Lukas was barely able to stand on his own. I wrapped a hand around his waist, stabilizing him, and his skin was cool to the touch. He placed his usable arm around my shoulders, leaning on me for support. His arm was cool as well, and it shook as I helped him take a step forward.

I sorted through near-forgotten medical training that the Church had offered a few years back, trying to remember what Lukas was undergoing. Shock, I recollected. He’d gone into shock.

Alright. That wasn’t something I could treat while we were in the midst of active combat, and his lack of an arm didn’t help his situation any. If I remembered right, I shouldn’t have been moving him, but staying still was a risk when there were still primordial offshoots trying to kill us.

On the other hand, travelling through the grass was not going to be an easy task, especially when I had to support someone who was already halfway into his grave. I’d killed a fair amount of the grass around us, giving us some breathing room, but the path to the other surviving party members was still infested with offshoots. Lasi, Sunsbridge, and Jasmine looked like they were almost done regrouping, too.

“Hey, Lukas,” I said. “ I know I said I’d take you to Jasmine, but I don’t think that’s safe right now.”

“I- uh, y-yeah, maybe,” he said, teeth chattering. “Not sure I can… can walk.”

That settled it. I had intended to take us both to Jasmine, but if the two of us left and tried to pass our way through the primordial-influenced grass, we would be beyond fucked.

“Stay still,” I told Lukas. “I’ll try and keep you from dying.”

I supported his weight and slowly got down on my knees, allowing him to slide off me and get on the ground more easily. He groaned, still falling a little bit onto his construct. The earth caught him, minimizing the shock of even his smaller fall. That gave some hope for his condition, at least, if his magic was still active.

For a second, I considered leaving him here and trying to make it there alone. I discarded the thought immediately. There were some upsides to leaving him here and not having to take care of a crippled man, but he was a fairly powerful ally and saving him here would encourage further collaboration with us. That aside, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t want Jasmine to see me abandon a teammate.

I shook my head. Now isn’t the time to be distracted.

I had worn a thin beige jacket made with sturdy material today, just like I had taken on every job beforehand, and though it had blood splatters on it now and tears from the grass it was still keeping me warm. I shucked it off and shook it around, trying to dust off as much of the dull red blood that had crusted up on it.

“Here,” I said, gently draping the jacket over Lukas’ torso. “We need to keep you warm, I think.”

Keeping him warm, keeping him still… was there anything else? I was far too rusty on my traditional first aid. I’d have to take another class if we made it out of here.

“T-thanks,” Lukas said. “I can… I can fight.”

I glanced at Lukas, who had unfortunately not gained his arm back, then over to Jasmine. Lasi’s trio had begun the process of clearing the grass around them, but they were moving rather slowly. Whatever injury Lasi had suffered, the healing process must have included the caveat of slowing down his magic for fear of breaking the spell. Their rate was steady, though, and it looked like they were going to be able to fully clear their area and begin making their way to us in a couple of minutes.

That left me to keep Lukas alive for at least that long.

“Just stay put,” I said. “You’re too weak to fight a child right now, let alone the power of a god made flesh.”

A small gasp escaped his throat, and he nodded weakly.

I brushed off a little dried blood that had coagulated by the edge of the jacket before standing up.

The “bowl” that Lukas had made was decently wide, maybe three meters from one end to another. I walked up its gentle curve and peered over the edge. I’d cleared the closest pieces of grass earlier when I’d been making my way to Lukas, but there was still quite a bit more field left. The blades were still growing, well above head height now. The closest of them had begun slowly reaching towards us, and they tensed as soon as I peeked my head over the construct, entering that coiled-snake form that I now knew meant an incoming attack.

Now that I was on the construct with Lukas, there was no risk of accidentally hitting him with the splash of my magic. I took the time to practice forming a magic missile. My mind was still framing the spell the same way I would with my unstructured magic, and I knew the frame was sloppy but I fired anyway. I tried to guide it even after I released the spell, the same way I would with a sphere of raw magic. I didn’t expect anything from it, since spells seemed to function so differently from mine, and I was pleasantly surprised when I could feel something shift in the way my spell flew. It wasn’t a great difference, but it was enough for me to sense. A little bit more accuracy, a little more control, a little less wrongness to it.

The spell collided with the closest blade to me, this one almost as wide around as I was, and after a moment of resistance it began falling apart, the magic animating it winking out as it died.

I fired another one as fast as I could, trying to recapture that post-cast control. There was definitely some deeper layer to this, some potential method to optimize my control of the spell after releasing it, but this wasn’t a laboratory and now was not the time to finely dissect how an oath worked. I would do what I could with what I had and I would figure things out along the way.

The second spell felt less controlled, the sense of wrongness so prevalent this time that I had to wonder whether the first cast had been a fluke. It still hit, though, but the grass simply recoiled, the missile failing to break through.

