After a few minutes of walking, I was almost bowled over when something slammed into my back, squaked angrily and then settled on top of my head. There she was.

"Raven, I missed you. Where've you been?"

I had to contort my neck to be able to see her face, which looked seriously unimpressed.

"Alright, alright. Sorry for not waiting up, but I haven't seen you either for a few days."

"Oooh, she's beautiful..." came the whisper from behind me, in a voice I knew well. "May I pet you, milady?"

"I don't think-" I started, only to be interrupted by the traitor lifting off my head and gliding over to je-Kalyi's outstretched hand. The amount of fascination in the Weaver's eyes might've seemed threatening, if she hadn't also exhibited it for everything else.

Over the next few hours, I got the distinct feeling that they were somehow talking about me, even though nothing was uttered by either party.

When we got to a small fork in the road, one path continuing further straight on and the other splitting off, Elran pulled forth a map from the bag we'd been given. It was surprisingly detailed for the perceived time-period this world was in - at least, that's what I thought before I remembered that there was magic here.

"Alright, everyone gather round" he called, before unrolling the map on a nearby rock. The paper? parchment? The undefinable writable surface unrolled smoothly, revealing thin, precise lines. I could make out a definite coastline, alongside some classical mountains and a few rivers. The rest was more intricate, and before I could read the small fenrex script, the whole team had gathered and Elran began speaking.

"We just came from here-" he pointed towards a small dot on the map, located within a larger circle. Ah, the crater! "And now we've walked the south road, alongside here." He drew his claw along one of the thin, dotted lines extending downwards from the crater, which was located to the left side, near the coastline. From the looks of it, it wasn't too far away from the ocean, about the distance we'd walked thus far only to the west. No doubt it would take even less time if one used a cart. "If we went straight, we would eventually enter Iomr lands, which is obviously not good. Luckily, we won't have to walk across untamed wilderness just yet. The other path leads directly inwards, away from the coast and into the center of the corruption."

"The map won't do us much good once we're in there, though." interrupted je-Kalyi, holding up Raven so she could look at the map too.

"Indeed. That's why we need to get to where this 'wellspring' is supposedly located, even though I still doubt its existence." said san-Zur, crossing his arms.

"I'll show you supposedly! We just need to get to the eastern mountains, I have a good feeling about this."

"I've learned to trust their feelings, honestly." I said, trying to defuse the situation.

"But why do we need it? I mean, the Mountain Throne is right here-" san-Zur placed his finger at a mountain range in the dead center of the map, but was interrupted by Ekias, of all people.

"Because the land's moved. Weren't you listening?"

"Of course, but-"

"There you go. Now be silent."

***

The sun climbed higher in the sky, with a few sparse clouds passing over, as we walked the ever-more trodden path eastwards. It would take us almost clean across the land, a march of perhaps seven or eight days. On the way, we would likely walk along the edge of the corruption, and I wanted to take that opportunity to compare it to the Revenant I'd already seen. Was it really inherently evil, or had it simply twisted what remained of the dead man's mind?

Between lapses of silence, we talked about random things. Families, jobs, history... I had to make up some framing for my circumstances, but the general stories were accurate to how they'd happened. Oh, I replaced cars with animals and technology with its closest analogue, but in general we got along fine.

Ekias was silent, though I think he preferred to have his brother do the talking for both of them. Elran was the older, and both their parents had died in the attempt to get them out of the Mountain Throne. They'd been part of a refugee convoy bound for one of the outer cities, until it was attacked by bandits, The two of them toppled wagons and defended their impromptu fort, herding the rest of those too young to fight inside until a patrol of soldiers came through and drove the bandits off.

je-Kalyi, then just Kalyi, had been older than the two of them when it happened. She wasn't able to get out of the Throne before the streets had been overrun, and instead fled into the Weaver's Spire, the once headquarters of their order. She weathered the first waves of revenants in the evacuated tower, collapsing floors and stairs as they broke down doors and piled up rubble. She stayed for weeks inside that tower, subsisting off rainwater and dry rations, slowly watching the corrupted fungus and moss creep up the walls. Finally gathering her bravery, she decided that becoming overtaken by a corrupted plant was worse than death, and jumped off the spire. During the fall, a strong gust of wind caught her, carried her over the walls and into the surrounding steppe before softly placing her onto the ground. After that, she wandered for weeks, eventually stumbling into Round Valley, the now-destroyed town, and joining the remaining Weavers who were headquartered there.

san-Zur, then just sun-Zur (an acolytal title, apparently used to denote something like apprenticeship), was the closest when it happened, that being the city's catacombs. The mediciners had been stationed there, using the dry, cold environment to aid in their practices. They escaped through the sewers when it happened, eventually exiting from the mountain the capital was built into and wandering along a river towards the ocean. On the way, they came across Round Valley, discovered a large group of their former colleagues and friends holed up there and settled in, researching the corruption and possible ways to drive it back. They'd actually been making some progress on that front - until the corruption revealed itself to have some malign form of intelligence capable of slowly adapting during tests, as well as some sort of mind-link to the rest of itself, because the main "body" was now also immune to their concoction.

