Visions filled its mind.
A silver skeleton stood large as a two-story house on a raised hill, metallic bones bright as the midday sun. Clad in heavy armor and wielding two crystal clear weapons, it fought against a massive bear nearly twice its own size. The creature’s twin heads roared in anger as each of its six heavily muscled arms cleaved through the air with the strength to fell entire trees. Wide tracks were torn through the earth in each exchange as the gigantic pair traded blows that shook fruit from distant trees.
A viscous crimson blob rolled relentlessly through a battlefield, grasping black hands of bone pulling in all that thought themselves safe. A small army of unidentifiable humanoids fled before it, hiding inside houses of brick and mortar for salvation. It was not to be. The blob’s endless hunger consumed even their shelters, its vast interior churning like a whirlpool of blood as it melted the very stones.
A silent, cloaked figure with burning red eyes and a bone-white scythe raised an almost human arm from its position at the door. It pointed inside at an old man peacefully sleeping the night away on a cotton mat, and the elder of a forsaken village breathed in for the last time. The air of the room stilled as he died. Color drained from the very walls, bleaching them the color of fading dust. As the old man’s body relaxed and his final breath escaped, it was drawn in. The figure’s scythe shone, and it turned on its heel towards its next victim.
Only these first few visions were clear, but they were not the last. Many more swirled one after the other in the undead’s mind. Scenes cut from a hundred different movies spliced seamlessly onto a nearly endless reel, though only the first three left any sort of lasting impression.
With an irritated mental flex, the undead cast these useless echoes of future potential away. There were greater concerns before it. Namely the ravenous, gnawing hunger of its insatiable stomach, the utter lack of any blood flowing within the range of its senses, and the fact that it was completely surrounded on all sides.
By food.
So much food! There could be only one response to such a feast. Crimson vines shot forth from its body in every direction, consuming and absorbing the flesh of enemies it only barely recalled defeating. It would be vulnerable feeding like this, but the undead sensed no foes remaining. It had time. Time to feed.
So it feasted.
When its surroundings had been consumed, mere seconds later, the undead stood and surveyed its new territory. The bounty of slain flesh in every direction was enough for it to spring immediately into action once more. It did not question where these gifts had come from. What its former self had done to upset so many and why it had left them uneaten were questions it simply didn’t ask. It didn’t need to.
It was a skeleton. A Gelaton, now. One of the Risen. Entor-Mal. Bounties of this scale were its right. Consuming them was its only duty. And it would continue to feast until either its bones were crushed to powder, or the Final Night fell upon the end of all things.
There was only one problem.
Another of its kind was encroaching upon its meal. The undead was confused by this, as its kin was both steeped in powerful death mana and yet walking away from a feast of its own. Without consuming the bodies. Without taking their mana. Without even cultivating the land with it. Simply letting the energy dissipate and go to waste as if it were nothing!
Outrage filled the undead’s mind, and its stomach howled in fury.
The instant its kin crossed into the boundaries of its domain, the undead attacked without hesitation. It was no fool. It was a hunter, and it had prepared while its kin had made the mistake of giving it time. Only the living made such errors of judgment, and the undead would use that failure to bury its kin here and now.
Their first exchange of blows taught the undead many things at once, even as the air of the cavern shook around them. The first was that this foe was more than a match for it in melee combat. Hammers were the clear winner versus swords, and yet its blow had been blocked by one. Split in half by one, really. Its second blow, a strike aimed straight at its kin’s face, was also blocked – though not nearly so well.
But its third blow landed. The silver dagger its stomach had wriggled out of its pack sank deep into its kin’s shoulder. Ordinarily, the undead would have followed up on this small victory. Living creatures were often hobbled by such attacks, easily distracted as they were by sources of pain.
Its brethren were not.
Just as the undead leapt away and summoned its bone shield, its kin’s sword glowed black and slashed down once. The air rippled between them, extending the force of the blow far beyond the tip of the sword delivering it. Despite the distance between them, the undead’s shield was shorn in half with a loud crack. A thin gouge appeared along its left arm as well, and several crimson veins were severed at the site.
They reattached easily however, and the undead summoned another shield. Its stomach reached out for more food from their surroundings, to replenish their stores of mana, but now something new was wrong. Something not coming from without, but from within.
Fury that outmatched any the undead had felt before filled every fiber of its being. It was accompanied by a sudden, powerful urge. A drive to retaliate so overwhelming that the undead’s next blow was traveling towards its opponent before it knew what was happening.
