Russ, Serenity, and Katya hopped out of the minivan while Red found a place to park and followed.

“Slow down! All of that is part of it!” Serenity could see its glow; everything near the lump was covered in magic that somehow seemed disturbingly wrong. It was patterned yet patternless. It almost looked like the large lump in the center of the area was shedding bits and pieces of itself, which then attempted to grow before decomposing into a slurry around the thing.

Russ and Katya halted at the edge of the contaminated area.

“There’s someone in there. He’s in pain, but he’s still alive,” Russ whispered as he started pulling bottles of water out of nowhere. “This is definitely Decay-related; I’ve seen similar things a couple of times, but never with anyone trapped inside. I don’t have enough water for this; we usually use fire when it’s this bad. Serenity, I know you can protect yourself. Can you, Katya?”

“What is it?” Katya stared at the green. “I don’t know the word. Decay?”

Serenity looked at it and started calling Death to himself. It was right there and settled over him. It did not like Decay; as much as Death could have an opinion, this was wrong.

The best way to answer Katya was in Bridge; there was a word for it. “Decay is Life pushed to the edge, Life eating itself into Chaos.” It was not even close to a complete definition, but Decay required Life and it was definitely the process of moving towards Chaos. It would be enough for her to know if she had a way to protect herself.

Katya shook herself and stepped backwards before replying to Russ in English. “Yes but not for long. Minutes at the most. It’s a good spell but not for something like that.” She turned to Serenity. “You are doing the thing. What you did for the City Lord.”

Serenity nodded. “Life does not intrude where Death rules. Decay cannot overcome its stasis.” He wasn’t certain if Katya understood all of the words he’d used, but he was also speaking to Red as she came up behind them. The explanation felt pompous, but he wasn’t certain how else to explain it. It was literally a matter of Concept. “I’ll do the best I can. I’ll be fine, but I don’t know if I can save someone who’s already overcome.”

“We need to know what happened here. There’s someone in there?” Red must have missed what Russ said. Red turned to Russ. “Can you find out what happened to him?”

“I’m listening,” Russ admitted, “But there’s been nothing about how he got here. We’d have to save him at least long enough for him to talk.” Russ looked doubtful. “If that’s even possible. I’ve never even heard of that being done for someone this far gone.”

“Listening? I don’t hear anything.” Katya looked at Russ, who seemed startled.

“I forgot you didn’t know. I’m a telepath.” Russ said it with all the weight of “I have brown hair;” it was a moment before Serenity realized his future father-in-law had said something that Serenity would have considered a secret to keep.

Katya, on the other hand, just looked puzzled. “Telepath?”

Serenity tried to translate it into Bridge, but once again there wasn’t a word. “Mind mage. He can hear the mind.”

Katya’s eyes widened. “That is a difficult magic to learn! To do it so simply; I had not realized. No wonder you do not consider yourself so unusual.”

Serenity thought there was a misunderstanding somewhere in there, but he wasn’t certain where it was. As far as Serenity could tell, Russ was exceptional - not just for a pre-Path human, but for anywhere.

“How are you doing that, Serenity? I know you’re not the threat, the thing on the ground is, but every time I look away from you I get nervous!” Red was far too close to the greenish-black sludge for Serenity’s comfort, especially since she was paying attention to him instead of the goo.

“Please get away from it.” At Serenity’s words, Red looked down and then danced backwards for several feet.

Serenity turned his own attention back to the enemy. After Red’s example, he didn’t need to lose his concentration. “Ready?”

“Do what you can. I’ll have what water I have ready for afterwards. Red, get over here; you get to carry water if you want to participate.” Russ handed the bottles he was already holding to Red, then pulled more out of the same nowhere. “If you have to kill him, death is better than where he is now. I think even he would agree.”

Serenity nodded. “I know.” He still didn’t want to kill someone that was probably just an innocent bystander. He’d done that enough in his past, even if it hadn’t happened. Serenity knew it would happen again, but the longer he could put it off, the better.

Serenity stepped into the goo. He was surprised to see that it was deeper than he’d realized; it seemed like the pavement was lower in this section than anywhere else. Had the decay-creature somehow managed to rot the parking lot?

As he stepped forward, Serenity left a trail of footprints that looked more like dirt than the near-mold he pushed through. The detritus wasn’t powerful, and it couldn’t handle even the nearby presence of a strong source of Death.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The creature itself was not so weak. When Serenity reached out to touch it, the ooze surrounding the body on the ground spread and covered Serenity as well.

Serenity could hear it screaming at him as it attacked him. The noise was incoherent but clearly angry. When he reached the skin of the body, he felt a strange sense of familiarity. He’d met the person before, somewhere. He didn’t know where and he didn’t know how he knew, but he knew they’d met.

The Decay creature tried to attack Serenity. Instead of sneaking in, it tried to burrow its way through his skin. At first, it succeeded; it managed to penetrate his skin. Serenity's skin was only human, after all, since Serenity hadn’t thought to shift back to his Chimera shape.

