1.8 – Corruption of Flesh

An abomination rushed toward Rika in a mass of twisted limbs and rolling flesh. No matter how the thing oriented itself, that single sickly eye remained fixed on her, growing in size as the abomination hauled itself ever closer. The weapons it held in each of its arms were all the sort for chopping or cleaving, their blood-slick blades promising a gruesome death for the creature’s victims.

Rika tightened her grip on her arming sword. White-knuckled, her fingernails dug into her palm. Sweat beaded on her forehead in the heat of the flesh-covered room and trickled down into her eye. She blinked it away, then swallowed her fear. As the Corruption of Flesh came ever closer, she grew keenly aware of every ache, every scrape, every unhealed wound the last room had left her with. Fight or die. Those were her options. And the closer this thing drew, the more likely it seemed the latter was her only choice.

But she only failed if she gave up.

The Corruption of Flesh reached her in only a few breaths, crossing the massive chamber with alarming speed. An axe crashed down from above, blade gleaming a sick red with half-dried blood and worse. The thing was larger than she’d realized now that it was up close. She wasn’t about to risk blocking it if she didn’t have to.

Rika darted to the side, her Finesse of a mere two proving itself barely up to the task. As the creature’s arm slammed down where she’d just been, she activated Strike. Her arming sword licked out, a tongue of steel to lash misshaped flesh. A cut opened on the Corruption’s limb, and it bled. It was, after all, a creature of flesh.

Strike: 12 seconds

She could do this. The thing was large, and its eye tracked her well, but now that she was up close, Rika could see dozens of openings. Places she could slip between the limbs to pierce and slash at exposed and unarmored soft flesh. She could open the creature, make it bleed, and wear it down. She could do this.

The Corruption’s wound began to close.

In barely the space she’d taken to draw a single breath, the bleeding gash she’d opened on its arm was gone, as though it had never been. With all six of its arms, the Corruption thrashed about, slamming and slashing with edge and blade. Rika darted back and away, out of the creature’s reach, and to relative safety. For now.

“Chryson, please tell me there’s something you can give me about this thing.”

“The Corruption of Flesh heals itself from any physical damage incredibly quickly. Such attacks are hardly an effective means of dealing with this creature, Miss Rika.”

She’d been afraid he would say something like that. Although she’d seen it with her own eyes, a small part of her hoped there’s be some other means of defeating the Corruption. Maybe it had a weakness, like the true-to-life construction of the Clay Sentinels. If there were, she’d have to find it on her own.

The creature’s mad thrashing ended, and it rolled itself over at Rika, sweeping at her with a butcher’s cleaver nearly as big as she was. With no other choice, she brought up her shield and all the meager protection it offered. Bracing herself, she leaned into the strike, putting all of her two points of Might into her counter-push, and hoping it would be enough.

An impact greater than any she’d felt in this thrice-cursed trial crashed into her shield. She’d lost count of how many times that numbness had spread up her arm all the way to her shoulder by now. It couldn’t be good for her. Off balanced by the weight of the attack, she barely kept her feet. Barely avoided the next overhand slam from another massive weapon. This one looked like a woodsman’s axe, just three times as large as it needed to be.

Her Finesse saved her from this one, and she wedged herself close to the thing’s body. Close enough that she could smell the rot. Unnatural heat rolled off the Corruption in waves. She gagged and nearly threw up. But she was close, close enough to be safe, if only for a few moments. Close enough to unleash hell.

Strike: 12 seconds

She opened a deep wound along the slick flesh of the Corruption’s main mass. Blood and bile oozed out of it, and the whole creature shook, as if roaring in rage and pain. Rika didn’t let up. She struck out again with a rush of attacks, guided only by all her time training with Marin and the household guard.

Maybe, just maybe, if she could keep up a relentless assault, she could overwhelm the Corruption’s regeneration. Maybe she could prevail. Maybe she could wear it down. She gripped her sword in both hands, leveraging as much of her two Might as she could. Hacking away at the mass of flesh and rot before her, she tried to deal out as much pain as she could in as short a time as possible.

Cut by cut, she opened one wound after another. It looked as though she might do it. Through sheer, relentless ferocity, she’d managed to open a number of deep, bleeding gouges on the creature’s central mass of flesh. Then it started thrashing again. The haphazard storm of limbs and bloody steel forced her back. Rika watched in disappointment and horror as the wounds she’d just worked so hard to create closed, leaving the flesh mended and new.

“Miss Rika, I…” the way Chryson’s voice trailed off seemed odd to her. Like he was conflicted about something.

She couldn’t spare the attention. Another attack slammed down from the Corruption of Flesh, and it took all her focus to avoid it. She blocked another sweep, and this time she couldn’t help herself but cry out. Her whole body just fucking hurt. Everywhere she bore some mark of all the bullshit she’d been through already. And now she had to deal with this. Her head pounded and her chest heaved, each breath ragged and taking more effort to draw than the last.

Eventually, Chryson made up his mind and finished on his own. “I don’t know if this is against my restrictions or not, but you do have a means of dealing with this foe.”

“Guess it’s not against your restrictions,” she forced out in response. “I can’t.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

How could she explain? From her earliest memory, her father had loomed over her. His expectations, his demands. You must be this, do this. Only then will I recognize you. Only then will you be my daughter. Ever since she’d been old enough, she’d done everything he’d wanted. Everything he expected of her. Not one thing had been enough. She’d been met with cold and stoic demands for more as her reward for doing what she’d been bid. Any success she claimed had been treated as a failure.

And even though he put so much on her, all the while withholding approval, affection, or even just simple acknowledgment, she was—and always would be—his unwanted bastard. Always compared to Ariadne. Always saying to her, “See? That’s the child you should have been. She’s the one who will carry our family forward.” And the more he did so, the more Ariadne lorded that over her. She’d tormented Rika when she was younger, and it had only grown worse as Rika’s majority approached. All because of their father.

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She was fucking done. The Trial of Destiny was to be the means by which the ambitious and capable could forge themselves into anything. That much, at least, Thaddeus had taught her. Choices mattered. Actions mattered. Your path through the trial laid the foundation for what you one day could become. Not what you already were.

The Watchers themselves embodied those principles, those very founding truths of the world. Promise, most of all. This was his trial, overseen by his deacon, and undertaken in his temple. Promise, the Lord of Beginnings, Steward of the Uncertain Journey.

His lantern’s frail light served as a guide to those bold enough to claim their destiny from the gods themselves. The whole of the world operated on that simple truth. The Trial of Destiny was forged by the gods themselves so that mortals could make of themselves what they willed. And while the gods cared little for worship, in Rika’s eyes, to do any less was blasphemy.

Worse, if she gave in, her father won.

Maximilian would be right. Not as if that were any different than usual. Her father always got his way, if not through force of will, then through strength of spell. Maximilian had proved to himself countless times over his long life the superiority of the arcane, of his precious Blackstone legacy—the magic Ariadne said flowed in their veins.