The Great Core's Paradox

Doran was frustrated. It was a combination of things that caused it. The creeping chill that invaded his body in fits and starts, alternately beaten back and reinvading again as it warred with the warmth of the [Little Guardian’s Totem] around his neck. The weakness that came with it, forcing his formerly reliable strength to fluctuate uncomfortably, with motions starting strong and ending weak. Or weaker at least. Still stronger than most.

Lastly, he was frustrated by the enemy they faced. It was a horrid amalgamation of biting and writhing corpses, interspersed with crystals that glowed with a baleful light. Every so often, the crystals would pulse, and the flesh that surrounded them would try to shift and reshape itself like the wax of a candle, letting the corpse-formed monster take on new and varied forms given enough time to do so. Not that it necessarily needed to. Take any form that was forged from what had to be at least a hundred biting and snarling corpses, and it would be a dangerous thing. Some were just a little deadlier than others.

Another crystal shattered as one of Kala’s arrows struck true, piercing through the purple-black substance with the sound of shattering glass. The limb that it had connected to, one of a depressingly large number, fell to the ground in a tangle of confused and snarling corpses. Valera swept in on quickened feet and slashed at their vulnerable throats, doing what she could to behead as many of them as possible before the crystal reformed and the corpses were reclaimed again.

Because they couldn’t stop that from happening. With the monster’s size, if it advanced, they had to give ground. Only the natural barriers that were the cavern’s stone pillars and stalagmites helped to prevent that, giving the group some small degree of room to breathe.

The beast shifted itself again as it ran against one of those natural barriers, apparently deciding that the stone was in the way. The thing stood up to its full height as the light of its crystals pulsed and undead flesh reformed itself, multiple arms joining together to form a single limb, thick like a club.

The club came down. Bones crunched, fragmented, and fell. The stone broke with a deafening crash. And light pulsed from the crystals at the monster’s joints as it reached down to reabsorb the pieces that had been lost, making the fragmented bones appear as scalelike armor on the outside edges of the creature’s flesh.

The damn thing just refused to fucking die.

Doran’s frustration spiked again and, as he finally spotted an opening that he could take advantage of, he rushed forward with axe in hand. A crystal shattered, light pulsed, and it reformed again - but not before Doran managed to kick a few of the corpses away from the monster’s reach, letting him retreat to break them into hopefully unusable pieces by the time they finally stopped trying to come back from the dead. He threw what remained further down into the tunnel from where they had entered, where the monster wouldn’t be able to pick the pieces back up.

When he turned back around again, it was to the sight of Elara’s single remaining blade sparking off of one of the creature’s largest crystals - and barely even leaving a scratch. It bounced off, the otherwise dull sheen of unenchanted metal glimmering with the purple-black light of its victorious opponent.

Elara’s left arm hung heavy at her side; unnaturally heavy, and unnaturally deadened. One of those she had chosen to do to herself, but both were problems. It meant that her balance was just a little off. That she occasionally caught herself trying to move in a way that didn’t actually work, attempting to lift an arm that refused to be lifted. That she had less force to bring to bear when needed.

Her sword sparked off of the monster’s crystalline joint again, brief motes of light flickering into the air and raining downwards. She huffed, dodging backwards ever-so-slightly as a nearby head - embedded a foot or so below the stubborn crystal - snapped in her direction. Luckily, it didn’t seem that interested. Not when the others were so much more successful in destroying their chosen crystals than she was - though even that didn’t seem to have that large of an effect on the corpse-formed beast. They just reformed themselves in an instant.

Still, that it was trying to defend the crystals at all meant that they were a weakness. One that Elara was, unfortunately, struggling to pierce. Her sword clanged off of crystal again, sending discomfiting vibrations all the way up her healthy arm. She stepped back again and, rather than slipping away from the snarling head again, took out her frustration when it snapped forward. Unlike with the crystal, the metal of her blade passed cleanly through the beast’s flesh, lopping it off at the neck.

Another crystal shattered itself somewhere nearby, the unmistakable sound easy to pick out despite the furor that filled the cavern. A light flashed, and Elara knew that it would already be back again. She ignored that, instead glancing back and forth between the stubborn crystal and her too-weak blade. Bare of mana, it felt worthless.

But it didn’t need to be either of those things, Elara realized.

She looked down at the shadow-infused gem embedded into her armor’s chest, its black surface shifting as if filled by an unsteady darkness - and just slightly

more full than before. Not enough to recklessly phase-dodge like she had attempted before. Not for something so reckless. But maybe enough to… Elara focused. Her body flickered briefly as the armor-and-gem combination was activated, looking like reality itself stuttered as she shifted rapidly between fully solid and distinctly less-than.

In her hand, the blade flickered with it, momentarily a sword formed of shadows - and then not.

She lunged, solid sword tip gleaming with a metallic sheen as it pierced the air. A slash wouldn’t work. It wasn’t quick enough, and any failure on Elara’s part would be likely to wrench her remaining usable arm out of its socket when the blade caught. But a stab, with the shift properly timed…

A stab just might.

For a split-second, one that would hardly have been noticeable at all to an outside observer, Elara shifted. The blade in her hand shifted with her, and rather than bounce off the crystal’s surface like before, it sank nearly all the way in - only to become solid again while still inside, the metallic blade melding with the crystal it overlapped with in the same way that undead flesh had spliced its way into Elara’s injured arm.

She focused again, shifted into shadow for the tiniest hint of a second, and yanked the blade free again at the same time. The stolen bits of crystal came with it, leaving glimmering lines of purple-black that traced across the metal’s surface, emitting a light glow that was altogether rather similar to that of the crystalline joints themselves - just weaker, given the reduced amount held within.

Elara took a moment to worry at what the crystal merging with her blade would do for the longevity of her sword, but only a moment.

She stabbed again and, when the blade was removed next - slightly heavier and merged with another layer of purple and black - the damaged crystal shattered. When it was replaced, she simply let herself flicker into shadows and stabbed it again, mostly managing to ignore the increasing glow that the blade began to give off with each successive strike.

It was pretty, though. And starting to get quite a bit heavier, layer stacking upon layer until the formerly mundane blade was anything but. She would have switched to using two hands to compensate, but one of them wasn’t working.

Still, it was nice that something was working. Her still-changing blade, unnaturally dense and shining with purple and black, buried itself into the reformed crystal again, collecting a new layer as it phased back into its solid form. Before she could pull it back again, the monster’s attention shifted, an unattended limb smacking her aside. Elara skidded off the ground in a ringing tumble, the metal of her armor scraping across bare stone, before finding herself stopped at Kala’s feet shortly after her helmet-covered head slammed against the ground. The woman gave her a look of concern, attention pulled away from the crystal she had been targeting.

“Elara, are you okay?” she asked.

Elara groaned and pointed with her uncrippled hand at the lost blade, its length still lodged deeply in the crystal where she had last left it. “I made a metal-crystal blade thing, but they stole it back,” she said, vision swimming and words slurring slightly. “I need to grab it again.”

Grabbing at her ruined arm with her free hand, she made it flop upwards. “Can you lend me a hand? I’m still down one.”