A soft muttering filled his consciousness like a pleasant conversation overheard from the next room, and the darkness receded. Tilly’s eyes flickered open to find Erash standing over him concerned, her perfect features marred by two red stains running from her tear ducts past her chin and down her neck. The pleasant feeling left him as her magic returned to the flame on top of her staff, leaving his mind feeling black, and somehow twisted in on itself. Even flashes of what had just happened to him, left him feeling like a used garbage bag.
Kindle ruffled her almost complete coat of feathers in concern and cooed questioningly near his face, her bright blue eyes looking deeply into his. She sent an impression of a predator and taking shelter. Honestly, Tilly couldn’t agree more in that moment.
“Jonathan Tillman, are you alright?” Erash called… and Tilly realized this was not the first time she had asked. He noticed she still stood above him with her staff ready.
Tilly struggled for an answer, his thoughts slow and thick. Eventually, he focused on his HUD and his blood froze in his veins.
Corruption’s Influence: 34%
Shit. Shit. Shit. Tilly's mind seemed stuck on a horrified loop as the reality of his situation tried and failed to sink in. Kindle trilled in concern, rubbing her head into his hair in an abortive attempt at comfort, but Tilly was too dazed to take it in.
All of his meditation, all his work, trampled by that… thing. 10% of his agency, gone in an instant.
He mutely lifted his hand to the wetness running down his face from his eyes, nose, and ears. Whatever that was… it had fucked him up good. “I’m still me… if that is what you are asking.” He groaned out slowly, looking at the red smeared across his palm after his unsuccessful attempt to wipe some of it away.
Erash nodded in relief, straightening up and looking around at the others who, with the exception of Hiro, seemed to have undergone a similar if less intense trial.
“That was mind magic on a level I have never experienced, and that is saying something. I am sorry for not anticipating this reprisal, this failure is unacceptable.” She uttered with a slightly lost look in her eyes, addressing the group in apology. “I could hav-”
“We needed more information, and you gave us much more than we could have hoped. I would rather face an attack like this now than in the coming battle with no warning.” Hiro interrupted gruffly, hand on his sword, as he stood at the edge of the wall, observing the coming enemy.
“Well, whatever that thing was, my Corruption’s Influence increased by another ten percent,” Tilly spat bitterly. getting to his feet and pulling up his stats and new debuff and buff numbers.
Status Effects:
Minor Corruption [Hidden] -24% wisdom +16% strength
That put his Strength at 15.8 and his Wisdom at 13.68.
He swung his arms around gingerly, feeling the new coiled strength that the interwoven tendrils had added to his shoulder and thighs. The network had begun to stretch into his extremities and lend its unwanted power to his movements. At the same time, he could feel the increased drain on his mana refill, as the infection arduously took and converted a portion of Tilly's power to continue its invasive growth.
Ichiro turned toward the group as if just now noticing them, having been lost in his thoughts and whatever his eyes were showing him above the coming battlefield,
“I am afraid that whatever power that creature is wielding, it is melded almost perfectly with the Abomination’s taint. I could see the weave itself unraveling as its influence touched us.” Ichiro added as he wiped the blood from his face.
“Well…What is… our plan?” One of the honu elders asked, her voice heavy with the weight of what they faced, her lined face showing only the faintest evidence of the mental attack.
Hiro considered their words, still looking out over the wall at the far distant Horde, slowed to a crawl by the magical haste of the Boon.
“With this new information, we have a chance to structure our defense and maximize our advantages. The fact that they have a class dedicated as ‘fodder’ tells me that they will spend their superior numbers to weaken us, and then strike with their elites to take out any magical support we have. They outnumber us ten to one. But with the time Origin’s Boon has bought us, we have gained a far superior position.” Then he turned from the edge of the wall and looked back at Tilly.
“None of this changes the ultimate outcome of this fight. We will fight defensively, and be ground down by their least valuable troops until they can break us wide open. As it stands now, without support from other parts of the continent, without the ability to resupply, and without the bonus of a Standing Army there is no chance for victory.” He declared with finality, his hard eyes boring into Tilly.
“We need that Facet. Jonathan Tillman, is there not anything else you can do to locate it?”
“I have tried playing through the memories of my encounter with it during meditation but found nothing there. I think I have seen it a few more times in my dreams, but I can’t remember any of them when I wake. I have even gone to the temple a few times, but all that I get is the same flame and altar experience as everyone else…I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have made any progress on that front.”
Then Ichiro’s eyes snapped up,
“Did you not say that after the explosion in the battle before the capital gates, you gained a Spiritual skill? Have you tried it since arriving here?”
“No, I have been so focused on combat and survival it didn’t-” Then Tilly smacked his bloody hand on his forehead.
“The threads! The last time I activated Spirit Walk, I was able to follow a thread to the Facet’s location. But it disappeared after the nexus closed. I should have thought of this earlier.” He growled at himself, settling back down into a seated position, while Kindle hopped around him curiously.
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“Cheep?”
The whole group was focused on him now, and as he started to deepen his breathing, he explained,
“I’m going to meditate and then activate the skill, hopefully, those two will synergize and I will be able to get you more information. I'm going to try and find whatever connection I stumbled upon last time I was in my Spirit Form. ” Tilly explained as his breathing fell into a rhythm that had become almost second nature after hours of daily practice over the last weeks.
He fell deeper into his meditative state and the group around him began to split off, planning for the coming assault. Their words drifted in and out of his consciousness as he settled himself into a state of acceptance and calm.
“Food is no longer a problem, but we will need to establish a supply depot...”
