Chapter 21: 11.1: Containment

“Fuck!” Sunsbridge shouted, physically recoiling as we watched the clock tower slowly crumble under the pressure of a thousand different vines. “What in the gods’ names is that?”

“The primordial,” Jasmine said grimly. “Or, at least, one of its powers.”

More cracks were beginning to open, now, radiating out from the center at the clock tower. They spiderwebbed out with little rhyme or reason, catching anything and everything in their way. We were almost as far as we could be from the town center right now, and there was little we could do in this initial phase but watch. I saw a gaping maw of earth open and swallow a pair of adventurers whole, along with half of the house they had been posted up in. A few moments later, a spray of red mist and dirt emerged from that selfsame crack, and a plant the size of a small child sprouted up in fast motion, its branches adorned with flowers colored a deep, bloody red.

The cracks weren’t slowing, and they were spreading fast.

“It’s going to hit us soon,” Lasi warned. “Stay close!”

He started casting, forming an elaborate spell pattern that I hadn’t seen in full before. I recognized it only barely— it was a Naan’ti spell designed specifically for Igni oathholders. A prismatic sphere of force, large enough to encase a party and powerful enough to disintegrate most things on contact.

“Come to me!” he ordered, and we did.

Lasi finished his spell with lightning-quick speed, and I watched as a bubble formed around us, colored an off-red and smelling faintly of ozone.

“This is a prismatic sphere,” he said. “With the amount of magic I put into it, it should be able to sustain a few hits from a—“

The sphere shattered.

Around us, there was chaos. A crack had stopped just short of hitting us, the barrier having cancelled it out, but elsewhere people were not nearly as lucky.

At the clock tower, the vines had stopped growing. It was beautiful, in an odd way, a rainbow of flowers sprouting out of them. I looked closer, and I saw that the adventuring group that had been up there had disappeared, their location drowned beneath a mass of branches and leaves.

Just ten meters down to the left of our hill, I saw a person locked into place by a patch of roses, suspended over another crack in the ground. The heavy canvas brigandine they'd been wearing had been ripped like so much paper, and there were long bloody lines across their body. The flowers pulled away from the adventurer, and he fell into the crack, piece by piece, a waterfall of blood accompanying him into the earth.

The village was a ruin. Not a single house had gone untouched by the earth’s sudden shift, and many of them had been swallowed whole, whether that was into the dirt or through suffocation by branches.

“Fuck!” Sunsbridge repeated. “What the hell?”

“That was a powerful initial attack,” Lasi commented. “We need to get moving. It’ll have had offshoots.”

The crack that had come for us hadn’t successfully breached the shield, but whatever magic had been animating the insides of it hadn’t stopped either.

Three vines shot out of the breach in the earth, the newly formed plant pushing its way through loamy soil and reaching out at us.

Professor Lasi didn’t even give it a second glance, casting his hand to one side. Beams of lightning and flame shot forth, short-lived and all the brighter for their brevity, and the vines were incinerated, not even ashes remaining behind.

“That,” Lasi said, “was an offshoot.”

“Doesn’t seem too bad,” Soren said. “It’s all like this?”

“No, it is not,” the professor said. “It’ll be more dangerous closer to where the primordial is.”

He pointed towards the center of the village, a good half-kilometer away. At the base of the foliage-choked clock tower, the blue knight and their party were engaged in active combat, cutting down trees that resembled no plant I’d ever seen at blindingly fast speeds only for them to grow back in a matter of heartbeats.

Even as I watched, a separate party of adventurers clad in plate marked with matching patterns fell upon the thick foliage, looking to support the blue knight’s party. I couldn’t tell what exactly happened, but clearly something must have because the five patterned adventurers dropped to the ground as one, covered in an instant by flowering vines.

“We’re avoiding that,” he said. “The high-level adventurers have it handled for now. We prevent the offshoots from growing.”

“Growing?” Soren asked. “They can do that?”

“Fewer questions,” Lasi said, already taking off at a sprint.

The rest of us followed him. He was running towards the edge of the cracks, which had spread far beyond the village limits, not getting any closer or any further from the main fight. By his current trajectory, we wouldn’t be entering into the mess that had once been the village of Clarsin.

“There’s an injured oathholder ahead of us,” Lasi said. “Not dead quite yet. Jasmine.”

“Yes sir,” she said.

I wasn’t quite sure which oathholder Lasi was speaking of, because there were people dead or dying everywhere. Just in the area directly ahead of us, there were at least a dozen people fighting for their lives and half that already gone, their limp bodies lying prone for mere seconds before the primordial’s offshoots enveloped them whole.

