Chapter 182: Jane, 1/2

Chapter 182: Jane, 1/2

The sky was bright with sunlight and [True Sunlight Rifts].

The land was dark with shadows and monsters.

Brilliant as the sky but a monster herself, Jane descended, her prismatic sword following in her wake like the dorsal fin of a sailfish. Black moon reacher amalgams scrambled up the smoky crystal towers at the edge of the Brightwater, but they were only one type of the many monsters out there. A horde of ten thousand beasts, each one a horrible amalgam of several other monsters, crawled or flew or floated out of the black ocean below. They were the heralds of a soul ooze that would overflow the world...

Or something like that.

Teressa’s prophecy wasn’t real clear. But whatever!

They were monsters, and Jane was the bigger monster... And there was some sort of joke in there that caused Jane to laugh out loud as she fell to meet her enemy. She wasn’t sure of the exact wording she was trying to find, but there was humor in this situation—

Ah!

Being the bigger person meant moving on and not engaging!

But being the bigger monster meant eating the smaller monster!

... Not very humorous, but Jane took what she could get.

Her body sang with prismatic light as Jane angled her descent to meet the first many-armed black moon reacher. It had five arms and three legs and a mattress-like body that opened up as Jane neared, revealing a blender-mouth full of bright white teeth. Tiny hands on deceptively strong arms reached for her.

But she was too fast for the pitiful thing. This mockery of an enemy. The original versions had made Jane feel so awful when she realized she had almost died to them in her first real adventure out on her own. She had thought she had worked through this particular trauma and fear when she had helped her father eradicate the moon reachers of the Forest of Glaquin. Ten thousand reachers she had killed!...

... Maybe not that many, but whatever. Apparently Jane wasn’t over it as much as she had thought.

This particular moon reacher was an amalgam of a new type of reacher; one that could reach through magic. It was much more deadly than the first type, by far. Theoretically, it could even grab her through her [Prismatic Body]. That is what the reachers had done to Scallion, back in the unicorn hunts. Ripped his leg clean off! And he didn’t even know he was missing a leg until later!

Jane twisted her ten-meter wide spider body into threads of prismatic light and slipped through every single grasping hand. Her sword followed in her wake, spinning around as she went through the blender-mouth of the creature, bursting out of its back like dynamite exploding a whale carcass.

Arms and tiny hands and big teeth and hairy legs, all briefly ignited with prismatic fire. Prismatic fire turned to simple blue fire rather fast. Hunks of burning, half-[Cleanse]d meat rained like gore—

‘I’m helping you with targeting, but since I have to do many things at once, I’m just going to hand over some of my senses,’ Poi sent, ‘Mission: Kill moon reachers and disrupt their offensive before they can reach the base.’

Jane had no idea what the first half of Poi’s statement meant, but the second was very understandable—

She suddenly gained another sense. It wasn’t sight or sound or smell. It wasn’t anything she had ever experienced before. Somehow, she could just tell where living things were.

Some monsters were more apparent than others.

Jane focused on the weaker ones first, to see if she was understanding this new sense correctly.

Most of the monsters were the same; like someone had taken a saturation slider on a monitor and turned it up. It was a halo around their body, sort of, but mostly concentrated around the head. Some monsters ‘felt’ more saturated than others, with the weakest minds out there —Yes, that’s what they were. Minds.— looking almost like nothing at all. And all of them were pointed upward, toward Forward Base. It was like the small edges of their halos were dragging them forward, toward Anhelia’s protected space.

Jane turned toward the larger threats.

The larger monsters were more than a simple saturation. They were like someone had taken a hammer to the very fabric of reality, shattering the world into color. This mind sense didn’t interfere with Jane’s normal sight, because what Jane actually saw with her real eyes was a whole lot of smoky crystal towers all around her. This sense allowed her to see through the crystal in every direction, all around, to see the locations of the most dangerous mental monsters.

It wasn’t [Greater Lightwalk], and it certainly wasn’t mana sense, but it was something similar and yet so much different.

Jane checked out her targets.

The crystal over there had two reachers crawling up the backside, out of sight of most people, but Jane saw them just fine. They were like sickly stained glass, crawling up the crystal, spilling noxious fumes out into the world as they went. Looking around, Jane saw ten more about a kilometer down. They were swinging between the smoky crystal towers like monkeys on vines, headed toward a soul ooze waterfall. Jane wasn’t sure how she knew what she knew in that moment, but she absolutely knew those reachers were going to go inside that waterfall, swim up through the ooze on the other side, and angle for a pincer angle on Anhelia’s base—

And then she realized she couldn’t actually see the ones down there at all. They were way too far out of sight, but she could ‘see’ them, and more importantly, she could hear their thoughts. How was Poi doing this? Was this how he saw the world all the time?

