Chapter 038
Typhon

Marcus and Helvran stepped through the spatial distortion and found themselves inside a large cavern. Not nearly as big as the cavern in the vision, with its huge inverted city, but big and very dark. A handful of ghostly blue flames floated in the air, dimly illuminating the place. They looked somewhat eerie, but Marcus could tell they were just simple illumination spells. Although… considering it was unlikely the necromancer would leave this convenient illumination here, this was probably really ancient spellwork. Maybe not so simple, then. Certainly Marcus could not cast a spell that would last this long, even something this trivial.

Nothing ambushed them the moment they arrived, not that Marcus was surprised by that. The spatial distortion that served as an entrance did not block spells, and he had done a quick check of the other side before entering. The two of them only had time to take in their surroundings for a few seconds before Chompy came barreling through the distortion, spooking Helvran, and then immediately dove into the rocky floor of the cavern.

“I keep forgetting you have that thing around you at all times,” Helvran said.

“Chompy is not a thing,” Marcus said absent-mindedly. He was busy checking up on the stone cylinders he had scattered around while they were exploring the main ruins on the island. They were meant to serve as anchor stones, allowing him to navigate back to the island if the entrance collapsed or something else went wrong. He wasn’t sure if they were working like he had hoped they would, but for now his connection to them remained stable. “You’re lucky he can’t understand you or you’d hurt his feelings.”

His faithful earth elemental immediately threw himself into mapping their surroundings, unbothered by the poor illumination. Through their connection, Marcus was soon presented with a much more useful visualization of the area they found themselves in.

The place was a maze of caverns and tunnels, similar to the dead giant’s cave system beneath his tower, but unlike that place, this one didn’t have the strange spatial distortion that made navigation difficult. Even so, it was not obvious where they needed to go. The cavern had several tunnels branching away from it, and no obvious path to follow. The necromancer’s golems left traces everywhere, seemingly scattering in every single direction. No doubt this was done deliberately to try and confuse them.

Marcus turned to Helvran.

“Can you sense where she is?” he asked.

“There,” Helvran said, pointing to his left without hesitation. “I don’t know if the tunnel leads directly towards her, but she’s definitely in that direction.”

“Leave the details of navigation to me,” Marcus told him. He had spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to orient himself in a confusing underground realm like this, and this place was a lot less troublesome than the one beneath his tower. “Just keep me pointed at our target and I’ll figure out how to reach her.”

After another minute of preparation, the two of them set off and began searching for the necromancer.

* * * *

Deep within the dark city hanging from the cavern ceiling, Ventine held her arms outstretched in front of a swirling barrier of red light. Overlapping circles and dense lines of magical symbols glowed with multi-colored light, orbiting around a disembodied heart in the center. The heart was big, much too large for a human, and was still beating, pumping out streams of blood that looped through the air to form a crude outline of a humanoid form. Ventine pushed against the barrier, doing her best to probe its weaknesses and unravel it, causing it to periodically flash and contract, but no matter what she tried, it wouldn’t break.

She tried her best to focus on the task at hand and ignore the issue of her pursuers. But it wasn’t easy.

“Hahahaaahaa!” the blood spirit laughed mirthfully, it’s voice booming inside the empty stone chamber they were in. “Foiled by a measly little priest, not even a spirit rank adept! How embarrassing! At this rate, they’ll be here in no time!”

“I don’t see why you’re so happy about this,” Ventine said, gritting her teeth in anger. She needed this thing, she reminded herself. She couldn’t afford to strike it down or walk away. “If they find their way here before I’m able to free you, this could all end in disaster. You’ll be completely at their mercy, and we both know what that means.”

She really thought she would have more time. Finding an entrance to this place was a stroke of luck, even though she was equipped with the foreknowledge of what she was looking for, and she had assumed she would have several days before this Marcus guy even stumbled upon it, if he ever even did. Then, he would have to make an opening, something that not every adept even knew how to do, and then he would have to navigate a confusing underground labyrinth.

Embarrassingly, it took her way longer to find her way down here and locate the Blood Moon Ancestor’s remnant than it would take those two to track her down. She thought she was being overly paranoid when she placed this guy under such heavy surveillance back at his base, but it turned out that if anything, she had underestimated him.