That wasn’t good. My magic was stopped by magical resistance but also by inherent physical power— if I didn’t use enough magic for a being that was sufficiently large or powerful, my spell wouldn’t do much. That meant two possibilities: either the primordial’s grass had developed magic resistance, or it had become naturally powerful enough to shrug off a baseline magic missile.

Either way, my response to it would be the same. I added more power to my frame and cast again, this time trying to maintain control of the magic all the way through, even attempting to maintain my hold on it when I released the spell. This time, it was more like the first time I’d tried it, a portion of my influence over the missile remaining even after the release of the frame.

This time, with the added overcharge, the spell burst through the grass with ease. Once I had this baseline level of required magic, the rest was a breeze. I cast magic missile after magic missile, experimenting with my control of the magic. It was slow progress, but it was just a side benefit while I whittled away at the offshoots attacking us.

I was just beginning to get tired when I heard the telltale roar of Jasmine’s flame. I looked away from the area I’d been attacking and saw the three other surviving members of our ad-hoc party making their way towards us, Ceretian shields protecting them from the grass. Jasmine was doing the bulk of the offensive work. Just how badly crippled was Lasi’s magic? It hadn’t been an issue with others she’d healed.

“Jasmine!” I shouted. “Lukas is hurt! Soren is dead! One of the adventurers we picked up is dead!”

“I saw,” she said grimly, her voice pained but firm. “The other adventurer is gone. Not dead, I don’t think, but he isn’t in the area anymore.”

Coward. The thought rose unbidden, and I did my best to suppress it. Their partner had just died. That would hurt anybody’s ability to stay in the fight.

“He made it out alive?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But that’s not important right now. Can you let us up here?”

“Y-yes,” Lukas said, voice small.

“Lukas says yes,” I repeated for Jasmine’s benefit. “He’s hurt pretty badly.”

A corner of the bowl opened up and sloped downwards, the same ramp-like configuration that had allowed me on earlier. Jasmine was the first up it, Sunsbridge and Lasi moving up more carefully.

“He’s close to death,” she said upon seeing Lukas. “You treated him?”

“A little,” I said. “For shock. I wasn’t completely sure what I was doing, so I just had him sit still and stay warm.”

“You did well,” Jasmine said, kneeling down by Lukas and beginning to heal him. “You made the right choice. Anything less than this and he might already be dead.”

“I did what I could,” I shrugged. “But you’re here now.”

“What I can do is limited,” Jasmine said. “Look at James.”

“What happened to him?” I asked. “It’s like his magic got kneecapped.”

“It’s complicated,” Jasmine said, her attention only half on the conversation. “When I heal, I create a frame and use a spell to set it. He can’t use more magic in one go than I use to set the frame. If he does, the healing will break, and even though my Nacea oath is strong it isn’t intact, so there’s a limit.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Is Lukas going to be okay?”

“I spent quite a bit of my power on healing the last few oathholders and James,” Jasmine said, a hazy circle of magic flickering between her hands. “I have enough left in my oath to Nacea to create and set the frame, but the setting isn’t going to have much. He’s functionally out of this fight either way.”

That was a shame. I’d increased my class by a decent amount, but Lukas and Lasi still far outclassed me in terms of raw magic, the latter by several orders of magnitude. Having both of them kneecapped meant a drastic reduction in our party’s survivability.

“I would reckon the limit to my current power to be around class six or seven,” Lasi said. “I haven’t tested the limits yet, and I likely won’t.”

With that, that meant three of us functionally at around class four to five. Lukas was presumably out of it, and Sunsbridge was only class two.

Speaking of which, the student in question had finally made his way onto the bowl. His face was pale, and he was holding his stomach, nearly doubled over.

Gasping from underneath Lasi, and Lukas was up.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was remarkable.”

“Of course. You know the drill. I’ve almost burnt through all my reserves for my Nacea oath, so limit your magic usage to what you would use if you were around class two.”

More than I’d expected. What godsdamned class was this girl’s Nacea oath? She was all too powerful for someone our age even when she was running on empty.

“Grant, are you okay?” Lukas asked. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

Sunsbridge was on his hands and knees, his breathing hard and unsteady. He retched but there must have not been much in his stomach because he didn’t throw anything up. Sunsbridge spat out of the bowl before stabilizing himself in a sitting position.

“I… Soren was my friend,” he said. “Tesen’s girlfriend. She- I knew her. I knew her and- and now she-“

He hadn’t been all too affected by the bodies earlier, and I had taken that to mean experience with the gruesomeness of violent death, but I was reconsidering that now. Then again, I’d never witnessed the death of someone that I truly valued, so I wasn’t in a position to judge.

