Ruins — Ferris

I look down off the side of the griffin as we descend towards the abandoned city. A towering castle, decrepit and covered in moss and vines, lies at the center. Spreading out around the old keep is a sea of ruined shops and houses, hemmed in by crumbled stone walls that once defined the boundary of the city of Telluria.

We land in what used to be a large town square, now a grassy field. A couple young apple trees have grown here over the years, their fruit red and inviting. There are no monsters in sight, nor even the tiniest hint of danger. Talia disembarks from the griffin. One by one, the others touch down as well.

“It’s strange. I came here on a scouting mission many years ago, back when I was iron grade. There used to be wolfbirds swarming the skies and groups of hoblins running around everywhere. Now, I don’t see a single monster,” Talia says.

“Aren’t monster sightings supposed to be increasing around this area?” Zack asks.

“They have been, or at least that’s what Grant said,” Ellie says.

“You don’t see the monsters?” Norton asks.

“You can see some with your air sense?” Talia asks the blind man.

“Yes, many. They’re out in the open. You should be able to see them,” he says.

Talia looks around wide-eyed.

“Are they invisible?” She asks.

Everyone but Norton shares a look of concern as we glance around, not seeing or hearing anything but peaceful mossy ruins.

“What kinds of monsters are they?” Ellie asks.

“Most of them are bestial in form. There is a significant amount of variety. They aren’t moving. They’re just staying still, watching us.”

“Well, that explains why the other adventurer teams didn’t come back. Suddenly getting swarmed by invisible monsters isn’t something easy to deal with,” Ellie says.

“Why are they invisible though?” Zack asks.

The question hangs in the air. Ellie pulls out a long wooden wand, and starts drawing glowing symbols on the ground as she walks around the town square. Soon, she has created a runic circle around ten meters across. The moment the formation is finished, a translucent dome of light appears over the circle.

“Standard defensive perimeter,” she says.

She looks up and sees my mildly confused expression.

“Only us five can pass through the barrier. It’s solid to anything else. We’ll be safe in here while we plan our next course of action,” she explains.

Ellie sits down inside her barrier with her back against one of the apple trees. She pulls a sandwich out of her bag and takes a bite. Unlike everyone else, she’s totally relaxed, clearly quite confident in her enchantments.

I step inside the circle, along with the others. I feel a strange tingle as the light of the barrier passes through my body.

“If we can’t figure out what’s going on here, we should just turn around and report back to headquarters.” Talia says.

“I agree. It’s very concerning that none of you can see the monsters. They’re rather hideous,” Norton says.

“So, what could it be?” Zack asks.

Once again, an eerie silence hangs in the air.

“A visual illusion, probably?” Zack suggests.

“Auditory too. The leaves should be rustling from the breeze, but I can’t hear it,” Ellie says, looking up at the gently swaying branches of the tree above her.

“That tree does not have leaves, nor is there a breeze,” Norton says.

Talia reaches up and picks a leaf off of the tree.

“What am I holding?” She asks Norton.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Tactile illusion as well, then.”

She sniffs the leaf.

“The illusion covers the sense of smell too.”

She bites the leaf, chewing for a moment before spitting it out.

“And the sense of taste.”

“So it’s an illusion that subverts all five natural senses. This is dangerous,” Zack says.

“All six senses,” I say. “We couldn’t sense the auras of the monsters.”

“We should also consider the possibility that I’m the only one hallucinating,” Norton says.

“How can we tell the difference?” Talia asks.

“Norton, how about you go out and kill one of the weaker monsters. From our perspective, it shouldn’t exist. We can test its existence by throwing its corpse at Talia. She either gets knocked back or she doesn’t,” Ellie says.

“That sounds like a good plan to me, but I think Ellie should be the one who is hit by the monster corpse. She’s the lightest of us, so the monster would have the most impact on her,” Talia says calmly.

Ellie sighs, giving Talia a disappointed stare.

“Fine. Throw a doggie at me, Norton,” Ellie says.

“Very well,” Norton says, stepping out of the protective sphere.

He takes a couple steps towards an abandoned building, then vanishes in an instant.

One moment he is there, the next moment he is gone.

“Fuck,” Zack says.

