The wood of the figure that shambled into the room creaked and cracked, before something began to rise out of it. A vaguely humanoid shape made out of twisted and gnarled bark of dead trees, covered in a dark green moss. Tahir spotted four arms with sharp claws at their ends, and where a head would be, Tahir could see that the bark continued up like the trunk of a small tree, but with small split that revealed two bestial, glowing red eyes.
Another feeling of dread assailed him, much stronger than before. The looming feeling of death and its near certainty almost made Tahir freeze in place, but the rumble of the roots beneath him kept him moving as he called out. “Murabi!” To get the Mithral redcloud’s attention, if only for a moment. Seconds later, Tahir could feel a violent hum, a vibration in the air as Murabi released more of his own aura. Tahir heard his voice loud and clear despite being several dozen feet away.
“This has turned into a bit of a tricky situation.” He said. “I need you four to keep that thing from getting close until I can finish off the cairn lord.” He didn’t say anything else, but leapt toward the cairn lord faster than Tahir had ever seen him move. Aura visibly gathered around and fell from his blade in the form of what looked to be some kind of flower petals, which scattered across the space as he swung his blade.
“You heard him.” Tahir said to Meti and Theo. Hasio reappeared between them with his daggers at the ready. “Any idea what this thing is?”
“Maligno.” Hasio answered. “It’s about as bad as the cairn lord. Maybe worse. Highly dangerous to anything living, really."
The Maligno seemed to realize that the four of them would stand in its way in its attempt to reach the cairn lord. With a shriek, it lifted one of its arms and let out a blast of necrotic energy. Everyone ducked and dove to the side, and as they did they noticed that the roots emerging from the ground had grown a black coloration to them. As everyone rose, the Winged Serpent took to refreshing their divine shields. For good reason, Tahir thought. A blast of that would probably break the shield immediately if it didn’t have full power, and he could expect those roots to have a necrotic touch to them as well if they actually connected.
Noting that, Tahir decided to change his earth spirit to his air spirit, better to avoid them entirely. “Well, you all heard Murabi.” Tahir said, casting the soulflame spell onto his sword once the air spirit settled in his soul. After that, he devoted some of his remaining mana toward refilling the Winged Serpents pool of spirit energy, since none of Tahir’s own spells would prove nearly as useful as the divine shield. They had to keep it from getting close, so they couldn’t stay back and fight defensively until Murabi took out the cairn lord.
Tahir, Hasio, and Meti rushed forward, while Theo continued to blast from afar with fire, but used wind magic to make far leaps away from roots that came after her. With their speed, Tahir and Hasio could reach it through roots that it tried to grow to protect it, swiping at it with their weapons. Their cuts bounced off the supernaturally enhanced wooden skin of the maligno, leaving small nicks instead of cutting through like they would with regular wood, but it seemed more wary of Tahir’s soulflame. Hasio dodged back immediately, but before Tahir could, the maligno turned to him and its red eye flashed. Tahir felt slow and lethargic, like the entire world pushed against his attempts to get anywhere with speed. He tried to dodge the claw coming to swipe at him, but couldn’t get out of the way in time with the slowing magic affecting them.
Fortunately, an aura boosted kick from Meti got him out of the way before it could do more than scratch his divine shield. From the way the shield reacted, the maligno infused even its claws with necrotic energy. Meti then swung out with her magic scythe, which also failed to do more than a surface cut before the maligno backed away from her. At that point, the lethargic effect on Tahir faded, so he could dodge away as the maligno prepared another massive wave of necrotic energy.
Meti managed to quickly bring up a magic panel in front of her, thin as a glass window. It shattered almost immediately when the maligno fired the wave, but it gave her enough time to dodge out of the way so she wouldn’t take the brunt of it. Shortly after, massive bolts of flame came from Theo and slammed into it, leaving charred marks across the maligno’s form.
Tahir had to imagine it had some sort of shield similar to their aura and divine shields, and they just had to break it before they could truly strike at its actual body. They had to be extremely careful, as only a couple of hits would likely destroy any one of their shields. Even though the situation seemed incredibly dire, Tahir felt more confident about this fight than he did for the lich. This was an enemy he could touch, and injure, and though he chose not to cast his spells against it, he felt like it wouldn’t be able to just block them completely with a wave of a hand like the lich did.
With another shriek, the earth started to rumble underneath everyone’s feet. Tahir dove to the side just as massive as a root, easily as thick as a tree trunk, sprouted from underneath him, and more similarly appeared beneath everyone else. Another wave of energy fired out from the maligno as well, which missed Hasio as he ran out of the way to avoid it. “Keep up the pressure!” He called, turning and rushing for the maligno once more.