Poi answered her, ‘This is what Mind Mages do, Jane. We can hear mental monster thoughts more clearly than all other thoughts. I apologize for doing this to you without your permission, but desperate needs demand commensurate responses, and I can tell you’re not mad about this violation. Thank you for that, by the way. Once you’re done with those targets, I will step back from your mind and hand you off to Olirio, and then we need you to kill the soul casters. If you get rid of enough of them then Kiri and the archmages can come in with reinforcements. The mages will not deploy their large scale spells until they are clear to do so.’

Jane was already headed toward the hidden pair of moon reachers the second Poi started explaining. By the time she got to his apology she had already twisted through both of those first targets. Scattered, blue burning gore fell down through the bright, gloomy air. She moved on. She aimed at the group of reachers headed toward the waterfall of soul ooze.

By the time Poi told her of her secondary targets, Jane had raced through that second collection of moon reachers. The many-armed monsters didn’t know what hit them as Jane blendered them with her sword, spinning through the lot of them, turning them temporarily into prismatic flaming debris that rapidly calmed down to simple blue fire.

Flaming blue gore fell through the air, and Jane pivoted to the right.

Another minute passed in rapid flight through another twenty moon reachers, sending even more flaming blue gore to the soul ooze far below. Almost none of them were close to each other, but that didn’t matter right now. Jane moved without impediment and killed without mercy.

In two more minutes, she had zipped through the crystal towers, full bore through the next group of thirty amalgamized black moon reachers half a kilometer away.

She burned Mana to keep her Health high, and she burned Health because Blood Mana ensured she got a lot more mileage out of her resources that way. She would have used her Blood Weaver Ability to pull out more resources from the reachers, to gather more resources for more killing, but there was very little blood inside any of these skinny, horrible monsters. Only the largest amalgams had anything resembling blood inside them, but that blood was more ooze than blood these days—

‘Resources.’ Poi sent, ‘Check resources. And Rest, dammit! You’re going too fast!’

Jane slammed into the side of a wall, out of range of many monsters, and cut her spellwork.

Ah.

Oh. Shit.

She was down more than 4000 Health, sitting at 1550 Health out of nearly 5.8k. Her maximum Mana was almost 9.4k, but she was currently at 3500. The numbers suggested she had only spent maybe 60% of her resources. But she had spent more than that. A lot more. Maybe 40,000 Health? Most of her mana had gone into Health...

Jane had no idea. Actually.

Okay. Time to go slower.

... She was very much not over these moon reachers at all!

Jane just sat there, clinging to the side of a crystal tower, not exactly breathing because she couldn’t breathe with this body, but if she wasn’t moving or expending mana she could go for an hour without needing to actually ‘breathe’ by using [Greater Shadowalk].

She was too far down on resources for much of that, though, so she cast another [Rejuvenation] on herself in order to get more resources. Health was easy to regain, but Mana was not. Mana regenerated at 5-6 mana per second. But with [Rejuvenation], every second the spell ran she gained another 195 Health.

Ten seconds passed and Jane regained almost 2000 Health. She cast another [Rejuvenation] and used her Blood Mana Ability to run [Greater Shadowalk] so she could breathe. She had Favored that spell long ago, which brought the mana costs down to 2-3 mana per second. But since she was running it off of Health, it cost 5 Health per second. This was fine. Health came back quickly. Mana was her truly limiting resource... She had already thought that.

Okay. Her thoughts were spinning in circles. She was thinking about math.

This was fine.

She breathed now, and everything was good.

Net gains all around, really.

‘Don’t let it get that low ever again, Jane.’ Poi sent, ‘Wait there. You killed the main offense. We’re clearing minds. Look up, and see.’

Jane was already looking up.

A kilometer above, spellwork lit up the sky, turning the space at the tower tops into fire and explosions, killing monsters by the hundreds. It was not enough. Jane looked down, at her own level, and saw a hundred thousand more monsters. More kept climbing out of the ooze all the time.

All around her, in the smoky crystal towers, were monsters.

Most climbed, with too many long legs or arms or long, grasping claws, finding or creating purchase on the crystal, as they ascended. Some flew. All were headed in the same direction. None of the amalgams fought with each other, and they didn’t actually pay Jane much mind. They were still all focused on the target. Jane watched as a few of them glanced her way, both with their eyes and partially with their minds. But Jane wasn’t worried. She could tell that they didn’t care about her. She was a giant monster, after all. She was one of them?