In the darkness from where it watched its own body imperil itself, heedless of its own commands, the undead hatched a desperate plan. To give full control over its limbs to its stomach. To let the all-devouring hunger that fueled it sit in the driver’s seat, and take the wheel.
The undead did not know what those terns meant. But it did not have to. Its stomach surged, stretching out to cover every limb. Assuming total control, though it still heeded the undead’s advice. This was good, for the pair of them would need every advantage possible to defeat their implacable kin.
The second clash between them shook the cavern once more.
Its stomach twisted, dodging blows from impossible angles.
And their battle continued.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Sean, you had better wake the wobble up already before– gahh!… Before we run out of bodies to feed on!”
Gel’s voice pierced the placid lake that Sean’s consciousness had been sleeping under, and pulled his mind abruptly to the surface. The sensation was less like stepping through a painting into another world, and more like being shoved through one. One instant he was asleep, and the next Sean was fighting for his life.
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The newly evolved gelaton blocked a blow on his shield from a shadow-wreathed blade that resonated with the power in his left hand, although ‘block’ was a strong word here. It was only the angle of the strike itself that had prevented it from slicing off his fingers as it passed cleanly through. Sean barely had the time to register that his primary defense had just gotten the butter side of the hot knife treatment before the blade reversed directions and its owner thrust it towards his stomach.
Leaping away and to the side, Sean attempted to use the wings from his feather up potion to escape… only to realize they were gone. The evolution must have consumed them.
Son of a–
“Gel, what’s–?!” Sean began, but was interrupted by their opponent driving a heavy, shadow-covered fist into the ground that shattered the earth around it in all directions.
A crimson whip extended out of his right shoulder, latching onto one of the vines that still stretched down throughout the cavern. Instinctively, Sean reached out with his right hand as well before remembering that his right was– back!
His hand was back!
Sean grabbed onto the vine and launched himself up it with both hands even as he pulled his feet up. A sound like a machete cleaving through thick brush passed beneath him, and Sean leapt out into the air away from it. He rolled to his feet, and all the while, his mind worked.
Information and memories flooded into his psyche, showcasing the aftermath of his evolution at high speed. The sheer weight of the sensations was jarring but thankfully, this was not Sean’s first rodeo. By the time he had gotten back up onto his feet, Sean’s mind was back in the game.
“Alright. Big bad, nasty extendo-sword, anime-style earth-fist-to-spike bullshit… am I missing anything?”
“Some kind of regeneration, really tough skin, and I’m pretty sure I’ve wanted to eat him before.” Gel responded quickly. “I never forget a face I want to melt, and I’m sure I’ve wanted to melt that particular face before. Does he look familiar to you at all?”
To Sean’s surprise, the hulking undead man-thing kind of did. There was something about its disfigured shoulder, and the way its dumpy rear end moved when it attacked that seemed oddly familiar. Like a recent memory that was nagging at him. But it wasn’t until the hideous thing pivoted on the ball of one foot to stride towards them again that it hit him.
“No way… Is that… Mumbles?” If they hadn’t been in battle, Sean might have been flabbergasted. He dodged backwards again, giving Gel time to vacuum up the few remaining mushroom bodies as they puzzled this out.
“It does look like him. Also, what's 'anime'?”
“How? He’s– I mean… He’s got lady parts now!” Sean asked, entirely ignoring the slime's question.
He hadn’t been entirely sure of the whole ‘lady bits’ thing until they had fought up close for a while. Mumbles here had plenty of flesh wobbling around, and his chest wasn’t the most important thing to watch. But despite his opponent’s undead nature, there was no way even a previously red-blooded male was mistaking that particular chest sway. Even if he didn’t have any red blood left.
Or maybe I do? Sean hadn’t gotten a chance to examine himself yet, but it looked like Gel had transformed from being a mass of clear liquid in his chest to a network of crimson vines running through his body. Thoughts for later.
“Some kind of conjoined summoning?” Gel guessed. “I’m all for academic curiosity, but this sounds like a great discussion to have after we kill it.”
“Can we?”
The question wasn’t as defeatist as it came out. Sean’s post-evolution memories had come with a recap of several dozen clashes they had already had with the creature. It couldn’t attack as fast as they could, but each one of its strikes was devastating. Together, they could overwhelm its ability to defend, but they couldn’t do so without getting close enough for it to retaliate. And they certainly couldn’t do so quickly enough to overwhelm its regeneration.
