Quite a few questions raced through my mind at that moment, but only one had the privilege of leaving through my mouth; “Who the fuck are you?”

The old young woman waved her hand and tutted. “Just an old woman who was passing through and saw some poor seeds in trouble. Now, if you would excuse me and stop trying to kill each other, I need to go find my quite a few times great granddaughter.”

She pressed a hand to the ground and yet another stone rose from the sand. I got a slightly better look at it the second time, seeing indents and shapes that faintly reminded me of trilobite and ammonite fossils inside the white-beige stone. But instead of stone, it looked like they were fossilized with pale pink diamonds. The perfect kind of thing for pressing through the health stat nineties.

Unfortunately, she was gone before I could say anything. I looked around with my sword at the ready, but it seemed that the old young woman’s words had scared the recruits into submission. They murmured something about a ‘God-touched Matria’ with reverence, parting before me to open a path to Nia’s fight without me needing to ask. Harvester never once looked away from me as I stepped forward, hatred and fear warring for a single place in his eyes. Scaolvera bent down and whispered into his ear, getting a sigh and a grunt in return as I passed them by.

“Have fun dying.” Scalovera muttered from behind me.

“Just ask Harvester how fun it was.” I shot back, and was received with complete silence. Unnatural silence. I’d walked into Nia’s domain, and I felt the weight of far too many people’s minds settle on my own; each and every one far stronger than I was. They knew it as well, as I felt their focus shift to Nia once more as I became the far smaller concern in the corner of their minds.

Except for one. His focus never once left me, a blazing beacon of excitement from Inopsy that both terrified and exhilarated me. He’d made his way back from wherever Nia had slapped him off to and now stood a few steps behind the de-limbed other Matria, who was struggling against the scales that prevented her armor from regenerating. He gestured wildly at me, then at himself, as if he was trying to get my attention. I raised my sword in confusion, and he raised his hands in victory and sunk to his knees.

I shook my head and laughed. “He’s fucking insane.” I muttered to myself. If I could count on Inopsy wanting me to live more than he wanted Nia to die, then I had a much better chance at this than I thought. Even though it didn’t look like Nia was about to fall any time soon. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much fighting going on at all. Everything had come to a standstill.

I crept forward with my guard raised, I waited for whatever had stilled the combat to fall. It came in the form of shattering silence; sound rushing in far too quickly like water into a smashed diver’s helmet. If I hadn’t had the boosts from my eelbone armor, I would’ve gone temporarily deaf from the intrusion of noise.

Luckily for Nia and I, it seemed to affect everyone equally. All functions fell away as their wielder’s concentration was broken, including the scales surrounding the other Matria. Nia screamed and fell to the ground clutching her head, her armor seizing up while her orange light began shining brighter and brighter until I couldn’t make out anything through the supernova of orange in the center of the battlefield.

“What’s wrong with her?” Inopsy asked, a bubbling pillar of flame refracting the light right next to me in his image. “I didn’t do anything, and my other chosen didn’t do anything at all. What in the abyss is going on?”

The image of a watermelon popped into my mind, and an awful scenario accompanied it. “Is Okeria one of yours?”

Inopsy visibly recoiled, clutching his chest in disgust. “That freak?” He vigorously shook his head in denial. “He’s one of Endra’s chosen, and not one of the better ones like Percy. Actually, let me correct that,” Inopsy cleared his throat, “He’s not Percy, who’s the only good one. Is that abyss-dweller here?”

“He was.” I confirmed with a nod, dread rolling over me as I remembered where I’d seen Okeria going towards. “I think I saw him going towards where all the citizens were hiding.”

“Okay, that’s that!” Inopsy shouted, clapping his hands and creating a burst of searing air that filled my reserves enough for my bones to truly begin to burn. “We’ve got bigger weeds to pull, people! Percy’s incapacitated, and it looks like Endra’s reinforcements are here! Pull out your sharpest blades, because they aren’t going to hold back like this one did!”

All of Addia’s chosen, even the other Matria who had been nearly killed by Nia, straightened their postures and saluted at Inopsy before hurrying towards Walkalong. There was a sense of desperation in the air, as if they had to get to the settlement before something awful happened, and within moments I was alone with Inopsy and Nia. Then Inopsy patted me on the shoulder and whispered something into my ear, his hand blazing with heat, and left to join his fellow chosen.

“Don’t let them kill Percy.” He’d said, words that almost exactly mirrored what The End had told me, and in a tone that only spoke of concern. There was a history here that made Addia’s chosen respect Nia. One that wouldn’t let them do whatever had happened to her to take out all of her functions in one fell swoop.

Whoever had done that still hadn’t shown themselves. I looked back at the recruits, who were following Inopsy in a tight formation towards walkalong, and tried accessing my interface yet again. Lavender’s fizzling still prevented me from doing much of anything, but the constant pulsing of almost white over the indicator for my stored fire warned me just how close I was to my maximum.

