Etienne knew he should be feeling despair, that he should be panicking, that he should be afraid! He could feel himself . . . breaking, crumbling away as his human body sank bit by bit further into the mass of the monster that had grown from him. It was already up to his elbows, and though it was slow it was still faster than it had ever been before.
He should have been desperate for rescue! For escape! For even a hint of hope!
He should have been terrified!
Instead, there was only a sort of giddy exhilaration that seemed to be sweeping over him, numbing his emotions, burying all his despair and apathy. His anger, his frustration remained, but it was all directed outwards, no longer turned internally, and even then, it was a languid, almost sluggish thing.
Maybe this was how it felt to take drugs, some small part of him wondered. Being able to all but ignore the world around him and simply enjoy letting his misery go. Inflicting it upon the world rather than himself.
He could see himself moving, see the monster that had grown from him attacking the winged figure, but it failed to connect to him, to stir any sort of emotional response.
Was this disconnection due to the monster? Some corner of his mind that was unaffected was screaming at him, shrieking that this, his feelings, his emotions, all of it, was all just something to keep him docile. Whatever change the monster was undergoing, part of it was pumping something into Etienne that was lulling him into an unresisting stupor so he could be easily absorbed. He could see it, could hear his reason working it out, but just as before it didn’t seem to reach him.
Instead, all he did was watch. Watch as his monster surged forward, almost entirely healed as its arms lashed out at the winged demigod that had dared to attack it.
The first blow was blocked by that shield. So was the second, and the third. However. the fourth blow left cracks snaking across the protection, and the fifth caused it to shatter! Shards of clear energy scattered into the air and then dissolved into nothing, but the beast that had grown from his flesh paid it no mind. It just continued to lash out, though no longer with the wide and wild swings it had been using before. Now the thick tentacles came in like darting snakes, the claws on their ends aiming to stab and skewer like spears.
The demigod moved, his speed impressive but he only just managed to avoid the attacks. He was being driven back, the savage attacks kept him pinned, unable to take to the skies again, not unless he was willing to be stabbed in the attempt. Etienne blinked slowly as he realized that was an idea he’d had, a way to keep the winged figure from regaining the air. It had been taken, stolen, devoured. Again, he knew he should have felt fear or outrage, but there was none.
The other demigod was now backed up against a tree. Not a bad move, Etienne thought dully, with the thick tree behind him he couldn’t retreat anymore, and if he tried to go up then the thick leaves and branches would slow him down enough that the tentacles could get him. Was it checkmate? Had the monster used his ideas to trap its prey?
The French demigod felt the body beneath him rear up, the muscles under its hide bunching in preparation. Then he was moving, the massive form he was a part of striking so fast that Etienne could feel the wind whistling by around him. He could feel the maw of the beast opening wide, and smell the rancid scent of its mouth. To either side all its tendrils, both the larger combat ones and the smaller and more delicate ones, flared out, ready to catch the winged figure no matter which direction it tried to dodge in.
He wondered what would happen after the other demigod was eaten. Would the hunger be satisfied? Would the magic that practically dripped from the winged figure be enough to satiate its craving? And if it was, what would it mean for Etienne? Would the monster go back to sleep after it had eaten? Or . . . or would it do more? After devouring the magic of the other demigod would it start to change more? Would it start to consume the man it had been born from even faster?
Did he even care at this point?
The young Frenchman’s flood of questions was cut off by an explosive crack as an eruption of roots and soil burst up in between the monster and the demigod. He just had time to blink in surprise before the beast he was a part of careened into a spike-like boulder the size of a car! There was a terrific impact, the loud crunch of something breaking, and even through his haze of indifference he could still feel the pain that erupted from the maw of his monster.
It took him a moment to understand what had happened, and even in his near stupor he could still feel a trace of amusement.
The monster he was a part of was huge and had plenty of mass backing it up, but even so, it was still flesh and blood. The portion of the boulder that had come out of the earth must have weighed tonnes, and there had to be even more of it still under the ground. As such when the gaping maw, open and ready to devour the winged demigod, slammed into it the result had been much akin to a car smashing into a large tree. The sharp point of the boulder had torn through the left side of the beast’s gaping mouth, ripping out teeth, muscles and bone as it did so. Blood and drool flew about as the monster born from his flesh thrashed, trying to free itself, but momentarily caught.