Or something?

Why were they ignoring her like this? Amalgams usually did not ignore her? What the fu—

A freight-train centipede rose up from the muck far below Jane, headed up the same crystal tower she clung to. Its segmented body was made of giant screaming heads, and it tore up and around the crystal tower like a moving spiral staircase. All those heads for a body marked it as a dispelling amalgam. Ah. The amalgams in the other towers were under the direct control of the soul ooze, or something, weren’t they? Maybe. Maybe not. The slime had seen Jane, and was sending something to deal with her. The dispeller centipede had eyes and mind only for Jane.

Resource check.

She was good.

Shadows lightened and turned prismatic. Thick air poured off of every surface near Jane, even clearing some of the smoky crystal under where she stood. A flicker of [Rejuvenation] flowed across her, and she turned that Health into action—

She suddenly realized that the vague sense inside her head was very much telling her that there were more mental-ish monsters out there, and they were how the horde was being controlled. The dispeller centipede had some sort of large tendril coming off of its backside that led off to somewhere else. That was where the control was coming from.

This was a very useful ability, Poi!

She would get to the controlling monster problem later. The centipede needed to die, first.

The centipede screamed directly at Jane as it raced at her.

Jane descended onto the centipede, her sword flashing brightly as waves of dispelling power washed out of the freight train monster like the screams of the dead. At the last moment Jane pulled her sword behind her, protecting it from the waves of power pulsing from the black centipede. Those dispelling waves washed across her body, but she had pulled her [Prismatic Body] and [Cleansing Aura] inward; all the [Dispel] managed to catch was her [Rejuvenation].

Not too bad of a trade.

The dispelling song passed Jane by, either bouncing off of her or doing nothing, and then she reached the head of the centipede. An amalgamation of crushing jaws and chittering mouths lunged at her, but she released a small bit of her [Prismatic Body] out into the world and controlled the light and air around her to twist to the side, dragging her brightly glowing and now spinning sword behind her as she raced across the back of the centipede, chopping the monster into flaming bits. It screamed again, more dispelling power. Jane pulled her sword to her own back, protecting it with her body, and then she went back to chopping up the target.

She raced down the staircase made by the monster, slicing it apart as she went, turning most of the greater amalgam into fire and thick air that sailed down all around Jane, further evaporating in the presence of her [Cleansing Aura]. It was well and truly dead by the time she got to the end of it.

Jane took a small breather and then she focused forward. Poi hadn’t retracted his ability or handed her off, yet, so Jane was going to use it while she could, and she had noticed something else out there in the gloom. Something that needed to die. Which was probably why Poi let her keep this ability.

Like a fiery blue comet, Jane trailed thick air all around her as she followed the trail of smaller tendrils at the backside of every nearby monster. She hadn’t noticed them at first, but she certainly noticed them now—

She found it.

Visually, the target looked like a small bundle of eyes and tails and paws and calico fur that was latched to the back of a lizard. This lizard was in turn latched to the side of a crystal tower. They were actually separate creatures, too; not one single amalgam, for whatever reason. To Jane’s normal eyes, the target and the target’s ‘vehicle’ were nothing important; just another tiny pair of monsters in the middle of a thousand larger, more dangerous looking threats, all climbing or flying up together. But to her Eyes of Magic, and to Poi’s mind sense, the cat-like amalgam was the center of a knot of behavioral controls.

The smaller monster’s tails turned ethereal a meter away from the creature, becoming strands of invisible intent that burrowed into the bodies of every single monster within a kilometer. Every single one of those monsters was under the control of this small one. It was a minor general in a very large battlefield.

One of those tendrils tried to poke into Jane, too.

Jane introduced the amalgamated shadowcat —for that’s what it had to be— to her shining sword. Snicker snack! Click clack. Jane turned the cat and its mount into flaming, evaporating gore. Suddenly, the nearby horde fell into chaos. Every monster had been moving up, toward the target. Now, though, some amalgams fell out of the air as they lost the ability to control their magic. Some fell from the sides of the smoky crystal as they lost the ability to climb. Some jumped from the crystal, as they were not willing to be out in the daylight. Jane imagined those ones fell to their death, but if people could survive a sky high fall, amalgams certainly could.

Many monsters remained dedicated to attacking Forward Base, but Jane had done a lot by killing that shadowcat.

Jane moved on, finding the tiny targets among all the rest, and ending them.

The monsters that continued the assault were a bit slower. They were a bit dumber. Less organized and more prone to stupid tactics. Like they normally were, every single night.

It was enough, for now.

