Fire. That was the closest thing I could describe it as. A raging torrent, a molten flow, a burning maelstrom. Pain. Pain the likes of which a sane mind couldn’t begin to comprehend. My body revolted, and my mind barely held on as unfathomable amounts of energy poured into me. It couldn’t be contained, and it felt like the very cells of my body were bursting as there seemed to be no end to this ocean of power that I had tapped into.
I needed to do something with this power before it overwhelmed me. Pushing through the delirious haze of pain that wracked every fiber of my being, I commanded my body to move. My hand strained against both the agony and the person holding it down. Twisting my arm as much as I could, I managed to barely touch the leg of the man on top of me.
There were no fancy tricks or careful applications to be found in my actions, I did not have the thought capacity for that right now. In leu of any advanced process, I simply dumped energy into his body in the form of healing with no constraints. The results were gruesome.
The skin underneath the man’s leg roiled and suddenly started to expand, inflating beneath my touch. Unable to contain the cancerous amalgamation that suddenly sprang forth, his leg burst open in a spray of blood and flesh. The air was pierced by the screams of the soldier who did not understand what had happened, but just knew that suddenly there was a large hole in his leg and an ungodly amount of gore seeping from it.
He fell off my arm, more concerned with his sudden injury than holding me down anymore. Everyone around us was in shock, probably wondering how that happened, and I provided the answer. My now freed hand shot out to the man holding my other arm and latched onto his face. He probably didn’t even have enough time to process what was happening before I once more let a tsunami of magical power flow into him. The man’s brain suddenly doubled in size, and you could hear the skull crack as the pressure became too great to hold it in its casing. The only reaction that came from this was a jerk of his body followed by streams of blood flowing from his eyes and nose. His lifeless body slumped over and hit the ground as soon as I let him go.
The one who was currently on my back tried to push me back down again, a brave but foolish action. I grabbed hold of one of his wrists and I could see his eyes widening in fear as he had obviously put it together that my touch was dangerous. His instincts proved to be correct as the flesh underneath my touch started to morph, metastasis, and expand to the point of rupture. Flesh burst forth from its hold, that thin container of skin, and hung loosely from the bone. The man’s wails of pain were silenced when my hand found its way to his chest. Once there, a short burst of power caused his heart to explode in his chest. His body seized for a moment before he fell over, dying shortly after.
At this point, the two holding my legs came to the decision that they didn’t want to be touching me anymore and retreated several steps along with everyone else around me. I gritted my teeth and fought to get to my feet as every nerve in my body fired off pain signals. The moment I came to standing posture however, something inside me spilled out into the world.
From my fingertips to my elbows my skin split open in a spiderweb of lacerations. I screamed out as blood erupted from the wounds yet did not fall. The droplets of crimson life hung suspended in the air around me, crackling and steaming with power, sometimes arcing short bursts of energy akin to lightning between adjacent globs.
The energy was building too fast, it was tearing my body apart. I had to hold it together, I couldn’t afford to succumb to this yet. In an act of desperation, I started to heal myself. The tears in my flesh stitched themselves back together and eventually closed. It felt like I was being ripped apart at the same rate that I was being put back together now, and it was agonizing.
I turned my attention back to the soldiers who surrounded me now, glaring at them with a locked jaw and an expression similar to that of a feral animal. They shrunk back from me one and all, fear plain on their faces. The newly christened commander attempted to rally his troops against me.
“Don’t just stand there! He is still outnumbered. Kill him!” With an authoritative finger he commanded his men. There were a few unsure looks amongst the crowd, but the numbers must still have been reassurance enough to convince a few of them to charge at me.
The one in front of me came charging in, sword poised to strike. Dodging was out of the question; I could barely even move right now. So, when he came at me with the intent to stab me through the chest, I simply pulled my hand up in the path of the sword. My hand was impaled upon the blade, and using the leverage that provided, I redirected the sword to the side. I didn’t even recognize any pain from the blade in my flesh, it was barely even a pinprick to me right now.
Unphased by the attack, I stepped closer to the soldier, hand sliding deeper onto the blade and leaving the metal smeared with blood until I could wrap my fingers around the cross guard. The soldier's confidence in his attack melted away instantly, turning into terror as my other hand lashed out again, practically oozing a miasma of death. Seizing him by the throat, the influx of magic I pumped into him caused the muscles in his neck to grow until they crushed his upper spine.