Lasi pointed at someone relatively near us. An Und oathholder, it looked like, because the plants in his vicinity were moving slower than they were elsewhere, and even as the man held his own intestines in he was hacking and slashing away at the groping reach of a rapidly growing tree.

The professor assisted, once again, and a moment later the branches that had almost been tentacles were reduced to little more than dust.

“Thank the gods,” the oathholder said as we reached him, falling down on his ass.

“Hold still,” Jasmine said. “I’ll heal you, but you’ll need to retreat from the fight as soon as possible.”

“I won’t second guess that,” he said. “Fuck this.”

Jasmine laid the oathholder down, then started casting her healing.

“Stay alert,” Lasi ordered, beginning to cast a shield spell. “An offshoot could come at—“

Soren nearly jumped out of her skin, wheeling on a dime and casting a veritable barrage of magic missiles. She filled the air with her magic, bright streaks of force meeting a half-formed tree trunk even as it formed from a nearby crack.

The cracks were everywhere, most of them no more than a half meter wide but some of them forming small chasms that I wouldn’t even be able to jump over. There was nowhere safe on this battlefield, if the cracks were what the primordial was channeling its power through.

Movement to my left. I pivoted, turning on a dime, and threw unstructured magic at it, not bothering to force myself into the awkwardness of a spell.

Magic flew from my fingers, pure darkness flooding out in a loose cloud over the crack that I’d seen movement in. The growths there dissolved into nothingness even as they exited the breach.

“Good,” Lasi said, finishing his spell.

It was the same spell he’d used earlier, a prismatic shield. I watched it as it formed, this time. We were far from the center of the village, right now, and so the intensity of the offshoots being thrown at us was far lower. I felt safe enough to observe, at least.

A point of red force appeared in the air above our heads, then another to our side, then another in front. All told, there were maybe sixteen origin points, and the shield extended from those points, filling out the space between.

A few seconds passed, and we were fully covered.

“It’ll hold better, this time,” Lasi said, a note of strain clear in his voice. “The initial attack was strong, but all we have to deal with at this moment are the weakest offshoots.”

“That’s good,” Sunsbridge said. “Why don’t we just stay in here, then?”

“Offshoots grow,” Lasi said. “And they don’t weaken in power. Left alone, they’ll become powerful enough to break my shield.”

“Then we just turn it off to kill them, then we return,” Sunsbridge said. “No?”

“What we saw were the lowest end of the offshoots. Beyond that, the primordial is liable to kill the people currently holding its central body at bay, and being incapable of retreat at that time will result in our certain deaths.”

“And you can only hold that spell for another fifteen minutes before you get exhausted,” Jasmine said. “Especially if it’s taking hits from primordial offshoots during that time. I know your limits, old man. You should too.”

“And that as well,” Lasi acknowledged. “That was just the beginning of the fight, the measure-taking of the primordial. Prepare yourself for more.”

“It hasn’t been too bad so far,” Soren said.

“People have died,” Jasmine said. “In droves.”

“Well, we’re safe,” Soren replied. “That’s what I care about, for now.”

“That’s a fucked up way to think,” Jasmine said, “But I digress. We’re going to have to move out soon.”

“Holy shit,” the Und oathholder said, his hand falling to his side. His wounds were gone, his shirt so soaked through with blood that I was surprised he hadn’t passed out before Jasmine had gotten to him. “I’ve never been healed so fast. Who are you?”

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“Jasmine, of House Rayes,” she said. “Do not rejoin the fight. Do not over-exert yourself. Do not get hit. Find a hospital. Your healing will completely and totally wear off in twenty-four hours.”

“Conditions,” he sighed, but it sounded almost like it was one of relief and not of exasperation. “At least you’re human.”

I didn’t have enough experience with Nacea oaths, but it began to strike me that I hadn’t been properly acknowledging how powerful Jasmine was. That man had been moments from falling apart at the middle, and in the matter of a minute or two he was good as new. Sure, the healing had been flawed, but that was because of damage to her oath, not any issue with her power level. Back at the Sinlen Pass, too, she’d healed what should’ve been fatal damage in moments. How much of a monster had she been before she’d started killing and hurt her oath?

“I do what I can,” Jasmine said. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more for you.”

“This is already incredible,” the Und oathholder said. “Gods above.”

“I’m dropping the barrier in thirty seconds,” Lasi said. “I need to conserve my strength.”

Lukas had been silent for a while, but he finally spoke at that. “Alright. I’m ready.”