A second loud crack drew Etienne’s attention back from his drifting thoughts. This time the sound was different from the sound of emerging stone, instead it sounded more glass-like.
Blinking he saw that, once again, shards of colourless energy sparkled in the air around the winged demigod before fading away. Then there was a blur of motion, black and white clashing too fast for him to see it clearly. The fog around his mind seemed to . . . shift slightly, not letting him go, not growing thinner, but maybe opening just a bit. He could feel his thoughts getting just a bit sharper. He still felt muzzy, disconnected even, but his mind no longer felt so slow.
The blur came again, but this time he was able to understand what it was. The monster was free of the stone spike now, even though he could still feel pain radiating from one side of its jaw and had reared up once more. From his position above its mouth, the French demigod could see the clash before him.
The winged figure was still grounded, but he wasn’t helpless. Once again, his shield had been shattered, but that didn’t mean he was helpless. The boulder between the monster and its prey was making some of its blows on one side awkward, though they remained strong. It did make them slower though, enough that their target was able to dodge them.
That still left him with the tendrils on the other side, but he was managing to fend them off. Even as divorced from the situation as he was Etienne couldn’t help feeling a tiny spark of interest flare up at the sight. Rather than fighting with fire or magic the winged figure was using his feathered limbs themselves as both weapons and shields. Even as he hovered in the air he was able to bat aside blows and retaliated with the sword-like feathers on his wings. These retaliatory strikes weren’t able to completely sever the tentacles they hit, but they were able to hurt them, even if the wounds quickly healed. Etienne could feel the echoes of the pain, and feel a growing frustration from the monster he was a part of.
The hunger was being denied, and deep beneath the overwhelming need to devour and consume, there was something that might be thought, something that realized it was being delayed. Something that could hate the existence of that delay!
The shift in the battle came so quickly that Etienne almost missed it. There was another blur of motion, a loud crack, and a scream of pain, then the other demigod was crashing to the side, bouncing off a tree before tumbling into the underbrush.
In his mind’s eye, the young Frenchman saw it happen again, his thoughts catching up to his senses. The tentacle had come in faster, harder than before, but just before impact, it had stopped. This abrupt arresting of its momentum had caused the end of it to crack like the largest and most vicious bullwhip ever. There had been no skill to the blow, just power, but in the end, it had been enough.
A wing that had been coming up to defend against a blow buckled beneath the sudden force, the crack of bone was easily heard as one of the longer bones just snapped, unable to stand up to the immense pressure so suddenly placed upon it. The demigod’s face had paled with pain, but even as a cry of pain burst free from his mouth another blow was coming at him, and this time there was nothing to block it!
The world snapped back into focus as his monstrous self surged around, the muscles in its main body working with its multitude of smaller tendrils to make the movement unnaturally sinuous. Even though its target had been thrown off to the side it was quickly able to reorient upon it. There was a moment where it paused, and Etienne could feel something in its mouth cracking back into place as it finished healing, then it surged forward again.
However, this time its charge wasn’t met by a rock, rather it collided with a fireball!
It wasn’t as large as the last one Etienne’s monster had been hit by, but it was still potent. Strong enough to halt the beast’s charge. Strong enough to hurt it. The French demigod again felt pain and smelled the scent of burning flesh. Still, it wasn’t enough. A snarl echoed forth as the monster reared up again, the burns upon it already healing . . . only to be met by a crackling fork of yellow lightning!
Etienne felt that one, felt the jolt run through him, felt his muscles lock up, only to be followed by pain a moment later. His chest felt tight, and for a moment he wondered if he was having a heart attack, then the feeling receded, washed away by the fever-hot warmth of his healing.
As he blinked his eyes, trying to recover from the shock, he became aware of a noise echoing through the clearing. It was . . . strange, out of place. It sounded like the ring of a tuning fork, a single note that went on and on. But rather than fading away, it was growing louder and louder.
