7. Daren Lee - Eaters of the Weak

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”

― Homer, The Odyssey

Chapter 7: Eaters of the Weak

The horror shrieked, as it charged. It bounded over a half-sunken long, leaping, filthy yellow claws outstretched.

It was coming for me. Directly.

Teeth snapping, the maw yawning wide. Filling my world.

I was going to die.

And there was the electric surge of terror that shattered my horrified paralysis. Adrenaline poured down my spine, into my legs, and I was running - running - every instinct screaming at me that this was death, and it wouldn’t stop until those jaws closed on my throat.

The beast slammed down behind me, so close I felt the breeze of its passage. Powdery earth sprayed: For one mad instant, the faceless thing foundered as it sank into the mire, its snarls chasing me with each step.

Feet slipping on the slick ground. Heart pounding in my chest like a drum.

I crashed through the trees, branches raking at my skin. Thorns bit deep, drawing blood, but I barely noticed - Blind, stumbling forward, each breath a scream that echoed in the night.

Because I could hear it closing in. Claws scraping, guttural growls vibrating the air.

Relentless. Hungry.

But it has no eyes, a tiny voice gibbered within me. How can it see?

Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe it didn’t need to.

Maybe it could smell my fear.

I glanced down, and there it was - My handphone, clutched like a lifeline, the screen flickering in the dark, casting a sickly light on the jagged trees. I wanted to throw it, to get rid of the weight, but I couldn’t. It was my last tether to Earth, to Claire - a connection to the reality I’d left behind, that was slipping away with every breath I took.

I stumbled into a patch of thick brush, the branches sharp against my skin. I could hear it, right behind me. Closer, impossibly closer.

I didn’t dare look back, not even a glance. But I could feel the proximity of it, the wretched stink of its carnivore breath, the weight of its fury. As I plunged into the shadows of the undergrowth, I could feel my lungs burning with the need for air, pulse pounding like my veins were about to explode-

Come to Me.

I was running towards the voice, towards the call, now. Headlong, heedless of the trailing vines and barbs that tore at my legs, the mad tangle of gnarled roots and moss that threatened to trip me with every step.

All I could do was keep moving. One wrong move and I was done.

Up ahead, there was a gap between the trees. Wheezing, bent nearly double, I felt a surge of wild hope as I staggered towards it.

Almost there, I had time to think. Almost made it-

Then the horrible stench of slaughter hit me, and another ape-thing lunged from the dark. I saw teeth the color of yellow bone, a drooling red maw, as talons ripped the air.

I got an arm up, just in time. For all the good it did me.

Pain. Shattering, rending pain. The meat of my arm tore, and I staggered back, and how could anything hurt this much? Blood welled and ran, black in the Mark’s crimson light - Gagging, warmth pattering down my side, I lurched away on rubbery legs, the world tilting as cold shock stuttered through me.

The faceless nightmare’s jagged jaws yawned impossibly wide, a bear-trap in reverse. It reeked of rot, of death - I could feel the awful hunger within it, the primal, mindless need to tear and consume.

To devour.

No-

My vision blurred, the forest spinning, but I couldn’t stop. I wrenched away, every motion sending fresh needles of agony through my arm. Gasping, reeling, I put all of my strength into one, two, three terrible, aching strides…

I didn't see the edge until it was too late.

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One second, the forest floor was solid beneath my feet. The next, the ground disappeared.

My foot caught on something and I pitched forward, arms flailing for balance. But there was nothing to grab, no warning. Just empty air, and the horrifying sensation of falling.

I screamed, briefly. The sound ripped from my throat, but it was swallowed by the dark.

Then the ground gave way entirely, and I fell, fell into the void.

For one agonizing second, I was weightless. Then gravity slammed me down, pulling me faster as the earth tore away beneath me. The flinty pain of jagged rocks sliced into me, every inch of my body scraped and battered by the unforgiving, crumbling slope.

