With a glass blade through his heart, and an eldritch horror practically spitting in his face, Tilly would normally have been completely overwhelmed, not at all able to pull off such a complex maneuver.
But he had been here before, visiting some version of this eventuality a hundred times in his mind over the past day. Time after time, he rehearsed the steps to this combination brutally, running his Will through the motions until the series of activations became almost second nature.
At this point, his Endurance was the only thing keeping the sword strike from being fatal. But that did not stop or even slow Tilly as he activated his bracelets, shifting his one hundred and eighty-five point stat imbalance to Intelligence and dropping his Endurance down to thirty-three. The damage being done by the sword multiplied horrendously, only surpassed by the increase in quality and depth of his Mana Well.
He didn’t have time to check his notifications and learn the details of whatever superlative Title came with such a crazy emphasis on intelligence. Instead, as he felt the Title slide into place, he seamlessly activated it alongside [All or Nothing] and [Divine Wind].
Oberon’s full-scale collapse into Corruption’s control made it impossible for the creature not to revel in his enemy's near death and he savored the moment with a slow moan of pleasure, completely missing Tilly's words. But the fey still had incredibly keen magical senses, and the writhing knot of tentacles that were not its eyes shifted downward as Tilly’s magical potential went from pitiful to godlike in the space of a breath.
When he looked back up, Tilly thought he could read fear in the thing’s face. With everything prepared and his life ebbing away, Tilly slammed his Will through the pattern to activate [Blue] Flame Expulsion+ and a shiver of recognition rolled through the creature as whatever was beyond those eyes finally recognized who Tilly was.
The one wreathed in flame…
The one that had destroyed so much of its work on this plane.
All three Titles surged from within him, magnifying Tilly’s ability as it roared forth, several orders of magnitude beyond what he could have even imagined. With a scream, Oberon shoved Tilly away, breaking the dying man’s grip as if he were a two-year-old… but that was all the time Tilly needed. An explosion of unsurpassed intensity ripped from Tilly’s chest, right next to the pommel of the king’s rapier.
The thing controlling Oberon’s body was still incredibly fast, and it blinked away the moment it was free of Tilly’s grasp, but by that time a roaring light was already chasing him. Tilly had become the epicenter of a thunderous boom so deep that it reverberated to the far distant mountains. Oberon’s body made it all the way to the berm before he was knocked from his feet by the blastwave, robbing him of his ability to use his incredible speed as he was pushed up into the air, where physics still seemed to hold sway.
The wave was followed by a curtain of flame, released with so much pressure it might as well have been from a nuclear blast. It incinerated everything in its path, picking up the scattered tons of iron and turning the entire area into a colossal version of the anti-fey grenades he had developed with Cog. A wave of bright burning metal pushed out from the leading edge of the blast in all directions, consuming the entire Wild Hunt in a single, awesome display of power before expanding hundreds of feet beyond.
What had once been Oberon clattered to the ground, reduced to a pile of charred bones in an instant.
That was all he saw before his body collapsed, every muscle, bone, and sinew, screaming at him in pain. To make matters worse, the length of slag that had once been a rapier shifted in its position as he landed, severing what little remaining function his heart had left and adding one more debuff to the incredible list that seemed to exist to emphasize just how screwed he was. Tilly’s old build reasserted itself and his plunging Health slowed to a concerning dive just above 2%.
He was out of time.
With a final gasp of effort, he activated [Resolute] and pulled the sword free, freezing his health at 1% for a scant moment. Wherever Erash was, he hoped she had heeded his advice and stayed well away, knowing that blast would have been just as deadly for her as any of these others… but that same hope spelled his doom unless he spent his final trump…
Answering his unspoken call, the temporal beetle skittered out from whatever place his armor had been storing the thing and latched onto one of his bracelets before humming. Time seemed to stop as the celestial item glowed faintly before its innate magic opened itself to his Will once again.