Poi sent something about how Jane’s actions were directly weakening the soul ooze’s assault on Forward Base, which was good, but Jane concentrated on killing. She dodged when something sought to harm her, and killed when she got a clear shot, and then she made sure she had actually killed whatever she had struck.

Jane was pretty sure that all the small bits of gore that she had scattered to the sky would fall down into the ooze where it would recombine into something else, later. But hopefully her flames and her [Cleansing Aura] would make the next battle that much easier.

After Jane killed shadowcat number 21 and random-monster-that-thought-to-attack-her number 45, she had to rest. Blood Mana was more painful the longer she used it; she would never complain, though. So far, it was a good kind of pain. But she had burned through another 40,000 Health of her 116k daily limit—

‘Moon reachers dead. Lesser mind magic targets dead. Target change after your rest,’ Poi sent, ‘Do not move until I finish telling you your new goal. Repeat to me that you understand this.’

Jane had been ready to move out even while Poi spoke, but she held herself back. ‘I understand.’

‘Good. Okay.’ Poi sent, ‘Your new goal is to kill the soul casters, but do it safely. There are at least 500 down there. Killzone and others will join you when they can, but the archmages and Kiri can’t move in to stop the flood of monsters coming out of the ooze until the soul casters are gone. We can hold off that flood up top for a while, but we will have to retreat again if air support can’t support us. Singer Nirzir is here at Forward Base ready to deploy some Undertows as soon as we know they won’t be corrupted away from her, like all of Kiri’s Sun Rifts were.’

Jane glanced toward the open area above the Brightwater.

All of Kiri’s rifts were turned to shadowy things, radiating protective gloom, or else simply gone. When did that happen?

‘Don’t worry about when that happened.’ Poi sent, ‘You were busy, and you’re still panicking slightly. You got all the moon reachers, Jane. If more get sent out I will tell you to take care of them. You and the Mind Mages and a few top rankers were the only ones not affected. New Frontier was hit worse than us, by far, but they’re recovering fast, too. Shade Farix is still a Shade so he was fine, and he has one real Mind Mage over there with him. They actually recovered faster than us, because they only have about 20 people over there, total. We have around 500.’

20 people! That was it!? Jane briefly felt the need to go help them, but then she realized that she did not want to be in that position, and those 20 people were probably each at the level of Mog, or something.

Poi sent, ‘If they need assistance, I will tell you.’

‘... Okay.’

Poi continued, ‘When you’re done with the soul casters, we want you to seek out whatever actually cast that large [Mind Fog] spell, and end it. Whatever did that was not the black moon reachers. They carried their own power, though, in full, and it is good that they are dead, but the soul ooze is displaying the power to mix and match monster abilities, so whatever actually cast that large spell is still out there. Maybe it's the soul ooze itself, but it's more likely something that the soul ooze made.’L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

Jane really needed to work on her lesser rivergrieve. Maybe up it to a true rivergrieve, though she wasn’t sure how. That Familiar Form had the innate ability Slick Scales, which deflected lesser spellwork and gave the creature a modicum of protection against lesser physical attacks, but that was it. Theoretically, she could combine those scales with the innate reflection from the nacreous weaver’s Radiant Presence, but in actuality, she had failed that bit of magical understanding and implementation; going from theory to fact.

If she had managed to do all of that before today, she would likely be perfectly safe swimming around in the soul ooze, hunting for the fog pulsers, or the singular fog pulser, wherever it might be. But right now? Here in the middle of battle?

Probably a bad idea.

Poi sighed. ‘Please, Jane. No experimenting right now. On task. I’m pulling back my senses now. I fear I would take the rebound attack from those Soul Bolts if I were to stick around.’

Jane’s world dimmed.

She saw the gloom in the air, and death all around, and she felt lesser, as though she had lost track of every single monster all around her. Which she had. Now she had to use her eyes and Surround Sight to see and to fight, and Surround Sight had never felt more inadequate than at this moment.

‘Work on your mana sense and most of that might come back. You’ll have time when this is over.’ Poi sent, ‘I need to coordinate Nirzir and Kiri. Switching you to Olirio now.’

The switch was instant.

Olirio sent, ‘Greetings, Miss Flatt. I will also be leaving you when you engage the soul casters, but I will return at a moment’s notice, as soon as you are clear of them. Do you need mana?’

‘Heard and understood.’ Jane pivoted around the crystal under her feet, aiming herself toward the Brightwater. She activated [Greater Shadowalk] to get clear of the smoky crystal towers, which she did through a bunch of small hops that barely cost more than her natural mana regeneration. ‘I’m good for a few...’ And then she reached the edge of the smoky crystal. She saw the Brightwater in all its horrible glory. Her hearts beat hard. Hundreds— No. Thousands upon thousands of targets, only some of which were bloated corpse soul casters. Still too many for her, for now. ‘I do not have the mana for this. I’m coming in. Where should I go?’