“Norton! If you can hear us, we can’t see you! Get back here!” Ellie shouts.

“The griffins are gone too,” I point out.

“Shit, we’re trapped. Nobody else exit the defensive perimeter. We need a plan,” Talia says.

“I’ll try to improvise some anti-illusion wards. I can’t make any guarantees, though,” Ellie says.

Ellie pulls out her wand and starts making a new magic circle on the ground, just inside the boundary of her defensive perimeter. She seems much more focused this time. The spirit of the ground beneath us warps and twists in complicated ways with every stoke of her wand.

“Norton’s disappearance suggests we’re dealing with an intelligent entity. At this point, it’s looking increasingly likely that we’re dealing with a demon. We should retreat,” Talia says.

“You want to leave Norton behind?” Zack asks.

“We might have to,” she says.

“I have no idea if this will work, but here we go,” Ellie says, making one final swipe of her wand.

Nothing seems to happen. She looks around with her eyebrows furrowed.

“Hmm, maybe if I… No. Well, let’s see,” she mumbles, drawing a couple extra runes.

The world around us transforms in an instant as a fog is lifted from our minds.

The grass is not grass, but a field of pale worms that stretch up from the ashy earth, slowly writhing in stagnant air that reeks of rotten flesh. The trees look charred and dead, but they still bear fruit in the form of large eyeballs that dangle from the branches on sinuous stalks. Black pulsing veins cover every solid surface and the color of everything is muted. The scene is like a painting that has been ruined by mold.

Norton is nowhere to be seen, but the griffins are dead on the ground, their throats slit. The monsters responsible stand over the corpses, their mutated bodies sprouting scythe-like limbs and toothy maws. Just as Norton said, there are monsters everywhere. Deformed doglike things stand in the streets, and huge hairless bats with too many wings are perched on the roofs. The monsters are as motionless as statues, their eyes silently fixed upon us.

The most striking change is the overwhelming aura of disease and corruption that can now be felt emanating from the world itself. Demonic beasts are one thing, but an environmental effect like this can only be caused by a true demon.

“We’re in a demonic domain,” Talia says quietly.

Ellie looks down and hisses, her teeth clenched. She squeezes her armored fists tight.

“I should have tried anti-illusion wards before sending Norton out. We should have never even landed inside the city. We should have entered on foot,” she says.

“Ellie, we all underestimated the situation. Don’t blame yourself. Focus on survival,” Talia says.

Ellie nods.

“Give me your helmets. I’m going to enchant them with the same anti-illusion ward. After that, we’ll make a run for it,” she says.

“And Norton? We can’t just leave him.” Zack says.

“We shouldn’t endanger ourselves by searching for him,” Talia says.

Zack glares at her.

I hand Ellie my helmet. She starts drawing the anti-illusion wards on it. It takes some time, but she carefully enchants each of our helmets with the ward. The monsters seem content to act like statues. It’s creepy, but I won’t complain about them not attacking.

“We’re going to run towards the city wall. Stay alert. The monsters, or even the demon itself, could attack us at any time,” Talia says.

Zack is wearing a disgusted grimace, but he seems to reluctantly accept that running is the best option. Leaving Norton behind leaves a terrible taste in my mouth too, but I don’t disagree that it’s the right call. We can only hate ourselves if we’re alive.

“Alright. Let’s run like the fastest chickens in the farm. On three,” Ellie says.

We nod.

“One, two, three!” She shouts

We run, and so do the monsters. They swarm towards us the moment we leave the perimeter.

I release the full force of my aura, making sure not to harm my allies. To my surprise, the ground doesn’t melt. The demonic influence strengthens the stone, making it resistant to heat.

As the monsters converge upon us, I form my flame blade. A bear-like thing with the spines of a porcupine leaps at me. It gets cut in half instantly, not even managing to slow me down. A pack of mutated dogs tries to intercept me. A flick of my wrist sends out a swarm of small fireballs, each one exploding on a different target, reducing the beasts to ashes.

These monsters aren’t particularly strong, but there are many of them. The whole city has become a sea of beasts, rushing towards us like a tide of diseased flesh.