A slight problem occurred when the moment I dropped my focus on healing myself in favor of attacking that I started to self-destruct again. As the man’s spine was crushed beneath his own muscles, my right leg tore open, sending a stream of boiling blood out where it didn’t belong. I dropped the body in my grasp, him taking the sword with him as it slid out of my hand and started to heal myself again.
My wounds had just started to close when a spear rammed into my flank. I staggered a step before shooting a wrathful look at my attacker who faltered slightly under my gaze. With a chop of the arm, I broke the spear just below the point where it entered my body only for another to find its place in my chest. The hit forced more blood, that seemingly did not find gravity a concept it needed to obey, out of my mouth as I coughed. Rage continued to fuel my actions as I wrenched both the spear head stuck in my side, and the one in my chest out of me. The wounds immediately started closing again, much to the horror of the soldier who expected me to drop from that attack.
With a jerk I pulled on the spear as I stepped closer to return the favor to my attacker. He was pulled off balance for a second but let go of the spear to try and escape. However, even while fighting my own body to move, I could still close the short gap between us quicker than he could start to backpedal from the awkward position. I grabbed the cuff of his breastplate to prevent his retreat, and then, taking the broken head of the spear I still had, jammed it into his eye socket as deep as it would go. The squelching and grinding sound of flesh and bone being perforated filled the air for a second before I simply let him fall limply to the ground with the spear still stuck in his eye.
There was a lull in the fighting for a moment. If I had to guess, I'd say that they didn’t know what to do. I had been stabbed multiple times already, such a thing would normally lead to death, yet I stood, in immense pain, but not a wound on my body. For a soldier whose job is literally to stab a person to death, it was a conundrum. They could stare dumbfounded all they wanted; it wouldn’t change anything. If they stood in my way, they would die.
Breaking the brief moment of peace, I started moving into the crowd again. As I approached the edge of the ring that had formed around me, I lunged forward at the closest enemy. I was slashed across diagonally across the chest in a desperate bid to ward me off, but I didn’t falter as the new pain was swallowed up in the constant suffering my body was already in. All it took was a touch and the man's ribs turned traitor, growing in all sorts of directions they weren’t supposed to, changing his internal organs into pincushions for bone shards.
I carried on with the momentum, weaving a trail of death through the soldiers ranks. In that moment I had embodied the aspect of the reaper, immortal, unstoppable, and killed with a touch. They tried their best to stop me while avoiding getting close enough for my hands to fall on them. Every time I made contact, someone would die, and I would fall apart.
It was getting worse the longer this went on. Whenever I stopped healing some part of me would tear open or rupture. At one point I was almost disemboweled as my whole torso split open in a jagged, explosive pattern. I must have been a horrific sight out of their worst nightmares.
One of the soldiers had the idea to literally disarm me to prevent me from touching, and therefore, killing them. We both watched with various levels of disturbance as the hand started to regrow itself. Bone, sinew, nerves, then flesh rapidly sprang forth from the stump at a grotesque rate. In just a handful of seconds, I had a completely new hand. It was the first time I had seen such an extensive healing process from outside the void of death, and if I was in a state of mind to consider it, I wasn’t sure if I would be more intrigued or disturbed by the process.
As it was, the soldier who had removed the hand suddenly found it placed upon him and his lungs exploding, sending a torrent of blood from his mouth before he suffocated to death. My chest burst open on the outside as his did on the inside, but the rampage continued unabated, and with every bloody step I took through the crowd of soldiers, I left bodies in my wake. Their resolve was crumbling, that much was plain to see even through my pain addled state of mind. They just needed a little extra push off the edge of despair.
The commander for these remnants was shouting, threatening, and generally trying to prevent a full route while convincing them to continue trying to kill me. His presence was the one thing holding them together, and his death would be the catalyst for their fall. So, with a basic direction now in mind, I pushed myself forward even as the flesh under my skin felt like it was being flash cooked over and over again.
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Two more soldiers tried to stop me from approaching their commanding officer by plunging their swords into my chest and holding them out at arm's length to try and keep me at bay. The swords stung a little, but I continued pushing forward even as the blades sunk further into me. After several inches of steel slid into me, I was in range to grab at them. The moment I reached out for them they both relinquished their hold on the swords and ran, self-preservation overriding their training and loyalty.
