The assault began at dusk. While the Aillesterrans weren’t stopped by darkness, their mobility was reduced and it was hoped that they would not dare to take another raid so soon after a failure. There was a boldness to the idea of trying again immediately, a way of calling the bluff, but just the same Lucius had to deal with Umbra as well. When he could pull troops away, he marched them to the south of the island and encircled the temple.

Taking only a handful, he entered the den first. The other soldiers were not there to help him in the fight, but to escape with any orders he might need to send out. Should they fall, in all likelihood they would be eaten by Golden. The men didn’t understand just what this northerner was, but their instinctual distrust served them well.

The Divine Beast was tickled that the locals didn’t even understand what he was. While I had put a great deal of effort into making him his fleshy home, the thing still radiated magic. However, the prisoners from the north were not the soldiers Lucius brought to the temple. While some had earned the right to guard the city–out of necessity for troops–he still trusted the locals the most. It was the people of the Misty Isles that were to prosper from the elimination of the demon and thus would fight most fiercely. However, many had never seen a man as pale as Golden. Their conception of Vassish was polluted by the southern nature of most visiting Vassish, practically Giordanans or at least tanned to look like them. Golden nearly hailed from Skaldheim. His skin resisted the burn of the sun and left him the color of milk; something else nearly foreign to the islanders.

His nature was not lost on the demon.

The moment they passed the threshold from cave to temple, that they set foot upon the basalt slabs mortared by moss, Umbra knew. Starlight patterns through the slitted windows faded as though tendrils wrapped around the forsaken fortress. The spirit grabbed hold of her domain and squeezed, knocking dirt from beams and sills before she toppled a tree across the entrance. It was a sodden, vine covered thing that laughed at the strikes of axes. The soldiers outside attacked it, finding only rot and wet mass that refused to be hauled off and yet blocked the gateway.

“Relax,” Lucius ordered, and drew his sword.

“Honestly, you’re safer in here,” Golden said with a shrug. “For now,” he added with a grin.

Among the men at arms behind Lucius was at least one who thought to know the island governor well enough to speak up, for he was one of the first to greet him so many months ago. The warehouse guard, now promoted somewhat, Clyde gripped his spear and asked, “Can you tell us the plan yet?”

Lucius glanced over his shoulder and arched his eyebrow. “Plan? I’m going to stab it to death.”

The men rattled like the windy jungle outside. “But, it is not a thing of flesh!”

Golden laughed. “It will be.”

Then the demon spoke. “You have made a mistake.” It sent vapors through the ground to suffuse the air with cooled smoke. The temple was buried well, but not abandoned. Umbra had workers carefully tending braziers below, feeding the holy fruit, the kuku bud, to the blaze to intoxicate the air.

“Take your medicine,” Lucius ordered, and he along with the soldiers began to chew on fermented amphos root. Sammy had been tasked for weeks with finding an antidote to the poison, but the best he could do was suppress the symptoms by supplying an overwhelming stimulant. The bitter tuber burned their mouths but burned the kuku bud slothfulness more. “Now then, keep your eyes open and you might learn something!”

Golden clapped his hands together and commanded, “Come out, dear cousin. Or I will make you.”

The demon jeered back, “You lost your feathers, biped.”

Golden cocked his head to one side, snarling. “What did you say?”

“You’re a slave to your gluttony, cousin.”

From a ring upon his thumb, Golden produced a blade no larger than a bird’s claw. He ripped it across the pads of his fingers and splattered his blood upon the floor, infused with his will. The droplets formed words, forcing magic into the room and consecrating it not as a temple to Titania but to his own progenitor, Shepherd. He layered it upon the walls and ceiling first and then wrote upon the floor, each rune a stake at the heart of the demon.

The stones rumbled. They cracked and rippled, collapsing in on themselves as though serpents swam through the walls. It rumbled the forgotten temple but the structure only pulled in tighter to each other. It was not something pushing through the masonry, but roots being ripped out.

Until, the floor before the altar, that horrid brazier wherein islanders would leave sacrifice of food, wine, and blood, the ground erupted. It peeled back like the hatching of an egg and the twisted carcass of plant flesh that housed the seed of Umbra emerged.(1) It wore detritus like robes and gazed upon the world with a lantern light from within its cowl. To speak of its size would be to miss the question, for it treated itself like a puppet–the strings its own flesh and barbed with thorns.

Lucius stepped forward, clad in steel and mail and his neck girded in a rough gorget. “The first of you, go! The demon is here, its sight is here!”

To protect its flesh phylactery, the price was her sight of the islands. It could no longer speak to its adherents, could not whisper information from one to another and permit them to evade patrols and investigations while stabbing the defenseless to death. This was the moment the guards of Aliston had to strike, even if Lucius failed to slaughter the demon.

