I’d entertained popping in to say hello to Messeras since his plane directly connects to Vizier’s Crown, but that plan fell by the wayside once the hunt went underway. I hadn’t seriously considered the possibility that our plan to send the centipede to another plane would deposit it onto Messeras’s doorstep, unleashing a voracious monster on his quiet jungle.

The centipede’s girth spans most of the aperture we tore in the veil, its many bodies coiled together like a giant, pulsing braid of cables. It rushes into the fragrant veil with the power of a high-speed hovergloss. The only way in is to carve a path through its body.

I dive forward and pierce through its segments, but it’s like I’ve jumped into a waterfall and been swept up by its powerful current. Its body flings me forward through the veil and I tumble free, ichor sloughing off as I shake my arms.

Beholding the jungle, I grimace at the burgeoning lifelessness, the vitality around us withering wherever the centipede passes. Its segments–pressed close to its body while shooting through the tear in the veil–fan out over the terrain, increasing the radius of death and desiccation, spanning the jungle as far as I can see. Its vitality seeking array doesn’t discriminate, culling trees and nearby animals in moments, leaving behind only husks. The smell of sweet flowers and wet overgrowth lingers, the last vestige of the area’s fecundity.

I commence my assault on the centipede in earnest, shoring up dead chitin against its side in an attempt to constrict and crush, to redirect. I try to seize control of its flesh, looking for pockets of death to serve as cornerstones for my influence, but its body is saturated with vitality. I can overpower the swelling vital energy in a localized region, but that’s effectively useless when the centipede is big enough to span the sky when its segments expand to the fullest.

A bead of panic swells in my chest as I consider what I’ve unleashed on this peaceful place, and how powerless I am to stop it. I successfully directed the centipede’s descent because it only desired to reach the nethereal lights–it didn’t care that I shifted its trajectory to the right or left. But now that it has a world of promise in its sights, it bucks my influence, dead-set on plundering this new world. I simply can’t control enough of its living mass to force its movements, and it barrels through the walls of dead chitin I press into its sides with impunity, much like it shook off Ketu's ice.

I sense Messeras approach like a comet falling from the heavens, stray locks of dirty blond hair escaping his hair tie flapping wildly around his head. “WHOEVER YOU ARE, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU,” he bellows, appearing within a blustering gale of wind, his face aghast.

He dies almost immediately since he enters the centipede’s kill range. I duck forward and swoop up his non-persistent, earth-tone clothes, holding them in a bundle against my chest.

In Messeras’s absence, I sense as Maria enters the veil, followed by Marcus and Vik.

Remind me who Messeras is again, and why he’s going to kill you? Maria transmits.

He’s the ascendant who lives here, the one who traveled with me to Nuremvark, I explain. He clearly doesn’t appreciate a centipede monster ruining his jungle. Can you blame him?

When Messeras reappears a second later, the wind pops around him, threatening to shatter my eardrums. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move so quickly. This time I cloak him in Death energy–thin enough that it’s only visible to someone with vital vision–and throw the bundle of clothes his way.

Why doesn’t Messeras recognize me?

“Please don’t kill me,” I say dryly. “I’m your best weapon against that thing.”

Messeras’s expression is incensed and he lashes out with a razor of wind, probing my defenses. He doesn’t normally put so much energy into his strikes. Blue energy surges defensively around my arms as I bar them across my face, my thickened skin weathering the blast.

He gathers up his clothes and roughly shoves on his pants, not even bothering with undergarments. He sends the rest of the clothing into a storage ring. “Why–how–did you bring that behemoth here, to my plane, of all places?” He watches as the monster scampers over the forest. Seized by a curious urge, the centipede tries to scale a copse of trees, only for their withered trunks to snap under its girth.

That’s when Vik renews contact. “Dunai, what’s wrong? You chased after the centipede in a hurry.”

“This plane belongs to another ascendant,” I explain. “We can’t offer it up to the centipede as a sacrifice. The man who lives here will have our heads.”

“What is our alternative?” Marcus asks, Vik relaying his question.

“I’m working on a strategy,” I reply. “Might need to send the centipede into another plane, but that’s easier said than done.” If we had Crystal here with us, maybe she could communicate with the behemoth and convince it to at least deactivate its vitality seeking array, but she’s with Karanos.

Messeras and I follow the centipede’s rampage above the treeline as the others catch up. Maria and Vik pull forward, the wind elementalist grasping onto Maria’s back while powerful flames and a sonic tailwind blast them forward. Further out, I sense Marcus and Alan, the two partly incorporeal and traveling straight through the earth, phasing through roots and rocks. In the far distance I sense stubborn Sah and the ascendant mentors entering through the veil vulnerability, their robes flapping as they pursue us, keeping a moderate distance. The vulnerability is now half-closed, and the centipede segments still on the Vizier’s Crown side suffer dire wounds on the veil’s edges as the centipede pulls them forward.

Though Messeras continues to pepper me with half-hearted wind blades, he seems to be taking my warning–that I’m the best weapon against the centipede–to heart. Rather than letting me fall behind him, his wind buoys me forward, allowing me to stay abreast.

“It’s me, you idiot,” I cry out, barely able to hear my own voice over the heavy winds, falling trees, shrieking wildlife, and the approaching roar of Maria’s fire. “Ian Dunai!”

His head jerks back as he averts his eyes from the centipede, his wind buffeting across my skin. “You don’t even sound like Dunai,” he replies. “You don’t feel like him. Don’t look like him. The only similarity is your practice.”

The easiest way to convince him is with obvious proof, like seeing one of my companions. Messeras isn’t very familiar with Maria, but there is one member of our party that he knows well. “Sense a bit further out,” I implore him. “Sah approaches.”