Talia is a juggernaut. She just runs in a straight line, indifferent to the many hideous monsters trying to kill her. The beasts, trees, and buildings with the misfortune of being in her way are simply pulverized as her body pushes through them.

Ellie has produced a plank of wood, on which she now stands. The board is shaped like an elongated oval, and is engraved with a complex pattern of glowing runes. It seems to be enchanted to hover around a meter above the ground, moving in different directions depending on the angle that it’s tilted. Ellie handles the artifact with unbelievable skill, surfing through the air with perfect balance. None of the monsters can catch her. She spins and flips around them like a leaf in the wind.

Zack is a barely visible blur as he dashes through the swarm of beasts. He moves from monster to monster with fluid motions, striking each one exactly once. The monsters he touches all die within seconds, their bodies melting from the inside as noxious fumes boil out of their flesh. In Zack’s wake, there is a trail of dying beasts, all of them writhing in pain as they slowly become puddles of lime-green muck.

For a moment, I feel like our escape is going smoothly. Then, I feel several powerful auras that stand out from those of the horde. Things won’t be so easy, it seems.

A strong monster leaps in front of me. It’s fast, and its aura is almost as strong mine. The thing has a vaguely humanoid body with a deformed horse head and spiraling limbs like ropes that have been twisted to the point of coiling over themselves. It it mostly bald, but has wiry hair that grows from greasy patches all over its body.

What makes me hesitate is the iron adventurers tag hanging from its neck.

Its forearm whips me in the stomach, sending me flying into a nearby building. I recover quickly, rolling to my feet and raising my spear.

There is a reason that true demons are so rare. Most of the time, when a human spirit is infected by the disease of demonism, it will warp the mind to the point that all reason is lost. Such beings will become mere demonic beasts, just like the animals and monsters that get infected by demonism. True demons only form in the almost impossibly rare circumstance that a human infected with demonism retains their sentience.

This demonic beast used to be an adventurer like me. He came here on a routine scouting mission, and was transformed into a monstrosity by the demon that rules this place.

Is this what will happen to Norton? If an iron grade adventurer became this strong after transforming into a monster, how strong will the monsters made from the bronze grade adventurers be? How strong will Norton be? I certainly don’t want to find out.

The deformed adventurer leaps at me, a bestial shriek emanating from its equine gullet.

I dodge through the monster’s whiplike limbs, striking its body with my flame blade. My attack burns a deep gash across its body, causing severe damage, but not quite enough to kill it. With an erratic movement, it kicks me in the chest and sends me smashing through an eyeball tree.

I charge back in, and the monster bellows with rage, whipping both arms towards me. I dodge to the side, striking through the limbs with my flame blade and severing them.

With no more arms, the deformed adventurer leaps at me head first, unhinging its jaw as it mindlessly tries to bite me.

“I’m sorry.”

I strike through its neck with my flame blade, cutting off its head. I catch the iron adventurers tag before it his the ground, immediately pocketing it. I don’t want to look at the name.

When I start running again, I see that my teammates are all fighting their own battles. In all, there are five monsters wearing iron adventurer tags, a full team.

Ellie is being attacked by a flying thing, a birdlike beast with dozens of mouths on its fleshy wings. Out of those mouths spews caustic grey smoke that turns everything it touches to ash. Ellie is not bothering to fight the thing, and is instead air-surfing away from it as fast as possible, aiming to escape the ruined city.

Zack is fighting a giant. The monster looks like a huge human, six meters tall, with a tiny head. It has no eyes or ears. The face is a featureless lump, with even the mouth sealed over by wrinkly skin. The monster has regenerative abilities. Where Zack’s venomous blows strike the giant, golden light emanates from its flesh to counteract the poison. Zack dances around the lumbering creature as it fruitlessly attempts to smash him. He lands strike after strike, pumping his flesh-melting magic into the beast in an attempt to overwhelm the healing. I do not understand why he isn’t just running past it. He could easily escape it with his superior speed.

