Closed inside the small cabin of the toilet, I vomited, to my horror, a handful of worms. Just seeing them wriggling in the toilet's water sent waves of shivers down my spine. Another cramp shook me, and I fell to my knees, resting with my hands on the toilet's rim, almost embracing it. Beads of sweat ran down my temples as I continued to vomit more worms, while the movements inside my bowels became even more furious.
A chilling wave of black magic washed over me, momentarily calming the violent churnings in my bowels and granting me a brief respite. In that strange interlude, Flo began to chant spells, and a blinding surge of light engulfed my senses.
When my vision cleared, I found myself in an otherworldly landscape, bathed in an eerie darkness and shades of gray.
The sky above was an enigmatic canvas adorned with arrays of stars allotted in unnatural patterns. Amidst them hung a peculiar object, colossal in size compared to our moon, emitting ethereal strands of what appeared to be purplish gas. These spectral wisps meandered through the void, resembling the frozen brushstrokes of an otherworldly painter.
Was it night? I couldn't tell for certain. Was that a giant dark star?
The gas-like hues painted the heavens with an eerie glow, akin to the shimmering of the Northern Lights, yet hauntingly motionless or perhaps just moving at a glacial pace.
The entire scene was an amalgamation of alien marvels, inducing a profound sense of awe and dread, a haunting beauty that both fascinated and terrified me. It was an atmosphere unlike anything I had ever witnessed before—a realm of chilling enchantment cloaked in enigma and shrouded in the eerie veil of the unknown.
I got only a glimpse of the strange, convoluted rocks and peaks around me, their myriad shades of grey forming a peculiar landscape, before I had the urge to gag once more. The handful of worms I expelled dissolved into the all-encompassing grey dust, like snowflakes on a hot stove.
Flo gathered some of the grey dust and placed it in my mouth, chewing it and forcing me to swallow. The metallic taste was both alluring and repulsive, an enigmatic blend of sensations.
She then began undressing and proceeded to pat the same dust all over my skin. Within moments, my skin burned as if I had been exposed to an intense sun for too long.
Gasping for breath, Flo scanned the surroundings, allowing me to take in more of the alien landscape.
Towering, jagged peaks encircled what appeared to be an enormous volcanic caldera. The only source of light seemed to be the strange filaments in the sky and the myriads of stars.
I convulsed once more, expelling another handful of worms, and I watched as they wriggled in the grey dust for a fleeting moment as though alive on a sizzling skillet.
These were no ordinary worms; they emitted a mesmerizing array of colors and attempted to escape, but in the end, they promptly dissolved into the dust.
Flo's tired and hoarse voice screamed at me, leaving me stunned and unable to respond.
“Where in Ethea's name did you get worms from!?”
As if I knew? I had never heard White Flower swear like this before.
On all fours, I continued to vomit loads of worms, and then she forcibly ate some dust. It was a horrifying situation.
How come there were so many worms?
In the next moments of respite, she admonished me again.
“Per Ghomer and Ethea, did you enjoy goblin cuisine? Did you live with one of their cursed tribes?”
That's when I remembered the encounter I had with the hobgoblin. Somehow she was able to grab my memory, as in the moment when I remembered, she sighed, exclaiming:
“Oh, in Ha'Des' name, damn hob!”
"Where are we? What is this?" - I couldn't help but ask, despite all the troubles. The alien landscape was so unsettling that I couldn't shake the feeling that I might be trapped in my own wild imagination rather than a real world.
Somehow, the avalanche of worms coming from my guts subsided, and she finally sat in the dust, her gaze fixed on the giant moon. It was then that I noticed a tiny filament arc opening and slowly spreading, joining the others in the sky tapestry.
Taking a deep breath, she looked around, allowing me to absorb more of the strange surroundings.
"This is the death node on Ha'Des. The place with the greatest accumulation of death magic in the known universe. This 'dust' all around us is almost pure black magic."
Hades? Is this what Hades looks like?
"We are under the eye of Deimos, the God of dread and terror," she said, raising her gaze back up to the strange 'moon,' nodding her head respectfully as if acknowledging and greeting a divine person, not a star. It was a star, not a moon! What a giant star it must be! But how come it was so dark? And those swirls on its surface must be giant planet-sized swirls!