His gaze softens. “Sah is, indeed, coming.” He rotates in place, wind building around him in a screw pattern before it dissipates, launching him forward. “I don’t understand how you’ve changed so much in so little time, and why you’ve brought this monster into my plane, but the time for explanations is later.”

I lower my voice now that I know Messeras will listen to my subvocalized words with his practice. “Where is the nearest tear in the veil, and where does it lead?”

“It’s Crystal’s plane, the veil vulnerability south of my home.”

I frown. Ideally, I’d prefer not to send the centipede there, for Crystal’s sake. “Which way is the centipede headed now?”

“East. There’s another vulnerability there that leads to grassy highlands. It’s further away, but we’re moving swiftly. It’s unfortunate that everywhere the centipede passes dies.”

I snap out my plane compass and study the arrow. It bounces between three directions where vulnerabilities exist, but as I turn it toward the front, the arrow settles down and points straight ahead towards the eastern vulnerability, though it’s slightly off-center.

“It’s veering slightly off course,” I assert. “If we both push together, we can force it to the side.”

Suddenly, Alan and Marcus emerge from the ground, their heads ghostly translucent and sticking out of the earth as though they’re buried in the soil up to their chests.

Messeras transmits Alan’s words to me, outspeeding Vik. “Where’s the nearest vulnerability?”

“Ahead, but we need to adjust the centipede’s course. Follow our lead,” I instruct, nodding to Messeras.

The wind elementalist says, “I can’t read your compass from here–you’ll need to show us how far to the left or right the centipede is deviating. Start moving the chitin.”

I acquiesce. I’ve already been using the chitin under my control to press in on the centipede. Now I strip off all the chitin on one side and augment the other, emphasizing which direction I’m pushing on. Messeras’s wind joins in applying pressure to my bulwark a moment later.

“Understood,” Alan says. “Give us a moment to get ahead.” The duo disappear into the dirt, their vitality fading under the layers of soil.

Vik and Maria catch up and disengage, Maria climbs onto the centipede’s main body and burrows inside, carving a path with flame-wreathed hands, while Vik flies over to Messeras and applies her practice to strengthening his own. Two powerful ascendants weaving the wind begins to have a noticeable effect, the centipede’s many limbs and heads struggling to keep their course.

I’m trying to disable the vitality seeking array, Maria explains, transmitting her thoughts directly. Within the centipede, there is no wind to relay her thoughts. Even if we move it to a plane that isn’t the domain of another ascendant, it won’t do any good for it to destroy that plane and make a new wasteland like Vizier’s Crown.

Keep it up, I reply. I think that’s what Crystal would want.

After a minute of high-speed pursuit, the plane compass’ arrow begins to waver, more sensitive to the smallest deviations left and right. “We’re getting close to the vulnerability,” I warn everyone. “Also, what is that?” There are two pillars fast approaching, tall enough to scrape the sky. With each passing second, their true form becomes more clear: two massive walls of earth, easily two-hundred feet tall.

“That’s our intervention,” Alan replies, Vik relaying his thoughts to everyone this time. “I also have a plane compass, so finding the veil vulnerability wasn’t difficult. The earthen walls narrow like a funnel, directing the centipede straight toward it. Now the wind elementalists should put their practice to use and speed over here so we can open up a wide enough tear for the centipede to pass through.”

Vik and Messeras lock eyes for a moment, both smiling at the unspoken challenge despite everything going on. They race forward, leaving me in the metaphorical dust.

Seriously, guys?

I pull ahead of the centipede, but not by much. By the time I reach the end of the line, where Alan’s massive earthen walls narrow, Alan, Marcus, Vik, and Messeras have torn the veil four directions, creating a rough square. The centipede proceeds at the center of the earthen walls, not bothering to burrow through, taking the walls as natural fixtures to be avoided.

Alan’s plan works perfectly.

The centipede barrels into the sundered veil, its body once more compressing in on itself, segments with writhing legs and gnashing mandibles braiding along the main body in a tight spiral.

“Go ahead after it with Maria,” Vik says. “We’ll keep the veil open.”

I nod and latch onto the nearest centipede segment, riding it through the veil vulnerability. When I emerge on the other side, it’s as Messeras described–a grassy highland. Or at least, it was before the centipede leeched the life out of the grass and shrubs, turning it into a yellow-brown barren.

Any luck? I ask Maria.

Almost. Can you give me a soul gem? I want to try something.

Because Maria is one of my constructs, I can sense where she is with high acuity, even though she’s buried in the centipede’s flesh. I roll off the centipede and fly over to her location, then part the centipede’s flesh with my practice, fighting against its overwhelming vitality. Gritting my teeth against the smell of rotting flesh, I join Maria inside.

Fire flares around her, charring centipede flesh and carving out a niche for her to work. They abate for a moment to grant me passage. She’s saturated in nasty, ichorous fluid, her hair a sticky mess. Her eyes are closed. But her hands are firm on the flesh in front of her, trembling slightly, as though she’s tensing her muscles. Her chest is still, the hovering diadem pressed flat to her forehead, inactive. I wrap her in my arms and a soul gem melts to a liquid in my hand. With gentle care, I send a trickle of it into her lips, replicating the strategy she used before.

Is this too much at once? I ask her.

It’s just right.

I feel tense, holding her in the centipede’s body. It feels like we’re in a rotten womb, the centipede’s flesh constantly trying to heal around us, only kept at bay by my Death affinity and Maria’s scorching flames.

Suddenly, the unstoppable surge of vitality cuts off, and the centipede’s body shudders as though from whiplash, its body faltering. Once again, the centipede is dying, though it’s worse than ever before.

Y’jeni, do I need to reactivate the array? Maria asks. I didn’t realize it would die so quickly without it.

I shake my head. You’ve done your part. Now it’s time for me to do mine.