Fuck fuck fuck-

Dirt and dead leaves churned beneath me as I slid, helpless. Hands clawing at nothing. Trying to grab onto something, anything that could save me, but it was all too slick, too fast. I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t arrest my slide - Twigs snatching, grabbing, lashing at me as I plunged down, down, down…

I turned over, and over, and the world tumbled around me. The wind ripped at my hair, tore at my ears: Rocks and hard earth clubbed, punched, crushed me, like a battering by a hundred hammers. I tasted blood, dirt, all the flavors of ruin, thinking only please God, please God let it be quick-

Everything was a blur. Darkness, motion, darkness again.

I tore through a patch of bushes, thorns whipping and clutching as I skidded down the sloping earth. A tree root slammed into my already-mangled arm, the impact blasting white fire through my marrow: In a white haze of agony, I slid slowly to a stop, on my back, crumpled across mossy stone.

For long moments, I lay there gasping.

Stones clattered down around me, gravel and scree. The dust - slowly, so slowly - was settling, as my breath rasped and crackled in my throat. It felt like the entirety of my body was a single large bruise: From far, far above, I could hear the howls of the ape-things, furious that their prey had escaped.

And all I could think was-

How am I alive?

I’d fallen a long way. The bushes had slowed my fall, but still…I should’ve been a wreck, all ruptured flesh and splintered bone. Instead, I’d had the wind knocked out of me - my lacerated arm throbbing mercilessly, like it was on fire - but against all reason, I was still in one piece.

Rise.

My body screamed at me to stay put, to curl into a ball and let the darkness take over. But the word settled in my blood, a wave of heat and cold. The Mark pulsed, like a beating heart - In that moment, I felt the impulse in my limbs to move, to follow the promise in that great, echoing voice.

A voice from everywhere and nowhere at once.

A voice that drowned out all others.

I tried to take a proper breath. Instead, I choked, coughing up dust, spitting out mud. Groaning, I flopped over onto my hands and knees, gasping through clenched teeth. With an aching effort, I dragged myself up, wounded arm cradled close to my chest.

I didn’t want to look. I did it anyway.

In the bloody glow of the Mark, I saw a horror of torn flesh. The faceless screamer’s claws had lacerated my arm - Deep, parallel lines that gouged deep into the meat. Just seeing it, looking at the appalling damage that had been done…it made my legs turn to cloth beneath me. Made the world slide out from beneath my feet.

“Oh,” I said, thickly. Wretchedly aware of the understatement. “Oh God-”

I was vaguely aware that you were supposed to do something at a time like this. Tie some kind of tourniquet, maybe. Cauterize the wound.

Stop the bleeding.

But looking down at the mess, all I wanted to do - the only thing I wanted to do - was throw up. Everything felt foggy, distant. Like all this was happening to someone else, someone who wasn’t me.

The blood, however, was real. I could feel it trickling over my fingers, staining the stone beneath me. The thought made my gut churn, my vision swim: a cold, distant part of me wondered how much I’d lost, how much further I could go before I bled out-

Come to Me.

I looked up. A faint, orange glow was seeping from the distance ahead. A glance behind me showed only blackness, the cliff-face rising like a wall of jagged teeth.

A shiver passed through me, an ache pulsing in my temples.

What’s happening to me? I thought. What am I-

But I knew I couldn’t waste time with hesitation. The ape-things would be on me soon, and no amount of self-pity was going to save me.

There, just ahead - the mouth of a cave. The light came from within, like some lonely beacon. My breathing was shallow, everything still hazy and slow: Each inhale was a sharp stab of pain, but I staggered forward anyway.

I couldn’t stop now. I couldn’t.

Wherever I was going, I would go all the way.

I’d get there, even if it meant my last breath.

-I’d get there.

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Within, the heart of the volcano waited…For what else could it be?

Even from here, I could feel the heat of it, spreading through my limbs. Breathing into my skin, as it crept through the walls in softly-glowing veins of crystal and ore.