Was this guy really a native adept? Surely he was just messing with her by saying that? This place didn’t even have any wood magic traditions. Nor any real necromantic ones, for that matter! So how would he possibly practice the Ghost-Devouring Method on this blasted world? Not to mention getting advanced knowledge of dimensional magic, mastering something as exotic as crystal element spells, and getting a spirit of the elemental planes to serve him so faithfully.

He was definitely messing with her…

“Work faster then, my new disciple,” the blood spirit said, unconcerned with the danger.

“I’m trying! Why is this prison so hard to break? Actually, why did you seal yourself so firmly to begin with? If this was meant to be a contingency in case you were defeated…”

She wasn’t so naïve as to think she could simply show up and shove the remnant into her bag or something, but she hadn’t expected it would be this difficult. Finding it and getting the consciousness of the remnant to cooperate with her, she had thought, would be the real challenge. Not so. The remnant actively called out to her when she entered this space, and the blood spirit was all too happy to accept her as his new disciple and go along with her plan. Getting it out of its vessel was what proved to be the issue.

“I obviously didn’t do this to myself, stupid,” the blood spirit sighed. “It was my closest followers who did this to me, the ungrateful wretches. They were supposed to come and aid me in my revival, once things calmed down a little and my enemies grew lax. However, they instead betrayed me and sealed me away, leaving me trapped here. Though, if what you told me earlier is true, this may have been a blessing in disguise. All of my disciples have been hunted to extinction, you say?”

“It is so,” Ventine said. She mentally gave instructions to the ghosts piloting the bone golems to start harassing her two pursuers, taking care not to get themselves destroyed. She had no illusions they would successfully kill the pair, but the more they could delay their arrival, the better.

Having done this, she refocused on trying to dismantle the barrier in front of her. Breaking magical seals was not a specialty of hers, but she had picked up a wide variety of skills on her journey between worlds.

“Serves them right,” the blood spirit said pitilessly. “That said… if they are all dead, then I likely would have suffered the same fate if I emerged when I was supposed to. Clearly I underestimated how devoted my enemies were to root out every single trace of me. They even kept the island unpopulated, just in case! Heh…”

The blood spirit seemed pretty pleased at the terror its originator invoked in people of this world. Ventine just found it troublesome. This would have been so much simpler if everyone had just forgotten about him.

She couldn’t afford to fail here. She had liquidated all of her belongings, cashed in every favor, and burned every bridge she had. She didn’t regret any of it. She knew she would never get a chance like this again. As annoying as this spirit remnant was, acting like he was the actual Blood Moon Ancestor himself and not just a measly sliver of the original, she needed him. She would play along for now, just like she had with all her previous “masters”.

Fortunately, their interests were extremely well aligned right now. She needed the blood spirit to get stronger, and to unlock the Blood Moon Ancestor’s prison. The blood spirit needed to make her stronger and better equipped, so that she was able to get the original freed from his prison. In this way, they were natural allies. Trust was hard to come by when dealing with ancient monsters like this, but she felt she could work with this.

One of the rings orbiting the blood spirit flickered and broke, the fragments fading away into glittering dust. Success! Ventine’s spirit was instantly buoyed.

“I don’t suppose you have a way to reach the moon?” Ventine asked.

“I’m guessing that’s where they imprisoned the original, then?” the blood spirit surmised.

“What? How did you guess that correctly?” Ventine demanded, surprised.

“Please. Where else would they imprison me?” the blood spirit replied. “There is a reason why I’m called the madman of the ‘Blood Moon’. Haha, you have no idea how much the selenites and their spider goddess hate my guts! I hope you have some really good tricks up your sleeve if you hope to get to me under their noses. They will surely drop everything they’re doing in order to prevent my release.”

The lines and sigils that encircled the blood spirit all flickered and shuddered. She had just found a critical weakness. Before Ventine could start methodically dismantling the defenses, the heart at the center of the array suddenly released a pulse. A flash of crimson light painted the entire chamber deep red, and the bindings were instantly blown away, scattering in all directions as dissolving motes of light.