By the afternoon, we saw something on the horizon. There was a small village visible on a hill, surrounded by some sparse woodlands and fenced-off agriculture. Spirits went up, at first - if people still survived here, maybe things weren't so bad after all.

Yet, it was not to be.

The town was abandoned, but not without a fight. Several of the buildings were charred husks, and at the center of town lay what might have been a statue... at some point. Now, it was the origin point of a- a growth. Fungus twisted across the statue's body like muscle, quivering in the sunlight, and jotting into the ground at its base. All around, the buildings were silent and covered in dust. This scene was a few months old, at the very least.

And the statue... these things were always fucked up, no matter how often you looked at them. There was always a note of 'shouldn't be' attached to it, but uncharacteristically, this one didn't seem overly active.

We poked around a bit, looking for clues or evidence of an attack, but apart from a few shattered doors and the aforementioned husks, there was no sign of a struggle. I tried to set the statue on fire and burn away the taint, but it didn't come.

I didn’t dare use other magic against it. From the way the captured revenant in Round Valley had effortlessly eaten my magic, I didn’t want to know what this thing could do.

"Maybe they were taken at night?" suggested Elran once I ignited a fire to ward off the night. One might doubt the wisdom of camping the night near a creature that seemed to fear the sun, but this close to Round Valley, the thing needed to be gone, and soon. Also, it was better to stay with a semblance of civilisation than camp out in the wilderness these days. We'd set up camp as far away from the statue as possible, but close enough to keep watch. Not keeping an eye on it sounded worse than doing so, even if it meant we had to stay closer. At least there were some glowbugs humming about.

I set down my cup on the step. "Sounds plausible. Or maybe they all fled?"

"Unlikely. There are definite signs of some sort of struggle." said Ekias, blowing in the fire to make it weather the slight wind better.

My cup clattered to the floor noisily, and I picked it up again. "Sorry, I must have knocked it over." One of the glowbugs hummed over the fire.

"What do we do about the statue?" Asked san-Zur, chancing a look at the thing. It almost seemed to glow in the dark, but only out the corner of the eye. Unnerving.

"Until I can summon the fire again, I have no idea. Definitely don't want to make the same mistake as with the Revenant."

"And as I keep telling you, you cannot command the flame. It will come when it needs to." Raven had at some point stopped being a traitor, and as such je-Kalyi was trying to draw up a tiny dust devil with her hand. She was largely unsuccessful.

I shifted on the step, and my cup fell again. I bent down to pick it up.

"Well, I'm just not that kind of-"

There was something wrong here. Something missing...

"Guys."

"You'll just have to-"

"People, listen."

"What do you mean?"

"Yeah, I don't hear ..."

"Anything." I finished.

Silence.

As slowly as I could, I looked around.

There was nothing.

The soft wind had ceased.

The glowbugs vanished.

The rhythmic creaking of something in the distance silent.

It was almost totally quiet, save for something creaking, shifting in the darkness.

I stood up very, very slowly. The others did too, and Ekias grabbed one of the torches we'd pilfered from a barn while looking around. In the circle of torchlight, we slowly but surely began inching our way toward the open field, but in the darkness, the way back was obscured.

"I can't find it, this doesn't make sense" whispered Elran, squinting furiously into the darkness.

At that moment, the moon came out from behind its cloud cover and illuminated the street in all its morbid, grotesque glory.

In the light of the moon, the street writhed. The gravel and dirt shifted about, there were not-vines running up the buildings - and before us, illuminated by the moonlight, lay the street out of the settlement. We walked the wrong way.

I whirled around, and came face to face with the statue - or what was left of it, anyways. The fungus, flesh, whatever the fuck it was, had grown under the cover of darkness, and torn apart the statue like cheap paper. The pieces were still attached, but the main "body" swayed rhythmically as though... dancing to some unheard melody.