Unfortunately for it, Serenity’s blood and flesh carried the Death he’d brought into himself, and injuring him only sped up the rate at which he killed it. The more it attacked him, the more damaged it became. All Serenity had to do was bear the pain. This one was either less powerful than the earlier one or simply less sneaky; it was unable to embed anything in Serenity, and he never felt truly threatened. It was simply disgusting to see Life eat itself that way.

It attacked more and more fiercely as it became more and more damaged, until it realized it wasn’t accomplishing anything. There was a pool of Serenity’s blood surrounding the creature, neutralizing its castoff debris, but the blood was no longer strongly enough imbued with Death to damage the creature itself.

Serenity had spent the time he was under attack trying to devise a way to attack the creature that didn’t damage the man inside it. Most of his attack methods - spell or weapon - would damage anything they hit. He needed to somehow separate the man and the creature.

Liminality seemed perfect for that, but when he reached out with his Affinity, he could find no threshold to use for the division. The creature had entwined itself too deeply into the man to be so easily separated.

Or perhaps Serenity simply did not understand Liminality well enough. He was still learning; maybe there was a way to use it to define the threshold.

What he could do was clear out everything that was solely the creature with Death magic. He knew that toolset well and had excellent control; he could avoid damaging the man, but it would mean leaving a thin layer of the creature present. It wasn’t a complete solution, but it was a good start; perhaps Russ’s water would work for the rest.

Serenity knew he could simply kill what was left, but he didn’t know what it would do to the man. That was the solution Serenity would have taken under other circumstances, but without a healer present to replace anything important Serenity destroyed, it would probably kill the victim. It was the same reason he’d needed to work with Blaze before; Death magic could heal some things, but it was best used in concert with actual Healing.

Somewhat later, Serenity stood up, holding the man. It was noticeably more effort to lift him than Serenity expected; he hadn’t realized how much weaker his human form was until he tried to lift the man and found that it actually felt like a strain. Serenity was clear of the decay, as was the area directly around him, but his clothes were in tatters.

The victim looked human, if someone completely covered in a thin, greenish-black fuzz could be considered to look human. It at least made his nudity less apparent; it seemed that the decay had completely consumed his clothing.

Serenity wondered for a moment if the creature they’d destroyed at the mall when they came into the City had once been human. It didn’t matter; even if it had been, its sanity was long gone by then.

Serenity carried the man over to the edge of the contamination, near where Russ stood watching. “Will your water work?”

“We can try.” Russ’s mouth was set in a firm line as he started pouring water over the victim. It hissed as it hit the corruption, which bubbled fiercely. At first, it seemed to work well, and Russ spread the water over as much of the victim (and sometimes Serenity) as he could manage. More went on the man’s head directly than elsewhere, both because it was on top and because it was vital.

Russ had gone through nearly half of the water he carried when it finally burned through the layer of green Serenity had left coating the man and he started to bleed. Russ stopped pouring water on him for a moment. “Can you hold out his hand? I’m worried that-”

Russ didn’t continue the thought, but Serenity held out the man’s hand anyway. He had all too good an idea of what Russ was afraid of.

“He is still alive, isn’t he?” Serenity couldn’t tell. He knew there was Life there by the way it irritated his senses, but that could simply have been the Decay creature. The man wasn’t struggling or doing anything, so Serenity was starting to wonder.

“He’s still fighting the shard. I think this might be more rot than decay. It’s not a good sign.” Russ didn’t say anything about the condition of the victim, but his expression told the story. He didn’t expect him to survive.

Russ poured the Water of Purification on the man’s hands. It didn’t take long to break through the remaining coating. As it did, it became obvious that his skin was badly compromised; Serenity could see past it in places and the corruption continued in clearly visible threads into his flesh.

“This won’t work.” Russ capped the water bottle. “All we’ll achieve is killing him slowly and painfully. We won’t even be able to get at all of it; if he doesn’t die of blood loss, he’ll rot from the inside out.”

Serenity hated to lose. “We need a healer. Do you know any that are good enough? Rissa’s a healer, but I’m not sure this is within her skill. She’s not a primary healer.”

“We’d still have to take care of all of it, and -”

“I think I can do that. I just can’t heal him afterwards. It would take a skilled healer, since it’s not simple and it’s essentially healing his entire body.” Serenity watched the bleeding area on the man’s head close. It was slow but visible; far faster than normal clotting. As he watched, it seemed to grow a thin layer of greenish-white fuzz, which darkened as it grew thicker. The hand would take longer, since it was a much larger cleared area, but Serenity could see it starting to heal as well.

It probably explained why he was still alive; while the rot ate him, it was also restoring him with its excess Life. It was a horrifying way to go.

“Maureen is an excellent healer. She can heal almost anything.” Red fiddled with the cap of another water bottle as she carefully looked close to but not at the man.

Russ shook his head. “We’d have to take him to her. There’s no way he’ll still be - he needs this dealt with in hours, maybe minutes, not days.”

Serenity watched Russ as he worked himself up to the obvious unpleasant but necessary decision. They needed to deal with the infestation; the only possibility they had was the one Serenity had proposed, and even Serenity wasn’t entirely confident in it. Even if they tried that, they needed a healer; they didn’t have one.

Not without time they didn’t have to take the man to a healer.

Something about that thought bothered Serenity. There was a solution there, if he could just think of what it was.