Whatever constituted the boundaries of [Resolute]’s protection ended, and Tilly felt his last thread of life begin to fray. Darkness closed in from the edges of his vision, and his mind grew sluggish. As unconsciousness claimed him, he distantly felt his last mental command fall into place and his Constitution swapped with Endurance. He activated [Unkillable].
…
Erash Level 90 High Priestess of Origin’s Flame
When her father revealed the level of depravity he had sunken to… she had almost attacked. But, hands clenched into shaking fists, she held back, biding her time. She had known the human long enough that when he suggested she keep her distance until “something big happened,” she took it very seriously.
So, she had hidden, wrapped in glamor, tucked behind a rocky outcropping hundreds of paces away. She was still able to track the conflict through the use of one of her last remaining treasures, a Scrying glass spun in silver and gold. Its maker had claimed it would be undetectable for all but the most sensitive Mana users, and she tested its full capabilities now, watching the worst of her people attempt to snuff out this plane's last hope.
She almost rushed from her place several times, fighting internal accusations of cowardice as she watched the battle develop, longing to intercede, but knowing in her heart that her time had not yet come. Instead, she bit her lip until it bled, and watched as her father plunged his legendary blade, the one said to pierce any defense, into Jonathan Tillman’s heart…
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
To which, that infuriating human had smiled! It was that moment, more than any other, that had sent a shiver of fear down Erash’s back. As cunning and cruel as her father had always been, this brutish human had played him like a pipe.
‘He knew! That rotten scoundrel!’ she growled quietly, her entire being focusing on the small reflective surface in her hands. Then she felt it, a pull on the very fabric of the Land as an incredible, terrifying amount of power was drawn upon all at once.
The mirror fell from her hands and she dropped her glamor completely as she realized she hadn’t hidden far enough away. Calling upon every ounce of favor she had with Father Rock and Sister Clay, she urged them to hide her, pouring her mana into the ground below as an offering.
They reached up around her in an orb three feet thick, readily answering her call… just in time to be shattered by the thunderous impact of an Ability so cataclysmic that Erash could scarcely comprehend it. Fire and heat poured through the openings of her defenses, and while her nature as High Priestess shielded her from some of its fury, much of this damage was secondary or even tertiary from that original power source.
She drained the rest of her mana well, summoning water and air to combat the intense wave of heat and healing flames to heal the damage done by the burning air that had shoved itself into her lungs and charred exposed parts of her skin. As the cataclysm ended, she pulled herself from the earthen defenses to find the landscape totally transformed…
Shock at the sight in front of her held her for a moment before her last view of Jonathan Tillman reasserted itself in her memory, and she started to run.
A man about to die.
She sprinted forward, heedless of any further damage she was taking from the still-smoldering landscape. Ripping free her last Mana potion, she downed it, causing her Pathways to scream as they flooded again with power. She ignored that pain too, summoning her adolescent wind elemental Zephyrous.
He coalesced before her, keeping ahead even as she sprinted, and she leaped upon him, allowing him to bear her the rest of the way at incredible speeds, even as his presence drained much of her only partly recovered Mana Well.
She arrived moments later, jumping off and immediately dismissing her almost invisible companion as she slid to her knees next to Jonathan’s body, activating Diagnose.
As its reading populated her vision, she barked a laugh of dismay. He had somehow restored himself to one hundred percent health in the seconds it had taken her to reach him… In fact, the only reason he had not regained consciousness was due to the strain she could read on his soul, something akin to Mana Exhaustion but with far deeper consequences.
Perhaps if she-
A soft clattering sounded behind her, and the thoughts running through her head crumbled to pieces.
She got to her feet slowly, horror drowning her nascent hope in thick despair. Reluctantly, she turned her head, finding that once again, her father had fooled her; this was not done… it would never be done.
The nearby charred skeleton rattled in a sound that Erash couldn’t help but associate with his laughter. In her memories, he had laughed often, but always at things she found more disturbing than funny.