Talia is fighting two monsters at once, so I dash towards her to lend assistance. There is a humanoid beast who has long bony spikes for hands, and a body covered in mangy white fur. It leaps towards Talia in an attempt to spear her with its arms. She dodges, but gets hit by the other monster. It is a human man, floating in the air with a huge buoyant body that has been inflated like a balloon. He shoots red beams of light out of his eyes that hit Talia in the back. She screams in pain as she loses her balance, collapsing on the ground. I have no idea what the beams do, but it’s clearly not pleasant. The spike-armed monster lunges at the prone woman, stabbing viciously. She fails to roll out of the way in time, but manages to raise an arm to block the spear. Her defensive magic surges, and the tip of the spear hits her forearm with a loud bang. The spike of bone chips, losing out to Talia’s overwhelming durability.

The balloon man’s eyes glow as it prepares to blast Talia with another beam attack. I finally arrive on the scene. My flame blade stabs into the balloon man, popping him.

He explodes. The heat cannot hurt me, but the impact from the explosion sends me flying. My body gets embedded into the wall of a nearby building. I pull myself out, having only suffered a few bruises.

“Thanks for the assist,” Talia says.

She punches the spike-armed monster, her fist cratering its face and sending it flying. She jumps forward and hits it again an instant later, unleashing a storm of blows that leaves it no chance to counterattack. When she is done, her opponent lies broken and unmoving on the ground. She pulls the adventurer’s tag off of its neck and glances at the name. She clutches the tag in her hand, an expression of utter fury contorting her face.

“I knew him. He was just an acquaintance, but still, I didn’t know it was his team that went missing here,” she says.

She glances toward the castle in the center of the city. She clenches her teeth, and turns away.

“Let’s go,” she says.

The words take something out of her. A little piece of her spirit is left behind. She runs.

We dash through the horde, slaying monsters as we move. Ellie is the furthest ahead, still being chased by the bird monster. Zack is lagging behind a bit, having finally defeated the giant.

Five truly frightening auras wash over us. Every hair on my body stands up as fear courses through my veins. The monsters made from the bronze grade adventurers descend upon us.

There is a woman who has dozens of spindly spider legs growing from every surface of her pale, corpselike body. Her face is locked in an expression of pure elation, her mouth distorted into a cartoonish grin, her eyes stretching wide open.

There is a huge dog that reeks of rotting meat. Its sinuous muscles pulse with frightening strength. It leaps from rooftop to rooftop, straight towards us. It drools black slime from its dislocated jaw, a mindless hunger in its pale eyes.

A ball of writhing tentacles floats in the sky, slowly approaching. There is a large human face visible in the midst of the seething mass. It is screaming. The noise makes me dizzy, and my sense of balance is brown off, as if I had been spinning.

A huge sandworm erupts from the ground. One pair of human arms, and one pair of human legs stick uselessly out of its sides, tiny compared to its enormous body.

Finally, there is a man standing on a nearby rooftop. He almost looks to be normal, though his mouth is stitched shut and his eyes are gouged out. Then, his torso opens up into a huge toothy vertical maw that goes all the way from his pelvis to his neck. Several thorny tongues come out from it, twisting dangerously, as if ensnaring invisible prey.

The tentacle ball shrieks at Ellie, releasing a focused blast of sound powerful enough to level the buildings around her. She screams, her body convulsing as she falls off of her flying device. The birdlike monster chasing her caws with glee, spraying its deadly grey smoke at her.

Ellie tosses a small metal cube at the bird monster. When it hits its target, runes glow on its surface and a cubical barrier forms in midair, encasing the bird monster completely. The barrier rapidly shrinks, collapsing down to a cube small enough to fit in one’s hand. The bird monster is mercilessly crushed, becoming a tiny block of compressed meat in an instant. The barrier disappears, and the highly dense cube inside it falls down to the earth with a loud bang.

The man with the mouth in his torso leaps through the air, landing in front of Ellie. He grabs her flying device and eats it. Ellie cries out in dismay, throwing another one of the metal cubes at him. The barrier forms around him, but fails to crush his body when it shrinks. Thorny tongues come out of the monster’s maw, piercing through the barrier and shattering it with brute force.

The spider woman pounces at Zack, trying to spear him with her chitinous legs. She is shockingly fast. It is all he can do to dodge her blows, frantically trying to escape.

I feel a rumbling beneath my feet, and I leap to the side. The sandworm comes out of the ground where I was standing, a toothy mouth gaping wide. I counterattack immediately.