She lowered her gaze, took a deep breath, and pointed at the dust where the last wave of worms had fizzled away. "These are magical worms that feed and reproduce on magic," she explained. "The only magic they cannot thrive on is death magic. It kills them instantly, as it does with any creature that is not shielded by its own magic. The worms are parasites; they do not generate their own magic but feed on the magic of the host. We can live here only due to my high level of magic generation, but that is also the reason why we have a big problem with the worms; there is plenty of food for them inside me, and we have to fight their accelerated growth. These small beasts, given time, navigate and expand in all organs. With this accelerated growth, we have little time."
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“There must be a cure! There are some efficient cures on Earth against worms; we should try one of those,” I suggested desperately.
She shook her head, my skin now hurting badly as she rolled again in the dust.
"I channel as much as I can from my magic to my skin and neutralize it with the dust; that's what you feel," she explained before answering, "It will not work; as I said, these are magical worms!"
“So what can we do?” I asked, feeling a sense of hopelessness.
“The only known cure against these worms, or the only one I know, is bathing the person in death magic. I do generate some, and I did my best to fight them, but I have too much white and elemental magic. I could cure a smaller caster by concentrating my black magic on them, but this will not work for me.”
“Why?” I questioned, trying to understand.
“As I said, I generate too much white and elemental magic. I cannot overwhelm my white magic with the puny quantity of black magic I generate,” she explained.
“You did say death magic, and now black magic?” I inquired, trying to grasp the difference.
“Oh, I thought you knew this. Black magic is interchangeably used with death magic even if it is not exactly the same, but it covers more or less the same area of magic. Look, the problem we face now is that we need to find a black magic caster, a caster stronger than me. First, those are seldom, I am a powerful caster," she said with a hint of pride in her voice, then continued, "The problem is then to find one who would agree to cure me of this problem and who will not use the occasion to hurt me or... The moment that I am overwhelmed with his magic, a thing that I have to allow, I would be completely at his mercy. Now, what would a black magic caster do with that opportunity?”
“Is there no other way?” I asked, hoping for a different solution.
“We can try to formulate a contract, but that might be very costly, and there are always some loopholes with those contracts. Oh, well,” she sighed, the weight of the situation apparent in her voice.
“Is there not enough death magic here in the node to heal me?” I wondered aloud.
She chuckled in response.
“Well, of course, it could theoretically, but merely eating it or washing with it is not enough. This has helped slow down the worms' reproduction, true, but it does not eliminate them. However, now that you mention it, there is a way we could use it.”
“How?” I inquired, my curiosity piqued.
"There is a ritual that is used to increase one's magic. Creating a node burst, the node by itself quells violently any manifestation of magic other than death magic. Some mages use it to enhance their own magic pathways, but it comes with great risks. Many have died attempting such an experiment. The reaction of the node is too unpredictable. A too-small burst does not do anything, but a too-strong blast annihilates the caster."
"So, we have two possibilities, risking a black magic caster or risking blowing ourselves up. What black magic casters do you know?" I asked, hoping for some viable options.
"The ones I know, I would not even think about," she replied somberly.
"Oh. What happens if we postpone the decision?"
"That's also bad. The worms lay eggs, and their initial form is so small that they can navigate into your blood vessels. They find a place to nest themselves closer to a magic pathway and start growing with any wisps of mana I cannot expel immediately. Probably we still have some hours until that happens on a really bad scale.”
Only now did I start to grasp the gravity of the problem.
"How big is the risk of blowing ourselves up if we try the blast solution?" - I wondered.
"Frankly speaking, it is not so big; enlarging my black magic pathways should be greatly helped by the fact that my overall magic pathways are very strong. It has the added benefit of enlarging my black magic pathways, so we would become stronger."
Oh, yes, White Flower, she is not an ordinary NPC; she is a boss-level NPC, even if a minor boss. She has the very seldom quality of mastering more than one class of magic.
I breathed a sigh of relief. A node burst sounded much more attractive now.