All she could do was prepare for the next danger, so she meditated to put herself into Rest, to regenerate Mana and her Health. A Restful state caused both a person’s daily Health and Mana regeneration to go from daily, to hourly, after all, and she needed more... of everything.

She felt like a very small spider in a very large world.

Her father had talked about this a bit back after the ‘Battle of Chelation’ with Terror Peaks. Jane usually didn’t feel this way, but here and now, she did. And she didn’t have Erick’s ability to be ten places at once, with sky spanning spellwork and endless resources. She felt even smaller for that fact, too.

... Maybe she should pick Intelligence. Bump it up to 25. Then she would never be this low on resources ever again.

Or maybe she needed to get a Blessing of Rozeta for Immunity to Mana Exhaustion and Health Fatigue. How would she do that? Scion of Balance for double resistance was great, but it was nothing compared to immunity—

‘Killzone and everyone else is in retreat. All people accounted for. We’re preparing for Farix’s spell.’ Olirio sent, ‘Thirty seconds.’

The next thirty seconds passed with Jane and her thoughts as still as a frozen pond.

At the twenty second mark she had to switch her eyes around so that she could see what was happening on the other rim of the Brightwater. She spent the mana. Her large set of frontal eyes effectively gained the best zoom-feature she had ever experienced in her life—

Farix stood at the top of his tower. A few cows stood placidly to the side. The top was completely open, but the rest of the place looked well defended, with spellwork and solid metal and stone. It looked like they hadn’t taken any damage at all.

It could have been an illusion, but Jane did not feel it was—

The spell began.

Farix lifted his hands to the sky. His forearms sliced open on their own and blood flowed to form an orb, hanging above. Shadows lifted off of the shadowed areas all around and joined Farix’s spell. And then there was a pause. And then more blood flowed up and into the spell. Second by second, pulse by pulse. Blood flowed. Jane wasn’t sure if she was seeing it right, but it seemed as though Farix was packing the thing overfull, like he was stuffing a suitcase with everything he owned.

With his right arm still lifted to the orb, Farix moved his left arm to the side, to a cow.

Blood and shadows flowed from the cow, into the sphere, packing in tight. The cows didn’t seem to care. They were likely drugged. Or somethi—

The first cow dropped dead and a massive pulse of shadow and blood and something brighter left the cow and entered Farix’s spellwork. Jane wasn’t sure, but it had to be a soul. Farix moved his hand and grabbed at the life of the next cow. In three seconds that cow died, too, its life joining the orb overhead. Each cow’s death settled into the orb and sent a pulse of power along a briefly-visible artery of shadows and ethereal blood that filled the air around the spell, like it was a heart and Farix was jump starting the beating of it all.

At the sacrifice of the seventh cow, that was enough.

Farix sighed and the shadows of the blood orb pulsed stronger.

In a flashing instant, the shadowy, ethereal veins and arteries in the air grabbed hold of the light, and the whole working became a miniature red sun lined in white clouds. And then the orb expanded, lighting up from the inside, expanding and expanding, until Farix twisted his hands in the air above, crushing the orb back down to size; concentrating the spell. He held on to the utter death he had created in order to prevent the premature release.

The blood orb had to be at least ten meters across before Farix stopped the expansion, but the light that poured out of it was much larger—

No. That was wrong.

The blood orb stillpulled in the shadows all around, transforming them, filling the world with light.

Some woman beside Farix boomed her voice out across the Brightwater, “Incoming!”

And then Farix pushed the red orb forward. It moved slowly at first, looking like it barely moved at all from this distance, but Jane could tell it had already moved a hundred meters in less than a second, glowing ever brighter as ten seconds, then twenty seconds, then a full half minute passed. It was almost to the very center of the Brightwater’s airspace, directly above the target, but it had angled down a lot. Jane felt a minor moment of panic as she realized that if that thing came any closer to them they would have to evacuate. It didn’t look like it was coming their way anymore, but Jane held no doubts that Farix could adjust the trajectory—

The orb reached the subtle gloom in the air over the once bright land, and like a dog sensing weakness, it launched directly downward, parting the gloom—

It was beyond her sight, now. Jane couldn’t help it. She had to see. She cast a [Scry] high into the sky, into the center of the Brightwater.