‘Volcanic Blade!’

The sandworm’s huge body is bisected by my attack. Volcanic ash rises into the sky.

My teammates seem to take my use of a manifestation as an invitation to do the same. We cannot afford to hold back right now. Our enemies are powerful, and we need to escape before the demon shows up.

The giant dog leaps towards Talia, snarling savagely.

‘Endless Impact!’

She raises a palm up towards the dog, and it’s knocked diagonally into the sky by an invisible force. Rather than falling back down in an arcing trajectory, the dog continues rocketing away in a straight line. It snaps its jaw, twists its body, and snarls as it flies away. It’s clearly still in fighting shape, but it has been knocked out of the battle. It disappears behind my cloud of ash.

Zack stops running from the spider woman, turning to face her and opening his mouth wide.

‘Viper Breath!’

Green smoke billows out of Zack’s mouth. It melts the walls of buildings and disintegrates the body of any monster it touches, except for the spider woman. She leaps out of the cloud of smoke mostly unharmed. Only her hair was destroyed by the deadly fumes.

Zack dives out of the way as she pounces at him.

“I might need some help with this one!” He shouts.

Talia and I run towards him. Then, I hear Ellie scream in pain. A thorny tongue has wrapped around her leg. The sharp spikes that line the slimy appendage rend her flesh, drawing copious amounts of blood. She is being pulled towards a gaping, toothy mouth.

“I’ll help Ellie! You get Zack!” I shout.

Talia nods, and we run different ways.

I am too far away, though. I won’t make it to Ellie before she is eaten. I’ll have to use another manifestation. I point Radius up towards the sky.

‘Diving Phoenix!’

A brilliant white bird made of fire forms above me. In a flash of motion, it flies straight towards the deformed adventurer that is trying to eat Ellie. It reaches the monster in less time than it takes to blink. When the bird of fire hits its target, it explodes, releasing a deafening blast that levels dozens of buildings. I make sure to prevent my fire from burning Ellie.

When I reach her, she clambering up to her feet on the red hot earth. She pulls out a potion and drinks it. The wounds on her leg rapidly heal.

The monster is not dead. Severe burns cover its whole body, and a couple of its tongues have been burnt off, but it’s still ready to fight. It climbs up to its feet and leaps towards us.

Ellie steps forward. Her spirit stirs with rage. A ridiculous amount of power crystalizes within her, enough to make me step back with instinctual fear.

‘Arcane Obliteration.’

Nothing visible happens, but the monster collapses, instantly dead.

“Sorry. I should have done that earlier,” she says.

“No problem. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

She nods, and we run.

I spare a glance back to see how Talia and Zack are faring against the spider woman and the flying tentacle ball. I notice that Zack is still running away from the spider woman, and Talia is unable to help him.

The demon has arrived, unmistakable for what it is, even though I cannot sense its aura at all.

It has a humanoid form. Its skin is a colorless pale grey, with branching veins of inky black pulsing across its flesh. Its eyes are solid black pits. Its hair is long, white, and sparse. Clothes cover its body, but they appear to have been knitted out of rotting intestines. With one glance at the thing, my body knows to be afraid. I have no doubt that, other than dragons, this is the strongest monster I have ever faced.

Talia’s neck is clutched firmly in the demon’s hand. She is struggling fruitlessly against its grip.

It is one thing to decide not to look for someone who has disappeared, choosing to focus on survival rather than a potentially fruitless search. It is another thing entirely to run away like a coward while my teammates struggle against a foe that they cannot beat alone.

“Ellie, they need our help.”

Ellie turns around. She sees the demon. Her eyes go wide.

“Talia!”

We run to aid our friends. The demon looks at us. Talia chooses this moment of distraction to unleash a counterattack.

‘Falling Mountain Fist!’

She told me about this manifestation when I asked her what she could do. It briefly gives her hand the mass and strength of a mountain, allowing her to throw a single unstoppable punch.

That punch hits the demon in the face.

Her hand breaks. The enchanted steel of her gauntlet shatters. Blood sprays from wounds that are ripped open by shards of bone that protrude around her knuckles. The demon is completely unharmed.

It laughs.