The Great Core's Paradox

Weakness rushed through Valera’s veins in a frigid stream, like her blood had turned to ice. It pulsed at the edges of her skin, causing her limbs to grow heavy, and her breath to come in harsh pants. Like an unavoidable weight that pushed down on her, making it harder and harder to stand. She backed up again, moving with mana-enhanced quickness and finding safe haven at the edges of the Guardian Statue’s aura. Immediately, the weakness began to ease, a spot of warmth growing against her chest where her [Little Guardian’s Totem] pressed against her skin. Healing. She kept moving, pushing further into the aura so that the healing effect would increase enough to bring her limbs back in full.

“It’s getting stronger,” she said, speaking softly to Doran, who had been waiting worriedly at the edge and only caught up a little while later. “Only took ten minutes before it was almost unbearable, that time. Down from fifteen, before.” She shivered. The burly man threw an arm over his shoulder, squeezing lightly.

“You all right?” he asked.

Valera nodded. “Just out of sorts,” she said. “It’s not a comfortable feeling.”

“I’ll go next time,” he said suddenly, mouth pressed into a stern line. “You don’t need to walk out there anymore.” She fought back a smile despite the still-uncomfortable chill that ran through her veins. Though it was in a different way, Doran could be just as heartwarming as their little snake sometimes. Still, they had already made the decision.

“No,” she said, “we already discussed this. I can move the fastest in order to get back in range if the aura ends up being too strong, and we can’t afford to not know how quickly it’s growing or how quickly it could take one of us down. Besides,” she continued, giving the man a pointed glance. “You’re supposed to be helping carve out a new Guardian Statue right now, not watching me. Put those big muscles to use.”

She pushed him away, sending him in the direction of the burgeoning sculpture. Like the ones that had come before it, the thing was carved directly out of a wall of the tunnel. Erik and Elara were kneeling beside it, each holding one of Valera’s blades. Erik’s mace would crush the stone instead of sculpting it, and Elara didn’t have Earth-enchanted weapons to work with; her normal blades would likely break before they cut through the stone.

Above them, the Little Guardian was hard at work. Stone liquified under his scales, seeping away in a sodden mess that draped itself over the others’ kneeling forms, dripping down their armor. They didn’t seem to notice, intent on their work.

Valera found a wall and leaned against it, keeping an eye on the darkness while she waited for the chill to leave her limbs. Her hands rested against borrowed blades, the hilt of Elara’s weapons feeling wrong after so much time using her own. She’d get them back afterwards, but for the moment it left her feeling antsy.

Or maybe that was just the thought of what waited for them outside of the light. Or what might have happened, according to the Little Guardian’s visions. She shivered. It had been a long time since there had been any, and she had forgotten how disconcerting they could be. Watching an image of yourself failing.

Watching yourself die.

She glanced over again, briefly catching sight of everyone else at work. The Little Guardian’s cute little tongue pushed out from his lips as he sculpted the Guardian Statue’s head into shape, stone scales forming below his own. Scales that, apparently, could have been used to tear Valera’s throat open if things had gone another way.

That had been hard to see, though the clear distress that the Little Guardian had displayed in showing it to her had helped. And the tiny tongue-kisses on her face too, even if the others had looked at her weirdly when she started laughing so hard that she fell over. The difference between the Little Guardian - so large and unnatural and dead - in the vision she was shown and the one that tried to comfort her helped to separate the two. One was just a future that would never be, even if it made her uncomfortable.

She was starting to see why Erik had so suddenly gained a fear of heights, though. Valera had a feeling that she would have some trauma to work through if their Little Guardian suddenly grew to the size that she had seen in the vision, even if she also knew that the snake that had killed her had been a dead Little Guardian under the control of a Death Core, and getting rid of the Death Core would make that future never happen.

Watching yourself die like that was just a little hard to forget. It probably didn’t help that their little snake had gotten much better at making detailed illusions than he used to be. Made it look more real. Uncomfortably so.

Valera pushed the thoughts aside, focusing on the way that warmth continued to fill her deadened limbs. Her breath slowed, lightened. Her muscles relaxed. Her -

Her ears caught the telltale skitter of claws against rock, just barely noticeable past the sounds of carving stone. The smell was a little easier to notice, the familiar scent of rot easy to recognize. She jolted in place, eyes widening.

