Chapter 18: Cruel Infestation: Part Two
I felt as though I was drowning in pain. Pain, confusion, and a crippling sense of violation, that was all that the world was to me. I couldn’t seem to think, I couldn’t seem to move. All I could do was try to endure, try to hold on until something changed.
Then something did. A surge of light seemed to cut through the darkness trying to bury me, and suddenly I could think again, I could act! The pain was still there, it still burned through me, but it no longer weighed me down, no longer stifled my every thought!
My limbs didn’t respond though, and my magic was still cut off. At least, most of it was, but as I strained against the black parasite energy that had embedded itself below my neck, I realized that it hadn’t managed to seize control over all my power.
There were nodes of power throughout my body, places where the system of channels met at larger points. I didn’t yet quite understand them. I didn’t know if these nodes were small reservoirs, tiny cores, or something else that I just couldn’t get my head around. Still, whatever they were, they held power, and there were three of those nodes where I could use them!
The first was near the top of my head, the convergence of energies practically in the centre of where my flesh-and-blood brain was. The second was smaller and a bit lower down, behind the bridge of my nose, right between my eyes. The third was smaller than the first, but larger than the second and sat in my throat, less than an inch away from where the parasite had stolen control from me.
Three points of power. Three tiny reservoirs I could tap. The only problem was that I had no idea what I could do with that power, but I had to try something!
I could feel the war that was taking place within me, even if I was cut off from it. Two forces were trying to wipe each other out, and I wasn’t a participant in the fight, I was the battleground. The new power, the bright one, the one that had freed me, had the initial edge, but I could already feel things turning against it. The darker power, the one that tormented me, was leeching off me, using my strength to fight. I could feel it, feel it draining me bit by bit, using me as fuel to feed its own strength, and I hated it!
I . . . pushed at the block, at the barrier keeping me from the rest of my body. It was an instinctive action, something without finesse or control. The power was there, I knew I could influence it, so I just shoved it against the blockage and tried to make it do something.
The power seemed to rebound off the barrier, not strong enough to pierce it. The pain in my back flared up, then dulled as the bright power surged forward, gaining some ground before it was again stalemated. I felt a moment of satisfaction at that and thought I saw some way to help. I could try to distract the invader so the bright power could make more headway, it was just a notion, but it was worth a try.
Gathering up the strength I could draw from the nodes in my head I tried again. Another shove, though this time I tried to shape it, to give the push a point, like an arrow or a spear. I tried to break through again, and if I couldn’t manage that, then I could at least make a distraction, either way was a win.
I was wrong though, instead, I felt as though the shove had gone into a pool of water where I’d been expecting solid stone. I’d been expecting resistance, an impact. Instead it just . . . fell in, the utter lack of opposition throwing me off my balance and leaving me mentally flailing.
Worse though, I felt the power I’d just used fall away from me, swallowed up and ripped from my control. Then I felt the dark taint running through me surge up, using the very strength it had just stolen to attack the bright power trying to purge it. I could feel the healing power being driven back, unable to resist the strengthened darkness.
Then I felt it, tiny, almost imperceptible, threads of darkness reaching upwards from the block at my neck. Trying to get to the nodes I controlled, trying to get at my brain, my mind!
Horrified I lashed out with the magic I had, not at the block, but at the tiny tendrils. This time it wasn’t swallowed, this time my power worked, and I could feel the threads burn. But I could also feel more coming. I could also feel something else, something faint enough that I almost missed it, but something that was so close to human emotion that it stood out amidst the inhumanity.
There, buried in the seemingly mindless aggression, there was something that was . . . content with how things were, self-satisfied. Something that was almost smug.
At that, at feeling that tiny spark of ugly satisfaction, something changed in me. Something just . . . snapped.
Frustration, anger, outrage, all of them bubbled up in me in a tide that somehow swamped my earlier fear and despair!
That force it was throwing around, that was my power! Mine! I’d only just managed to catalyse it, to spark it from raw mana into something potent and beautiful, and this thing had stolen it away from me in the instant before I could fully solidify my control over it.