“Traitors! You'll be hanged for desertion!” They didn’t seem to care and just kept running. I gripped the blades sticking out of my chest and jerked them free, letting the swords just clatter to the ground. The commander quickly brought his attention back to me, panic starting to creep onto his features as things continued to spiral out of control. With a gesture to the side, he shouted a command at some soldiers there. “Shoot him!”
I spared a glance in that direction where I saw three soldiers drawing bows and taking aim at me. Apparently, the chance of friendly fire didn’t matter anymore, and the arrows were loosed in my direction. One struck my thigh, another my arm, and the last slipped between my ribs. The multiple impacts staggered me a step to the side, but I recovered quickly from it. Like splinters being pushed out of the body, my accelerated healing forced the arrows out of me like they were nothing more than a nuisance. The glare I shot in their direction after that was enough to freeze them in fear, preventing them from attempting anything else that would draw my ire.
“What are you doing? Attack him!” None of the soldiers stepped forward anymore, and they seemed to only just barely keep ahold of their weapons. “This insubordination will be punished!” They may have been trained to follow orders, but they all weren’t so mindless as to carry out what they most likely saw as a suicidal attack. “Traitors all of you!”
His desperation was starting to seep through as I got closer to him. In one last effort of resistance, he readied his own sword to try and delay the inevitable. He made a hacking swing at my neck. A decapitation would probably stop me for a little bit, but I was more concerned with what would happen to all the energy inside me if I died. Not taking any chances, I moved to actually block this attack.
Bringing both of my arms up in the direction the blade was coming from, I intercepted its path. The steel cleaved through the flesh of my arms before stopping on my bones. He pulled the sword out in a slicing motion to open up more flesh, but it didn’t matter as my arms started stitching themselves back together almost immediately. I went for a grab, and he was trying to dance away from me. Thus began the deadliest game of tag to have ever existed.
He would make thrusts and quick slashes at me to attempt to slow me down, but I barely broke stride as I continued to push closer to him with the same self-preservation mindset of a zombie. I was cut multiple times, stabbed several more, but I was wearing him down bit by bit. The more exhausted he became, the more likely he was to make a mistake.
My chance came when he stabbed me again and was too slow with the withdrawal of his sword. I gripped the blade with both hands, and he couldn’t beat me in a contest of strength. Even tugging with all his might to free his blade, he could only cut my fingers a little bit. With his only means of attack now defunct, I reeled him in, grabbing his arms to establish full control.
I didn’t bother destroying his arms, instead, I just went right for the throat. Hoisting him by the neck until his feet dangled free from their connection to the earth, I presented the helpless commander to the soldiers. Now sufficiently theatrical enough, it was time to put an end to this.
The magic I pumped into him was venom, my fingers the fangs that delivered it. His fear was replaced by pain as you could see the skin around his head start to morph in unnatural ways. His face bulged, his skull cracked, and he was probably already dead in the first few seconds. I didn’t stop at that though; his death would serve as a warning to the others that would not be ignored. If you fight, you will die.
His skin was stretched taught, swelling in a horrifying way. Then, it finally happened. With a crack and squelching pop, his head erupted in a shower of blood and gore, coating me in what fell in my direction. Brain matter, heavily engorged by artificial growth, leaked from the remnants of its former casing. All that was left of the head was the lower part of the jaw, leaving just about nothing which the former officer could be identified by.
The stillness was unnerving. Everyone was staring at me, the results of what I had done. No one wanted to move, lest the attention be brought onto them. I let the body slip from my grasp, and it fell limply to the ground, head landing with a splat as more blood was flung from the gaping hole.
My gaze lifted from the mangled corpse and scanned the crowd around me, glaring, daring anyone to step up and suffer the same fate. Anyone who I passed over shied away from me until one flat out turned heel and ran. The cascading effect of this soldier’s move was an instant route for the remaining soldiers as they scattered to the four winds in a mad dash to get as far away from me as they could. I watched them scramble like roaches until the last of them vanished from my sight.
The only ones who remained in the area were Kala and the survivors of her group. They were all unanimously staring at me with slack jaws and a combination of awe and fear. I didn’t know what to do with this situation anymore, and before I could even attempt to reconcile any of this, my body finally gave out on me.
Both my legs exploded to such an extent that bone was exposed in a few places. I screamed as I dropped to my hands and knees. Even as the flesh was reforming around my legs, my left arm bulged slightly before bursting in a similar fashion. The agony was indescribable and made everything I've experienced up until this point seem like a minor inconvenience.
