Amelia Cooper Level 35 Botanist Surveyor
Amelia was held suspended in a sea of darkness, drowning in its depths. A place that had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember.
A place where nothing grew and no light ever showed.
Amelia! You will not speak to your betters that way!
Whispers surrounded her, buzzing like flies around a corpse.
We are sorry Mrs. Cooper, you are just not what we are looking for in a candidate.
Here, she was completely alone, abandoned. Her only company, a continuous loop of accusations, replaying her past failures. They never stopped, never quieted.
We have exhausted every option ma'am, you are just unable to have children.
This heaviness had pressed down on her chest many nights, waking her with its crushing presence until she could hardly breathe. But this time was different. This time she wasn’t alone with her despair and its buzzing cloud of witnesses.
Something had weaponized her darkness, giving it terrible form. Now in its newfound sentience, she felt a terrible gnawing hunger.
Thousands of appendages reached toward her suspended frozen form. She had nowhere to run. There was no hiding in her own private hell. Just endless grief and fear. This new darkness thrived in the sea of her regret, pulling in her endless despair and multiplying. What started as an intruder, grew into a multitude, surrounding her on all sides, radiating a cold hatred.
It would take her, twist her, and use her to destroy all she loved.
She curled in on herself and screamed for an eternity as its grasping hooks reached her floating form and began to tear and rip, gobbling up the edges of her soul.
She felt it invading her body, screaming in her mind, offering freedom. The complete and total release of utter destruction. An end to the pain. Its hatred of her made complete sense. She hated herself... didn't she?
She looked down again at the half-empty bottle of liquor and popped open the cap on her medication.
God, it hurt so badly, even as the tendrils dug into her flesh tearing and gnawing at the exposed parts of her being, an even greater pain started to build at her center.
A bright burning seared her navel, galvanizing it… Purifying it.
From that place, flowed Fury. A wrath like she had never known.
She had been here before. She had fought this battle and lost, and in the losing, she had given up hope completely. These voices had led her down dark roads, promising the cold salvation of oblivion. Then when she reached the end of the road and saw her destination, she tried to run.
Tried to fight.
But it had not been enough and she drowned in that darkness. It had taken everything from her and now it was back. Demanding more. Eating away at who she was all over again.
Not again
She dived into the burning pain at her center, stoking it, feeding it her outrage, her rejection, her denial of this thing trying to claim her.
The pain was incredible, but it was honest. It demanded nothing from her, besides that she burn and to that burning, she gave her whole self. She fed it more. She fed the flame her pain, her mistakes, her fears, and her desires. She channeled all that she was into the growing inferno allowing it to consume her soul.
The tendrils increased their writhings, tearing into her at a faster rate, but it was pointless. Their hold on her was fading, burning away, leaving only a glowing corona of Blue Flame.
It blazed there, daring the tendrils to come closer and resume their feast. The tendrils curled back on themselves, fearing the destruction that always came with the flame. But the fire did not follow. Instead, it formed a protective sphere around the tiny mote of light at its center, glowing with an otherworldly iridescence that made the surrounding darkness seem but a shadow.
Congratulations. Under immense metaphysical pressure from an invader, you have successfully formed an Origin Seed.
----------------------------------------
Tilly
The heat of Tilly’s rage poured off him in cascades as he turned toward the group of Marcellus guards almost on top of Franklin. These bastards had abused and attacked his allies at every turn. Now, because of them, Amelia was lying in a pool of her own corrupted blood, fighting for her life and probably her sanity.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Strangely, the pain from his overused pathways had grown distant. Even the throbbing in his side, pushing him to revel in his hatred had been dampened. There was so much he couldn’t do. So much that he couldn’t change. Yet this reality didn’t weigh on him like it had minutes ago. In this moment he finally understood his purpose.
The incessant buzzing of anxiety and the heavy chains of past regrets all fell away as his whole being focused down to the razor's edge of the present. The battles playing out before him sharpened in intensity until he entered into a moment of perfect hanging clarity.
The crash and screech of clanging blades continued to sound up the street as Hiro finished his duel with the huge naga. At some point, Hiro had removed one of his opponent's arms, but in response, the Naga had entered into a berserker state, and his tempo of attack had doubled. Black smoke poured out of his mouth as he released a continuous screech of animalistic hatred. Hiro met the onslaught stoically, an island of calm in the raging sea of strikes, only allowing the most shallow swipes through his defense. Yet, even they were taking their toll as Hiro became covered in a rusty red network of bleeding cuts.
The flashes of light that had accompanied Linus’ strikes had ceased, and there was no sign of him or the enemy archer.
All three generals were either eliminated or removed as threats. That left Titus Marcellus with his cadre of 20 guards. The mosquito that Just. Kept. Biting. The embodiment of all that had eaten this empire from the inside out.