Lukas and Lasi were both trying to comfort him, and I looked away. Dealing with other people’s grief was something I had literally no experience in. Instead, I looked back at the area where we’d been ambushed by the fucking ground.

I counted three separate areas that had been cleared of grass, not counting our current position. The trails of annihilation were singed, erased from existence, and frozen, respectively, and each one of those had varying levels of blood splatter accompanying them. The latter had the most, and my eyes were drawn to the center of a patch of field made ice. There was still leftover carnage in the aftermath of the surviving stranger’s magic, and I thought I could make out what had once been a leg, though the blood that had coagulated and frozen on it made it pretty hard to tell. Whatever the case, it looked as if the adventurer who had left the area had taken the other half of their partner’s body, a trail of frost indicating where the one and a half people had run afterwards.

Soren hadn’t even put up a fight. I felt bad for her and those around her, I really did, but it was a muted feeling that I couldn’t quite invest myself into, the sensation of loss one that I could intellectually perceive but not truly feel.

There was something fucked up or abnormal about me, that much was plain to see, but anyone would have to admit that it made me more efficient in a high-stakes situation like this.

Sunsbridge looked like he was just about done, wiping away tears as he got back to his feet. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I tried, and the words rang hollow. I pressed on anyway, trying to emulate what I’d seen Jasmine do before. “Take your time. We’re here to protect you.”

My words felt painfully fake in my mouth, but Sunsbridge seemed to buy into it, nodding to me and taking in a deep breath.

“We shouldn’t be wasting time,” Sunsbridge finally said. “Don’t let me slow you down.”

“What’s our next plan of action?” I asked. “I assume the grass is still hostile, and our party’s magic capability is a fraction of what it was fifteen minutes ago.”

“Survive,” Lasi said, a hint of emotion in his voice.

He’d told us that his reasons for coming here were to keep his students alive. With his history in the Tayan military, discharged from a special strike squad after my uncle— his teammate— and several others had died… it wasn’t too hard to put the dots together. Any man would react poorly in his situation. It was commendable of him to not break down and compromise our safety.

“Survive?” Sunsbridge asked. “I mean, I like that plan, but are we just going to stay here?”

“No,” Lasi said. “Look at the clock tower.”

We looked as one. The last time I’d chanced a look at the center of the fighting, there had been a decent amount of adventurers there, fighting offshoots while the blue knight’s party tried to contain the developing growth that had been blooming by the clock tower.

Now, the number of adventurers had been halved at best. The smell of coppery blood wafted through the air, propelled by the recent developments near us combining with the absolute massacre that had taken place in the city center. Even adventurers several classes higher than us had been blindsided by the primordial extending its power through a city’s worth of grass, and it showed in how the response to the offshoots there was weakening. Adventurers were being pushed back, choosing to tactically retreat rather than risk being overwhelmed by the veritable forest that was still expanding at the center.

With a jolt of dread, I realized that the blue knight’s party was included among those retreating. They were no longer at the center of the fighting, and without their leadership and power to guide the assault against the primordial’s center of influence, it was being allowed to grow nearly unchecked. The tree at the center of the village stood nearly twice as tall as the clock tower had once been, reaching up so high that I had to crane my neck to see its top even from our position. A number of smaller but equally impressive growths were slowly subsuming the town. While the gathered force of the adventurers were doing their best to stem that growth, it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t be enough.

“If the military doesn’t arrive soon, it might start growing uncontrollably,” Lasi said. “I’ll toss some spells at it, but—“

By the looks on the others’ faces, everyone felt it. A crushing pressure, a feeling of certain doom. Of a being as far beyond us as we were beyond ants, its power passing us by.

The rustling of the grass died out. Its sudden silence made me realize that I hadn’t even noticed the noise until it was gone, but it was now eerily silent, the sounds of the battle occurring at the city center pausing with us.

“This is bad,” Lasi said, resting his head in his hands. “Fuck. The primordial is recalling and gathering its power. From my experience, that means it is about to move.”

I looked over to the clock tower again. The primordial’s center of influence had changed, the trunk beginning to branch off into another direction, and sure enough the base of the tree was shifting ever so glacially. A grinding sound reached us belatedly, audible even across a kilometer of fields. It was the sound of nails on a chalkboard, repeated and layered over itself and amplified, and I had to cover my ears even though it wasn’t quite deafening at this distance.

“Where’s it going?” Lukas asked, his question a shout.

“I don’t know!” Lasi replied. “We cannot let it leave this region!”

Yaguan was twenty or so kilometers away. It was the nearest population center, and if my vague recollection of the train ride here was correct, the primordial was headed in that direction. Even as callous as I was with lives, the number of deaths this monster would cause if allowed to make it that far was unacceptably high.

