Suggested Listening (Warning, still unpleasant)

"Everyone get back!" Elruin shouted, then she gave orders to those that did not need to hear her to obey.

The dollies had to go in first, to protect the people. Elruin knew this, though she still hated to sacrifice them. She sang her song to the closest human corpse, using her newest spell to bolster its strength and speed. It charged spear-first into the mass of tendrils that she could not yet decide if was a single creature, or a mass of worms that got themselves tied in a knot. Perhaps there was no difference, where this thing came from.

The beast howled when the spear pierced it, though it was impossible to guess whether it did so in anger, pain, or joy, or explain how it could howl at all without a mouth.

The magical augmentation of the sacrificial doll melted on contact when the tendrils wrapped around the doll. For some inexplicable reason, the taint which let the doll be puppetted remained. Elruin changed her notes, the doll released the spear and began to hack away with its arming sword even as the creature attempted to strangle and crush the doll.

"We can't rely on augmentation or magic weapons!" Lemia launched one of her incendiaries at the beast. Flame erupted across the creatures surface, causing it to cry out again.

Ketak's scales began to shimmer as she drew together her magic. A simple, minor spell that provoked the flames to burn hotter. "Merat na!" The flames dimmed a moment later, and the tentacles started to rub the flame away. "It even feeds on indirect magic!"

"What part of 'thaumivore' confused you?" Scratch asked. "It eats all magic it comes in contact with. Except taint, it seems to instinctively avoid taint. Good show, though, I always wondered what happened if the magic was added after the attack."

Meanwhile, Elruin's other zombies began to encircle the beast, pelting it with arrows.

It dropped the drained corpse, then began to roll forward, propelling itself by means of tendrils toward Elruin.

"It's coming after the strongest source of magic!"

Clackybones jumped back, then bounded away, moving more like a deer than a horse. The tendril blob gave chase, moving far faster than anything its shape had a right to move; it would catch Clackybones soon.

"Circle around the archers!" Cali shouted at the retreating necromancer. "Enhance them!"

Elruin trusted Cali's judgment, and made Clackybones turn. If she rode a normal horse, which required guidance from its master, she wouldn't have had the time to spare to cast her spells, but Clackybones was tied to her thoughts and mind, allowing Elruin to time her actions for the exactly right moments to enhance one zombie after another.

"Gimme that!" Ketak yanked a spear from one of the zombies, it didn't seem to notice. She gripped the arrowhead, concentrating her power upon the tip until the metal began to glow red, and the wooden shaft caught fire. "Entek ne! Cheap trash!"

Arrow after arrow struck true, then the creature gave up on Elruin's retreating source of magic and engulfed another skeleton. Once captured, it released its bow in order to use its sword. Moments after the energy had been drained, the corpse was forgotten in favor of the next nearest zombie. The released zombies were still whole, and in fact left unharmed aside the magic stripped from them, and some small burns from the flames of the alchemical weapons Lemia hit it with.

"Stop enhancing the zombies!" Lemia shouted. "It's using the magic to heal itself!"

Now that they had distance, Elruin could see it was true. Her lifesight didn't work on this thing, save to show a featureless empty blob where some living force should be, but with natural eyesight she could see the wounds stitch themselves together.

Then the burning spear sank into its side, quenching the red glow in monster fluid while steam that was once its blood rose into the air. "Hah! I knew I could beat its trick! Someone get me a weapon that's not magic or cheap garbage!"

Even with the burns and cuts, the creature kept moving from zombie to zombie, stripping them of power.

"Persistent little bastards, ain't they?" Scratch sat in the air, watching the show. "Fun to watch, 'course I ain't gotta worry about 'em eating my face like you do."

"I swear if I die, I'm going to come back just to ruin your afterlife!" Lemia launched another bomb at the creature. As far as she could tell, it didn't like fire of the natural variety.

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"No thanks, sounds too much like being a parent."

Having consumed all of the magic on the skeletons, the creature refocused on Elruin, and began to chase her along yet again. Meanwhile, the zombie troops picked up their bows and returned to the strategy they had used before.

Calenda waited until the chase came close to her, then she threw all of her power into her own augmentation and jumped over the pair. When she was directly above, she threw a sword straight down at the creature, impaling it through the center mass and pinning it into the dead soil below.

It oozed apart, then began to roll away with but a small pool of brackish white goo left behind on the blade. Now that Calenda was flaring her power, it decided she was the more desirable target and began chasing after her.

Cali threw her knives at the creature while continuing to flee. "Why won't this thing die?!" As fast as she was, the tendrils allowed it to move faster still.

Scratch, still floating above, laughed at the unintentional joke. "Better run, I'd be real upset if you died. Again."

Elruin fired her death bolt so that it sailed past Cali, and exploded into a shower of necromantic energies. It was harmless, more illusion than actual power, but it did distract the beast long enough to let Cali gain a few precious feet of distance before it returned to the chase.

Then it fell over, twitched, and deflated.

"Is... is it dead?" Lemia took a step back, in case it sprang up yet again. Everyone else followed her example.

"Not quite, give it a second." Scratch floated down above shapeless mass in time for it to release a loud, foul-smelling blue gas from some unspeakable orifice. "Heh, that never gets old. Now it's dead."

Suggested Listening

Lemia coughed and covered her face. "Ugh! Kill me so I don't have to breathe anymore!"