Dark thoughts and darker feelings stirred as she stared transfixed at a head-sized nest of wriggling appendages, pushing free of the protective housing the skeleton had offered. At its center, she saw that accursed horn, broken in two, and from its midst surged… more.
Now unable to look away, her teeth ached and her vision blurred as she attempted to comprehend the thing growing from within her father’s remains. Its twisting and reaching movements spoke a language all its own, whispering of possibilities and offering promises of the sweet release of madness.
Aperture detected: lng.Exception: arr[input.%#(^$///???#_)#] = "OuterDark -&^&(*^- <># incursion"
Her Identify spewed forth a mix of words and symbols equally difficult to understand as the horror continued to expand before her. Her heart hammered in her chest and her instincts screamed at her to do something… anything. She had broken countless of these infestations with her power.
Yet what grew before her was not just another Corrupted.
This was her father… or what was left of him, and as bones shifted to accommodate new, ropy muscles, wriggling with slippery hunger, she found herself frozen. Clamped between the vices of her lifelong hatred of the man and the centuries of fear and longing he had wrung from her.
The thing continued to grow, doubling in size every few breaths. But she could not bring herself to move, no matter how she raged internally, all that came out of her mouth was the smallest whimper.
That tiny voice was back, the one that had whispered to her late into the night. It was screaming.
Run!
Hide!
You know what comes next….
Then a roar shattered her dark, sinking spiral, breaking the spell. Brokenridge, bleeding from dozens of wounds, dived at the thing shoving its way through a rip in reality without hesitation. He slammed into the creature, now half his own size, and raked at it with his claws before flinging it away violently.
It crashed into the ground twenty paces away, and yet Erash could not see any damage done to the creature. It just continued to shove more of itself out of its center as if nothing else mattered, growing in mass with every rapid beat of her heart.
Next to her, Brokenridge growled in frustration, rearing back his head and releasing a torrent of deep blue flames, incinerating its new growth. The thing let out a discordant scream of fury that lodged itself in Erash’s mind and pulled in every direction, attempting to rip her sanity apart.
Brokenridge continued to pour out flames on the creature, unaffected. But as her mental defenses finally rebuffed the attack, she realized that even contending with dragon’s fire, it was somehow matching its pace of growth with the destruction at its outer edges, and she doubted Brokenridge could keep up his ability forever.
"No, not growth…” Erash realized, her eyes narrowing back at the center of the horror, “Identify called it an ‘Incursion.’”
As the realization hit, many things fell into place, and the ice in her veins began to melt. Brokenridge had yet to let up, courageously containing the creature's expansion, and Tilly lay behind them, still unconscious. She would not let them down… terror or not.
Fighting every one of her long-heeded instincts, she took a step forward. Then another, as words whose source she could not guess came to her lips.
“Nameless, formless one. Forever chained to the Outer Dark, you have no dispensation to this plane.” She declared in a whisper, the light at the tip of her staff flickering into a bright flame, “Yours is the boundless cold. The endless gnashing of teeth.” As more words came, her volume increased, as did her boldness. For the creature had begun to flinch as each declaration landed, striking it like blows from the lash.
“It is not yet your time, and as long as I and the others of my order stand, it never will be.”
Its flinching grew into full contortions and it began to diminish in some immeasurable way as Erash’s voice grew into a passionate cry. Strength hid within her words, a power she had shied away from for too long.
Faith.
“As an Advocate of the Seventh Order and High Priestess of Origin’s Flame, I Banish you!” She shouted, thrusting her staff into the air as light blazed forth from its head.
The horror, whose entrance into this world had seemed undeniable just moments before, screamed, folding in on itself in a distortion of space that caused Erash’s head to throb. Bathed in Brokenridge’s flames, the creature collapsed in on itself rending the air with otherworldly shrieks of pain and fury, yet Erash did not look away.
She watched carefully as the light burning from her staff searched out every piece of the twisted creature, banishing it back to the void from which it came. The final echo of its scream died and it was gone, leaving behind her father’s bones and a now shattered horn.