Tiria couldn't do anything but watch as Nori and her clearly dead and corrupted Subgenitor eyed each other.
"You didn't even die here," she mumbled, her disbelief slowly turning to anger and gaining momentum. "How dare you!"
She still glared at her Subgenitor, but her shouts seemed to denounce the entire forest. "How dare you bring him here! HOW DARE YOU TURN HIM INTO THIS!"
Like a faucet had become a waterfall, Aether exploded within Nori. Even to Tiria's limited soul sight, it looked like she'd been set on fire as its tip licked the under boughs of the eldritch trees.
With that much Aether empowering her, her single step forward shook the forest all around them as the aftershocks of her power bled out from her. That single step launched her forward and Chum actually stumbled from the sheer power that she gave off.
"Let's coordinate!" Tiria yelled, but her voice was lost in Nori's all consuming anger. Tiria had always known that Nori cared about herself and her clan, but this was the first time that Nori's emotions were truly on display. They were raw and unassailable.
The smell of scorched flesh hit her nose as Nori reached the electricity field that surrounded the monster that was once Tama. Nori's flesh cracked and scorched as she was electrified.
She and the monster began to fight, but it almost seemed like a choreographed dance. The monster seemed to know exactly what Nori would do and was always there to dodge or block with its strange unwieldy limbs.
"Heal her!"
"Already on it! It's not en-" Chum screamed, but his wasn't from an attack. A veritable wave of Aether was pouring from him to try and keep Nori alive. Frankly, Tiria had no idea how either one of them was channeling so much Aether though their bodies, but at their level, that amount meant they had less than a minute to end this fight.
Tiria mentally went through all of her techniques, but none of them would help here. Her water just brought the lightning to her faster and the rest of her abilities were all melee focused.
Thankfully, her mind finally caught up to the sudden onslaught.
She dropped the simple looking river stone from her [Expanded Pocket]. If she didn't know her own river stone so well, she might have thought she'd grabbed the wrong one that's how mundane it looked, but Yom had said this is what they used to capture the source of chaos.
Not knowing exactly how to do it, she tried to funnel her Aether into it and then it came alive. The stone expanded to about the size of a baseball with dozens of holes all across its surface.
There was a slight pull on her Aether as the stone touched it, but it seemed to reject her.
She wasn't what it wanted.
Beside her, Chum had dropped to one knee as he tried control the flood of Aether he wielded, but she could tell he was already straining.
Poe, from above, tried to fire web at their enemy, but the lightning burned it up before it had a chance to stick. Like her, he was very ill suited for this battle. She'd kill to have either Gi or the Twins here, but neither of them had truly survived the battle of Igna.
Without any other options, Tiria found herself sprinting across the forest floor to dive headfirst into the melee. An errant thought wondering if Wane had ever awoken slipped away as she entered the field of lightning.
Pain wracked her on all sides as she started to cook and she wondered if she'd made a mistake as there was no way that Chum could heal both of them. Maybe Danna was still looking out for her though.
Once the former river stone entered the field of lightning, it showed its worth as a vessel of chaos. The lightning retracted from both her and Nori as it arced directly towards the vessel in her hands.
The eldritch Tama shouted with the sound of a thousand voices and his roar reverberated through the trees. The darkness of the forest seemed to press further in and the whispers in Tiria's mind transformed into an angry crowd demanding attention.
It didn't matter.
With the lightning field neutralized, she and Nori were finally free to fight. A mace of water appeared in her left hand and memories of Kumo's dual style of fighting crystallized in her thoughts as she used her [Fighting Style] (The Path of the Clan).
With the lightning gone, Tiria could see the tears that drizzled down Nori's cheeks and she could tell that the goblin wouldn't be a resource of strategy for this fight. She used all of her Progenitor level Skills to attack in the most straightforward and brutal fashion.
That meant Tiria was forced to battle by the tempo that Nori set. As inconvenient as that was, it seemed appropriate for a Subgenitor.
The two of them traded blows with the Eldritch monster, but it still had an unnerving understanding of Nori's fighting style. Most of her attacks were dodged or blocked and Tiria herself was constantly on the back foot from the unfurling limbs that let out corkscrew attacks.
Eventually, its fist missed Tiria bouncing off a nearby tree and she was able to close the distance.
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A water mace smacked into the knee of the eldritch Tama, just above its coiled calf. The stumble gave Nori enough space that her fist embedded itself into the thing's chest.
She shoved the vessel against its body and it howled. Again, its shout brought the voices surging in her mind. It started to buck and its limbs lashed out all around her, forcing Nori back and obliterating trees, but Tiria hung on. If she was pushed off now, she might not get another chance before Chum and Nori were burned out.
Its undead flesh broke before the vessel and Tiria's fist plunged into its chest. It felt like plunging her hand into a warm rotten pie. More howls echoed out of it and both she and Nori were lashed by its coiled limbs.
Fortunately, the vessel was wreaking havoc on its insides. Even with its claws now taking her back, it could no longer stand, having fallen on its back and Tiria rode it to the ground.
Like a tentacled monster, all four limbs moved independently as the attacks against them renewed. If they'd all been focused on her, Tiria would have been torn apart, but Nori was a force of nature that could not be ignored as she pushed everything into ripping the eldritch abomination apart.
Bones and flesh were ripped out of their enemy. Its claws scored deeper rivets into Tiria's back. She could feel her wounds healing, but it was slow. Chum must be almost completely exhausted.
