Bound Evil

Emily squinted into the murky, broken world ahead. The city's jagged ruins were half-swallowed by dunes and crusted in glittering obsidian,

Emily squinted into the murky, broken world ahead. The city's jagged ruins were half-swallowed by dunes and crusted in glittering obsidian, sharp enough to catch the faint, bruised light.

A strange low-pressure zone hung in the distance, pressing against her skin like a warning. It didn't mean she could lower her guard—not for a second—but it gave her a sliver of breathing room.

Until now, she'd stubbornly kept her gaze pinned to the crumbling matrix beneath her boots, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other. But with the weight easing for a moment, she risked glancing up.

From the looks of things, she was still lingering at the city's ragged edge. If she wanted to reach the heart of it—the storm's bleeding core—it would be a long, grinding haul.

And then there was the temple.

Tendrils of black cloud snaked upward from the precipice, coiling into the boiling storm above.

If Emily were the betting type—and she wasn't anymore—she'd put good coin on that being the storm's source.

Which raised an uncomfortable thought.

Tao had made the metal sound natural, like she could just dig it up and be done with it. But the dead city clawing at the horizon told a different story.

And whether that was greed for power or just testing a new theory, it was clear the civilization had not survived the resulting storm.

Emily stepped onto the closest pathway, not buried in sand, her foot crunching over the dunes. Believe it or not, this was not her first journey into a derelict and abandoned civilization.

Unfortunately, that didn't serve to help dampen the eerie feeling she got as she made her way into the city. From the looks of things, there had once been a wall around this place, but it had been reduced to nothing more than rubble strewn across the desert.

She had no problem navigating around the crumbling mass of stone and into the streets beyond.

The buildings were built low, and it didn't help that most of them were buried halfway under the dunes. Most of what she could see was the tops of residential housing. Much of it had deteriorated or collapsed inward. Unable to handle the passage of time and the surrounding storms.

As she walked, Emily noticed the trail of footprints she left behind in the sand, likely the first in years.

Pushing that from her mind, she continued deeper into the maze of sandy passages and streets.

From the outside, one could see the sheer size of this place, but it wasn't until she was inside that the true magnitude of this place became apparent.

Emily could tell this was easily twice the size of the city she had just come from. Making this all the more interesting.

From the looks of things, this place had been here for a long while, but what kind of civilization could build such a place as this? Capable of weathering a storm that had been going on long enough to give this place its name.

As Emily moved forward, she saw a split in the path ahead

Looking left and right, she could see both detoured further into the city. The thing was, the most direct route ahead was blocked by a tall structure, and she was not about to take a detour.

So, with a little bit of concentration, she lifted herself onto the roof of a nearby building.

The once red tiles up here were covered in a glittering layer of crystal. It reminded Emily of a layer of black salt encrusting everything. As her boot came down, flakes cracked off and slid down into the dunes below.

However, from up here, she could see a clear path directly to the heart of the city. Smiling to herself, she hopped over to the next rooftop. Only employing the smallest amounts of power to cross when the densely packed roofs were too far apart for her to jump on her own.

Strangely enough, the closer she got to the center, the less the winds howled around her, though to compensate, she noticed a marked increase in the surrounding temperatures

Greatfully, her matrix held firm. With the wind dying down, new sounds pricked at Emily's ears, or rather, the lack of them.
No creak of abandoned buildings. No whisper of life. Only the hush of sand dragging itself through the streets.
The silence didn't soothe her. It scraped against her nerves, leaving her raw and twitching.

If this were a movie, this was the part where the spirits of the damned would rise, wailing at the intruder. She smirked at the thought.
Nothing came.
Nothing moved, except for the restless dunes shifting between the crumbling alleys.

The closer she crept toward her destination, the tighter the unease coiled at the back of her neck. The hairs stood on end, alert, bristling.
Something was wrong.

Mid-jump, her body locked up.

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She hovered above the rooftops, scanning, waiting.
Seconds stretched into minutes. The city below remained still, as though holding its breath.

Then it hit her—
A sour bloom in the air, thick and rancid like the stench of death left too long in the sun.
Her stomach twisted hard. Whatever it was, it wasn't natural. And it was nothing she would ever want for herself.

Emily's gaze sharpened. She drifted sideways, slow and deliberate, combing the ruins with her senses.

Ten minutes passed before something snagged her eye.

Near a chimney, embedded in the cracked brick, a glint winked at her.
She floated closer.

A shard, no longer than a grain of rice, jutted from the wall.
It caught the light with a dull metallic sheen, halfway between crystal and forged steel.

The trails of obsidian around it had bent away, leaving a strange, untouched circle of stone. As if even molten glass had feared to come too near.

Emily narrowed her eyes.
A faint ribbon of black smoke unfurled from the shard, thin and steady, like incense burning in a dead man's shrine.

Sweet, yet decaying.

Emily watched it trail towards the storm in front of her and knew right away she had found what she was looking for.

Only, instead of plucking it and turning back towards the exit, she glanced to the center of the city.