Then an icicle the size of an infantry spear pierced through one of his tentacles, almost completely severing it, and the sound was unimportant.
The attacks kept on coming, fireballs, icicles, cutting wind, stone cannonballs, lightning, and even beams of searing light! It was only one at a time, but as the strange note grew louder they came faster and faster. Blood flowed from dozens of wounds now, and the pain was no longer just a distant echo, now he was feeling the pain himself. The attacks were wilder than before, less accurate, and some of the cutting wind had left a gash along his shoulder, and though it was healing as fast as the monster the spike of agony it sent through his body had been his own.
The lassitude that had been all but drowning him before was burning away now. Emotion was starting to take a grip on him again. These weren’t his emotions though, at least not entirely, the anger might be his, but his anger wasn’t directed at the other demigod as this was. He was angry at the situation, at the world, at whatever god-forsaken trick of fate had left him as this monster where so many others had become heroes out of storybooks. However, that anger was getting swept up in the rage of his other self, the monster that was part of him and yet not him. It raged, and so did he!
He advanced, even as the flesh was burnt from his bones, even as his muscles spasmed tore from electrical shocks, even as ice and stone rained down, he advanced! Like a soldier forcing himself forward through the winds of a gale, he advanced. Like a beast from the depths of the ocean fighting against a fierce current, he advanced. Like a madman charging into the ranks of his foes, he advanced!
It was difficult. Large as his monster was, the attacks being rained down upon him were powerful. They would have been enough to blast him back had they caught him unprepared. Instead, his tentacles stabbed into the earth to act as anchors or wrapped around nearby trees, anything to help him push through the onslaught. Thinking of it as a wind was surprisingly accurate, but this was a wind that was tearing away at him, cutting, crushing, piercing and burning him, even as it tried to push him back.
He felt his lips curl, and he imagined that a manic smile might well be splitting his face. Pain . . . what did it matter? He was already healing, he always healed, didn’t he? And as he healed . . . wasn’t he getting stronger? Wasn’t he getting tougher? Before this kind of assault would have hurt more, that rain of fireballs had been weaker, but it had hurt more. But now, now that he’d healed up, wasn’t he tougher? Wasn’t he stronger?
The note grew louder, and the attacks grew fiercer, but it didn’t matter. Anger and a sort of drunk exhilaration, that was all that filled his mind. The pain was there, but it had fallen to the wayside, something that no longer held meaning, that no longer held power over him.
Another searing fork of lightning hit him, this one blue rather than yellow.
Not enough.
A huge misshapen hailstone of ice, easily the size of a basketball smashed down on his side with crushing force.
Not enough.
A lance of stone, as long as a streetlight and thick as a battering ram speared up at him from below, stabbing up through the serpentine body behind him.
Not enough!
A torrent of fire roared out at him, striking at the now closed maw, pressing against it with an almost physical force, more flesh burning, more hide being seared away.
Not! Enough!
The wind assailed him, hundreds of invisible blades cutting at his tendrils, his hide, his human skin, one even slicing into one of his eyes, that half of the world going dark for a moment.
NOT! ENOUGH!
And he kept on going, his anger not letting him stop, not anymore. Hunger, anger, it was all just one jumbled mess now, along with the rest of his thoughts. Kill, eat, it was all the same. And this winged idiot was trying to stop it? Trying to stand in the way of his hunger?
“NOT ENOUGH! JUST NOT ENOUGH!”
He screamed the words as the monster lunged! It was met with resistance, more attacks, but it forced its way through. Both the man and the monster were blinded by the assault though, so all they could do was swing wildly at where they thought their tormentor to be. Etienne felt his crazed smile widen as he felt an impact and heard a cry of pain. A hit!
But still . . . not enough.
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It . . . it wasn’t enough!
I’d thrown everything I could at Etienne! Hell, I’d managed to do more than I’d ever done before! When I’d been down after my wing was broken my halo had reacted, starting to give off that note, then . . . then I suddenly felt like I could take on the world!