I didn’t overly need it, as my bones felt like they were in the process of being boiled for stock. Even my teeth began to feel like they’d been stuffed with fire, and biting together somehow only made it worse. My eyes were getting hazy, every step I took towards Nia was met with the painful grinding of bone on bone, and just holding my sword and shield was akin to holding a molten rod of iron in my bare hands. Except my hands were also filled with molten iron.

Yet I still felt the most powerful I had in this new life. My steps carried me further, my actions had more weight behind them, and the outside world felt like it was behind an impenetrable wall. It was such a shame that my inner world was the one full of searing agony.

I held a hand up to my eyes and waded through the blinding orange light that Nia was at the center of, gently moving forward until I felt my foot brush against something incredibly hard.

“Nia?” I asked through an incredibly dry throat. “Can you hear me?”

//I APOLOGIZE FOR THE PAIN YOU WILL FEEL FOR RECEIVING THIS IN ADVANCE.

//SOMEONE BREAKS THROUGH THE VEIL WITH A CONFIDENCE BROUGHT ON BY THE ADVENT OF HUMANITY’S EMBODIMENTS.

//THEY WILL BE WEAKENED, THOUGH NOT WEAK; HOLD THEM OFF UNTIL ADDIA’S CHOSEN RETURN.

The End’s messages cut through Lavender’s fizzling like a knife, and brought me absolutely no pain in return. Or maybe there was pain, and it was simply lost in the song of agony my bones were singing. Regardless, whatever had just done this to Nia was coming. I needed to hold them off.

I expected the sky to crack, for some ray of light to shine down and bring forth my demise. Or for the ground to rumble and belch forth a monster I couldn’t hope to fight. What actually happened, right before my eyes, was infinitely worse.

Nia’s light died. Her scales began falling away, crumbling to dust, as if they’d suddenly aged a millennia. Wherever her armor cracked showed sickly skin that rumbled and bubbled like there was an army of bugs crawling under it, pressing disgustingly high up until small black needles began poking through. They burst through Nia’s back in twin ridges of spines, wriggling about and grasping at the open air as a thick clear liquid dripped in generous amounts down Nia.

She didn’t utter a single sound as this happened. I stepped back in disgust, watching in horror as whatever the fuck was happening to Nia happened. Her skin stretched and began ripping just beneath her neck, like a tab ripped out of the back of a toothbrush, popping free in spurts of clear blood as Nia was carved out from neck to back to birth a monster. It struggled against freshly dead skin before teeth popped through it, tearing and devouring it to reveal an underside that was all teeth.

The bug ripped free from the mostly empty body of Nia, legs extending to terrifying lengths as I stared at the corpse of someone I’d hoped to call my friend. The thing looked up at me and shrieked, a smaller version of the monstrous centipede-thing that Nia had called forth. I almost vomited in my helmet, but the Scorched Bloodcoral Concoction ensured I felt something different.

An incandescent rage that burned hotter than the fire in my bones. I flowed forward, rolling my shoulder and slamming my shield down onto the bug that had been Nia. I let it struggle under the unbearable heat of my shield, taking a sort of sick pleasure from hearing it scream its monstrous lungs out, then drove my sword down to split it in two.

My blazing blade hit only glassy sand. The thing’s razor-legs bit into my calves as it pulled itself away from me, growing larger and larger by the second, until it was as long as I was tall. It screamed and began raising one pair of legs at a time, ticking upwards to bear more and more gnashing teeth until only a single pair remained on the ground. Two measly points supporting the entire monster.

It grew longer and longer in the split second it took for me to swing my sword, attempting to split the damn thing in half, but my blade met a hand. It was the pale green of not-quite-dying plant matter, with claws over each finger that mimicked the centipede’s legs frighteningly well. A woman emerged from the centipede’s endless mouth, a sickly sweet smile etched onto her too-thin lips before she opened and closed them to reveal strands of bright orange saliva connecting them.

“How long has it been?” She gurgled, raising a slit neck that bled bright orange to look at the sky. By all accounts, this woman should’ve been dead. She opened her eyes to reveal hole-laden marbles, tiny centipedes poking their heads out at the touch of fresh air.

I pressed my blade further, but her grip was too strong. I spun myself and went in for a shield bash, but the centipede she’d emerged from coiled itself around her like a scarf and shielded her from my attack. “What the fuck are you?!” I demanded, fury completely winning over fear in those tense moments.

She completely ignored me, instead walking over to Nia’s corpse. She laughed the delirious, gurgling laugh of a dead man and raised Nia’s blank face to her own. When she turned back to me, she wore the face and spoke with the voice of someone I’d hoped to call a friend.

“Don’t you recognize your Matria?”