I wanted it back!
The magic crackled out of the three nodes under my control, and once again the current of power slammed into that black barrier. Once again, I felt that emptiness, but it seemed shallower, not the yawning void that it had been before. I could also feel something behind it, the barrier I’d run into before.
I powered through, pushing at the power with my mind, with my will. It reached across the void, losing some strength but reaching the block. Again, it gave slightly, but I could feel it trying to flex back, to rebound and throw my efforts back. I kept up the pressure though, not giving it a chance, not giving it an opening.
A surge of dark satisfaction ran through me as I felt the pressure grow. I could feel it giving, straining, weakening. The dark thing infesting me was being forced to fight on two fronts, and it wasn’t strong enough to take both attacks. All I had to do was keep it up and . . .
My infant triumph died as I felt my attack starting to flag. I tried to keep it up, to push harder, but even so, I could feel the pressure of my magic wane. I just didn’t have enough magic, the thought hit me like a punch to the gut. The nodes in my head weren’t cores, they weren’t big enough or strong enough to generate magic the way my whole system could. I’d used up the power I could draw from them in my all-out attack. Sure, they’d regenerate in time, but it was time I didn’t have.
I needed more magic! No, I needed more power! The thoughts ripped through me as I strained to keep up the pressure for just a bit longer. Every instant I could keep it up was more time for the bright power to gain more ground. But I didn’t know if it was going to be enough, and even if it was, what if the parasite infection tried to send more tendrils towards my head? Would I be able to fight them off?
Fear gripped me, but it was quickly buried under anger. Outrage at my situation, fury at my weakness and hatred at this thing trying to drain me! The mixture of emotions surged within me, hot and roiling, but impotent! I kept on pushing, trying to hold on, even as I raged at my situation.
Then I felt it. When I’d snapped, when I’d thrown everything I could at the parasite, something had opened. It was a channel, a passage. I wasn’t sure of its nature, but I could feel it connected my magic to . . . me, to my mind, to my feelings. What came next was as simple as breathing, even though I’d never done anything like it before.
I fed my anger to my magic using that new passage, even though I had no idea how I was doing it. I could feel the emotion wane as I poured it into my magic, my earlier outrage and fury cooling, shifting from a visceral emotion to something colder, calmer. I was still angry, but it was all in my mind, more something I knew in my head than something that pounded in my blood.
I wasn’t sure I liked it, the way the emotion seemed to drain, but I couldn’t argue with the results.
My magic surged, vigour replacing the tiredness that had been creeping into it. The barrier that had begun to push back faltered, fell back and began to crack!
Anger might have faded, but satisfaction remained as I felt the parasite’s block begin to buckle.
I was going to enjoy this.
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Hadriel had not been happy with how the situation had developed.
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Yes, she had been able to help the resurrected saint get close enough to their charge for her to aid him, but once that was done there had been nothing else for the angel to do. She had stood over the prone form of the young demigod as the lady Joan had poured her healing energy into him, but there had been little else to be done. The parasite seemed to have frozen in place, its focus shifting internally as it sought to prevent its purging.
For a moment Hadriel had considered attacking the exposed part of it but decided against it. She knew more of the hellish creature was buried within her charge, attacking the exposed portion might cause the hidden part to run wild. Yes, it might weaken it, but the internal damage it might inflict on Adam before Joan could finish it off . . .
Having dismissed that course of action the red-winged angel had found herself unable to do anything save guard the saint and the demigod. The battle had shifted location away from the outer world to within the body of her charge. It was not a battle she could join.
However, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon how one looked at it, there was little for her to guard against. The parasite was frozen, no more attacks were launched, and even the wild elemental manifestations had ceased. The warrior angel stood in the field of white, her eyes fixed on the black worm-like protrusion, waiting for any hint that it would once more act. It was all she could do.
Time passed. Instants became moments, which in turn grew into minutes. The shift from action to such dead stillness was jarring, but Hadriel did not allow it to throw her off. To the side lady Joan made a small sound, but the angel was unsure of its meaning. She could see perspiration begin to form on her face and neck, see the muscles coiled beneath her skin as her face remained set in concentration.