I could suddenly channel more of the colours, make them bigger, stronger, sharper! I’d been able to do the kinds things of I’d imagined when I heard I was going to have magic. Fireballs, lightning bolts, lasers, ice spears, almost anything I could imagine. Suddenly I was the mighty sorcerer out of my favourite books, the sort that could face off against a horde of orcs or take on a dragon.
So, I used it, I used it all and rained down as much elemental destruction as I could on the advancing monster. I could feel it, feel just how strong the attacks I was using were. Hell, I could see it! The few attacks that missed or were dodged managed to tear up the ground like artillery fire, blast trees over, and smash stones apart. I could feel that pressure growing in my head again, but this time it was worse, like a pipe forced to contain too much pressure and too much heat. I thought I felt something leaking from my nose but ignored it as I forced myself on.
I couldn’t afford to get distracted. Yeah, I might be hurting myself, but if I didn’t stop the monster then I wouldn’t simply be hurt, I’d be eaten. Not just killed but consumed!
I hit him as hard as I could, with everything I could think of. Some colours slipped away from me, my mental grip not yet strong or skilled enough to hold them. The empty grey, the roiling purple, the sickly and poisonous green, even with the boost from my halo they were beyond me. Others though, the ones I was familiar with, they responded, and came in a quantity and quality I’d never been able to manage before. Power enough that I was sure even Joan or Hadriel would have been impressed.
Again, and again, and again!
And . . . he . . . just . . . kept . . . coming!
He burnt, he broke, he bled, he froze, but it didn’t stop him! He regenerated, he healed, and he just didn’t stop, no matter what I did. I aimed at his limbs, trying to cripple him, he pulled himself along with the bleeding stumps even as they regrew. I attacked his main body to drive him back, he just forced himself onwards, uncaring of pain, healing as fast as I inflicted the damage. I even attacked the real Etienne on the monster’s back, hoping to drive it back if he was hurt, but even that failed.
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Seeing that, seeing him take everything I could throw at him and still keep coming, I felt my earlier confidence start to crumble. This was the most power I’d ever been able to draw out, surpassing anything I’d managed in training, but it wasn’t enough. And if it this wasn’t enough to beat him then . . . was I even able to?
There was no other way though, escape wasn’t really an option. That blow, the one that had broken my wing, had done more than just snap the bone, it had also broken the web of power I’d built inside myself to allow me to fly. That web had been anchored to my whole body, but some of the focus points had been in my wings, and when it broke the unfamiliar pain and the shock to the physical appendage had disrupted the web, breaking it.
I could recreate it, and re-establish my power of flight, but it would take time and concentration, neither of which were available to me as Etienne continued to advance. if I let up, if I gave him any opening, then he’d come crashing down on me like an avalanche of flesh and fangs.
And what was even worse was what I felt over the link.
When my wing broke, I’d tried to reach Etienne, tried to . . . Honestly, I didn’t know. I knew he wasn’t in control, but I thought I might be able to get him to pause, to hold back, to do something. It was a wild hope, like holding up your hand when attacked to try to get them to stop. You knew they wouldn’t, but the instinct was there.
When I opened the link, it was as though the mind on the other end was gone. Instead, all I found was a blazing inferno of rage and hunger.
Simple words couldn’t do the sheer enormity of those emotions justice. So much anger, anger at me, anger at the world, anger at everything, thick, black, and burning. And the hunger . . . it was like it had no end. A hunger that would consume everything!
I shut them out, closing the link and concentrating on using every offensive element I could think of. But even as I poured the magic into fire and thunder I could feel both rage and hunger at the back of my thoughts. Bleeding through, screaming at me! Screaming they would never quit, never give up, never stop!
I ignored it, kept on pushing, kept on attacking, kept on throwing everything I could at the monster before me. I wasn’t even really thinking about it anymore, the pounding in my head not really allowing it. Instead, I was just running on instinct, cycling through the elements I had a grip on, using them in every way I could imagine, or that just felt right!
One of them had to work! One of them had to-
The blow caught me completely off guard, so absorbed was I in trying to force more magic into my attacks. I thought I heard a voice, or was it just the echo of one, something from a moment ago that was just now filtering into my conscious thoughts?