The heart powering the blood spirit instantly began to beat faster, pumping more streams of blood into the air, solidifying its humanoid form. It confidently stepped out of the small depression in the ground that once marked the boundary of its prison.

Ventine immediately prepared a defensive spell, alert to any sign of treachery.

“Relax. I’m not going hurt my most loyal disciple,” the blood spirit said. His face now had enough features that she could see a faint outline of a grin in them.

“Your only disciple,” she reminded him. He needed her. “You better keep your end of the bargain when we get out of here.”

“Patience, disciple. All in due time,” the blood spirit said. “Let me take a quick look at you first.”

The humanoid form collapsed inward into a floating sphere of blood centered around the heart. The sphere then opened into a giant eye, and slowly circled around her once. She could feel this was a much deeper scrutiny than just visual, and felt awfully exposed. She knew intellectually that she was dealing with a sliver of spirit from a pinnacle adept, and that even a fragment of such an expert was not something to casually trifle with, but it was only now that she really understood. And she didn’t like it.

Despite feeling uneasy with the whole thing, she didn’t make any aggressive moves. She had some contingencies if this whole thing turned sour, but she would rather not use them now.

The sphere ultimately returned to its previous position and quickly morphed back into a humanoid form.

“I see why you came to me,” the blood spirit mused out loud. “When I saw those bone golems of yours, I thought you were just your usual corpse raiser, but I sense an unusually strong vitality for a necromancer of your rank. You are already practicing a blood technique of some sort, no? Well, you’ve come to the right person! I can definitely help you.”

“I want to advance fast,” Ventine told him.

“Who doesn’t?” the blood spirit countered. “For what it's worth, I also want to recover my strength as quickly as possible. Even in my prison, I’ve seen the visions and felt the tidings of doom. The Hegemon is calling all powerful adepts to answer his call, and I can’t afford to take things slowly. You came at a fortunate time. Frankly, I was already considering doing something drastic in order to get out. I need to be out there! I need to merge back with the original and get ready. The time for action has come!”

“The Hegemon?” Ventine asked, confused.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you later,” the blood spirit said dismissively. “I sense we will have visitors soon. These bone golems of yours sure didn’t count for much, huh? They barely even slowed them down!”

“None of them were destroyed,” Ventine said, annoyed. “Don’t pretend like having six of them in the upcoming confrontation counts for nothing.”

She was really proud of her skill at making these. She rose all the way to unification rank as a no-name orphan of minimal talent through those bone golems.

Sadly, the remaining two were left outside this realm in a failed attempt to ambush her pursuers before they reached the entrance. That was a blunder, in retrospect – one of them even ended up destroyed – but in all honesty, if six bone golems weren’t enough, two more probably would not have made a difference.

“I find myself curious about this adept that is chasing you,” the blood spirit said, ignoring her lecture. “I had a bit of a rivalry with the wood adepts of this world, you know?”

“You’ll be pleased to know they’re all gone, then,” Ventine told him. “Well, most of them. As I understand it, this man is the last spirit-rank adept of the last wood magic tradition on the planet.”

Not that Ventine believed he was really native, but whatever. That’s what the souls of the adepts she had slain and interrogated had told her.

“Really?” The blood spirit seemed shocked by the information. He was silent for a few seconds before bursting into loud, annoying laughter that lasted way too long. “How glorious! How delicious! The last vampire against the last druid; one final battle in a world that has forgotten them both! Oh this is better than I could have ever imagined!”

Ventine thought about pointing out that neither of them was truly forgotten, but decided there was no point. The blood spirit had clearly gotten a little bit mad from his long imprisonment. Really, it was a wonder he was still as coherent as this.

“Ideally, we would delay this fated showdown until you’ve had time to regain more of your strength,” Ventine pointed out. “Do you have some way of leaving this place without using the main entrance? I don’t think we can avoid a confrontation if we try to leave that way.”

The blood spirit hummed thoughtfully.

“But who says I want to do that?” he told her. “I want to meet him. Surely you realize that we’ll be constantly on the run for the foreseeable future? This may be my last chance in a long while to have this conversation with him.”

“He wants to kill you,” Ventine pointed out.

“So?”

“He’s a disciple of the Pale Tree, so don’t think your special nature will protect you,” she warned. “His ilk specializes in absorption of spiritual energies. If you are defeated here, he will eat you.”