There was too much, even expending as much energy as I was healing myself, it was still growing, and I didn’t know how to stop it. There was a yell from the group that I could barely perceive over the sensory overload I was experiencing. I turned my head just enough to see Kala racing towards me.
No... “STAY AWAY!” I snarled at her, even going so far as to swipe at the air in her direction to get the point across. I was about to reach critical mass, and I couldn’t imagine just what that would look like. She needed to run, but the only thing she did was halt her advance.
Several of my internal organs ruptured, and I vomited searing blood before falling on my side and writhing on the ground as more harrowed screams tore themselves from me. I was only holding it together by a thread, I couldn’t let it loose, not now, not with them so close to me. My ability to articulate enough to warn them was hampered by my body finding it difficult to keep up with the healing process now.
I need to do something! I couldn’t just wait for the inevitable conclusion and hope it didn’t hurt anyone else, but at the same time, moving with any amount of urgency was proving to be problematic. I needed somewhere for the energy to go, but there was nothing in sight that could feasibly hold it all.
Amid my throes my focus came upon the paved street where a bit of color practically exploded from the dull grey of the stones that made up the path. From the cracks between the rocks sprouted forth a small patch of grass, struggling to survive in such a choked environment. An epiphany struck me then, though it was more of a last-ditch gamble that had just as much of a chance at failure as it did success.
They’re technically alive, right? Technicalities would have to be good enough, and if it tried to tell me otherwise, I would force the matter through. With no better solution coming to light, I reached out, straining against my body's convulsions.
I gripped the little patch of grass and started releasing energy into the plant. The effect was almost instantaneous. Suddenly the small, choked patch of greenery swelled forth with renewed vigor. Every square inch of free space in the street was now being overrun by its rapid expansion as the individual blades grew ever taller. They gained such force as to shift the stones in the ground out of the way after a moment, revealing more room for growth to take root.
Despite the success, it still wasn’t enough. I needed more plants to give the energy to, so I reached deeper into the connection I had just made with the grass, feeling its zealous path of expansion and finding a whole microcosm of potential life beneath the earth. Seeds that had fallen or hitched a ride on animals and people, stray spores from mushrooms that drifted along the wind only to find rest here, all of them opportunistically waiting for their moment to spring forth into the light, and I was willing to provide them that chance.
The flood gates opened, and I unleashed every last ounce of the power that was building inside of me into the earth. The ground rumbled, shifted, and then finally burst forth as trees, vines, flowers, and mushrooms sprang forth. The stones placed by the Thrainians were ripped up from their very foundations. Roots and vines shot out and climbed the side of buildings nearby as they sought leverage to outpace their rivals in this sudden race for verticality.
To those who think plants are peaceful, you’ve never seen their process in fast-forward. Trees extended their roots, intent to choke out the competition and even going so far as to uproot other, smaller, plants. Mushrooms latched onto the sides of these quickly growing giants, parasitically leeching energy from both myself and the tree to fuel its own life. Vines sprang up like snakes, wrapping around other plants and strangling them, intent on reaching the hastily forming canopy to lay claim to the light.
The chaos of nature played out in rapid acceleration, and it was working. The plants drank eagerly from the wellspring of energy I provided, and they were insatiable. Unlike people, whose forms are constrained by genetic limitations, plants could grow almost indefinitely and thus were not so prone to bursting.
With one last push, I felt the flow of magic begin to taper off before the last drop was exhumed from my body. Now that my body wasn’t overflowing with energy I no longer had the will to maintain any control over my muscles. Everything felt like jelly, and for all I knew it could have been considering what I had gone through. I simply fell on my side before rolling onto my back.
My vision focused in and out on the brand-new canopy of trees that shaded me from the harsh light of the sun. The fully grown trees sat large and proud despite being completely out of place in the urban environment that they invaded, adornments of mushrooms, vines, and moss clinging to their limbs. The ground was soft, fresh earth having been exposed beneath me as the grass cradled my form as if to give thanks to me for my contributions to its exponential growth.
I was vaguely aware of some kind of noise trying to pierce through the ringing in my ears. Then a bleary yet familiar form was over me, shaking me and making more of those muffled noises. Words were beyond me, actions a seemingly impossible task, I just felt so very tired.
Whatever it is can wait. They wouldn’t begrudge me a nap, right? My body didn’t need any convincing as things were already starting to go black around the edges of my vision. Eventually, I just closed my eyes and let myself slip away, unconsciousness taking me in its grasp, lulling me into a sleep like death. Peaceful.