Elruin pulled her dress up to cover her nose. It didn't help. In spite of the stench, she began to sing, and play her violin. Their defensive bubble had been damaged in the fight, and she feared the unshielded void far more than any aroma. She changed it, twisted it further, to smooth the cacophony into something that wasn't about to drive her mad.

Ketak looked around as only she and the dead weren't reacting. "We dwar'es don't ha'e a sense o' smell like yours. I don't 'ink it's toxic, whate'er it is."

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't torture you to your second death!" Cali shouted at Scratch. It required taking a breath of the horrid air, but she was dead so it was limited to the one breath.

"Woah, don't you think that's moving too fast? Maybe we should have dinner first, catch a show, some forepl-urk!" Scratch had no features to look surprised when Calenda reached out and gripped him with her hand, then began to squeeze.

"I've. Been. Practicing." Cali answered the question everyone thought, and replaced it with the question of how she could practice to catch something that didn't have a physical form. "Now talk, ghost."

"First, I'd just like to say that is totally unfair," Scratch said. "Second, none of you were ever in real danger. Third, this is our key to beating Claron."

"Never in real danger?" Calenda squeezed harder, causing Scratch's body to distort and bulge through the gaps in her fingers. "It was running around sapping magic from everyone!"

"Right, sapping magic, not life force or anything else that's permanent. Worst thing these guys can do on their own is give you a hangover. Granted, it's the worst hangover of your life, but it doesn't kill. Besides, they die in a minute or two on this side of the void hole. I think it's for about the same reason humans don't do so well underwater. It was all in good fun, and you were never in any real danger. As long as you're here, at least. These things are nothing compared to some of the horrors out there. Lucky us, most of them are too smart to come over here where they know they'll die."

"Right, the other side." Now that the danger had passed, Lemia was curious about the void. "What is that thing?"

"Not a damn clue," Scratch said. "I once had a scholar try to explain it to me. Best I got is that it's what happens if you walk in a direction that doesn't exist."

"A... what?"

"Well, we got up and down, left and right, back and forward," Scratch said. Meanwhile, Cali had relaxed her grip enough for him to slide out. "Then there's the magical directions, inward and outward, or something to that effect. Or that's what the mage said to call it, something about the relationship between the self and other. Then there's Void. Which is none of those things. That which cannot exist yet does. I admit, I feel a certain kinship. I suspect I'm not the only one here who does. Right, Calenda?"

"No!" Then Cali hesitated. "Well, maybe it feels a little less alien to me. It's... still wrong, though."

"So are we," Scratch said. "And before you ask, no, I can't tell you what relationship Void has with Taint, if they do at all. I've taken every necromancer I've ever worked with to a void-hole, save a handful who died before I got the chance. Some devoted their lives to studying them, if any found answers they neglected to share them with me."

"Who made them?" Elruin asked. She'd stabilized her song to one of mourning for the pain of the world. "Why would anyone cause something so horrible?"

"That'd be the Kiara, the Goddess of the Void. Or, as I like to call her, 'the bitch who fucked the world'. What you're looking at is one of the holes she did it with. There are hundreds of them across the planet. For those strong enough, you can theoretically climb in that hole, fight your way through all the freaks on the other side, then climb back through anywhere anywhere. But none of you are anywhere close to that strong. As to why she did it? Couldn't tell you, she lived and died long before I did."

"A shortcut, perhaps?" Ketak suggested. "Or seeking resources. We dwar'es do it, why not a goddess? What incredible secrets might be on 'at side?"

"I've never heard of a Goddess of the Void before," Calenda said. "She's not on any of the divine charts, controls no element, and I can't imagine an Ancestral God having such power."

"She wouldn't be," Scratch said. "She was a Living God. The most powerful mortal to have ever existed, stronger than any of the High Gods, perhaps even stronger than The Seven, but a mortal still. She lived, she wielded power enough to shatter a world, she had some offspring, and then she died like mortals tend to do."

"A few minutes ago, I wouldn't have believed you," Lemia said. "But that was before I witnessed hole leading in a direction that doesn't exist. It... truly is bleeding, isn't it? This wasn't meant to exist, it's a wound."

"A wound, infected with disease," Scratch said. "Which we are going to use to kill Claron."

"How?" Cali asked. "This... thing... is tough, but you said yourself that it can't kill."

"No, it can't, but it doesn't need to," Scratch said. "I got a look at Claron's power, most of us have. He's not weak, but he's relying on the Eye of Enge to empower him. Strip that power away and I'm sure you can kill him now. Nothing in this world strips power quite like a thaumivore. Especially when the victim bleeds energy like Claron does, we'll have at least two or three of the nasties climbing out of that hole. Then when they've sucked him dry, we carve a few extra holes. And the best part is, there's only six or seven beings on the planet who know enough to explain it after the fact, let alone see it coming, and none of them are Claron."

"It could work," Cali admitted after a moment. "Luring him here might be tricky, and I can't imagine how we're going to explain how we killed him. They'll know it wasn't through raw power, none of us have that sort of city-breaking strength. We'll have to do a lot of planning."

"Details you can worry about later," Scratch said. "The first question is, does Elruin want a new extra-abomination dolly, or would you kids like to see what void sarite looks like?"

"Couldn't we just, I dunno, lure more of them out to die?" Lemia asked.

"Yeah, but I don't know how many are that close to the hole," Scratch said. "More than two, less than six, that's my best guess. We kill off too many, and there won't be any left for Claron. Of course, after Claron's dead, we can do whatever we like with the remains."