“I also have a habit of eating my enemies,” the blood spirit said, visibly amused. “I don’t take it against him.”

Ventine rubbed her forehead. She really wished she could have a strong drink right now, but she’d already emptied her flask on the way here to calm her nerves. It was probably best to start carrying two flasks from now on, if this was what working with the Ancestor’s remnant was going to be like. Or maybe look into those spells for making a container larger on the inside…

Working with this guy was going to be hell.

* * * *

They advanced quickly, despite the constant attacks by the bone golems. The constructs were big, fast, and almost indestructible, and they could phase through solid rock to escape and attack at unexpected angles. On top of that, Marcus had to be careful with his offensive spells, because he risked collapsing the tunnels they were travelling through if he was careless. Despite that, the golems struggled to impede their progress. Due to Chompy’s help, Marcus could see them coming from a long distance away, and the golems were also reluctant to damage the tunnels too much. The necromancer would need them too, after all, when she tried to leave this secret area.

They eventually broke through into an absolutely massive cavern – one that Marcus remembered vividly from the vision. Thousands of blue flames floated through the air, dimly illuminating the massive space. At the bottom, there was a large lake, its waters dark and still, like a massive black mirror… and hanging from the ceiling was a multitude of buildings, towers, and statues that depicted unsettling grotesque forms with no resemblance to anything human.

They both stared at the scene in front of them for a while.

“A Klatu city,” Helvran commented quietly. “Amazing. I thought they were all destroyed in ancient times.”

“You know about the Klatu?” Marcus turned towards him, surprised.

“A bit. There are some records about them in temple archives,” Helvran said. He pointed towards the dark city above them. “This should come as no surprise, but the necromancer is over there. I’m certain of it.”

Of course she was. Marcus looked around the cavern one more time. There was no obvious way towards the city. The massive caverns had many tunnels branching off of it. One of the walls was literally full of holes. Even with Chompy’s help, it would take a long time to narrow down a correct path.

Well, no matter. He could fly, after all. He was just about to activate his flight spell and take them both up there, but then in the next moment he shifted into defensive position and triggered a defensive barrier to protect them. A bright crimson star suddenly came streaking towards them from the depths of the inverted city, approaching at great speed. Yet, instead of impacting their defenses, the red star suddenly stopped in front of them, coming to a halt near-instantly.

Before them floated a severe-looking woman dressed in non-descript brown clothes, clearly intended for stealth and blending in rather than grand impressions. Her black hair billowed behind her as she gazed down on them menacingly. A sphere of blood floated beside her, streams of blood extending from it to form a defensive barrier around both of them. Marcus thought it was a tool at first, but in the next moment the sphere opened a large eye in the center and fixed them with its gaze. The scrutiny was less hostile than that of the woman, more curious, but somehow a lot more terrifying.

The woman dropped down to the ground in front of them. The sphere retracted the streams of blood and re-arranged the blood it was made out of. Soon, he was staring at a disembodied beating heart, surrounded by a rough outline of a giant humanoid being made out of blood.

Behind them, pale forms rose out of the cavern floor, arranging themselves behind them like soldiers. All six bone golems that had been harassing them on the way here were gathered behind their master.

The face of the humanoid made out of blood was rough and indistinct, but Marcus could puzzle out the traces of a joyful, predatory grin.

“The necromancer we’re looking for, I presume?” Marcus loudly asked Helvran, sounding unconcerned at the display.

“Do you even have to ask?” the priest asked back in exasperation.

Marcus could not figure out if the priest was honestly confused at his question or just playing along. In any case, he was leery of simply attacking the woman in front of them. Battles between spirit-rank adepts were rarely quick matters, and unless you saw a way to inflict a crippling blow on your opponent or knew their skills extremely well, it was best to act cautiously.

If she wanted to talk and play theatrics for now, he would humor her. He had a strange feeling about the blood humanoid next to her…

“Hahaha! While my disciple’s ambition is praiseworthy, it is me you should be paying attention to!” a booming voice emanated from the disembodied heart. “Welcome, both of you, to my secret stronghold! I am Typhon, King of the Red Moon, the Blood-Crazed, Bane of the Gods! Though you probably know me as the ‘Blood Moon Ancestor’. Ah, my treacherous progeny… even after betraying me, they still boasted of their links to me. It’s almost endearing.”