The sloping passage should have slid down into cold darkness: Instead, it grew warmer with each step, the wind spilling a gauze of dust down the tunnel.

I was close, now. I heard the voice again, distant but distinct: a whisper, a murmur, wordless but beckoning. Like it knew I’d come too far to turn back.

I took a deep breath, ignoring the way my chest tightened with every movement. Steadying myself against the wall, I limped down, down into the red-tinged gloom.

Each step was marked with the patient tap-tap-tap of dripping blood, fat beads spattering the uneven ground: the bleeding was slowing, which I supposed was a good thing…Unless I was running out.

A low rumbling, like the flow of a great river, was coming from up ahead. It grew, as the passage curved before me - I was treading through soft, grey ash, thick enough to muffle my footsteps, a smell like copal resin hanging in the air.

Around the next bend, the path ended.

What lay beyond-

The chamber beyond was vast. The walls, skinned in fused black glass, gleamed like a constellation of stars - I’d expected a great blaze, some eternal flame, but the light came from something far more primal.

At the center of the cavern, rising from a pool of molten rock, was the thing that had called me forth.

To my eyes, it was immense. Carved from the grey rock of the world’s heart, its form both tree and titan at once. A hundred arms branched forth from its colossal trunk, each one gripping a weapon - swords, axes, spears, mauls - all hewn from the same dark, ancient stone.

Chains bound it, looping over it, punching into the stone and radiating away to the cavern’s edge. The links glowed yellow and white with heat, swarming with glyphs, with symbols, with almost-words that burned with fire so black my eye could never hope to hold them.

Small orange sparks danced under the high roof. A gust breathed through the flamelit space, the chains rustling and swaying. As if that vast thing stirred in its bindings, restless in its sleep.

Oh Jesus, what is this? I thought, raising a hand against the heat. What is-

My gaze caught on something at the base of the idol, and I recoiled. A skeleton slumped against the black stone, fleshless skull bowed as in prayer. I glimpsed the faint gleam of an ancient knife, gripped in skeletal fingers - the tattered black robe, like a shroud, that clung to the charred bones.

Even in death, the priest’s empty sockets seemed to watch me. The only things that the fire could not reduce were the eyes and the teeth: It magnified them both, made the eyes huge, staring pits of darkness, at once mournful and hating. The teeth had become a wide, lipless grin, a scorched white smile with no end.

Grinning at me, as if at some secret joke.

For a moment, it almost seemed to move. Something about the shroud seemed to drink in the light around it, like faint wisps of black mist curled from its edges. I made myself look past the scorched corpse, up at the-

You have come.

Each word struck like a hammer, shaking me to my core. My legs gave: I sank to my knees in the soft grey ash, without thought. Before this towering figure, its hundred hands frozen yet alive with power, I was nothing, infinitesimal.

An ant.

A mote.

I have waited and watched you for so long.

It had a face. God help me, it had a face - a graven mask of wrath, hacked into the stone in blunt relief. Once, maybe, it had been handsome and stern and commanding: Hasty chisel-strokes and the erosion of time had stolen all nobility from the visage, twisting those carved features into a serrated scowl.

And the eyes. The hollow eyes bored into me, gathering shadows from the furnace glow. Twin voids without end, pulling at my soul. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, my breath caught in my throat.

Do not look away.

The air thickened, the heat pressing down like a physical weight, as I grovelled in the dust. Ancient, unyielding, the presence coiled around me - Pressing into my mind, like a knife into wet clay.

I have so much to give you.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The chains rustled again, their glyphs flaring brighter. I could feel the dread weight of the petrified titan’s regard, holding me, judging me.

Finding me wanting, or perhaps worthy.

I honestly couldn’t tell.

I felt my own sweat trickle through the dirt of my face, like tears. Rivulets of blood, my blood, cut channels through the dust.

“Who are you?” I whispered, dizziness unwinding through me. “What are you?”

The answer came. Not in words, but in a flood of memories - Surging into me, filling me like a flood.

