The Great Core's Paradox

I flinched, nearly losing hold of my tail as a Coreless-shaped mass blurred past me in a gust of wind, only to end in a deafening crash of ore-flesh against stone. From the corner of my eye, I could just barely make out the prone form of Will, already struggling to get back onto his feet and back into the fight. While I appreciated his willingness to put himself into danger, I couldn’t help but think that he could have gotten back faster if he didn’t need to find his feet. The disorientation of the blow and following flight through the air had made him slow and set his legs, those consistently horrible things, to wobbling.

I shook myself, both mind and body. It wasn’t time for thoughts like that. The Lesser Core’s aura must have really been getting to me; with that thought, I let another stream of vitality press against my flesh, healing the most recently inflicted damage. There was less of it than before, even [Mana Restoration] far from enough to keep it from running low after so much time.

Only the vast stores of mana that had already been filling my blood kept me going; that, and the Coreless’ presence allowing me to focus solely on keeping myself alive and replenishing my mana stores.

I did feel a little useless, though. Like a decorative carving of a snake that had wrapped itself around Needle’s flesh. At least the three most recent [Little Guardian’s Focus]es that I had made were helping.

Based on the size of the Lesser Core’s Guardian, the Coreless would need it - even without the Core itself trying to kill them. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that - based on how much effort it was taking to keep myself alive - the Lesser Core’s aura was taking up most, if not all, of the healing that my Coreless’ [Little Guardian’s Totem]s provided.

“Erik!” Needle called out in [worry], the noise loud from my perch on her shoulder, while The Grateful One rushed forward to take Will’s place at the front of the group. Already the smallest of the Coreless, she looked outright tiny in front of the amalgamation of flesh that was the Lesser Core’s final defender. Her ore-flesh, dark as its mana-light was, seemed to meld into the light of the corpse-formed bad-thing’s crystals. It would have made her hard to see, if I hadn’t already flexed the eye-muscles required to activate [Ambusher’s Vision] long ago. With it, I had an easy time noting the way that she dodged this way and that after capturing the bad-thing’s attention, moving with a preternatural grace that I envied - and turning ethereal in the brief instants when a hit might have landed. It was impressive, even if I noticed that the moments that The Grateful One’s ore-flesh let her phase out of reality were getting shorter and shorter, the light that it gave off quickly beginning to fade as its well of power ran dry.

The [TERROR] that flooded my connection to her was a little less

impressive, though it disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared, the Coreless quickly beating back the emotion. I didn’t blame her for it, though. The Death Core’s Guardian was terrifying. Seemingly intelligent in a way that the Nature Core’s Guardian hadn’t been, and powerful enough to act on that intelligence.

Nothing made that more clear than when one of the crystals forming its joints erupted into a flash of light, and the flesh that formed its connected limb changed. The crystal dimmed, and a set of corpses leapt free from the bad-thing’s flesh.

The Grateful One’s ore-flesh shifted. Sputtered. Failed. Her arm, held up before her in a bout of [panic], phased back into reality - inside of a corpse-thing’s flesh.

She screamed, and horrible [PAIN] assaulted my mind.

“Elara! Phase back out, phase back out! Elara!” someone yelled. Elara didn’t hear it. Her mind was frayed, stretched until thoughts felt far away; distant, sluggish, and disconnected. Shattered by the pain that was her arm phasing into something solid. Forming something that should never have been possible. Something terrible.

For her, at least.

If she had any thoughts with which to doubt, she might have doubted that the corpse she had fused with even cared. If she had room to notice, she might have said that her arm felt oddly heavy. Unnaturally so, dense with flesh twice over, both undead and still living filling the same space. Fighting for control of the abomination that her lower arm had become, some horrible fusion of arm and the midsection of a moving corpse, one that continued to scrape and scrabble at the stunned woman’s armor with an unnatural tenacity, joining the other two undead monsters that tried to push past her defenses. Her armor scraped and squealed under the assault, the Shadow-enchanted metal less able to stand up to direct attacks than its Earth-infused counterparts. For a second, her arm twitched, the body it was fused to moved as if by an outside will.

And then fire ran through her flesh; a soothing balm and a terrible scourge all at once, the full force of three [Little Guardian’s Focus]es all hitting at once - because with their bodies fused together to become one terrible whole, the effect of Elara’s [Little Guardian’s Totem], tucked carefully against her collarbone, spread to fill her new flesh. And destroyed it.