“We’ve got company,” she said, regretfully pulling herself from the wall and heading towards the unfinished Guardian Statue. The others were already pulling themselves to their feet, having heard her warning. Valera took her blades back, returning Elara’s at the same time, and stretching out a hand. Scales ran across her arm, whisper-quiet, as the Little Guardian wrapped itself around an upper section of the limb. A hiss pressed against her ear, moving closer.

She knew what came next; it wasn’t the first time that it had happened since they found the Little Guardian again. That didn’t make it any easier to handle. Not that it was a bad thing; it was just…different. Uncomfortable. Wonderful. Both, at the same time.

A set of fangs found their way to her neck. Pricked at the flesh. Something slipped in, not in a drop, but in a stream.

Valera’s limbs burst into life, pinpricks racing across her skin. Her face twisted into a manic smile, and her voice into an excited giggle.

She didn’t notice either of those things.

Instead, what she noticed was the power. The way that her flesh felt on fire. The way that her muscles surged with strength. The way that her thoughts started to run against another - as if moving too fast, yet not fast enough. Pulled in multiple directions at once as her entire body became temporarily enhanced, invigorated. Her ears sharpened. Her fingers felt as if they could make out every groove in the leather wrappings around her blades’ hilts. Her eyes gleamed, the darkness brightening ever so slightly.

Kala was still the first to see them, her mana-enhanced eyesight far beyond Valera’s temporarily boosted vision. A shining arrow shot into the darkness, moving fast - but not fast enough that Valera couldn’t see what happened. The impossibly sharp arrow passed through the head of one monster, sending it toppling to the ground, before continuing as if nothing had happened. Then it hit the next, and the next.

They all fell.

They all rose up again, ignoring the gaping holes in their flesh, just like the monsters that had come before. Moving, slavering, hating corpses. Some were canids on four limbs, with sharp teeth and sharper claws. Some were strange, bipedal creatures with horned heads and near-translucent skin, brain and bone visible through flesh. Others were all but unrecognizable, twisted by wound after wound. They all ran forward, urged on by the Core that kept them moving.

Valera’s grin widened. A snake hissed in her ear. Another arrow shot forward.

And then the woman moved, her already mana-enhanced speed pushed even further by whatever it was that the little snake on her shoulder had done to her. She was on the enemy in little more than an instant, blades stretching out in a shining arc.

A head lopped off, falling through the air, and a forelimb joined it before it even hit the ground. Ice started to slowly fill her veins, the nearby Core’s aura dimming the fire in her flesh ever-so-slightly, but it wasn’t enough to matter. One of the translucent-skinned monsters lunged at her headfirst, horn already dripping with some other creature’s blood. Valera twisted to the side, letting it skitter off of her armor and forcing the monster to stumble past.

The Little Guardian’s fangs caught it in passing as it stepped by, and the walking corpse all but disintegrated at its touch, lines of gold running across its skin in the brief moment that it still existed.

By the time she was forced to turn back, the fire nearly dimmed by the ice surging through her veins, the monsters were ash and scattered limbs.

Valera grinned as she stepped back into the Guardian Statue’s aura, tossing Kala her arrows. “Well. That went well. Back to work everyone, that statue’s not gonna finish itself!”

The others sighed, well used to the near-hyperactive state that the Little Guardian’s bite seemed to induce, and started to walk back to the nearly finished sculpture. Valera breathed in deep and fought against the urge to bounce in place, deciding instead to give the snake on her shoulder a few well-deserved scratches.

“Gotten a lot stronger lately, huh?” she cooed, just as impressed by the differences as she had been the first time that she had seen them. A lot had changed in little more than a week. More than she’d have thought possible, really. The stone-shaping, the increased ability to empower others, somehow turning corpses to ash in a single bite…

A lot had changed, and it all seemed to be for the better. With another Core nearby and the issues with Virtun’s sabotage that still needed to be dealt with, they needed to take everything that they could get.

The Little Guardian hissed back, the sound muffled by the tail caught within his maw.

Valera fought back a squeal at the sight, still struggling a little with the aftereffects of the tiny snake’s bite. She’d calm down, she knew from past experience.

Eventually.