A hand, knapping a black spike of flint. The cold bite of the stone edge, made not for the carving of wood or hide, but as a weapon.

A forge, buried deep beneath Endoria’s tortured skin. Lit, blood-like, with an upswelling of ancient flame.

A hammer, falling on twisted rods of iron. Shaping the sword they would become, blow by ringing blow.

A hundred blades for a hundred hands, each forged in fire and blood. A hundred spiteful instruments, glimmering with a thirst for killing.

An axe, falling.

And always the hunger - For more strength, for a sharper edge, for the cold finality of the blade’s kiss. The power to tear down, to break, to cast down the foe and leave them as blood in the mud.

His essence was in every spark that flew from the anvil, in the rhythm of creation and destruction, the heartbeat of war.

His presence was in every clash of steel, every cry of strife that echoed through time.

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The visions shifted, pulling me deeper.

I saw the tribes, fierce and proud, their banners emblazoned with the secret sigils of their hundred-handed God. His chosen, His children of strife, thriving in the chaos He bestowed.

I saw their savage unity, the rivers of blood that flowed as they met in battle. Their forges burning, day and night, to craft weapons of war.

Their chants, rising to honor their God.

One name, over and over again:

Hekatoncheires, God of the Forge.

I could hear the screams of their sacrifices, taste the smoke that rose from the pyres.

Hekatoncheires, God of Strife.

The ring of iron-on-iron. Rams horns, blaring in sacred discordance.

Hekatoncheires, God of War.

A river of flesh and iron, thousands of men marching to battle. Their shouts of salute and praise a rolling roar of voices, rising above countless battlefields.

The earth, sown with blood and bone. Seeds of death, for wars past and wars yet to come.

I saw it all. I stood amidst the ranks of the People of War, feeling the ground quake beneath the weight of their march, the air thick with the acrid stench of burning steel and flesh. Saw their enemies, crushed beneath the relentless tide of the Hundred-Handed God’s chosen.

War was their altar. The cries of the victorious and the wailing of the vanquished, their prayers. Each victory, a testament to His unyielding might.

Until the coming of the Wrack.

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It fell from the skies of Endoria, like a black whirlwind descending. The shattering impact of its arrival, carving a great scar across the surface of the world. Unclean things grew, swarming in the wound, like maggots amid rotten meat.

They bred, spawning in pits a hundred kilometers across. Bursting from their birth-sacs, consumed by endless and eternal hunger. The choking miasma of the Blightveil oozed forth, coursing through the plateaus and valleys, twisting all it touched.

When the black-edged tide of malformed unreason surged forth, the Wrack was at its head.

It was an abomination, a towering wall of infected flesh. A black, blistered bulk, vast limbs rearing up from its mass. Armored in its own iron flesh, great tusks rising like battlements from its surface.

When the Wrack roared, the mountains shook. The earth shuddered, beneath that soul-bruising howl.

It was the roar of a predator, the voice of a billion-year-old devourer that had just woken, and realized that it was hungry.

The oceans boiled. The cities burned. The graves opened and spewed up the dead.

I saw a plague of worms, writhing in the poisoned fields. Saw a plague of crows, all the crows in the world, showering from bare, bleeding trees.

Saw the moons blotted out, as the world sank into darkness.

Amid the crucible of ruin, a desperate alliance was forged. The totems of Hekatoncheires, born alongside the crescent-moon banners of Minerva. Armies clad in shimmering silver, fighting side-by-side with the warriors of the Hundred-Handed God.

Together, they made war upon the Wrack. Purifying what was unclean, excising the cancer through conflict. For the first time, the Misbegotten knew ferocity greater than their own: Relentless in their fury, pitiless in their discipline, the armies of the Gods carried the war to the poisoned fissure from where it had arisen.

An unstoppable force, meeting a set of eminently moveable objects.

And then, on the last battlefield - Betrayal.

Betrayal, in spite of everything. After all this time.