Elara screamed again as her already-ruined arm was ruined further, parts of it - that still overlapped with others in an incomprehensible way - turning to ash. The undead she was connected to started to disintegrate alongside it, until gravity pulled her mangled arm free and Elara finally managed to pull herself together enough to remember that she didn’t need to feel pain.

Her thoughts calmed, falling into stillness like a placid lake as the ruined arm numbed itself, sensation cut off with a blissful immediacy. She wouldn’t really be able to move it properly like that, but It didn’t matter; she wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Not as damaged as it was, her muscles filled entirely by powder and ash, each bit somehow in the same place as otherwise-pristine flesh.

It didn’t make any sense, even as Elara’s mana-enhanced awareness of her own body desperately tried to make sense of it. It failed, and she was forced to turn her attention away before the contradiction became too much to bear.

Also, there were still undead trying to bite through her armor - and they were getting worryingly close.

With her armor still too weak to reliably use - Elara had no desire to know what would happen if more of her body became spliced into something else - the fallen Seeker was forced to thrash and writhe, throwing the monsters off enough that she could dodge the giant amalgamation of flesh’s next blow. Because it hadn’t forgotten about her, even if she had almost forgotten about it.

Another of the corpse-formed monster’s arms came down, nearly smashing into Elara’s legs, missing by bare inches. She scrambled backwards as the canid corpse that took the place of a hand chomped down, biting air - and then biting the ruined flesh of the near-disintegrated undead that she had momentarily fused to. Meanwhile, the other two undead gave up the fight, moving to press their sides against the amalgamation’s arm.

A purple-black light flared from one of the monster’s crystals again, just like it had when the three undead detached, pulling the near-ruined corpse and its far healthier counterparts back into itself, returning them from where they came. A brief moment later, they were all spitting and snarling again, canid heads jutting from the amalgam of flesh.

That’s not fair, Elara thought. Not at all.

Booted feet clinked rapidly against the stone as Erik arrived to take his place back, finally recovered from the powerful blow that had sent him flying, and Elara realized that the terrifying ordeal had actually only lasted a short while. He set up in front of her, shield at the ready.

“Are you okay?” he asked worriedly.

She wasn’t. Not at all. Her arm was fucked up and wasn’t getting any better and the skies-damned monster was a corpse that refused to die and her armor was running out of charge and - she forcefully calmed herself, pushing the sudden panic aside.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be fine, I just need a second.”

There wasn’t any need to mention all of that. She would be fine. Her arm would heal. Eventually. Hopefully. Even if a brief effort showed that it took all of her will to force her hand to close itself in a loose grip. Even if it still felt heavier than it should.

There were other things to focus on, and that wasn’t one of them.

Even if a harshly-suppressed part of her desperately wanted to.

Instead, she retreated to the back to catch her breath and point out the only possible weakness that the corpse amalgam might have.

Kala beat her to it, the experienced Seeker not even needing the notice. A shining arrow of Earth-infused metal streaked through the air and shattered one of the monster’s crystalline joints. Broken shards of black and purple rained down, and the corpses that it had connected to rained down with it. Unlike before, they seemed out of sorts, momentarily purposeless and confused from the sudden severing.

“Got it!” Kala cheered, already reaching for another arrow. “Shatter the crystals and it will fall apart!” she shouted to the others.

And then, from behind the corpse-formed monster, the Core flashed. A thick stream of purple-black light stretched out, and the purple-black Core became just a little smaller. Barely; the change was almost unnoticeable, if it was really even there. It might have just been a trick of the light.

The light found its destination. The crystal reformed. The ruined limb restored itself, constituent parts snapping and snarling at the air.

“Fuck!” Kala cursed, shifting her aim towards the reformed death crystal. “There’s no way I’m going to have enough arrows for this.” She shot again, and the crystal reshattered with the sound of cracking glass.

Elara looked down at her remaining blade - she had dropped the other when her arm stopped working properly - and the slowly-recharging gem embedded into her armor’s chestplate. The large number of fights it had gone through in reaching the Core had taken its toll; it didn’t have enough charge to be used reliably anymore. Which meant no more phase-dodging, since she didn’t want a repeat of what happened to her arm with anything else. Elara sighed.

“Guess I’m going back in,” she muttered, reluctantly stepping forward again to rejoin the fight. Her arm dangled at her side, limp and nearly useless, bits of ash occasionally spilling through her armor’s tiny joints.

Another crystal shattered, tinkling glass resounding in time with her footsteps.