Blood Red Trees

[Stare]

Onwards they went into the dark crimson of Lindequalme. A place that had once been full of life, then poisoned, and was desperately trying to make a come back still. The Forgotten One Pode, who had been the one to scar the forest, had been defeated, and in a way Stare felt a loss for that. She wondered in that moment if Vitruvion had ever met any of the Forgotten Ones and made the connection to the ancients who knew about Althanas so long ago.

I have met the pantheon gods, he growled back at her. That was enough for me.

You might have found an ally in Pode, or another? Stare suggested, quite honestly. The story goes that they were once mortals, they have a vendetta against the gods here as much as you do ...

Bah, he cursed back at her, and that was his answer. Stare could understand, maybe empathise with him for his dislike of the gods. They were the ones, after all, who had forced him into a human form and taken away much of his more godly powers. Omnipotence and bodilessness was beyond him even now with Stare.

Her eyes kept scanning the darkness before them. It was only when she realised that one of her other sights might be more useful.

Heat sense. Apparently part of the natural colour spectrum of light. She let her eyes widen and gaze around, letting the range of hot red to black fill her mind, the red all the warmth in the land, black the complete lack of it. She saw small red lights on trees in many places, birds hiding in the crowns. A brood of deer slowly made their way along the edge of a river far away. And … there was a distant figure, humanoid in form, striding away from them.

She blinked and reached out to grab and tug Nevin's cloak. “Nevin” she whispered, “There is a being over there,” she pointed.

The blood mage nearly jumped out of his skin when his friend grabbed his cloak - for the past bit, he had been concentrating on pursuing the feeling of the disgusting tainted blood magic in the air - and that had been consuming his attention as he tried to keep pace on the thing that was creating the taint. So when Stare tugged on his cloak - well. He didn’t scream, but there was a swallowed shout that made him cough as he turned to look in the direction that she had indicated.

In the darkening gloom of the forest, he couldn’t see what she had spotted - but at the same time, Nevin was fully aware of the fact that her eyes were far superior to his own. So he closed his eyes and instead focused on the sense of his own he could trust - and sure enough, the bitter, angry chorus was stronger in the direction that she had indicated. His eyes snapped open and he pulled his whip from his belt, coiling it up to prepare for the fight that was coming. He began moving through the brush after the figure that she had detected, his eyes piercing through the gloom as he did his best to make his way quietly.

[Nevin]

“NEVIN!”

She did not have time to merge into the aura sight, and study this being - the one of twisted, disgusting, bloody-coloured waste. Her mind did recognise the one sitting on the altar as being connected to that she had destroyed outside. But she was not enraptured by Nevin had been. Instead she caught the glimpse of the being in her periforole as she slowed to stalk the building. And there was also a: Man, to the right.

All it took was for her to launch back into a run, charging for he who charged her friend.

Luckily her speed was better than most, and she had never come to a complete halt. She slammed into him with a mighty sound, and pushed him to the ground between two pews. Her screech sounded again and she went stabbing at his eyes with her beak at the same time as stabbing his heart with her dagger.

For this man was nothing. He would never get her friend.

There was a shout - a familiar voice, calling a familiar name, and for a moment the panic in that voice almost broke Nevin of the grim entrancement that the creature in the middle of the room had wrapped the alchemist in. But then there was a pulse, as crimson light sprang into Nevin’s eyes, and his magic began shrieking in terror and joy, and the almost freedom was washed away.

No - no this thing it was pulling - Nevin broke from a part of his unnatural fascination, stumbling forward. Unseen, unfelt, dozens of threads slid from Nevin’s skin, surrounding him in a writhing mass of crimson threads, tendrils, and cables, almost like he was a sea anemone. The blue being in the middle of the room began to glow, a cobalt shine breaking forth, and in the air above it blue and red began to swirl together.
Nevin knew, somehow utterly certain, that if this thing managed to complete whatever it was doing, then something utterly terrible would happen. Something he knew he absolutely must not let occur - because he had seen red swirling in that pattern once before, the night when the outsider had taken over his body and destroyed the cultist village. Whatever this tendril being was doing, it was easily as bad as that, if not worse.

So Nevin broke into a run, vaulting over any pews that got in his way - and when he was close enough, his threads shot forward, racing for the being. The creature let out a soul-shivering squeal as it was pierced countless times, Nevin’s threads somehow splitting through its skin with ease. Crimson spread across the blue body, washing it away - and with a loud, ear splitting crack, the blue hanging in the air above vanished.

For a moment the red in the air - the red that grew in the trees, in the plants of this forest - hung motionless. Then it fell, no, then it drove down, washing around Nevin. The mage glowed with the unnatural light - and then crimson began to shine, the brighter red battling the darker as Nevin began to shake, mouth open in a soundless scream as he fell away from the carcass of the creature.