—The blood orb plunged down into the gloom, sucking in the shadows and spitting out light, growing even more powerful as it descended. The journey of the ‘red dot’ parted the black clouds above the black ocean like only an explosion could, and then it touched down into the very center of the soul ooze slime.

It detonated downward.

For a brief moment, Jane watched the Soul Bolts of five soul casters each try to reach Farix’s blood ball, but the transformative light of the blood orb sucked up those nearby Bolts and turned them into more power.

A wave of light and seeking veins of blood washed away the soul casters and turned them into red light, that became red blood.

The wave of bloody light passed across the entire Brightwater; a suddenly-released ocean of transformative power. The black ocean burned away, revealing amalgams below the surface and leaving everything to float in midair, briefly, before flesh and bone and everything else all transformed into even more glowing red blood. A great deal of material was lost in the conversion, but as the light passed—

Jane had many emotions at what she saw. She wasn’t sure where to even begin. Mostly, she felt awe, but there was a distinct undercurrent of wild anticipation of some emotion beyond her understanding, tainted with the thought of how much of a challenge it would be to kill Farix.

The destruction of his spell was absolute.

25% effectiveness! Bullshit!

Farix’s [Blood Conversion Orb], which was Jane’s tentative name for the spell, washed out from the center of the Brightwater, pushing away the black ocean while simultaneously converting every single amalgam into raw blood. The soul ooze was not fully gone, but the Shade’s magic had been directed downward, instead of going up at all, and thus it had burrowed through at least 25 kilometers of ooze, plummeting the new surface of the soul ooze to well below the old coastlines.

His spell had only actually stopped because it hit the bottom of the lake, along with other impediments.

For a very brief moment, the entire Brightwater, covered in blood, stood revealed. The coastlines to the north were wreckages of broken crystal towers and cathedrals and mansions and palaces. The coastlines to the south were more modest homes. To the far west were mountains and a bunch of ruins; the remains of what used to be floating castles, where people used to go to school to learn ‘proper magic’ before they were allowed to enter into the Script. To the far east were the soul towers, where the Spire reigned as the largest, only inhabited structure around. It was abandoned now, of course. It had also been submerged under the previous height of the soul ooze’s surface. Now, though, the Spire was revealed, but that didn’t matter as it was still very broken.

The other crystal towers near the broken Spire used to be home to a land of near-sentient dead souls; refugees from the old cosmology that lived a life that resembled their lives from well over 1500 years ago, and a universe away. The Shades sometimes picked prized shadelings out of those dead people, for the souls out in the rest of the city were too far gone to be turned into anything useful. That whole place, which used to shine with brightness, was now full of smoky crystal towers, full of the insane dead.

Farix’s spell had killed every amalgam. It had transformed them all into blood. That blood pooled here and there, and especially at the bottom of the lake, but there was one place that remained fully black.

The soul ooze.

Off-center of the lake bed, to the east, was a glob of black ocean sitting in a land of blood, like a bloody black booger. Farix had uncovered the soul ooze, but he had not damaged it. Domain had warred with Domain, and Farix’s spell had needed to go through a lot of fodder to get close to the soul ooze. Farix’s spell had been broken by the soul ooze itself.

Farix’s spell had cleared the way! And if that was all that it had done, Jane suspected that the kill could have proceeded from there with minimal issues. But the sudden release of pressure from the removal of a small sea’s worth of ooze had a catastrophic effect on the rest of the Brightwater. All the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst was still filled with black ooze, after all.

Gravity in the Underworld— for that’s what this was, once one got this deep— was wonky. Even so, water still flowed to the lowest possible point unless measures were taken to stop that. Thick walls surrounded all of the Brightwater, for the people of the Brightwater needed to keep monsters out of their homes, too, and walls were still the best solution to that problem, no matter how much magic there was in the world. There were holes in that wall now, though. Some holes had been caused by monsters, no doubt, but at least one was caused by the soul ooze itself, when it moved into this land.

To the west of the Brightwater, where the land was mountainous and full of ruins, Jane saw a conspicuously large, flat area, stretching from the walls to the former coastline of the Brightwater. A large hole was in that wall.

And now, there was a large difference in water level between all of the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst, and the Brightwater.

Black ooze poured in from that massive hole, and then the massive hole tore open wider. Crystal retaining structures broke. The black ocean flooded—

Several things happened almost too quickly for Jane to understand.

Killzone descended into the bloody lake, directly at the soul ooze.

Farix instantly killed his remaining cows and all of the blood inside the entire Brightwater began to glow in resonance.