At its center was a large, lidless eye, staring unblinkingly at me.

I had the presence not to fall backwards onto the street, but I did stumble in that general direction while letting out a startled scream.

If the eye was fazed by the noise, it didn't show, but several of the... arteries growing up the buildings around us shivered, and the street grew more lively. The eye, sporting an unblinking, unmoving slitted pupil still stared at me, looking at me, into me.

And I'd almost forgotten what these things look like, too.

"Onto the well! Jump!" someone shouted, and the five of us scrambled to balance on the well at the center of the square.

I regained my presence a few moments later when I felt something prodding at my boot. With a very violent kick, something very unnatural was sent skittering into the darkness emitting an unholy screech, and the eye's pupil dilated.

In one movement, the entire square turned itself towards us, lashing out with spiked appendages, flowing across the space like a demented mixture of an ocean and an orchestra. The statue entity sways in the nonexistent wind, and the entire... organism moves with it.

One wave rears up, growing talons and claws and teeth and horns and hands, forming into a wave that rolls towards us, tearing apart the street below.

I reach for the flame, but it doesn't come.

"Come on, come on!" I shout furiously, throwing out my hand over and over again, over the sound of my companions drawing their own weapons - we might be safe from any lingering corruption, but this being is clearly capable of more than just seeping poison.

The wave splits around the well, crawling up the stone and reaching out from all sides, and Ekias draws first blood. His spear (more of a halberd to be honest) cleaves into the grasping hands, horns and tentacles, cleaving off several before becoming stuck. The flesh grows around his weapon, healing and sealing it into the entity, and he is viciously ripped forward, but manages to hold on. The support beam for the small roof over the well cracks as his claws dig into it, and he screams at the strain of holding onto both it and his weapon.

To be disarmed would be death.

"Up to the roof, come on!" shouts san-Zur, barely managing to evade a vicious slam by one of the thorned tentacles that digs into the stone where he'd been standing. Elran soon joins him, hacking off the few grasping vines that flow towards them. I draw my own sword, and begin slashing at the monster.

Raven is above us, staying out of it. She has to be careful - there is no Firebond, so she can’t let herself be touched by anything.

My blade is sharper, and doesn't seem to get stuck in its flesh, so I help out Ekias by cutting repeatedly into the growth wrapped around the blade of his halberd until it lets go. He thanks the retreating tendril by flinging some of its dead meat at the statue. It strikes the eye, and the beast lets out an unholy screech, withdrawing some of its body to shield it.

"The eye, it's a weakness! Look at how it's protecting it!" I point toward the statue while helping Ekias pull himself up the small roof. It's getting cramped, and san-Zur is kneeling on the floor, digging through his bag.

"Keep it busy! I have something that might work." he shouted, and the three of us that were armed stand back to back around him and Kalyi, who is looking somewhere into the darkness behind me.

"No, that's not... no, I need - aha!" With a shout of triumph, he whips out a small bottle containing a black, oily liquid. "One by one, hold out your weapons! The other two, cover us!" Elran is first, while Ekias and I take care to swipe at everything that gets close. The monster isn't a mindless animal, it can apparently sense that it won't win like this, and attempts to attack from all around. It is limited in volume, but not motion - every so often, it manifests a tendril that rears up from the ground and strikes at us, only for it to disappear and then reappear elsewhere.

"Alright, Amelia! Your sword, now."

I quickly kneel down, and the brothers cover the three of us. san-Zur begins applying the oily substance to the edge of my sword, while je-Kalyi has stood up and is slowly spinning around with her hands lifted to the sky.

"We've only just developed this, and are reasonably sure that it hasn't adapted yet. If we're right, it might not be able to adapt at all. This is an oil, of sorts" he explains while evenly covering the edge with the stuff "made from the ashes of the creature you destroyed. Mixed with a few more active reagents, it should emulate the fire that created it - and coating your weapons, you should be able to ignite them and then create wounds that are instantly cauterized. Because it contains a part of the corruption, it won't be able to adapt - after all, it doesn't want to kill itself."

I nod once, and conjure up a spark of light that ignites my sword. I feel a sense of recognition that is not my own, but it quickly vanishes as the blade is consumed in fire. I swing the flaming blade into one of the rearing tentacles, and it is completely severed. Unlike before, the severed apendage squirms on the floor, then lies still. Its flesh is grey as ash.

Ekias and Elran quickly find their weapons ablaze, and begin hacking at the approaching growths. The entity roars in anger, and redoubles its efforts, attacking from all sides at once. It's too much.