Whatever battle the reborn saint was waging, it was not an easy one, that much was clear. Frustration continued to mount within the angel as she stood tensed and ready to act.
Then the silence of the field was broken by a sudden blood-curdling shriek. It came so suddenly that it took all of Hadriel’s self-control to keep from lashing out with her sword in pure reflex. The sound was both alien and familiar to her, and this set her teeth on edge. She had fought hell-spawn before and knew the unearthly sounds they made in pain or rage. The shriek seemed to reach high into the air, drilling into her head through her ears.
Her eyes immediately darted to the maggot-like hell creature as it flailed about, its earlier stillness was gone and its mouth opened and gave vent to a seemingly endless wail that would have made a banshee shudder.
For a moment she just stood there, unsure of what to do, then her eyes widened as more tendrils emerged from Adam’s form, the thin lengths of darkness floundering through the air in wild movements. Hadriel could see them trying to burrow back into the demigod’s flesh, only to be rebuffed, their ends unable to penetrate her charge’s skin.
That was all she needed. Maybe attacking the main body would have been foolish, but it was clear that these smaller shoots were being expelled and were trying to get back in. Stopping them seemed like something worth doing.
Her sword whipped out, a length of divine steel more than four feet in length and sharper than a razor along its entire edge. With the precision of a surgeon, the great blades sliced away one tendril after another, the severed ends caught by the lightning dancing on her blades, and burnt from existence before they could fall to the grass.
The creature’s screech rose in pitch as more tendrils were forced out, only to be severed by the angel, and as they burned Hadriel grimly smiled. At least there was some aspect of the fight she could join.
Swinging her sword once more she continued to slice any vulnerable tendril that emerged.
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Joan didn’t know what had changed, but the resistance that had been holding her back had suddenly begun to collapse like a castle of sand before the incoming tide.
Her earlier efforts had initially had some success, but the malignant infestation had rallied, its dark tendrils tearing into her healing energy and scattering it where before they had been burnt away. She’d still been able to fight, to heal Adam and purify him of the black roots infesting him, but it was a losing battle. The roots grew back, digging in deeper, forcing back her efforts.
She’d felt pain, felt her reserves of power begin to dwindle as she was pressed back, but she had not relented. The resurrected saint had one mission on the mortal plane, one task alone, to guard and aid Adam West. She refused to fail! She refused to let her weakness overcome her!
She continued to pour her magic into the demigod, supplementing her weakening reserves by tapping into her own life force. It was a dangerous move, but it was a potent one. Her magic surged again, invigorated, managing to stall the advance of the hellish energies in turn. For long moments they’d remained locked that way, a balance of power that she knew she would lose first.
Then the change had come, and she refused to let the chance slip past her.
Heedless of her own risk she pushed more of her life’s energy into her magic, feeling the parasitic infestation falling back even further as she pushed on. Pain started to grow in her heart, a burning pain that somehow made her shiver in cold, but she didn’t stop.
She was making progress; she was sure of it! The smaller tendrils were no longer fighting her, instead, they were falling back, wriggling away from her tide of light and healing. The thicker limbs, the stronger ones, still fought, but they burnt as they did so.
She just had to continue for just a bit more . . .
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The aggregate of hellish energies tried to thrash, to rend all about it to shreds, to cling, to burrow deep, to burrow back in, anything to escape the twin forces tearing at it!
Perhaps it had begun to develop some primitive shade of a mind, something that went beyond simple ingrained motivations. It was aware of its danger, of being forcefully expelled, of the likelihood of its destruction, and it was reacting.
It dug in where it could, trying to absorb more of the host’s abundant energy, even as its smaller tendrils were burnt away. It could take some power, but it was only a trickle compared to the harvest before, and even that drain was lessened as it tried to pull more.
The host was fighting back!
Its ability to parasitize the demigod it nested within was being lost, therefore it shifted to another course of action, its steps as mindless as water seeking a different path downhill.