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Tahir definitely agreed. Though it wasn’t epic magic, this thing did seem to have a massive well of power and nothing it used felt short of advanced magic. They’d quickly become overwhelmed if they let it do as it pleased. Tahir, Hasio, and Meti tried rushing it again, but having to contend with the massive roots, which they couldn’t cut down in one swing like the others, along with the maligno blasting them with necrotic energy and slowing them down made getting more than one hit off on it before it repositioned itself difficult. Even Theo couldn’t fire on it as effectively, the massive roots blocked more than one of her fire bolts from even making it to the Maligno.
Seeing Theo ready another one, but wait to fire it off, he focused his attention on one of the massive roots instead. Channeling his aura, he dodged out of the way as it tried to slam into him, and brought his blade down as far along its base as he could manage, carving through it and chopping it off. With the gap in the roots, Theo fired off the bolt and watched it break through the gap created by Tahir and slam into the maligno. This caused another shriek, and at the creature’s call, three more roots sprang out from the ground and moved to join the attacks of the rest.
Seriously?! Tahir though. It seemed like continuously cutting through the roots wouldn’t work if it could create new ones that quickly. Just how many of these massive roots were embedded into the earth of this ruin? Dodging through the newly created roots, Tahir rushed through to the maligno once again. It had been dealing with Meti and Hasio coming in and out, but at Tahir’s appearance, its red eye flashed at him and slowed him down before he could even swing.
This time, Meti was too far away to bring him out of range of its claws. They came slashing down as Tahir tried to jump back, and shattered his divine shield in a flurry of swings. Fortunately, his aura held, and the maligno’s attention quickly switched to Meti and Hasio before it could strike him any further. Tahir lept back once his speed returned to him, out of harm’s way, and let the Winged Serpent swoop down and restore his divine shield. It had been flying up and dodging the roots on its own, firing weak bolts of divine energy and saving most of it for the divine shields.
“It really doesn’t like my soulflame.” He called out. Its major responses had only been to fire - Tahir’s soulflame and Theo’s fire magic. Whatever shield it had, fire seemed to be most effective against it. What I wouldn’t give to have a few bottles of Punice oil at this moment. He thought. Watching the Winged Serpent return to the air, he got ready to jump back into the fray, when a sudden rise in the temperature of the room gave him pause.
He glanced over to Theo, who tossed aside one of her vials of medicine. She looked like he’d seen her before while unbalanced. Fire roared around her in a blaze, her hair and eyes were glowing fiercely. He’d seen her intentionally unbalance herself before, but that was never something they intentionally tested due to the safety concerns and the limited nature of her medicine. With her newfound aura control, however, she seemed to have a much better handle on it than before. No longer did her hands shake, they remained perfectly still as she rose a hand toward the maligno and gathered a perilous flame.
A fire that shook the air, not in the way that the epic magic of Zorhe did in Tahir’s memory, but something close. It wasn’t epic magic by any means, but it was definitely advanced. “Move.” She spoke, though Meti and Hasio were already dodging out of the way before this bombardment of fire shot out from her hands, faster than Tahir had ever seen. It utterly singed any roots in its path, and the resulting explosion from the impact nearly knocked Tahir off his feet.
Just as he and Meti guessed. Once she got a handle of that raging elemental energy of hers, she had incredible potential. Already she conjured another one, but a shriek from the maligno caused the roots around it to frenzy. “Keep up the pressure!” Tahir called out. “I’ll handle the roots!” As he suspected, most of the roots would rush toward Theo. He cut through them at the base while they moved toward her. With aura and soulflame, he figured he’d be the fastest to actually chop them down. Looking at them, they seemed to be made up of numerous smaller roots fused together with magic, and not all the massive roots of one giant plant.
They all but continuously rose out of the ground to attack Theo, but Tahir only needed to cut a few, for Theo to dodge the rest, and have her powerful fire magic incinerate them as the bombardments traveled toward the Maligno and exploded against it. This process repeated a couple more times, the frenetic pace of it all starting to leave Tahir out of breath even with his aura boosted stamina, but he could see burn marks starting to stay on the Maligno’s body. Theo’s magic definitely had a major effect on its shield.
Once it realized that Tahir stopped approaching it, the Maligno switched to using its slowing ability on Hasio when he approached. Tahir spotted this and, with his speed boosted by the air spirit, managed to rush forward and deflect a swinging claw before grabbing Hasio and moving out of its reach. He heard Hasio starting to give his thanks, but it was drowned out by a cry from Theo.
Back toward the middle of the room, she was on her knees, clutching her chest. “I-I’ve lost control. I can get it back, I just need a second. I just-” As she spoke, another shriek came from the maligno. Seemingly sensing Theo’s weakness, it spawned a dozen massive roots in an instant, all from below the ground, and commanded them all to go for Theo at the same time.