Somehow, when people talked about something being a walk in the park, I had a feeling that they weren’t referring to what we experienced the night after the ritually boosted attack on the Withered.
Walking into the area they had previously occupied was a fascinating experience. Maybe it was thanks to my extrasensory perception trait, maybe it was due to my high intuition, either way, I could feel the remains of their psychic web all over the place. It was utterly ripped apart, with only traces of pain, agony and incomprehension remaining, and those traces were enough to send shivers down my spine. There was nothing to be scared off, and yet, I couldn’t help but feel spooked by the atmosphere around us.
Luna might have felt something similar, or maybe she simply noticed my discomfort and reacted to that, I wasn’t sure. But I knew that she clung to my hand, occasionally shivering just a little, as we made our way through the area, towards the devastation I had wrought.
When we got closer to the park, I could feel the lingering power in the air, the cold hadn’t dissipated despite it having been an entire day, even if not a sunny day, and I had a feeling that the death I had caused here would leave an imprint, one that wouldn’t fade for quite some time.
Stepping out from between the buildings, moving onto the road from which I could see the park, or what remained of it, I froze, stopping dead in my tracks. I had been somewhat prepared for the results of my ritual, I had expected it to look like a combination between an avalanche and a hailstorm had gone through but the reality was even more impactful than I had ever imagined. There were still massive spears of Ice sticking from the frozen earth, almost like the white crosses marking the graves of unknown soldiers.
In addition, I could see the fungi I considered to be the primary bodies of the Withered, they came in countless different shapes and sizes, a few looked like the classical mushroom, but many more were simple sponges, covering the ground. Maybe they were that way to maximise the area they could cover, I had no idea and I didn’t care too much. Now, whatever their purpose had been, it was gone, simply because the incredibly violent storm I had conjured had raged through the area, piercing, shattering and ripping apart everything in the area.
The image of devastation was made even more solemn by the complete absence of movement. Everything in the park was still, it felt as if even the wind was too scared to move, or maybe it was just frozen, like everything else. Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried to focus on my magical senses, my tongue briefly flickering out to taste the air. The explosion of taste in my mouth made me almost gag, there was the familiar, comforting taste of my own, frozen power, intermixed with a bit of Wind from the ritual that had created the storm I had thrown at the Withered. To my surprise, that taste wasn’t the strongest, despite the sheer amount of power I had unleashed. No, the taste of death, both the energies unleashed by the dying Withered and by the magical transmutation I had attempted at the end of my ritual, was incredibly thick in the air.
Opening my eyes, letting some Astral Power flow into my magical sight, allowed me to get a better look at the situation. Sight allowed me to see the bigger contrasts easier, but taste made it easier to trace the nuances. Both were incredibly useful and now that I had some idea what I was dealing with, I could see the bigger picture more clearly.
And that clear image made me shiver for a moment. The sheer devastation was quite striking, the physical sight was bad enough, with the utterly ruined plants and the Icicles still sticking out the ground everywhere, even some parts of the pavement had been shattered by my relentless attack but what truly struck me was the magical devastation. That what went unseen, the imbalance of energy in the soil, would last far longer than any physical damage.
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The very earth of the park was completely suffused with the necrotic energies of death, making it obvious that nothing would grow there for a long time. There was a bit of grass, still clinging to the soil between the destroyed patches of fungus, some of the grass was squished, with large hailstones still lying next to it, but it hadn’t succumbed just yet. It would, simply because there was nothing to support life in the soil beneath, likely a result of my last-ditch strike. The fungi must have had roots, or whatever they were called for mushrooms, reaching into the ground and those roots were what I had sensed and attacked.
Once in the soil, the necrotic energies had to have spread around, bringing devastation to everything. The park, once a small oasis of life in the concrete jungle of a human city, was now utterly devoid of it, to the point that the roads around the park were more welcoming to life. It was almost ironic, but somehow, I couldn’t laugh about it.
“Wow,” Luna quietly muttered and when I looked down at her, I noticed that her eyes were glowing with a soft, silvery light. “You sure smashed them good, didn’t you, mum?” she mused, her gaze sweeping the devastation.
“That, I did,” I gave her a grin, taking solace in the fact that the destruction had been necessary. “You saw the different Withered yesterday, the Hunters, Skulkers and Husks. They were all, at least to my understanding, nothing more than toys for the entity dwelling here. It dug deep into the soil, growing and turning into a menace that might have killed everyone it could reach. Or worse, it might have grown into their brains, turning them into puppets. Alex almost fell victim to its infection, it was only a great deal of luck, or maybe fate, that saved them,” I explained. Destruction on the scale I had doled out wasn’t something pretty to look at, especially not when done in such a violent way. But Luna needed to learn that sometimes, destruction was necessary, that only by destroying your enemies, you could protect your way of life. Or in this case, only by destroying your enemies, you could gain the power to make your own path in life.
“Let’s look around,” I suggested, “We might find something interesting in the devastation. I know that the powers unleashed here were quite potent, there might be some remnants I can use in my craft. But don’t touch anything, until I had a good look and Silva, Alex, don’t even think about eating anything, I don’t care how tasty it might look,” I reminded my companions, getting a highly amused chuff from Silva.
Moving slowly, we made our way into the park proper, taking care not to step on any of the fungus, while I continuously kept my Magical Sight active to make sure there was nothing able to infect us any longer. I had no idea how resistant to the necrotic energies I had unleashed the smallest spores might be, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. The large clusters had been thoroughly smashed or pierced, to the point that I thought they had been destroyed, but fungi weren’t really something one could kill by targeting some vital organ. Not like they had a heart, brain or spinal column, at least not to my understanding, making it difficult to confidently claim that a fungus was dead.
My original training had been assuming human enemies and I had expanded upon that by reading up and studying the anatomy of different animals, making inferences from shared traits to understand more monstrous creatures. But there was nothing to prepare me for combat against fungi, so I could only use the basics and my magical detection, hoping that even fungi had a connection to the Astral while alive.
It worked for all plants I had noticed thus far, but given that a large part of my perception was centred on my ability to detect and sense connections to the Astral that didn’t mean much.
Luckily, with the entire area completely saturated in magic rather inimical to pretty much everything living, namely my own flavour of Ice Astral Power and the potent necrotic energies unleashed by the death of countless beings, anything with a connection to Life energies would stand out to my sight like a sore thumb.
Still, I made a note to be careful and later, after we left the area, disinfect us all with some Death Magic, in addition to checking everyone with my Blood Magic later, just to make sure nothing was growing on us. Or rather, in us, I had no desire to have one of us fuel the next iteration of Withered. But there might be something worthwhile to find here, something worth taking the risk.
We just had to find it.