The war had been a blood-edged tide of destruction thus far, but nothing prepared the tribes of Ullan for the brutality unleashed then.

Golden light, cutting down the warriors of the tribes. Villages set alight, the screams of the dying rising to the skies. The cold precision of the young Goddess’s soldiers, culling the People of War with ruthless efficiency, hunting them through their own lands.

The forges fell silent, the chants of the priests turning to screams. I saw the sacred sigils of the Hundred-Handed God defaced, their pyres repurposed to burn their own dead.

Every fane ruined. Every shrine despoiled.

I felt their rage, their despair. Their voices, calling out to Hekatoncheires for salvation, only to receive silence in return.

Ash, falling from the smothered skies. Descending from grey clouds like soft-whispered rain.

The King-of-Tribes, choking on his own blood. Whispering his last prayer, with his final breath: Knowing, even then, that the doom of his People had been sealed.

Avenge us.

Avenge us.

Avenge-

A keening, a sharp need, shuddering through me like the beginnings of a convulsion…

No more, I thought, desperately. I don’t want to see this.

Please, God. Let me wake up.

I flailed, without moving. Struggling, fighting - Trying to arrest my plummet through history. To pull myself from the mire of the chained god’s memories.

I want to wake up now.

Let me wake up-

More than anything, I wanted to be somewhere - anywhere - other than here. I wanted Claire to be alive, for all of this to have been some awful nightmare.

In the face of all I’d seen, all I’d endured…All I had was a single, hopeless prayer. The one everyone has in the face of disaster.

Please, I thought, into the darkness and silence. Please, please, just wipe it all away and bring everything back…

It can be done.

The voice was the roar of the forge, the clash of steel-on-steel. The sound stitched together from centuries of existence, from slices of lives spent destroying, enduring and destroying again.

That is the dream of your soul, and the dream you shall live.

Memory stirred, in the deepest recesses of my mind. The Broadcast’s promise - A single, shining chance to unmake what had come before: To make things right.

The shame of it. The horror of it. The disgrace.

If the wish could wipe it all away, like a stain…I would do anything, anything at all, to make it happen.

For I wanted it to be true. Needed it to be true.

Serve me.

The burning voice filled my mind. Strident, impossible to deny.

Become My vengeful Hand.

I could fix this. I could bring her back.

I could make this right.

Defeat the Wrack. Claim your prize. Restore what was lost.

I’ll do it, I thought. I’ll do anything.

Anything, even the darker parts of anything - All so I could look my parents, look her, in the eye.

All I had to do was let the God in.

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It was harder, far harder, than it sounds. Like clinging to a precious handhold over a sheer drop, with only the surging wrath of the inferno below.

I won’t lie: Everything about Hekatoncheires terrified me. To give myself over, to submit, to let go, was a kind of annihilation - That, I sensed instinctively.

I concentrated. Though it made no difference, I shut my eyes.

Let go, I told myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

I could feel the sweat, dribbling down my brow. The stench of sulphur and molten rock, of red-hot iron. The furnace heat, beating against me in broiling waves. My breath burned within me, my blood acid-hot in my veins, but some fundamental part of me still shied away from the horror of the God’s embrace.

One last truth, my Chosen.

Your sister’s killer lives.

And on the heels of that searing whisper, I thought - What?

The God’s words, His truth, hit me like a blow. My pulse stuttered, my heart thudding leadenly in my chest.

He is Minerva’s now.

No. It couldn’t be. I’d killed him - I’d seen him die. If I’d done nothing else right, I’d at least accomplished that one thing…

He walks this world, unpunished.

I would have denied it, if I could. But I could feel the awful gravity of Hekatoncheires’ words, the terrible certainty in every syllable that left no room for doubt.

Gabriel, alive? It was unthinkable. The notion was revolting, inexcusable.

Red, red, a flare of insulted rage-

Together, we will hunt him. Together, we will make him suffer.

Unthinkable. Unthinkable.

The red was in me, now. Filling my vision, drowning the world.