Marcus shot Helvran an alarmed look. The Blood Moon Ancestor? Didn’t the priest say the man was definitely not held here on the island? What was going on?

The priest’s narrowed his eyes, and they burst into pale white flames.

“A soul fragment,” he declared. “It’s… ah!”

He suddenly clutched his forehead, the fire in his eyes sputtering out.

“Don’t be rude!” the blood giant declared loudly. “If you want to know something about me, you can just ask! I’m always happy to talk about myself, you know?”

“You want to talk?” Marcus asked cautiously.

“Why not?” the blood giant challenged. “Life is so dull down here, without a soul to keep you company, even for a monster like me. Besides, it’s not like I feel terribly threatened by your presence. I guess people like you are considered impressive these days? I did hear from my newest disciple that Chaoswood had fallen onto hard times since I was sealed away.”

Marcus internally scoffed at the arrogance. The giant in front of him was just a fragment of soul. He had never encountered something like this before, but he had heard of them from others. He didn’t know how powerful the Blood Moon Ancestor was in his prime, but it was known that these fragments were much, much weaker than the original. In particular, they had no endurance, and could only perform a handful of full-powered spells before becoming totally exhausted and falling into a kind of deep sleep. So long as the soul fragment didn’t kill him outright, he could outlast it.

However, he was getting a very unsettling feeling when he looked at the disembodied heart, and he could not explain it. It wasn’t a spell, he was sure, but it was there, and it made it impossible to dismiss the fragment’s attitude as mere arrogance. He had to be wary.

“Even if we’re enemies, surely you can at least introduce yourselves?” the blood giant demanded.

“I am Marcus, an elder of the Great Sea Academy,” Marcus said. He pointed at the priest beside him. “This is Helvran, a priest of the Raven Temple.”

“I am Ventine, an independent adept,” the woman next to the blood giant said.

“Not true! You’re my disciple now, remember?” the blood giant pointed out.

“Right, how silly of me,” the woman said blandly.

“I was told that you are on the side of Abyssals, and that you feed on your fellow human beings,” Marcus stated bluntly.

“I will have to feed on quite a few people in order to regain my strength to something manageable,” the blood giant replied, readily confirming the accusation. “After that, I guess I could stop doing that. Drinking people’s blood is mostly about acquiring power for me, and at the level I’m at, preying on most people is pointless. But you know, a man has to have hobbies. Would you really deny this old man his pleasure? What if I promise to only feed on elves? Would that be acceptable? Besides, aren’t you also a man-eater?”

What?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marcus said, frowning.

“Pale Tree’s disciples have a rule about only devouring the souls of Abyssals and those who side with them,” Ventine said, folding her arms over her chest. “So it’s different than what you’re doing. At least, I assume that’s the argument he would make.”

“Being picky about who you target is just common sense when you’re low on the food chain,” the blood giant said. “I used to go only after acceptable targets when I was young too.”

“I was also told the Blood Moon Ancestor was safely sealed away elsewhere. That the island and the rest of Tasloa were methodically scoured for any trace of your works and your bloodline,” Marcus said. “Yet not only did you leave a piece of yourself here, you managed to build an entire underground city here in secret. Quite an achievement.”

“Oh no, this thing was already here when I found it as a young adept,” the blood giant said conversationally. “I don’t know who built it, but it wasn’t even remotely human. I’m pretty sure this whole cavern was once completely submerged, all the way to the ceiling… oh, just so you know, I already thoroughly looted the whole place over the course of my long life. I did store a lot of supplies and rare materials for when I finally emerge back to the world above, but I’m afraid my followers took everything back when they betrayed me.”

Hmm. The Ancestor’s fragment was… unusually chatty, Marcus thought to himself. Maybe he should try to get some information out of him before things turned sour.

“Do you know how this realm came to be? Not the city, but the whole hidden underground zone,” he asked.

“The demiplane? Hmm… you did seem pretty familiar with this sort of thing as you were navigating the tunnels. I’m guessing you've encountered one before?” the blood giant speculated.

