were busy pissing yourself in fright, I’ll kill you myself.”

I made the once-blasphemer ignore whatever that was, continuing to look around at the surrounding plant-flesh, trying not to give anything away. At the same time, I slowly worked my way down from his neck, still covered in the masking power of [Illusion Spark].

“Do we try to grab the prisoners?” another shouted back incomprehensibly as I reached the ground, forcing me to make the once-blasphemer ignore it once more, given that I didn’t know what the right response was.

While the once-blasphemer played as dumb as any blasphemer should, I waited on the floor, careful not to be seen. [Illusion Spark] was strong, especially now, but it wasn’t perfect - because I was the one who had to control it, and I was already trying to do so much at once. Now, between keeping the surrounding plant-flesh from murdering the now-freed captives and trying to not give away what I’d done with the once-blasphemer, it was all I could do to disguise myself as simple ore-flesh or stone.

Still, I had the plant-flesh do one more thing while I waited; they wrapped around the Coreless that they’d saved, binding them tight like the cocoon of a many-legged bad-thing. It was galling to even think it, but those horrible creatures’ creations could be useful sometimes. Held tight like that, I was fairly sure that the blasphemers wouldn’t bother to recover the other Coreless.

There was no reason to think they were still alive - at least, as soon as I caused the plant-flesh to tighten until the former captives ceased their desperate thrashing.

“It’s too late for them,” the blasphemer that all the others listened to shouted over the din. “We continue on! It shouldn’t be much longer before we find our way past all of this, and now we need those new hostages. If we try to walk past those immortal monsters now, they’ll tear us apart like they did everyone else.”

The blasphemers started to walk forward again, and I had the once-blasphemer follow behind them. It was tempting to force him to drive a fang into his supposed allies, but I wasn’t sure I could manage it well enough before the rest of the blasphemers closed in and destroyed my new minion.

If that happened, they might guess enough to start looking for me. It was better to wait, to remain a snake in the shadows, striking only when I knew the time was right.

I followed behind the wary blasphemers, already planning my next move. At least now, I wouldn’t have to worry about the future faithful being put in harm’s way. Now, there was only me.

===

Geral tried not to panic, even as his death closed in. He’d already done everything he could; he’d thrashed; he’d screamed; he’d even cried. None of it helped. Now, he was just waiting for death. Waiting for that slow loss of air in his lungs to be his last, leaving him gasping for a breath that would never come.

The vines loosened.

Tumbling out with a heaving gasp, he frantically tore himself away from his former prison. All around him, the other captives did the same, though not as freely as Geral. Unlike him, they were still tied together by the chains that ran between them.

But, miraculously and against all odds, they were alive.

He stumbled to his feet, pulling the others with him, and began to work his way back to his family. The entire way through, the strange forest did nothing to harm any of them, nothing like the man-devouring plant-life they’d been described to be - and that they’d proved that they could be.

By the time he and the others made it back to where his grandmother Corinne waited with the other somehow-immortals, clearly in the midst of debating on whether to risk following or not, he still had no idea what had just happened.

When he tried to explain, describing everything that happened - all the way down to when that final guard had screamed before the plantlife cut off his ability to see - his grandmother and the others with her seemed simply relieved. Even after he explained what the men had been planning to do, and their desire to gain more effective hostages in the children kept further in the mines, they didn’t seem to worry.

“It’s all right,” his grandmother told him. “It will all work out now. The Little Guardian will protect the children, just as he protects us all. It is what he does. Elara, that strange girl, should already be there with them, too. It won’t be long now, and everyone will be reunited again.”

“Praise the Little Guardian, whose benevolent coils shelter all,” a nearby man, covered in blood from the previous fight, said.

“Praise the Little Guardian,” others chorused back a little creepily.

Who?