Whatever the case, I came back to myself as my back slammed into a tree.
There had been no grace or skill to the blow, just pure brutal power. I felt things crack inside me, felt pain ripping through my spine, tasted blood in my mouth, but somehow, I managed to stay conscious.
Somehow, I managed to half shift half fall into a sitting position, my back to the tree, even though the slightest movement was causing me agony. I really only managed it because my limp wings were pulling me into a sort of middle position, both of them splayed out on the ground. Distantly I worried about them getting dirty, then, as another bolt of pain ran up my back, I wondered if I should be more worried about my spine.
Coughing from a sudden tightness in my chest I lifted my eyes to stare at the monster, trying to see what it was doing. To my surprise it wasn’t rushing straight at me, rather it was slowly rising up, like a cobra lifting its head. The long tendrils that came from its frontal portion rested on the ground, though I couldn’t tell if they were dangling down or propping it up.
It wasn’t facing me right now, but as I watched I saw it slowly begin to turn. Its sudden slowness after the frantic action of the last few minutes was jarring, disorienting.
Still, what did it matter how slow it was? There wasn’t much I could do about it. I couldn’t move, my limbs just didn’t respond. If it weren’t for the fact that I could still feel their pain I might have feared that my spine had been snapped.
But worse than that, I was just spent, I had nothing left. I’d been burning through my stamina like crazy as I got stronger, knowing that escape wasn’t an option anymore, not after it cornered me. At that point my only choices were victory or death, so why try and preserve my reserves of power?
Before, I’d had momentum on my side. As I pulled from my reserves I’d been able to drag more out, the act of constantly draining it making it easier to keep up a continuous major flow. As my reserves dwindled down it’d been harder to keep up, but that was where the momentum played its part.
Well, it had worked. I’d managed to throw massive amounts of magic at the monster, and I no longer had the strength to drag out any more.
True, my reserves weren’t completely empty, and they were refilling as my enhanced vitality allowed me to recover magical energy fast, but that didn’t matter. What was used up was my ability to convert it, to use it to conjure up any sort of offensive force. I’d pushed that part of me too far, and like an overworked muscle, it had just given out. It’d probably heal in time, but not soon enough!
Above me, even my halo seemed to reflect my exhaustion, the note that had once echoed so clearly now sounding dull and faint. It sounded like a dirge of sorts, a final mournful send-off.
My body wouldn’t move, all I could manage was spasmodic twitches. My magic still reacted, but felt numbed, uncoordinated. My head was pounding too much from pain, pressure, and disorientation to really think about anything. I was trying to clear it, but everything felt off, wrong.
A shadow fell across me as Etienne’s monstrous form finished twisting about. For a moment all I could do was blink up stupidly. Then, as the maw opened and it started to move closer, it finally clicked into place.
I was going to die.
The confusion burned away like morning mist under a hot sun, but it didn’t do me much good since my body still refused to obey me, and my magic was no better. Twitches were the best I could do when I tried to move, and tiny sparks were all I could produce, rather than lightning bolts or fireballs.
Nothing!
That was all I could do, nothing that would save me!
Maybe the creature that was growing out of Etienne somehow sensed it too. Earlier it had moved like lightning, now it had the ponderous slow inevitability of an oncoming glacier. Was it taking pleasure in my fear? In my frustration?
I’d heard that some animals tormented their prey because it made them taste better. The chase, the fear, it released hormones and chemicals in an attempt to stay alive. Such things apparently spiced up the flesh.
Was that what I was dealing with?
My vision blurred as my eyes began to tear up, a mixture of frustration, despair, and fear making them well up. I blinked, trying to clear them, but only felt my frustration grow as I realized I couldn’t even reach up to wipe them away.
I . . . flailed, that was the only way I could think of describing it. Sat there, paralysed, watching the monster that wanted to consume me drawing closer, I did the only thing I could and just flailed about with what magic I had left. There wasn’t any thought to it, no plan, no reason, just the frantic flailing of the desperate.