The only question she had now was if this shard was enough to consider her trial complete. Knowing the Ashvali, they might consider the task done if she brought them this, but if she'd learned anything from her time spent with them, it was that the bigger the better.

Hermes might even use the fact that she'd only found this much as a way to invalidate her trail.

Sighing to herself, Emily hummed and pulled a marble-sized bead of blood from her fingertip. If she was going to carry something like this, there was no way she was willing to touch it.

Sending the blood towards the shard, she encapsulated it and pulled it from the wall.

Waiting to see if there was any change to her surroundings.

After a minute of nothing assaulting her, Emily grinned and hardened the blood, catching the bead, she unfolded the sack Tao had given her, and dropped it in.

Supposedly, it would help contain the shard's properties, and the moment it went in, the hairs on Emily's neck relaxed.

Seeing how easy that was, she hopped up and decided to keep moving towards the center in search of a more impressive specimen.

It wasn't long before she entered the inner section of the city and came across another shard.

This one was even smaller than the first one she'd found, but nevertheless, she collected it in the bag as well.

When Emily came across the third shard, not five minutes away from the second, she frowned.

The energy these shards were expelling was very strange. Her first impression was that they were pure death, but the longer she worked near them, the more she felt that was a rather simplistic way of describing what she was feeling.

Something told her not to look at them through a rune, so she avoided that, but she could still feel some similarities with this metal and source.

To be more specific, blue source.

Now, Emily didn't know how using blue source felt, but she could see how it acted in their surroundings. Blue source was the origin of change, it was a life-giving force. Something with blue source would hardly need to keep its form fixed, and yet this energy felt like stagnation.

It opposed the idea of change in every way. So much so that its mere presence was whipping the other sources up into a frenzy. They seemed to react explosively with one another as though unable to coexist.

Emily wondered why it felt so similar to blue source. Perhaps she'd never know—maybe the previous civilization had been experimenting with it, and this was the result.

Either way, Emily continued to move towards the large temple in the center of the city, collecting shards as she did so. Their frequency skyrocketed, but Emily picked them up without much fuss at this stage.

By the time she got to the temple, she had over twenty marbles of blood containing shards.

This area was more open, save for a large set of stairs leading up to the zenith of the temple. The heat in the area had climbed to staggering degrees, and there was a distinct charge in the air.

It was here she found the largest shard yet—almost the size of a US penny.

Emily hummed under her breath, pleased, as she tucked it away into her pouch.

A sudden chittering screech snapped through the air ahead of her.
She froze, the blood draining from her face.
'Damn it'. She hadn't been paying attention. Not here, not in a place like this.

Something scraped against the black sand.

Her answer came slithering into view: a Venomtail, dragging itself from the dunes.
Only one, thankfully, but the size of it made her stomach knot.
It loomed over the landscape, easily as tall as a four-story building.

It's chitin, normally a pale desert hue, had darkened to a sickly violet. Obsidian tumors jutted out of its joints and spine, twisting its body into a shape too wrong for nature.
It didn't look alive. It looked bred from rot and nightmare.

Maybe it had crawled straight out of hell.

From cracks in its exoskeleton, a viscous, glowing liquid oozed down its limbs, dripping like blood.
The surrounding light shimmered on the slick surface, painting it with a sick, ghostly sheen.

Emily barely had time to process the sight before it shrieked and lunged.

Breathless, she vaulted backward into the air, desperate to create distance, but the creature moved with unnatural speed.

One second, it was in the distance. The next, it flashed beside her, faster than she could track.

A massive pincer snapped toward her.

At the last moment, Emily twisted her blood, wrenching her direction midair.

She wasn't fast enough.

Instead of cleaving her in half, the claw clamped down around her left shoulder.

Emily reacted, activating Tested flesh, Vital shell, and encasing her left half in blood, reinforcing it to its limit. Scarlet armor surged around her, but the crushing force was overwhelming.

Her defenses cracked, then collapsed.

Flesh tore.

Bone shattered.

A scream ripped from her throat, raw and feral.

The pincer didn't finish the job. It held her fast instead, the creature deliberately easing its grip, preventing her from slipping free.

Pain roared through Emily's body, but she clung desperately to her matrix.

If she lost it now, this close to the storm's heart, her body would vaporize in seconds.

The Venomtail lifted her into the air triumphantly as it loosed a victory screech that rattled the very air and sand.

Emily's mind reeled.

This thing was on par with the mother wyrm she'd spotted in the mountains.

But there was no one here this time. No reinforcements. No chance for rescue.

She was alone, bleeding, seconds from death.

Instinct surged up, and she didn't fight it.

What doesn't serve you is only a burden. Get rid of it.

Without hesitation, she slashed her right hand in a tight, brutal arc.

Blood rippled around her, hardening into a scythe.

The blade exploded downward.

The edge glanced off the pincer, carving only a shallow groove—but that wasn't her target.

In the same swing, the blood-scythe cleaved through her own skin and shattered bone, severing her left arm at the shoulder.

Emily entered a free fall as the ground rushed toward her, even as the creature wailed at its escaping prey. All the while, her vision darkened at the edges as pain tried to rob her of her consciousness.

Blood points: 641