"With the right Cards and the Life Essence to fuel them, reality could be your plaything.
Do you understand what that means? What is being invested here? Each and every one of you has the potential to reach The Pillar of Divinity and become gods. Gods!
Do not be swayed by those among your number who wish to rally behind one of your number as the sects do. Yes, it could result in a god from among you in record time, but the cost is simply not worth it. Those that swore fealty and pledged their faith will have wasted their own potential, one god no matter how grand could be greater than the possible dozens we may source from among you.”
“And how many gods have the Heaven Seekers Guild produced in the last five hundred years?”
“Well….”
“Then how would you of all people have any idea?”
-Grand-Seeker Saimon Rumas attempts to address the ‘Creed’ children.
Chapter 63: Rain Of Spores
Alabaster
Making it to the glass building before the skeletons engaged the pair of boys was no problem. Neither was juking around the looming bone golem that had emerged from the structure. No, the real problem appeared once the large opaque glass door was slammed shut behind them.
Evidently whoever in here Manifesting creatures had only sent a small fraction of the monsters they had called forth from their Deck to aid the ghostly knights.
The single high-ceilinged room that made up the glass structure was oddly bright and hot. Despite being covered floor to roof in enough vines and roots to utterly blot the sun out, a familiar purple light permeated the room. It shone down from strange fruit that grew from a huge tree that utterly dominated the structure.
In between the boys and the tree was a cohort of ten Manifested Creatures of varied power. The strongest was a strange tree man that stood over seven feet tall and seemed to have bone for bark. The thing sported 3000 power, and runes indicating its Resonances were Undeath, Bloom, and Abomination.
The weakest being just another swamp zombie with 550 Power. None of the group had more than one vitality which made Alley think whoever was Manifesting these monsters had wanted to avoid spending Vials if they could. While that meant the Creatures were mostly on the weaker side they more than made up for it with numbers.
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“Uhh Alley.”
“Yeah”
“Am I hallucinating or does that tree have a Hand?”
Alley frowned at what was maybe the strangest question he had ever been asked.
“Huh?”
The dark-haired boy shot his gaze up from the group of monsters that had yet to move. Behind them stood the strange tree that was somehow both vibrantly alive and rotting. Two-thirds of the way up its fifteen-foot trunk extended a figure that looked as though a woman was being grown by the tree. In front of ‘her’ hovered the images of a five five-card hand.
‘What the fuck is going on with my life?’
“You know,” Alley said with a little sigh. “When I said that pirate feeding people to a Card was the craziest thing I ever heard I really didn’t expect it to get out crazied so soon.”
At the words, Darius barked out a single laugh and exploded into action. He had the right of it, as was so often the case Alley didn’t have time to truly investigate his surroundings. Not whilst yet another inhuman monstrosity was trying to separate his soul from his body.
‘After’ Alley promised himself. He was literally in the presence of a tree that appeared to be growing Undeath crystals and...people? He was absolutely going to go over this place with a fine-toothed comb, but it could wait till he wasn’t being swarmed by inhuman monstrosities especially as the creatures in the garden were probably only a few seconds behind them.
The sound of breaking glass from behind him informed Alley it was even sooner than that.
Alley wasn’t sure if it was because of Darius or because of the reinforcements coming in, but the line of Manifested creatures exploded into motion.
Not looking to get caught in a pincer movement for what felt like the tenth time today, Alley broke into a sprint to catch up to his friend. Stuck with his hookless chain Alley didn’t really have the capacity to quickly destroy the creatures arrayed against them, which meant he was relegated to a more supportive role for the moment.
Alley believed if you were going to do something you had a responsibility to do it well. So he covered Darius’s advance as best he could; Whipping his chain out to knock aside blows aimed at the redheaded boy’s back or side. Initially things went well, Darius had little trouble carving through the one vitality monsters.
The tree-woman obviously wasn’t willing to simply accept the destruction of her defenders without retaliation, as she activated a spell card. There were no words but one of the Card images in front of her glowed as it was cast.
image [https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/117920146/305c4e9690cc494cbeb04c548aae9458/eyJ3Ijo4MjB9/1.png?token-time=1737676800&token-hash=tz8QApTYPj6txAFrpgyV817fik3F1z0Xoj5_YcSqaUw%3D]
Instantly a cloud of spores began to expand out from the tree, filling the air and choking the boys while the monsters didn’t even seem to notice.
Coughing and spluttering, both boys were forced into a hasty retreat, right into the waiting arms of a pack of spear and shield wielding skeletons backed up by a towering golem.