I first felt my opportunity not with my magic, but rather with my flesh. The tree I’d smashed into had been right at the edge of the clearing, enough so that the underbrush had grown up around part of its trunk. I’d been trying to make a fist, but instead, my fingers had convulsively clutched at the dirt.
It was only when my arm twitched, jumping to the side a bit, that those convulsing fingers finally curled around something other than loose dirt or empty air.
I only noticed it because of the pain, otherwise I might have been too focused on the oncoming monster. Still, the feeling of sharp thorns digging into my palm was enough to draw my attention, making me realize I had a death grip on the bramble.
This wasn’t one of the ‘domesticated’ versions of the plant, the ones bred for large berries and small thorns. This was a wild bramble, the sort that defended itself with the kind of thorns that looked as though they’d happily tear the flesh from your bones if you stuck your hand where it didn’t belong. Thorns that curved almost a centimetre out of the vine.
Thorns that were now embedded in my skin.
What happened next would have been a brilliant tactical decision, if I’d done it consciously. Instead, it was an action of pure reflex, nothing more.
Even as I looked down at what was hurting me I’d still been flailing around with my magic, mindlessly trying to find something, anything, that I could use it on. As soon as I looked down and my mind made the connection between the pain and the bramble vine I was clutching, my magic made the jump.
It was absurdly easy, probably because of the thorns digging into me, soaking in my blood. Magic and blood share a deep connection, with blood being quite possibly the simplest and oldest method of using magic. Blood had many properties, or so Joan had told me when giving me a grounding in some of the basics of magic, but its best was as a conductor for magical energy.
My magic was looking for an outlet, one that could somehow help me, and here was a vine soaked in my own blood. With all the ease of electricity shooting through a soaking wet towel, my magic jumped to the bramble and immediately went to work.
It wasn’t a sophisticated use of my power, not like how I’d worked on the cherry trees, or the other plants back at the farmhouse. Instead, my magic slammed into the plant with only two overwhelming imperatives; ‘Keep me alive’ and ‘Stop the monster’, nothing more.
When using magic, control is paramount. You never let the magic just run wild. Doing so made it powerful, but also made it unpredictable and dangerous, that was something Joan and Hadriel had repeatedly emphasized to me. The consequences of uncontrolled magic could be . . . messy
What I was doing was dancing on the line between maintaining my control, and simply throwing power at the problem and seeing what happened. Fortunately, even in my scattered mental state, the halo helped me to imprint the basic imperatives that were in my mind onto the magic, something that probably saved my life.
The entire bramble, attached to the vine I held, practically erupted outwards. The whole thing grew so fast that for a moment I honestly thought the underbrush was exploding. Long stems, almost tentacle-like in their growth, shot towards the monstrous form of Etienne, wrapping around the nearest limbs, and growing along them.
The monster did not react violently to those first growths. If anything, it seemed to be more puzzled than anything, at least as far as I could tell. No, puzzlement was too human a concept to apply to it. Rather, it was as though it had been expecting a more dangerous attack, and was uncertain as to what to do next after having seen how weak what came was. With a simple shift of its weight, it broke the stems, then continued onwards, ignoring the new growths that followed them.
That was a mistake.
The first hint the warped monster got that things were going wrong was just as it got closer to me. At that point, my thoughts were coming back together into some sort of cohesion, and I could have sworn I saw saliva leaking from the corners of the maw, as though it were drooling in anticipation. Then I saw its muscles bunched to move it forward . . . and it remained in place.
I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or it. I still wasn’t too aware of what was going on at that point. When the stems that had wrapped around Etienne had been so carelessly broken, I’d given up on them but kept pumping in the mana anyway, because it was all I could do.
My eyes flicked around the clearing, taking in various sights like pictures, then trying to make sense of it. I stared in incomprehension, then the pieces clicked together, and I could work out what was happening.
The bramble I’d been flooding with my power had spread across the whole clearing like some sort of plague, the vines dipping into the ground, then coming up again as they grew. From where they had been pulled out I could see that they’d dug roots into the soil, long and deep roots to fuel their growth.