She died in pain. Gabriel killed her. He fucking murdered my sister.

I focused on the red. I needed to cling to my rage. I needed to make that fucker pay.

Pay, and pay, and pay-

Let. Me. In.

That was it - the push I needed. I felt the spark against the tinder of my anger, as the last walls fell. Fear, crumbling before the white-hot tide of fury.

Claire deserved justice. Gabriel deserved ruin.

I would be the one to bring it, whatever the price. Whatever the cost.

I opened the last stitch of my soul, and the fire leapt up.

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You are My Son.

Thunder shook the walls, a cataclysm of sound.

I claim and free you, soul of My soul.

The Mark blazed crimson, pulsing with the God’s ancient rhythm. My skin burned, achingly fiercely as filaments of red stretched forth from the jagged sigil, fanning out in molten threads.

Symbols formed out of the red. They swam before my eyes, resolving into meaning.

[Charnel Feast]

Dimly, I sensed this was the miracle that had healed me, that had closed the gouting wound in my side. Roused by my final, spiteful blow, the crash of wood against bone - the rush of blood, as life flowed out and death flowed in.

It surged through me, now. Fierce, unrelenting: Like molten metal, pouring into my veins. Through a haze of ebbing steam, I felt the God’s gift unwind within me, the sensation at once profound and profoundly wrong-

The white phosphorous it ignited inside me burned spastic jerks through my limbs. It banged my head against the floor, ripping screams from my torn throat.

Rise.

Let worlds tremble.

Heat threaded through my veins, stippling my flesh like twitching needles of burning light. I heard the hiss of cooking meat, the sizzle of a branding iron being driven home, as words - chirring, spidery script - scored themselves into my flesh.

Words that made. Words that built and un-built.

Reknitting muscle and sinew, as my bones burned black with heat.

[Forgeborn Resilience]

Pain, moving with all the speed the world had lost. Expanding, blooming.

Cackling light.

Crackling fire.

I tried to grab my head, as runes swarmed across my flesh. Tried to stop the pain from exploding beyond the confines of my skull, tried to hold it all together, but I was too slow - The God’s will too vast, too swift, to be denied.

Through the agony, I felt it. Strength, raw and unyielding, flooding every fibre of my being. Torn flesh sealed, as if forged anew. The pain ebbed, replaced by a steady, thrumming vitality.

The chamber’s heat no longer scorched me; it was part of me now, as I gasped - my breath steadying - pushing myself to my feet. Ash swirled around me, like a swarm of fireflies: All those black specks, resurrected as flame.

The jagged, angry light of the runes was fading, the light sinking into my flesh. I could still feel them, like scar-tissue, scorched into my hands, my side, over my heart - But only the mark continued to burn, proud and stark, smoldering with sullen heat.

Let wrath be your blade.

Spite, your shield.

There was a splintering, grinding crack, and from above - far, far above - one of the statue’s hands shattered.

It fell like a black thunderbolt, a sliver of sharpness. It struck the stone and sundered it, fiery cracks spiderwebbing out across the rock. The impact plucked at my tattered clothes, my ears ringing from the echo: But through the clearing haze, I saw.

It was a sword. Long, straight and heavy, black as jet. Razor edges ran down both sides of the blade, and dark leather wound the grip beneath the crossguard.

I reached out, without thought. When I touched the hilt, when it slammed into my palm, it sang with the high, humming whine of the power-

I had never known anything like it - But even then, I realized that was a lie. For the knowledge was in me, now: Every technique, every stance, every lethal arc of a blade. Already, I could feel its phantom weight in my mind, like it had been there all my life.

[Blade-bound]

I pulled, and the sword cut free of the rock. It shrieked in my shaking hands, as I raised it high: Lifting it to the light that speared down from the eyes of the bound God.

It hummed, in my grip. Whispered, just beyond the edge of perception. If I strained to listen, bent every iota of my focus to hear, its murmur was almost but never quite intelligible.