Gel had stabbed it enough times to turn a normal human into a pin cushion, and they had struck it at least a dozen times in at least a dozen places looking for a weakpoint. Sean even remembered literally breaking the head of his sledgehammer over it – and all to no avail. The thing took damage, but not enough damage. Though each movement reminded the gelaton that his strength in this new form had clearly gone up, it was like he was fighting against the tide.
Not only was Sean splashing harmlessly against it, but the tide felt like it was swelling.
“I know I’m going to hate this answer, but is it getting stronger?” Sean asked, blocking another wind-strike of the creature’s blade with the last of his shield. The bone was shorn off from his forearm, and Sean almost summoned another one but... this isn’t working.
“Every minute or so, yes.” Gel confirmed grimly. “It’ll do a thing where it– actually, it’s doing it now. See that?”
The hulking form of the undead Mumbles paused its relentless attacks and raised its black sword towards its face. Dark mana flowed from the sword’s hilt down its arm, enveloping its entire body. Tendrils of deep shadow rose up from within the mana barrier around it before sinking into its pale flesh like spikes. Muscles spasmed across Mumble’s body, and Sean couldn’t help but notice them increasing in size.
“I’ve never seen my meal bulk up before. Not sure how I feel about it. Good, because I get to eat more later? Bad, because it’s going to hurt getting there? I’m a little conflicted. Should we let it keep going? Should we stop it? It’s kind of creepy, right? ”
Sean couldn’t help but agree with that last point. He also couldn’t help but realize that now was the perfect time for them to claim a power up of their own. His memories of their fight, now that he knew what to go back and look for, told Sean that he had at least a few seconds to act. They also told him how pointless it would be to try and attack right now. The mana surrounding Mumbles literally was a barrier of some kind.
Learning that particular lesson had apparently been painful.
“Get ready to grab our last few easy meals.” Sean instructed his friend, dashing over to the last of the fallen fungaloids. “I have a feeling we’re going to need ‘em.”
“Ooh, do you have a plan? Because it sounds like you have a plan.”
“Working on one.” Sean confirmed, pulling up his subconsciously minimized prompts as he looked for the information he needed. The information he had hoped to receive, and that might just be what they needed right now.
As expected, the first prompt that greeted him heralded their latest evolution. A swirling maelstrom of deep midnight mixed with dark crimson washed over him, bringing with it the last howl of a timber wolf standing over a tundra grave. Though there were no fireworks this time, the tandem voices from before returned. Each speaking as if the voice of the other resonated from an infinite distance away. One burdened with the implacable inevitability that awaited all things, and the other madly shouting, free from the bonds of anything that might constrain it – even logic.
Hark and rejoice, rising agent of Death and Chaos! Once more you have chosen to remain on our paths, and in so doing step further down your journey of devastation as an ever-growing Gelaton! Enjoy the benefits of your new form, and take our dual blessings with you a second time…
As before, a bone-deep chill permeated Sean’s every bone as the prompt was read to him, and the message vanished the instant the voices stopped speaking. A prompt of the same coloring appeared, bringing with it no sounds of any kind… but as it harbored the information Sean sought, he didn’t mind.
Direct Bonuses Received: +2 to Might and Toughness. +2 to Cognition and Adaptation.
Indirect Bonuses Received:
* Gelatons naturally function as a composite of the base creatures that form them, operating in tandem on an instinctual level at all times. This close physiological cooperation allows them to combine the base physical attributes of both creatures.
* Thanks to your bond, morphic trait, and the naturally symbiotic nature of a Gelaton’s existence, either entity may now access and acquire manasphere nodes from the map of the other as if it were their own.
Relieved, silent laughter spilled out of Sean’s clattering jaw as he read through the second prompt. He had been saving the manasphere node points from his earlier level ups this entire time, hoping to gain even more options to spend them on when they evolved… and it looked like that effort had finally paid off.
Vindication! Sean cheered mentally, before dismissing the rest of his waiting prompts again in favor of opening up the node map. New sections were revealed to him from the retreating fog, and Sean didn’t hesitate to make his selections as he skimmed through the options.
Closing the map just in time to see Mumbles finishing whatever Dragon Doll Z-style power up was happening over there, Sean felt his own upgrades begin to take effect. He settled into a combat stance of his own, feeling like the timing for it was right. If only he had a camera.
“And now…” Sean said, unable to keep a smug grin from his face as he activated his new ability. “Time for round three.”