There's a scream from behind me, and I see Elran stumble. He's caught by Ekias before falling from the roof, but I can see a dark spot spreading across his arm. He's had the presence of mind not to drop his weapon, but he isn't as good with his left as with his right.

Another shout, this time from san-Zur, and I see him clamber upwards, his leg oozing blood.

I whip the sword around, and sever a clawed horror, before feeling a hard impact on my neck that causes me to stumble. I put a hand to it, and it comes away wet. I look at my hand uncomprehendingly, and there is a rush in my ears that grows deafening. My hand is red. Wet, red... red like blood...

I see darkness encroaching on my vision, and my knees get weak. I'm dimly aware of someone shouting, a hand pulling me backwards, but I continue looking at my hand.

Did it hit an artery?

And why is it getting so cold?

...

And then, there was Light.

I feel a burning sensation in my chest, before it spreads outwards through my body. My back arches and I let out a scream when it reaches my neck, and the flesh that was torn there.

It rises within me, and I find myself hefted up by two people, but I can't see them - I see a darkness before me, deeper than any darkness could naturally be. I know this darkness. I've seen it before - not so blatantly, but the Revenant I destroyed possessed a similar one.

The hands holding me up are gone, and my body is weightless. I float before the darkness, staring at the unblinking, lidless eye that has appeared at its core. It is so much more than an eye - a face, a mind, a soul - and I can see that now.

Looking down, I'm surprised at my body - I don’t see the normal, light brown of my own skin, but a rolling, glowing mix of colors. All except my missing arm, that is. I can see an outlike, like something should be there but isn't, and know that it would almost assuredly break irreparably if whatever is happening affected it as well. I pull it to my chest to protect it. Strong bands of radiant green run across the rest of my body like veins or roots, caging in an orange, yellow and red, mottled with a myriad of deeper, finer colors I can't quite make out, deeper and stronger than any I'd ever seen before. I take a step forward, and the darkness lashes out, a hand forms in its midst, and the Eye opens like a circular maw filled with too many teeth. The hand is shadow, adorned with many things hands should not normally have - there are claws, scales, even a thorn on its back.

It reaches for me, wraps around my body, but I don't let it. I take another step forward, and the hand catches fire. The flames are an echo of the ones in me, but they still burn brightly and the shadow writhes in something like pain... if it can feel any, that is. I take another step, and many more hands, claws, teeth, maws, eyes and tentacles reach for me. I simply arc my arm, and the flame goes free.

Great bands of fire loosen from my body like the flares from a star, forming halos of light that tear into the darkness and set it ablaze.

In my right hand is my sword - wreathed in flame, of course, everything is - but the metal is glowing, too. Under my command, the blade bites into one of the shadows, and darkness spreads into the air like ink into water. The Eye is darkness. I am light. I take another step forward.

It continues throwing horrors at me, but they are burned away by a blazing halo of light before they can reach me. What few survive until they are in striking distance are hacked apart by my sword.

I'm not calm. I'm furious!

The flames react to my anger, and I blaze brighter.

Who dares? Who dares??

I can feel it attempt to wrap its aura around me, but the eye cringes away as its shadows are burned by the light. I take another step.

I can see the eye clearly, now. It is still before me, but has taken on a new expression. I do not know which, and I do not care. I take another step, and cleave apart a large, shadowy spider. It dies messily, its blood spreading into the air.

The eye is within reach, and I suddenly know its expression.

It is afraid.

I lift my blazing sword, and stab it into its pupil. The blade cleaves inwards, up to the hilt, and the entity emits a blood-curdling screech, manifesting shadows all around. The blade is stuck, but none of the wild swirls and waves around me are coordinated. I see first the pupil, then the iris crack, and rays of light pour from the entity as it continues screeching and swatting at its eye.

And then, there is a world-shattering explosion. The eye is torn apart from within by a shining radiance, flinging shards of glassy, iridescent darkness outwards. The force of the explosion strikes me, and I stagger backwards.

With a rushing sound, the fire and light and energy withdraws into my body, and I am standing in the square again - the creature is dead, all its flesh has withered and shriveled.

There are small fires all around, burning squirming hands and mouths and eyes to ash, and at the center of the destruction lies the ruined, exploded corpse of the creature's eye. As its flesh crumbled, the fragments of stone fell to the ground, and now they litter the area around the base of the statue.

And there, stuck what remains of the statue's base, is jammed my sword, the metal still glowing orange and boiling away the last of the creature's blood that still coats it.