It was not simply the host either. The antithetical energy pouring into the demigod was not relenting, burning its weaker protrusions, driving it back. Even worse, the smaller tendrils that were being driven from the host’s body were being destroyed by yet another external force.
Any one of these the aggregate could have overcome, adapted to, or overwhelmed, but all three at once was too much!
There was only one path that the two imperatives embedded in its very nature would allow. Tendrils grew serrated, no longer seeking to invade but rather to rip, to cut, to tear. Even as those slimmer limbs burnt, they sought to eviscerate the demigod from within.
It would not go quietly! If it could not consume the host, then it would ruin the demigod! That power, the channels it travelled through, all of them would be ripped and torn and despoiled by the hell-born parasite.
The demigod would die!
The demigod must die!
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I could feel my body coming back under my control, but it was a distant, almost unimportant, thing.
What held my total focus was the network of channels and nodes I could once more perceive throughout my body. Before, after I completed my core, I’d only had a brief instant to perceive my fully ignited magic before it was wrenched away from me, but now I had the opportunity to see the full beauty of it.
Unfortunately, along with my awareness of my system of ignited mana, I could also perceive the mass of black tendrils running through me like rotting roots. Everywhere they seemed to be feeding, leeching away at the power about them even as they thrashed and about.
Without knowing how I was doing it I cut off its feast. I just willed it and the magic the putrid tendrils had been devouring seemed to harden, to resist its attempts to drain it down. I could still feel the parasite trying to take more, and having some tiny success, but it was nothing compared to what it had been stealing from me before! Savage satisfaction rippled through me as I felt it trying harder, but getting nothing as I resisted.
My magic began to do more than resist, it began to squeeze the tendrils that had been draining it. I tried to make the magic sharp or spiked, something that would inflict harm, but could do nothing like that. I could control the force, the pressure, of the magic, but that was it.
Still, it would be enough.
I could see where it fought the bright power, where it was burning, and I could feel where it was being driven back.
And I could see where it was trying to tear me apart from within.
Pain of a different sort ran through me as the internal structures that my new form had developed struggled to remain intact as the parasite tried to tear them open. It was a sensation like none I’d ever felt before, as though hooks of ice were running through my blood vessels, ripping as they went, but leaving only cold and numbness in their wake. In a way it was even worse than the earlier infestation, now I could feel parts of myself slip away, falling into a sort of numbed stupor. It wasn’t much so far, but if it kept going . . .
Redoubling my efforts, I tried to force my way through the numbness and pain. I wasn’t going to let this beat me!
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Joan felt it when the parasite began to attack Adam rather than drain him.
She’d been able to drive more of the tendrils back, searing the thread-like ones into nothing, but then their resistance suddenly fell away. Like someone pushing against a door that abruptly swung open, she was left floundering, struggling to regain her balance. In that brief window, the hellish infestation turned upon its host, its limbs no longer trying to steal power. Instead, the tips dug into the vessels about them, tearing small rips in the magical veins, letting the refined mana spill out, toxic to the body once outside of the magic system.
The French saint felt her heart freeze in her chest for a moment, then the shock was replaced with outrage and an icy determination. Again, her magic surged forward, backed by her life energy! Again, she felt the pain that burnt with cold in her heart, but she paid it no mind. Rather, her focus was solely upon the parasite, solely upon its destruction before it could further harm her charge!
Her healing energy washed over the torn conduits of magic, repairing the damage, sealing the rents and preventing the escape of more mana. Once more the tendrils fell back, but they continued to claw at their surroundings as they did so.
Joan felt panic begin to grow but forced it down. In all truth, she was unsure as to just how dangerous it would be for Adam if his magic leaked out into the rest of his body. For a normal magic user, it could have been disastrous, the unchanneled power running wild in their flesh, causing random mutations and eventual death. Her charge was a demigod though, his very flesh was infused with power that would prove more resilient than a mortal mage’s. She knew the spilt mana could not be taken lightly, but she hoped Adam could endure it long enough for her to deal with the infestation.
Redoubling her efforts she fought on.