The Great Core's Paradox

“...I’m still down one.”

I watched from my perch as The Grateful One’s arm flopped about, frustrated at my inability to fight. At my inability to do anything other than bite at my own tail. To keep myself alive.

I stared balefully at my enemy; at the back of the cavern, almost entirely hidden behind the bulk of its Corpse-Guardian, the Lesser Core pulsed with light. Got just a little smaller.

Not nearly enough - and even if it was getting smaller as its mana began to run dry, my mana was beginning to run dry, too. And once it did, I would die - and turn against the Great Core. Again.

I hissed in rage at the thought.

Below me, I heard the sound of the first disciple’s needle-spitter hitting the floor, a clatter of wood and [worry] announcing its fall. She lurched forward, one hand stretching out to wrap itself around her fellow disciple’s uninjured forearm, clasping it in a firm embrace. Pulled upwards.

“Thanks,” The Grateful One said, making sounds at Needle. They were off, slurred. Her stance was unsteady; maybe others wouldn’t have noticed it. It didn’t look unsteady, compared to most Coreless that I had seen. She was upright, on her feet, firm. Fairly.

But not entirely. Even I could admit that, despite her unfortunate case of legs, the way that The Grateful One generally stood and moved had always looked perfect. Graceful.

This wasn’t that. It was just…serviceable. Like any other leg-afflicted creature. The blow to her head as she fell must have been causing problems.

I couldn’t do anything about that. It was all that I could do to keep myself going. The Coreless had their [Little Guardian’s Totem]s. That would have to do.

After a short exchange of incomprehensible jabbers, the two disciples parted. My attention returned to the ongoing fight - not the one going on in front of me, but the one going on inside me.

My mana was close to running out.

Something needed to change - but I wouldn’t be able to be the one to make that change.

I had already done everything that I could, at least until the Core was drained far enough to devour; the rest of it wasn’t up to me now.

An arrow streaked past Elara’s shoulder, the light that it gave off stabbing into her eyes. She almost stumbled, feeling once again like a puppet pulled by strings, like there was a notable difference between her intention to move and the way that she actually moved. Her head felt hazy, vision blurred. She couldn’t find it in herself to focus enough to fix any of it, though a distant part of herself realized that she normally would have tried.

It seemed like that fall had knocked something important loose.

Somewhere to the side, Erik blocked another blow, grunting with the exertion. His back was pressed up against a giant stalagmite, the column of stone providing enough support to prevent him from being sent flying away again. That was good. Elara hadn’t liked it when that happened last time. There was something…something that went wrong with that. She couldn’t focus enough to think about it.

Elsewhere, Valera streaked through the air. Elara nearly stopped, spellbound at the sight. The woman moved in a way that Elara couldn’t, even if she tried, even with the cold that must have been seeping into her limbs. Charging at a heavyset limb, she somehow shifted the forward motion into a run upwards, traversing the limb like it was any other surface. Her blades, two glimmering blurs that hung at her sides, parted the flesh underneath as she passed, pulling apart stitched-together corpses like a seamstress plucking at a seam. Easily. Effortlessly.

And then she slowed, and it was only the sudden presence of Doran that kept Valera safe. The man had followed up behind her as she ran, boots kicking and axe swinging at the undead creatures that she pulled free, sending the disparate pieces flying far away from where the stitched-together amalgamation could easily reach. When one of the monster’s many mouths wrapped itself around Valera’s boot as she passed by, Doran was already moving to lop it off at the neck. The blade of his axe passed within bare inches of Valera’s leg, and she was freed again.

The two restarted their efforts in whittling down the undead amalgam, and Elara’s head lolled back towards her destination. The blade…thing.

Its hilt peeked out at her from its crystal sheathe, highlighted in a purple-black light that stabbed at Elara’s eyes in a way that it hadn’t before. Her stomach roiled, and she just barely managed to clamp it down before what little was in it spilled free. She tried to place an arm against her rebellious gut. The arm rebelled too, refusing to move properly, so she was forced to use the other one.

Another arrow cut past Elara’s shoulder, its passing light another stab directly into her brain. The crystal sheathe shattered, and her blade-thing spilled free. It hit the ground in a clatter, falling in between the cracks of a number of now-freed corpses. Elara tried to focus on the spot where it fell, still moving forward despite the way that the light had made her stomach roil again.

“I’m out of arrows!” Kala called from behind her. She sounded upset. Elara hoped that she’d feel better when they were done. She’d have to remember to check on her later. Kala loved those arrows.

Skies, what is wrong with me right now? The thought was bleary, but focused enough that Elara’s attention snapped back towards her goal, as fuzzy as it was. The sword, buried in a pile of moving corpses.

A light flashed, and the corpses were suddenly less moving - pulled back into the form of one of the monster’s limbs as the recently broken crystal reformed itself. The blade was pulled alongside the tangle of corpses, hilt jutting out from between the melded mass of three different undead.

The first two were wolf-like, same as many of the others, with elongated snouts and dangerous fangs. One faced directly towards Elara, its mouth snarling and snapping at the air. The other faced away, trying its best to twist around and failing to do so. Finally, the third undead that surrounded the blade was one of the translucent-skinned monsters, horn pressing outwards from its forehead and against the blade’s leather-wrapped hilt in a barely-there kiss.

Elara gathered herself, still-blurry vision taking in the enchanted gem inlaid at her armor’s chest. It was low again, its formerly pitch-black surface more gray than anything else. A quick attempt to use the thing confirmed it; she barely flickered at all, only finding that floaty, weightless feeling of its activation for a brief moment.

One that disappeared all too soon.

She breathed in deep. Let it out slowly. The world sharpened just a bit, coming into focus; not entirely, but enough to help with what came next. She stepped forward, eyes narrowed. It helped with the light, but not the roiling in her gut - and she still couldn’t focus enough to fix that.

The next time her stomach churned, nausea rising up, her hand rose with it - reaching for the hilt of a crystal-warped sword. A set of fangs skittered off her metal-covered arm. A horn rubbed against its side. Her hand wrapped around the hilt, gripping tight.

And a blade began to pull free, the motion harder than it should have been. Too hard, really. It took its concussed wielder by surprise, causing her overtaxed muscles to cry out in surprise. She pulled again, harder this time, confused by the odd resistance.

Above her, the nearest crystal pulsed, and the stubborn blade was finally released, crystal-laced metal exposing itself to the air. Bits of torn flesh were wrapped around some of its length like bloody ribbons. Before the sword could fall to any lower, Elara’s hand shifted. Rather than arresting its motion entirely, she chose to direct it along a slightly different path; the falling blade’s downward trajectory swept outwards in a crescent, crystal-laced edge sweeping across undead flesh.

To her surprise, the blade pulsed with baleful, purple-black light as it made contact; when she pulled it away, it tried to pull away an entire corpse with it, the clearly-confused undead warped and wrapped around the crystalline metal like an unwilling passenger. The crystal it had been attached to pulsed in turn, battling with that given off by Elara’s blade in an odd sort of tug-of-war.

The monster’s crystal won, but not before the abducted undead it fought for found itself stretched apart like taffy and - well, ripped.

Huh, she thought, still struggling to focus. So that’s what the sword does now. It’s basically just another crystal.

Though she didn’t really know all of what that meant, especially when cutting into bodies that weren’t dead, Elara did at least realize one thing. It could help now.

Now she just needed to figure out how to intentionally use what it could do, and how to get the leftover corpse off of the damn blade.

Which was hard when she was having so much trouble focusing in the first place. She shook it a little.

It, unsurprisingly, didn’t work.