Unbidden, a name came to me:

Seized by some impulse I couldn’t name, I reached down. My fingers brushed the robe of the God’s last priest, draped over his scorched remains. The fabric felt alive, cool and slick to the touch: For a heartbeat, a chill ran through me, stark against the shrine’s heat.

But then I pulled, and the cloak slid free.

There was a soft clatter, bones settling into the ash. For a moment, I thought I saw the skull’s rueful grin widen - In silent blessing, maybe, or just acceptance.

The mantle settled around me, light as a whisper. It clung to me, dark against the flickering light of the fane: I felt myself stand a little taller, a little straighter, beneath its enfolding embrace, like I had crossed some invisible threshold.

Go forth.

Carve My will.

The world moved. But now I no longer felt like a drifting ship. Now, I felt the tug of the anchor, pulling me round to face the rising tide.

Let all know-

Hekatoncheires’s voice, louder than all the worlds. Slow and ponderous and inevitable, carrying with it the weight of ages.

I HAVE RETURNED.

Laughter, like a storm, and the earth rumbled with a deep, seismic groan. Molten stone bubbled in the pool at the statue’s base, the great chains flaring with black fire. The blaze fractured the surrounding gloom, harrowing the darkness with fierce un-light.

Cracks split the air - Rock tearing, grinding, breaking apart. Chunks of debris rained down, dust swirling, cracks skittering across Hekatoncheires’ prison walls. The world shook, a hail of twisted fragments rattling, clanging against the ground.

Jesus-

Adrenaline flushed my system, and I started running. Feet pounding down as grit stung my face, a hot wind pushing me forward. The sounds of collapse grew darker, faster, louder - Monstrous, like the end of the world.

The vast edifice of the Hundred-Handed was collapsing upon itself, burying the God’s last shrine beneath tonnes of falling rubble.

Not going to make it-

Sword in hand, the breath wheezing in my throat, I made myself run faster still. The dust-choked air wracked my lungs, but I was sprinting, now - my fleeing shadow flickering before me, the Mark’s bloody glow lighting my way.

Legs burning, I shouldered my way through the falling shards. The distant glimmer of the cave-mouth seemed so close yet so far: Borrowed cloak writhing in my wake, I put on one last burst of speed.

One final effort, struggling towards the only hope of escape.

My heels struck flinty sparks from the ground, the world slipping past in slow motion. Only then did I realize how fast I was going, how far I’d come…Before I burst forth from the God’s rocky tomb, into the enormous darkness of the ashen wilds.

Safe.

I was panting, open-mouthed. Trying to catch my breath, the constant rumble of the seismic turmoil still echoing in my ears. Everything was a whirl: I knew only that I’d made it, that I’d left the volcanic shrine far behind.

That finally - finally - I was…

Oh, I thought, as the vile bacterial reek of rotting flesh and old gore hit me. As things moved in the darkness beneath the trees, their proportions all wrong.

Oh, no.

-I wasn’t alone.

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They were waiting for me, eyeless faces peering from the shadows of the forest. The-

Canker Eaters.

The name sprang into my mind, with the clarity of a true vision. In that moment, I knew what they were - the once-rulers of the forest, warped by the Blightveil. Made Twisted, by the foulness pouring forth from the wounded earth.

I raised the sword. Heard the scratch, as the point lifted from the rocky ground. It rose in a double-handed grip, the fast, firm efficiency of the motion both achingly familiar and utterly alien at once.

I felt terror through my core, but - curiously - it was a clean, simple feeling. For at long last, this was something that could be fought.

“Come on, then,” I said. “Come on-”

They came pounding out of the gloom, their shrieks rasping from bloody lamprey mouths. A half-dozen, a dozen ape-things, all bounding and charging. Howling, as they loped across the narrow distance, fanged maws gnashing the air.

Sinistral purred in my hands, god-runes blazing with vengeful light.

Things began to happen very, very fast.

TO BE CONTINUED