“We will rotate two Units at a time at the edge of the wall, three deep, and hold the Bastions in reserve for any breaks, along with two of the three squads of rang...”
Inhale. Hold.
Exhale. Hold
Finally, when he was fully settled into his circumstance and had worked through accepting his body and the changes it had just experienced, he activated Spirit Walk.
The disjointed feeling of moving sideways through physical space to enter into something parallel but not the same still somehow felt nauseating. Nonetheless, Tilly’s spirit detached from his body, and looked down to find the thread connecting him back to his physical form had grown much thicker. It now looked to be a complicated braid of fibers made up of… well, himself.
Or at least whatever he was made up of in his spiritual form. He looked down at his ghostly body and found that, unlike the tether back to his body, his spiritual form had not improved since the battle. But it seemed that the meditation had helped him ground his spiritual form back toward his physical state more securely. He knew instinctively that the added strength of this connection would make the return to his body much faster if he ever needed to cross great distances in his spiritual form again.
He raised his spirit eyes from his bodily connection and looked around, finding everyone but Ichiro still engaged in planning as if nothing had changed. Ichiro was looking in Tilly’s general direction with a middle-distance look in his eyes, and Tilly wondered how much he was seeing... He waved at the lapin, but got no response before turning to the advancing enemy.
Tilly saw a dark chaotic cloud of writhing static accompanying their advance, like a stormhead rolling over the endless sky of the midwest United States. It was pure chaos... Unlike the feel of the blood ritual from the Nagas, which had been malignant but consistent form, this felt… broken. Like it had once held its own pattern, but that pattern had dissolved and left behind a corrosive momentum of undoing. It gave the impression of the snapping of strings or the rusting of metal, moving through the existing order and undoing it. If Tilly could have shivered, he would have, realizing that in his spiritual form, he was just another pattern to be unwoven in the face of that cloud's momentum.
Thankfully at this distance, he couldn’t pick out any specific signatures or forms in the advancing force and was glad he didn't have to face the spiritual reflection of the owner of those insane red eyes.
He shook his insubstantial head to try and focus, and assumed his meditative pose again, floating a couple of feet above his body. He couldn’t breathe in this form, but something about sitting like this helped him concentrate. He also realized that closing his eyes did nothing to reduce the input of his surrounding environment. Nonetheless, he allowed himself to drift, taking in his surroundings without fighting them. A steady feeling of rightness was flowing past him from behind the wall, washing all the land in its presence. Tilly could tell the feeling originated from the Flame in the mountain. It felt warm, bright, and steady. Now that he noticed it, he had a hard time imagining what this place would be like without its presence. Almost as real as the wall under their feet, the formation of energy coming from the temple felt sturdy and ready to face the coming threat.
He let the feeling of that strength wash over and through him, as his senses sharpened and he detected a glowing thread of light between him and the Flame. His awareness of the connection faded in and out and Tilly found it impossible to focus on it specifically. Like a figure you could see out of the corner of your eye, but was gone when you turned to look.
This was made even more difficult by the ripples of corrosive force that emanated from the Vampiric Horde. Even at this distance, he could feel it trying to eat away at the boundaries of the Alliance’s area of influence.
Tilly floated there, trying to find a hint of something, anything that could lead them to the next Facet, another piece of Origin’s influence on the plane. The longer he sat there, the more nuanced and layered his understanding of the effects of the environment on his spiritual self became. With the added benefit of his meditative introspection, he took in the spiritual realm around him, slowly gaining greater insights as his environment met the boundaries of his spiritual self.
This form of him held no shadow of Corruption, which was encouraging, but as he focused on his physical body, he could feel the force of its anchor-like hold there. It was a sentient tumor, constantly broadcasting a tooth-grinding hatred paired with a bottomless hunger that even now was attempting to gnaw away at the edges of his body and soul.
His awareness sunk deeper into his spirit self until he felt like he was observing the “skin” of his spiritual form on a micro level. From his magnified perspective, he saw that the boundary layer of his spirit was woven from millions of tiny fibers and he understood that the tighter the weave the more resistant to outside influence he would become.
This became clear to him as he watched different parts of the woven structure begin to unravel before the external pressures of the chaotic environment, before being renewed and firmed by another force. Every section that was undone and then restored was strengthened minutely, and he wondered if he was actively watching as his skill progressed in real time.
The source of this restorative force had an unmistakable feel of ‘otherness’ to it. Unlike the pressure of the coming cloud of chaos and undoing, this energy washed over him subtly, on a different wavelength altogether. It kept fading before he could sense it directly, but Tilly continued to observe undaunted as his spiritual form was assaulted and then remade in a thousand minute battles of influence.
At some point, he entered a dreamlike state of awareness, and the part of him that was only awake while he slept realized that these encounters were not random, but happening in sequence with a strange sort of rhythm. It was wild and almost unpredictable, but at the same time familiar. Tilly’s spirit eyes popped open and he smiled. He had finally realized what he was seeing, or more specifically, hearing.
Then, as if his realization turned on a switch, he was suddenly able to hear the music faintly surrounding him all over again. It called him to grow, thrive, and flourish. It was the very same melody that had perfused the hidden valley, and drawn him to the Flower in his encounter weeks ago.
Tilly stopped trying to actively observe and instead started to listen, letting the effect of the restorative music wash over him. After an indeterminate amount of time enjoying the song, he realized he had begun leaning forward toward the song.
Toward it!
He could feel the directions it was coming from! Yet as soon as that fact sunk in, another crashed in with it, shattering his concentration and deafening his perception of the song.
The song was coming from directly behind the force arrayed against them, leading straight into the middle of the Horde’s lands.