“Clyde!” Lucius barked as he strode to meet the monster. “The cultists are your problem. Drive them out or cut them down. Axel will be remiss if he doesn’t get any fun though.”

The guardsman straightened his back and stuck out his chin before barking, “Aye sir!” He spotted the stairs down, or at least what he presumed them to be, and led the remaining guards in a charge.

At this point, there may have been some quips, some pithy one-liners of boast and antagonization. The memory record certainly implies as such, but those are so often conflated with after-the-fact desire that I have omitted them as crass. The only thing certain is that Lucius charged the demon while the demon lashed out at every human. Vines swung like whips, a living cat-of-nine-tails studded with poisonous thorns.(2)

Lucius laid into the monster before it could take more than some passing swings at his subordinates. While so many of the plant tendrils were trying to coil around hard leather, he began pruning. The body of the demon was far inferior to its ability, but he knew that it would be loathe to invest all of its soul to the material preemptively. It wanted to remain ethereal as much as possible, but he could not hope for it to be suicidal. Thus he sliced at every vine, every root and tuber and thorn and mass of demonic flesh. He hacked them off and cut them away. He ripped into the demon and forced it to heal. He forced it to invest more into the body and strengthen itself.

Lucius worked through sword form after sword form, swinging as fast as he could. He took any slash he could connect with, even if Umbra could swing through and lash him across the face, the arms, any scrap of exposed skin between the plates of his armor. The poison burned into his body, soon fighting against his stigmata in an attempt to exhaust him.

This was only to buy enough time for his subordinates to descend to the haze of intoxicating fire. Umbra realized this as soon as they left and Golden hadn’t bothered to move. “You can’t move, can you?” the demon asked, turning its gaze on the Divine Beast.

“Oh, I can. But why would I need to when I have a monster between us? And this monster is on my side,” Golden said with a shrug.

The poison burned in his blood, making his skin itch and his chest tighten. The throbbing of his heart made his vision shake, but the fight was only beginning. The rush of battle nearly made him careless, but I had long ago beaten that out of him. His sword had become heavy, the blows dull. For every cut through the vines of Umbra, a bit of sap had stuck to the steel. While most had been kept off by the oil of his sheathe, that had quickly worn off. Just one little spot of grime stuck to it became a blight upon his blade. Like algae clinging to each other upon a sea rock, wafting strands of weed across shipwrecks, his sword had nearly become useless.

Golden sighed. “You can deal with that, can’t you?”

Lucius needed it burned off, but clearly didn’t have the time for that. “I’m fine,” he said, and drew his arming sword with his off hand.(3)

To write of what came next, what can words offer? Must I say that he fought, that he slashed well and true and traded wound for wound? That at times, Umbra grappled with him? Pitting the strength of roots against the strength of man? What a folly that would be. I’ve met so many so-called monks and alleged thinkers that talk about how the roots of a tiny plant can find their way into a mighty boulder, that year over year their persistence can work the crack open and split stone like a nut.

Rubbish.

There is no sense in thinking of a rock, an inert object, as mighty. All it takes to protect such a stone is the lowliest tending of an inept child–to pluck the weed from the crack. A rock does not have this capability, so it cannot be said to be mighty. That title is reserved for a monster of will that can be smashed against stone again and again, until his clothes are red and his armor dripping. A creature who can become filled with more poison than blood and still force himself upright out of spite and determination. When his fingers dig into the flesh of that plant and tear it apart, bathing in sap and terror as he at last forces the demon to manifest in truth, that is a being I will agree is mighty.

A pity for the demon who underestimated him.

While the demon of Aliston was almost entirely of a spiritual nature, to become wholly so was a step too far; a leap of faith it could not make. For the same reason parasitic godlings take on bodies of flesh to contain themselves, the emissaries of the gods always kept a nucleus of self somewhere they could rebuild from if need be. There are several things which could swallow a mere emissary without a body, particularly if they are pulled from the protection of Helios. The nature of those I will not be detailing. A very common misconception is that poison is a fast process. No, acid is a fast process. So too can be said of base counterparts such as lye. There are very, very few chemicals which can cause immediate damage to a human and Umbra did not know of them. Not to say the poison did nothing. Even bad, that is to say ineffective, poison can cause rash, nausea, fatigue, sweats, imbalance, all manner of horrible effects for a warrior. However, there is good reason that fighters don’t bother to poison their weapons: it takes longer to debilitate than stabbing them a second time. Even in a siege, they don’t use poison. They use feces, because they have the time for disease to manifest. Very durable creatures humans are. An arming sword is hardly longer than a dagger and rarely worth noting. It’s practically a part of public fashion and only drawn if the warrior has lost his primary weapon.