And they needed that fuel. The first stems, the ones that had been so casually broken had been about as thick as my little finger, but otherwise normal. These new vines . . . they compared to those first ones in the same way a tiger compared to a housecat. Each one was thicker than my wrist, the thorns on them looking like some unholy cross between daggers and meat hooks. Even the leaves were dangerous, large and leathery, and lined with smaller hooks along their edges. For a moment I thought back to childhood memories, to tales of Sleeping Beauty and a castle choked with briar thorns.
But this was no fairy tale. The brambles bit into the earth, emerged again, split, split again, dug into the soil again, then grew more. Again and again and again. Shoots growing off into their own vines, only for more shoots to grow from them. In short order, the bramble I’d been empowering had become a veritable tide of brown stems, green leaves and grey thorns. A tide that had engulfed the back of the serpentine monster and was moving to swallow the rest of it.
There was a moment, a split second that seemed to stand out to me. Maybe it was some mystic talent that I hadn’t been aware I possessed, or, more likely, it was my still somewhat concussed state. All I knew was that in that instant I could feel the world teetering, balancing on the weight of a single choice. And what made things worse was that it wasn’t me who was making the choice. It wasn’t even Etienne himself who was making it, I could tell that from the way his eyes seemed to swim between a glazed stupor and a feverish intensity.
No, the one making the choice was the monster that was growing out of his flesh, a creature that came as close to being a mindless embodiment of hunger as anything I could imagine.
It could have lashed out at me, helpless as I was it wouldn’t have been hard. Yes, it couldn’t reach me with its mouth, not held as it was, but its tentacles were free, and I couldn’t do anything to dodge or defend myself. It could have picked me up and thrown me into its maw like some sort of snack. It could have lashed out with those hidden barbs and killed me just as easily. It could have dragged me away from the bramble I held, cutting my ability to feed the plant mana, ending the problem it was dealing with.
But such thoughts, such plans, were the province of thinking beings, of man, of the beings like man. This creature, it was just an animal, and a stupid one at that.
Maybe I was being harsh, after all, how was it to know that I was the cause of the green growth seeping over it? All it knew was that it was being attacked, so perhaps it could be said that it was natural for it to forget its food and instead concentrate on the danger. Whatever the case, the monster’s attention was diverted from me as its tendrils reached out, tearing at the vines tightening around it, uncaring of the thorns. It tore away great swathes of green, tangles of vines and stems larger than I was. But the brambles kept on growing.
I could feel it. My mind had cleared and I could now understand what I felt from the plant I was tied to. The soil here was good, nutritious if not rich, and the rain the night before still rested beneath the surface providing plenty of water as needed. The plant could grow freely, though it was unlikely the other plants in the area would do so well in the coming days. It was strong growth, but I needed more!
I gritted my teeth and forced more mana to travel through the channels in my arm and into the thorns digging into my flesh. Above me I heard the flagging note of the halo pick up once more, growing clearer and louder. I also felt the rest of my body . . . flush, as though a wave of heat were passing through me. My limbs still felt weak as a kitten’s, but the paralysis seemed to be passing.
In response to my efforts, the growth increased, both in speed and size. Longer vines, thicker stems, more vicious thorns, more, more, more!
Nearly half of the monster’s form was covered by greenery now, held in place despite the thrashing of its upper portion. I could hear the continuous groan and snap as the enhanced brambles gave way, but for every one that broke another grew to take its place. It was a question of leverage, namely that the monstrous creature had none. It had been caught by surprise and was now too entangled to break free. Any struggle it made was fought by hundreds of vines sharing the burden.
I felt a surge of hope, of excitement! Maybe I would be able to survive this! Maybe I could win!
Almost immediately after those thoughts rose up I felt something wrong through my link with the bramble, something bad. The plant felt . . . tired, weak, spent. For a moment I couldn’t understand what was happening, it had been growing like a rocket only an instant before, my magic fuelling it. So, what was wrong? What had changed?
The connection to the plant provided the answer almost immediately, the same magic that empowered its growth granting me an intuitive understanding of the plant it suffused. Water, and food, it seemed to be crying out for both, though water seemed to be the primary need. For an instant I couldn’t understand it, sure that earlier I’d felt lots of water in the ground, ready and waiting to be drunk. Then the plant provided the answer.