The soul ooze released ten soul caster amalgams from itself, along with the large giant made of hands. It was the Hand Caster! The only amalgam that had shown the capability to think and to heal itself. It had been gone for a while, but it was here, it had shown itself! Jane wanted to rush in there and kill it right now. It had evaded her so many fucking times! It had killed so many people. It had—

A pit of dread and hate opened up inside Jane’s chest as she looked upon the Hand Caster, and saw some of its hands were tiny, and attached to very, very long arms. Those hairy black arms twisted at unnatural angles and began to join together, aiming upward, gathering shadows into a spell similar to what Farix had done, but—

Jane had no idea how bad it would be.

If she were an orcol, Jane was sure she would have been Raging.

The mother fucking Hand Caster had amalgamized moon reacher shit into itself! It was probably the thing that pulsed that large [Mind Fog] all across the whole Brightwater and beyond! Fuck that guy!

Olirio sent, ‘Help Killzone. Now.’

Right.

She was here for a reason, and to accomplish a specific goal.

Jane instantly did as she was told, transforming her eyes back to their proper arrangement as she dove into the red glowing Brightwater. She aimed directly for the Hand Caster all the way at the bottom, which floated directly above the soul ooze.

—she watched as the glowing blood of the whole area flowed into the gap in the western wall where the soul ooze’s main body was attempting to flood the area. That blood moved faster than Jane would have thought possible at these size scales, acting at first like a net, and then like a condom, to hold back the inundating ooze coming in from the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst like a balloon would hold back the water from a faucet. The blood bulged out, instantly, and Jane hoped Farix had a better idea than that—

Blood actually flowed up from everywhere, not only filling the main gap, but also every single smaller gap as well, but the smaller ones were not really concerning—

The balloon of glowing red blood suddenly transformed like the sudden appearance of a glacier, becoming massive crystals of blood that slammed into and out of every single break in the wall. The sound was astounding, and almost made Jane move off target. Some ooze had gotten through, and would continue to get past the blood crystals, either trickling or pouring—

Olirio sent, ‘Farix can give you five minutes. Maybe ten.’

She was moving too slow, too unsure. Things were taking longer to understand than they were to kill.

Jane got her head in the game.

Olirio sent, ‘This whole thing needs to happen before the soul ooze can regain all the resources of all the other monster parts in the rest of the ooze. Kill the guardians first.’

Killzone had reached the first of twenty surviving soul casters (Where did the extra come from?) long before Jane could join him. He had already turned two into exploded goo, while fending off and outracing a constant barrage of a hundred black bolts.

The Hand Caster was Jane’s target, though. It was wildly different from how Jane remembered, but it was still based on the general shape of a giant, with two large legs like massive tree trunks and two large arms coming off of a torso, but now it had a massive head at the top and a bunch of longer arms in the place of every tenth normal arm. It was a dispelling mental monster amalgam now, and it was casting some sort of large scale spell.

It floated, cross-legged, midair above the soul ooze, with all of its arms raised out and to the sky, each hand with an eye upon the palm, each eye staring at a mass of shadows gathering above its head. It was probably another [Mind Fog] attack. Jane hoped it was a [Mind Fog] attack.

It probably wasn’t. She proceeded anyway.

At Jane’s approach some of the hand eyes turned Jane’s way.

She would likely only get one shot at this. This damned amalgam was too smart, and it was too capable of self-healing—

A bright darkness took hold of the sky overhead as ten stars appeared as though from the deepest depths of Abyss, to shine their Void Starlight out into the world. Nirzir was here, somewhere! Or maybe she had finally figured out a [Familiar]. Jane didn’t have time for that, though. Tendrils of violet shadows instantly poured down from above, punching straight through the gathered spellwork of the hands caster, burrowing straight into the creature’s body. Violet glitters streamed up into the constellation above, the spellwork pulling out Health and Mana to empower itself.

It wasn’t the same as Erick’s [Undertow Star], for [Luminosity] wasn’t part of the Open Script yet, but it was functionally identical. Nirzir’s Void Song burned away at half of the gathered shadow orb overhead, and would continue to burn for as long as needed. She would have to cancel that spell before a soul caster threw a Soul Bolt at it, but it looked like Killzone had every one of those amalgams’ attention.

Killzone had killed five of them, so far.

Nirzir’s Star gave Jane an opening and so Jane descended on the Hand Caster with her sword swinging brilliance and her entire body lit up like a comet. Amalgamated arms flew away from the body of the monster as Jane slashed and sliced. The entirety of Nirzir’s [Undertow Stars] pulled at the entirety of the hand caster like drilling violet tendrils.

Jane latched onto the amalgam’s upper torso and face, cutting with all of her claws while her sword further clipped all of its severed limbs. She had already cut away every moon reacher arm; she made sure of that before she went in.