They advanced arduously against Franklin's onslaught of woven water jets. If they won out, then every remaining battle here would tip toward the enemy's hand and pressure would come to bear on the Hub and its escaping refugees.
Tilly didn't have to process this information. He took it all in along with a deep inhalation of fiery air. Indecision and doubt were gone, all that was left was purpose.
He would burn away the rot that stood before him.
His heart blazed in righteous fury, building up pressure inside him until it manifested in the form of blue fire wreathing his body. Wrath burned in his eyes as they glowed bright azure blue.
He felt light.
He felt certain.
He couldn’t protect the whole city. He might not even be able to protect his few allies. But whatever power he did have, he would use to his utmost to push back against those who wanted to destroy all that he had promised to protect.
Reality snapped back into movement and Tilly sprang into action.
Right before the lead guards reached Franklin, Tilly launched his hatchets, whirling with his throws to lend them even more velocity as he released. They shot off, small explosions of flame propelling them even faster as they impacted squarely in the flanks of the formation pushing towards the Tidecaller.
The fire was instantly quenched by Franklin's water Ability, even as the axe heads bit deeply into the neck and side of their respective targets. As the flame and water met, an explosion of steam was produced, bypassing all armor and shields as it left blistering welts on the guards all around the two that had been hit by his initial salvo.
Tilly kept up his forward momentum, sprinting toward the unit, calling back his axes and spinning again as he whipped them in furious arcs back toward the unit scattering in confusion at the unexpected vector of attack. The woven jets of water emerging from Franklin didn't let up, and steam again burst in their midst as two more guards were incapacitated.
The guards whom Identify pinged at levels 21-28, finally oriented on the new attacker bounding towards them. He was wrath incarnate and fire flowed off him freely as he crashed into their slow to form ranks. Franklin coordinated his attack pattern, splitting off jets to avoid hitting his newly arrived ally.
“It's just one Man! Kill him! Ignore the shellback!” A voice screamed from the back of the formation.
The nasally grate of his screeching command caused Tilly to smile.
'Soon.'
This new Ability flowed through Tilly as if he had been born to it, allowing him to constantly radiate blue flame from every part of his body in a continuous attack. The flaming aura simultaneously pushed his enemies back and enflamed each strike of his weapons. His close-up technique with his hatchets was almost nonexistent, but Dexterity was his second-highest stat and even his rough motions held a certain deadly grace, allowing him to move from one enflamed strike to another without ceasing.
Not that his fighting style would have been called graceful. He looked nothing like Threstus moving his twin swords like a master painter attacking a canvas. When that man had fought, every moment had been purposeful and connected to the whole, creating a bloody work of beautiful devastation.
In contrast, Tilly was rage incarnate, and what he lacked in training, he more than made up in savagery. A shoulder tackle flowed into a strike against unguarded goat legs, before jumping up to smash his head against the chin of a guard trying to strike down on him.
His patternless rage combined with his constant aura of blue flame quickly caused the remainder of the guards to give him space. They all backed away in a loose circle as Franklin continued to punish those on the edges with jets of water. He stood there for a moment gasping for breath, covered in bruises and cuts, none of which had managed to do critical damage.
His mana had completely run out at some point and his armor had morphed into its Null Spider Set. He could keep up the full body flame as long as he kept taking down enemies… and them giving him space was exactly what he didn't want.
“What are you waiting for you imbeciles! We have provided you with healing potions, now earn your keep!” The same voice screeched from outside the circle.
Tilly smiled and feinted away from the voice, before pivoting and sprinting right towards his favorite Quaestor and the guards who had the misfortune to be in his way.
“Stop him!!!” Squealed the young aristocrat as Tilly charged the two guards and leaped into an insane attack completely ignoring their defensive strikes. He tangled himself up with their weapons as he rode them to the ground taking more shallow strikes in the process.
The guards screamed in outrage and then horror as blue fire cascaded over their exposed flesh. One tried to stab Tilly in the gut, but his outrageous Endurance demanded much greater strength than the guard could leverage from his compromised position. All the strike did was add to the network of cuts crisscrossing Tilly’s body. The rest of the guards charged in behind him, just a few steps away, all probably rearing back to strike.
Tilly rolled with the tackle and pulled the guard who had stabbed him over his body as the rest of the unit attempted to rain down chops and stabs on Tilly's sheltered form. The now charred meat shield took most of the initial strikes before Tilly kicked him up and rolled to the side. Then with a primal roar, he burst out a reduced-cost Flame Expulsion, giving him enough space to leap to his feet.
A huge blast of water hit the rest of the guards from behind as they stumbled back from Tilly's area of effect. This knocked most of them to the ground and Tilly smiled a bloody smile at Titus as fire consumed the caked-on blood and viscera that had coated him for over half a day.