Ugh, found out so quickly… this thing sounded like a dumb chatty idiot, but the fragment was actually pretty perceptive.

He didn’t answer the question.

The blood giant didn’t seem to care.

“Our world forms these kinds of demiplanes pretty regularly,” the Ancestor’s fragment said. “Most of them are small and transient, dissolving away in a century or less, but sometimes one coalesces around something sufficiently powerful to give it stability and structure. Think of it like a clam forming a pearl over the years by layering nacre around the offending object. This city above us, it’s just dead stone for the most part, but something about it is special in a way that even I don’t understand.”

“That’s… odd,” Ventine said from the side, frowning. “Planets don’t usually do that. I should know, I’ve been to several.”

“Our planet is washed by constant chaos storms. The tides of life,” the Ancestor’s fragment said. “It nourishes the worldsoul of this planet, causing it’s lifeforce to overflow. That’s why it constantly forms these demiplanes, like a prosperous tree bearing fruit. Many strange things happen here due to this.”

“The worldsoul…?” Marcus repeated. “The planet has a soul?”

“How could it not have one? All life-bearing worlds have one to my knowledge,” the blood giant said.

“So the other two planets in the system, the moon…”

“The moon? Haha! Well, about that…” the blood giant cackled. “You might have noticed the place is pretty barren these days. It wasn’t always like that.”

Marcus frowned, not understanding what the fragment was getting at.

“You? What… what did you do?” Helvran asked, sounding horrified.

“Hehe… there are two ways to become a god in this universe. The first one is to be acknowledged by one of the Pillars of Creation. The second one is to do what the Abyssals do and claim a planet’s worldstone to consume its soul,” the fragment explained gleefully.

Even Ventine seemed shocked by the words.

“But I thought you failed to become a god!” Ventine protested, her breathing quickening. “I thought you were just a domain mage!”

A shiver ran down Marcus’s spine at the words. A… domain mage? A pinnacle adept?

“This fight is unavoidable,” Marcus declared.

A number of things happened at once.

First, the six golems behind Ventine and the blood giant burst into action, rushing at them with incredible speed. Secondly, Ventine began to cast a spell at them. However, her inexperience was showing, and she was much too slow to recover from her shock and react in time.

Third, Marcus clenched his fist in front of him, and the entire area imploded.

It happened in an instant. The golems, the air, the rocky floor of the cavern, and several small items attached to Ventine’s garb were instantly sucked towards the center of the area and crushed into a large ball of rock, bone, and metal.

The compressed air then blasted outward, scouring the area further in an explosion of force and making the entire cavern shake as the aftershocks bounced back and forth within the relatively confined area.

Before the rocky ball containing the golems had the chance to fall to the ground, Marcus hit it with a vortex of kinetic force, launching it up towards the city above them with incredible speed. It shattered on impact, causing a large dust cloud and more shaking. The golems then rained down and fell into the dark waters below, intact but unmoving.

They probably weren’t fully out of the fight, but he just wanted them gone for a while.

Unsurprisingly, Ventine and the blood giant were unharmed, having been shielded by the Ancestor’s fragment somehow. However, Ventine had clearly lost concentration over her spell, and there was no immediate counterattack coming.

Marcus moved to follow up on the spell with something similarly destructive, but before he could do that, a field of red emanated from the disembodied heart in the center of the blood giant, instantly enveloping the entire area.

“You don’t fight like any druid I’ve seen before,” the heart commented. Its humanoid form collapsed, reverting into a sphere of blood. Thin streams of blood extended out from the sphere like feelers, waving in the invisible wind and bending towards Marcus and Helvran.

Marcus couldn’t move. His thoughts were muddled, and his blood felt like it was on fire. It strained against his skin, as if it wanted to escape his body and offer itself to the disembodied beating heart in front of him. Ominous red filter covered his entire vision. Beside him, Helvran was kneeling on the floor, bleeding from his eyes, nose, and mouth, little droplets of red floating away from him and towards the heart. Even Ventine wasn’t immune to the effect, and was down on one knee, breathing heavily, trying to maintain composure.