And there was barely anything we could do about it. The great tree scraped forward, inexorable, almost laughing off the attempts of the combined adventurer force to stop it. I saw a branch nearly as thick as a house crash to the ground, further flattening the ruins of an actual house as it did, and still the tree scraped on heedlessly.

I frowned. Primordials were usually human or animal. There was no reason that it had to lug this tree around, unless…

Jasmine came to the realization at the same time I did. “Whatever that primordial once was, it wants what’s in its tree.”

That didn’t help us much, though. All we could really do was—

“Target the tree,” I found myself saying. “We may not be able to do anything, but we should at least try to draw its attention.”

There was no dissent. We had a short discussion amongst ourselves as to whether we could safely walk through the grass that was still greatly enhanced in size. Given the lack of intelligence in the blades, we decided it was worth taking that risk to get closer to the primordial for a cleaner shot.

“You shouldn’t come with me,” Lasi said as the five of us brushed our way through inactive grass. “I’ve lost one student already. I don’t want to lose another.”

“I’m going,” I said. “I have magic that could be useful.”

“You— okay, I don’t have the energy to argue,” Lasi sighed. “But the rest of you. The rest of you need to get some rest and stay alive.”

“A little late to bring this up now,” Jasmine said. “I agree, though. Lukas, Grant, you’ve both been injured in some capacity. Retreat.”

“I— yeah, I think I should,” Grant said, and there was relief in his voice. Had he been fearing this final run, too scared to ask to leave? “I’m not cut out for this.”

“I can escort him,” Lukas said softly.

“Jasmine—“ Lasi started.

“Don’t you even think about finishing that sentence,” Jasmine said. “You’re weakened. Both of you are walking into imminent death. Don’t think I’ll just let you do that alone.”

“Fine,” Lasi said tiredly. “But you are worn out too. I can see it. If you need to run at any point, then run. Do not confuse overconfidence with courage.”

“I’m not overconfident,” Jasmine said. “I know full well the risks of fighting a primordial. I’m willing to risk my life for this.”

I wanted to ask her why, why would she throw her life away for two people who probably wouldn’t even affect the primordial, but there was no time.

I started forming unstructured magic between my hands as we sprinted, preparing a blast to aim at the base of the tree.

We made good time, the cracks and grass both no longer under the active influence of the primordial. Now, it was just a sprint towards the city.

Six hundred meters to the clock tower.

The grass was no longer actively trying to kill us, but it had still been warped by the raw power of the being we were fighting. It was almost above my head in height, and since Jasmine was only a little taller than me, that left Lasi as the only one who had perfect visibility.

We had been enhanced by a Ditas oath before we’d left, and all three of us had years of training, which did make it easier, but it was still irritating trying to run to a target that I could only barely make out through dense patches of mutated grass.

Five hundred meters.

The grinding was gradually growing louder as we ran. It really was horrible. The comparison of nails on a chalkboard rose to my mind again as the tree moved, the sound sending unprompted shivers down my spine. I tried to tune the noise out, but it was gradually drowning out even my own thoughts.

Four hundred.

The grass was thinning out, portions of it unaffected by the primordial, and we had a clearer view of where we were going now. In place of the grass, though, were the cracks, wide and ready to break our legs if we made a single misstep.

We were sprinting around bodies now. It was tough work, avoiding both the cracks and the dead, and we were occasionally weaving back into patches of grass to avoid large cracks. The three of us were jumping over the small cracks, but larger ones necessitated a course change.

At one point, the ground underneath my feet was an odd texture, slippery and with a softer consistency than dirt or grass should’ve had. Something gave in the ground, and I almost tripped as my foot fell right through, like I’d stepped on an overripe watermelon. Liquid splattered my left boot.

I made a face when I realized what I’d just stepped on, but whoever that’d been was already gone. No time to worry about it now.

We were inside the village line.

Three hundred meters.

The village had been decimated. Earlier, I’d thought it had been pretty destroyed, but now, apart from the ruined clock tower, there was no structure left standing that went higher than my height.

The blue knight was down. I couldn’t see their party members, but their armor was splattered with too much blood for it to all be their own. They were still alive, I could see an arm moving, but their lower half had been buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed building.

Fuck.

Two hundred—

We were within a musket’s shot of what had once been the clock tower—perhaps three hundred meters from the primordial— when everything went wrong.

The ball of unstructured magic I’d been forming sputtered, flickering for a second, and then it reestablished itself stronger than before. For a terrifying instant it felt like it wasn’t my magic at all, my control over it wavering.

The grinding, the sound near deafening now, suddenly stopped.

The tree had stopped moving.

Ahead of us, I felt a presence much larger than my own turn to us. My magic pulsed again, and accompanied with that strange sensation was knowledge. Information, images from the view of someone else that I had no right knowing about.

And that other being was inside the tree and staring straight at me, building power for an unstoppable strike.

The primordial had noticed me.