It had all already been drunk, used as material for the explosive growth of the bramble, and leaving the ground nearly as parched as a desert, and without water, it couldn’t draw nutrients from the soil. The growth of my plant was faltering and would soon fail. Magic could make up for some deficiency in resources, but it could only go so far.
I needed more water, more rain!
My free hand rose shakily up, the half-open fingers pointing towards the clear sky as I focused, trying to keep the flow of magic entering the bramble steady even as I tried to open up another flow from the same source. For a moment I thought back to my experiments with dual casting, levitating that tree trunk while playing around with fire, and felt a surge of satisfaction. It hadn’t been useless, it hadn’t just been a game!
As a colour weather magic was strange, a sort of blueish-white and grey that made me think of the different types of sky. It was all three colours at once, yet was able to keep the colours distinct from each other. It was an apt colour for the magic, subtle and strange.
Controlling the weather didn’t need much power, and why should it? The amount of power already present in the world’s atmosphere was immense, all I needed to do was prod it, coax it in the direction that I wanted and then let it do the rest. I could feel how easy it would be to mess things up. Weather was wild, even wilder than most forms of magic, and not something I had wanted to use at all until I had more experience.
But what I needed wasn’t a hurricane or a blizzard. What I needed was the simplest thing that weather magic could provide. All I wanted was rain.
The weakening brambles strained, breaking, weakening, but the colour of weather already flowed through me, reaching out into the sky. What was once a clear blue with only a few streaks of white suddenly became grey. Fat droplets of water started to fall, even before the clouds above had managed to gather together. The downpour grew stronger and stronger as the sky darkened, though the only place it was doing so was directly above us. Around the edges, I could see the blue of the regular sky, but above me and Etienne only the dark grey of rain clouds could be seen.
The water fell, and my bramble drank it greedily. The growth surged back to full force, then seemed to double and redouble! A strangled roar escaped the monster’s maw as it tore away at the thorny growth. But despite ripping away huge chunks of plant body with every effort it just wasn’t able to keep up. First, the rest of its back body was engulfed, then one of the larger tendrils was caught, then one of the main tentacles, then another, and another. Each tendril that was caught meant there were fewer limbs to keep the growth back, and it became easier to ensnare another limb. Blood leaked out of hundreds of tiny wounds, but still it struggled, healing them as fast as they were inflicted.
Slowly I fought my way back to my feet the thorned vine still tightly clutched in my hand. I was still unsteady, feeling more like a newly born colt trying to stand than a demigod that had just bound the nightmare of a monster. I couldn’t even use my flight to help me, all my attention was focused on keeping up my feed to the bramble. Behind me my wings dragged in the mud, soaking wet and still lacking the energy to pick themselves up. It was a hindrance, and I could feel it as soon as I took my first step, but I didn’t let it stop me.
Staggering forwards through the pouring rain I made my way towards the bound form of Etienne and his monster. It was on the ground now, the vines having grown tight, dragging it down until its belly was flat against the earth and more shoots and stems bound it in place. Bound it where I could reach it.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but it was the only thing I could think to do. It was only a vague notion, but earlier I’d managed to make a connection to Etienne when his monster wrapped its tendrils around my arm.
Maybe . . . maybe if I could establish a stronger connection then . . . something would happen. I didn’t know what, but I hoped that it would be enough to let me survive this mess!
It was only a few steps, but it took me what felt like an eternity to reach the bound monster. It would have been better to have laid my hand on the beast’s main body, a satisfying way of confirming my dominance. Unfortunately, I lacked the energy to make it even that far, so I settled for dropping down to the dirt and sitting next to a bound tentacle, mud staining my already-soaked clothing. Most of the limb was covered in the thorny vines, but there was enough free skin for me to grab the thick limb without getting skewered.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, some sort of door to open in my mind maybe. To feel some sort of flow of energy in his body that I could connect to. Maybe even to just connect again with Etienne himself.
I wasn’t expecting to be dragged into what felt like a raging storm the size of a star!