"Don't kill it! We have to absorb it!" Tiria's yell didn't even register in the obsessed Nori's ears and the goblin Progenitor continued her onslaught.
Something cracked inside Tama as strike after strike from Nori's fist landed. Not able to wait for Nori to kill it, Tiria dove into the goblin's ribcage and force the vessel even further inside. The vessel glowed with an ethereal light, showing that the inside of its body was even larger than the outside.
A strange mutated heart thumped in reverse like it was sucking something vital out of the air. Lightning still crackled within it and the stench of undeath that came off of it was even fouler than the rest of the thing's innards.
One of the thing's limbs wrapped around Tiria's waist, but before it could yank her out of its torso. Tiria clawed her way forward and slapped the vessel against its abyssal heart.
The creature roared again with the full might of the forest behind it and the voices in her mind snuffed out her consciousness like a pot of water over a candle.
She didn't know how long she was out, but when she awoke, she was wrapped up tightly in decayed flesh and brittle bones. As she burst her way out of the thing's corpse, she pulled with her a small furry foot.
In the hand that had once held the vessel of chaos, she now held a small Child Otter instead.
Upside down, the creature held a piece of the Eldritch flesh in one hand as it shoved it into its mouth with an intense hunger. Its eyes seemed devoid of any true intelligence that she might expect in a monster Child.
The strangest thing of all was that one of its limbs looked emaciated and hung limply above its head towards the ground.
"Gi?"
But that was all she had a chance to mumble before the forest erupted again. It wasn't enough to cause her to lose consciousness, but there was one idea that came across quite clear in the whispers.
She'd stolen something from the forest and it wanted it back.
"We need to le-" Her words died on her lips when she saw that both Nori and Chum were still unconscious. Poe had struggled up from the ground and even now was moving over to Chum. With his experience, he knew the same thing she did.
They were being hunted.
Tiria rushed over to Chum and shouldered him onto her back. Even with his deadweight, he barely weighed enough to slow her down. His attitude always seemed so strong and sturdy that she sometimes forgot how frail he actually was.
"Stick him to my back."
Poe looked at her quizzically. "You sure?"
Howls erupted from the forest, causing Tiria's heart to slam against her chest anew. "Just do it!"
Web shot from Poe's jaw and slapped into her, wrapping around her shoulders and hips until she was confident that Chum was secure. Not willing to wait another second, she tore across the small clearing and scooped up Nori as well.
She juggled Nori and the strange doll-like Otter Child for a moment before she found her balance and then she took off running. It had only taken them a few hours to get to this spot which would be much faster while running, but it would still take just under an hour.
Her burdens weren't heavy, but over that distance? She'd find some way to pull through.
She'd have to.
"Poe, get me eyes in the air. Call out any incoming!"
Even as she ran, the howls of the forest started to grow more distinct. It wasn't just whatever otherworld entity that inhabited the forest. It was all of the demons and goblins that had been corrupted in here. She tried to count each unique scream but gave up when the exercise quickly became futile.
All she could do was run.
"LEFT!" Poe's shout gave her just enough warning as a demon barreled through the trees. It had an empty scabbard belted to its waist, but no sword to speak of. It lunged towards her and she had to kick off a tree to dodge it, but that just meant the faster demon was now at her back.
"Poe, take the kid!" Not waiting for a response, she tossed the doll to him. It barely reacted to being tossed in the air, only stretching its one good arm out towards the demon like a real Child might for fish.
Expanding, Poe caught the doll just as a watery mace slapped into Tiria's palm. Kicking off another tree, she luckily dodged the demon's next attack as she spun around in the air.
What she'd intended as a ranged attack turned into a melee as water exploded against the demon's head and sent it flopping into the ground. She doubted she'd killed it, but with luck, it wouldn't be back for awhile.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the only one.
"FRONT!" Poe's voice brought her eyes back to the front just as a goblin leapt out of the branches ahead of them. Instead of ducking, Tiria dove low to avoid the attack, sprinting on all fours to keep her momentum.
It wasn't quite good enough. The sound of torn webbing joined a spattering of blood against her cheek. That bastard had hit Chum. It wasn't the most efficient use of her Aether, but she activated [Lord Commander], getting a summon to flank her on each side.
She never stopped running, but she did take a moment to try and feel where Chum had been cut. Thankfully, it was shallow. He wasn't in danger of either dying or falling off, but she couldn't afford any more mistakes like that either.
Another goblin burst from the trees to their right, but a splatter of web stuck it fast against a tree. Like the one she'd downed, she'd be lucky if it did more than slow it down.
They managed to survive the first minute and then the next. If the eldritch monsters had any sort of strategy, they could have overwhelmed them with the numbers that came, but instead, all of the simply attacked as soon as they could.
The real problem was behind them.
In the distance, a wall of noise roared through the forest as the massive army of corrupted monsters swarmed towards them. Each passing minute the noise got louder and louder without them actually arriving to overwhelm her.
Just how many were there? Even as large as this forest was, how could it sustain such a massive host?
Part of her hoped that it was just a trick of the forest, that the growing roar of monsters would never reach them.
She was wrong.
"Oh Danna...," She heard Poe mutter and Tiria couldn't help herself. She looked behind her. Like a red and green wave, demons and goblins scrambled over each other and clawed through the trees. That eldritch tsunami disappeared as far back as she could see into the trees.
They'd never make it.