She tried not to think about how all of the arms could potentially have the moon reacher ability, even if they didn’t look like moon reacher arms.

The dispeller-head roared a blast of anti-magic directly at Jane’s own head, but it simply bounced away, unable to affect her inner spellwork, or touch her quickly-dodging adamantium sword.

All of Jane’s blue fire evaporated off of the amalgam, though. But she kept applying more and more spreading blue flames. In a flashing set of instants, blue fire engulfed the entire amalgam. The main head tried to cast another area [Dispel], but this time Void poured down through the amalgam’s throat, breaking its [Dispel] into something less harmful. Some of Jane’s fire went away, too, but that was fine.

The hand caster blipped.

Half of it, anyway.

Like shearing paper, twenty-odd half-severed arms and hands and eyes appeared to the left. Most of the creature didn’t blip at all. Most remained firmly trapped under Jane’s claws. Jane tore into the rapidly dying amalgam, ripping and tearing and cleaving and [Cleanse]ing as fast as she could, heedless of Mana or Health costs. In ten seconds she was left holding onto the chest of a corpse with stumps for legs and no arms that was rapidly disintegrating under her power. The hands that had blipped left had long since fallen out of reach, though Nirzir’s [Undertow Star] tracked them the whole way, for they still had life in them, until they fell into the Domain of the ooze below.

Nothing could get through that Domain, it seemed, unless the ooze wanted it to get through.

Jane felt the Hand Caster go limp under her many gripping legs, unable to fight her any longer, and so Jane ascended, holding on tight to the corpse to make sure that it was actually dead, ascending the whole time, ensuring that she stayed away from the ooze’s Domain, too.

She could feel the ooze’s Domain this whole time. Right below her. It was like an edge to the world, or like a black hole, threatening to pull her in if she got anywhere closer to the thing. If she got near, she knew she would die. She had fought off her fear this whole time while she attacked the Hand Caster, but now that the amalgam was dead and her job was done, Jane’s fear won out over her furor.

So she raced to escape.

Mog was down there helping Killzone kill the soul casters. She had killed her fifth, or something. Then she, too, was escaping to the north. Two other people who Jane didn’t know were escaping south. They were from Farix’s camp, Jane was sure.

Killzone finished off the tenth and last soul caster, and then he rocketed directly at the side of the soul ooze—

He struck the edge of the soul ooze’s Domain like a child would hit a glass wall. He bounced away.

“Jane!” Killzone backed up, yelling, “RUN! NOW! Not too far, though!”

Jane was already racing away but she wasn’t going fast enough, apparently. She clutched her prize and dragged it along with her as she moved. Her [Cleansing Aura] and her fire had begun to turn the thing to ash, and somewhere between kilometer five and ten of her rapid flight the Hand Caster’s remains broke apart into pieces too small to hold.

Behind her, the ooze quivered at the bottom of Brightwater Lake. It was a black gelatin the size of a football stadium, and was the only solid-colored thing in the area. Everything else was smoky crystal layered over with a combination of bright red blood and dead soul black sludge—

A shattering crack resounded through the bowl of the Brightwater as one of Farix’s blood crystal towers, holding back the flood to the north, broke. It wasn’t the large break in the bowl located to the west, but it was large enough for a waterfall of black gore and sludge to flow into the Brightwater like so much spewing mucus.

They had maybe minutes before every single one of the crystal dams broke.

Which was likely why Spur was pulling out the big guns.

Olirio yelled at her to get to cover.

Jane chose a large ruin behind a veritable plateau of crystal, and while the ruin had been reduced to puddles of blood and black sludge, the plateau itself was more like a minor mountain range than a ruin. Jane touched down in the ruins, and in that moment, she wasn’t sure if she had fucked up, or gotten very, very lucky.

On the other side of the plateau the world exploded in fire and lightning.

Jane, a very, very small spider, huddled behind her cover, in the black muck, and in the red blood. She had not turned off her [Prismatic Body] or her [Cleansing Aura].

Which is probably why the next event happened.

Her feet touched blood. Dirty, glowing black and red blood, and yet it was still filled with power, ready for the taking. For the first time since fighting these amalgams, or really, ever, she touched upon a treasure unlike any other. Both her Blood Weaver Ability from the Familiar Form of the same name, and her Blood Sense from her lesser rivergrieve, activated at the same time, unbidden. It was like touching upon a spider web that she had strung across the world.

And then [Cleansing Aura] truly started to work.

Black sludge evaporated away like thick air, and the blood concentrated.

Jane disassociated from the battle.