Marcus trembled, but managed to remain standing, and, through sheer force of will, managed to focus his thoughts again. However, try as he might, he just couldn’t cast anything. His body still wouldn’t listen to him, and his magic was in turmoil.

“It’s somewhat impressive that you can withstand my domain and remain relatively lucid, even if I am only a fragment of the real thing,” the blood sphere said, its hair-like tentacles reaching towards him. “I can do this all day long, by the way. A domain is not a spell, but merely an evolution of the spirit. It costs me no mana to keep this up.”

A spirit…

“Besides, your follower doesn’t appear to be doing too well, poor thing. You might be a spirit adept of some minor note, able to keep your blood inside of you, but I don’t think he’s long for this world. Haha, does that make you mad?”

A ghostly, towering oak manifested behind Marcus. Its roots stabilized the earth. Its branches reached out towards the heavens…

The roots of the ghostly tree suddenly grew and expanded, wrapping themselves around Marcus and Helvran, seeping into them, threading themselves with the essence of their being. Marcus’s blood and flesh stopped fighting against him, his mind became crystal-clear again, and his magic answered to his call.

He raised his hands high in the air and the waters of the nearby lake rose in response. A massive tsunami of black water rushed towards them.

The Ancestor fragment was a being of blood, and Marcus suspected that being diluted by a small mountain of water would actually be more harmful to it than being targeted by fire or other destructive spells, and he seemed to be right.

The heart flew high into the air to escape the tsunami, leaving Ventine to frantically try to protect herself. Considering the heart was still enveloping the whole area in its domain field, that couldn’t have been easy, but she somehow managed to get herself away.

Helvran’s situation had stabilized, thanks to the stabilization effect of his spirit’s roots, but he was not in good condition. Marcus simply enveloped him in a force bubble and let the wave wash over him. Being under water was probably the safest place for him right now.

Before Ventine could recover and join the fight, Marcus flew towards the orb of blood at high speed. The Ancestor fragment didn’t really try to flee, confident in its might, and instead shot several spear-like tentacles of blood at him.

“A soft squishy caster trying to melee me? Leave that stuff to the warriors, kid!” the fragment shouted, laughing.

Marcus dodged the tentacles and stabbed at it with a wooden stake. A blood barrier blocked the impact, but the stake instantly rooted itself into the barrier, greedily sucking in the blood and visibly growing roots as it did.

He only managed to keep it up for a second before the heart released a powerful nova of force in all directions, blasting him away.

Marcus managed to keep his grip on the stake as he was forced away. It was now stained deep crimson, and he could feel powerful vitality stored within it. A faint pulse emanated from it, as if it was some kind of wooden heart.

“That spell, that blasted spell! Now that’s the druids I remember!” the heart shouted maniacally. “But do you really think something like that could ever end a being of my glory and magnificence!? Weak! Too weak! I can see you’ve never practiced this until now!”

Well yes. How could he have possibly practiced it? All his disciples were dead.

Marcus rushed at the heart again, but was forced to dodge when a beam of light enveloped the heart. It punched a hole straight through the ceiling, and even through the dimensional barriers that surrounded this space. When it cleared, a patch of the night sky was clearly visible. The moon hung bright in the sky, black spiderweb-shaped cracks covering its entire visible surface.

“Ahahah! This was a fun fight, and we should do it again sometime. Even for a wood mage, this ability of yours to counter my domain is quite special. It seems there are some things worth learning, even in this fallen age! We shall see each other again. Disciple! We’re leaving.”

“What? Wait, what about my golems!? I spent a whole year making them, we can’t just leave them-“

“You still have one of them outside. Don’t be such a whiner!”

Before Ventine could protest further, a blood tentacle seized her and pulled her closer. Both she and the heart turned into a red star that shot up into the sky, through the newly-made hole, and then away. The speed at which the Ancestor’s fragment made his escape was incredible – Marcus couldn’t catch up to him, even if he wanted to.

He wasn’t sure he did. This seemed like something beyond his individual ability to handle.

He fished out Helvran from beneath the waters and checked up on him. He was shaken and had lost a lot of blood, but he would live. He fed him a healing potion to help him recover his vitality, and then looked around the cavern.

He sighed. It was going to be hell explaining any of this to Gaius and the rest of the elders.