“Got it,” Jasmine said. “You. Will you be able to evac yourself?”

“I don’t know,” the bloodied man said. “I’m not fast. Or strong.”

“The area we’re in is the weakest section of the primordial’s influence,” Jasmine said. “We can escort you out.”

“Oh, I can,” Soren said. “I think I can handle the, uh, offshoots? Right, the offshoots in this region.”

“We go as a group, or no one goes,” Lasi said. “Primordials are too dangerous. We’ll escort him out of the dangerous region, pick up anyone we can on our way, and return after they escape.”

“Why can’t we just stay outside the zone?” Soren asked. “We’ll be safe that way.”

“Read the laws,” I sighed. “Desertion during the fight for reasons other than injury is punishable by life in prison. If you prefer that, then yes, you can stay out of the fight.”

“Gods, okay,” Sunsbridge said. “You don’t need to be so harsh about it.”

“Yes, she does,” Jasmine said. “I can understand wanting to leave, but there are people dying out there. We have a role to play.”

“Dropping the barrier in ten,” Lasi said. “Get ready.”

I formed unstructured magic in a hand, drawing my frost-knife with the other. Jasmine stood up, walking away from the man she’d been healing. The others assumed alert positions, though Soren and the Und oathholder looked more like they were playacting at being soldier than anything else.

The sphere dissipated around us, the panels of magic retracting into the points where each of them had begun propagating from. It didn’t pop so much as it retracted into the void, and suddenly we were in the field again.

The situation hadn’t improved. There were still cracks as far as the eye could see, and at the clock tower there was still fighting, a veritable forest sprouting where there had once been a marketplace and still growing even as a dozen people hacked away at it with blades, flame, and a dizzying variety of magic.

Cracks to our left, front, and center were rustling, fresh trunks, branches, and roots sprouting from within.

“Incoming!” I couldn’t tell who had shouted it.

I turned and took the time to form a magic missile, ensuring my enunciation was perfect. A thorny branch grew towards me, and in an instant it blew apart and began dissolving.

Still don’t like how it feels.

Lasi incinerated the other vines heading towards us, and the others cast spells a moment later. Jasmine hit the same one as me, ensuring its demise in flame and decay. Soren landed a swarm of magic missiles, but her target was one that had already disintegrated through Lasi’s lightning. Sunsbridge threw up a shield belatedly, breaking it a moment later when he realized that the threat was gone.

“Move,” Lasi ordered, and we made to obey.

We had already been on the fringes of the primordial’s attack radius, and so we’d already been facing the weakest it had to offer. I looked back at the clock tower as we ran, slower for the addition of another oathholder, and judged it to be nearly a kilometer. There was still more to go, though. The cracks in front of us were lesser in number and thinner than before, but they were still numerous and they were still lethal. They did start to end at a certain point, though, their quantity diminishing as we ran through an endless series of small grassy hills.

“Shields up!” Jasmine said. “Simple ones are fine, they’ll weaken a hit!”

I cast one to my left, barely bothering with the frame before throwing it up. It was a little hazy, uneven and morphing around the edges, but it would do the job. Around me, the others did too, forming a rough shield wall to protect the freshly healed oathholder jogging between us.

I had my eyes looking forward, intent on finding where the primordial’s current area of influence ended, and I almost failed to notice the spiked branch stabbing my way. As it was, I took the hit with my shield, and it popped almost immediately, the power of even this weaker offshoot enough to pierce it in one shot.

It had, however, slowed it down, and I met it with another burst of unstructured magic and a swipe of my dagger. The blade wasn’t incredibly effective on it, frost spreading across a section of branch but failing to fully kill it. The magic, however, was, and whatever magic was powering it failed to keep it going after the meter closest to me became ashes.

“Fuck!” Sunsbridge shouted, flinching back. He really seemed to enjoy that word.

The dark-haired student wheeled around and drew a revolver from his waist, shooting at another offshoot even as it breached his shield. There must have been some heavy enchantment on those bullets, because his target offshoot simply stopped moving when he hit it, a snapshot frozen in time.

“Another injured!” Jasmine shouted as we ran. “Two of them!”

The offshoots that had been attacking these two were dead and gone now, remnants of an intense magical battle involving ice and water still marking the ground. Unfortunately, the adventurers that had done that weren’t faring much better, lying unmoving on the ground.

“One of them is dead,” Lasi said. “Save the other. We’re far enough away from the center that simple shields should suffice to block a hit.”

Contradicting his own words, he began casting the prismatic shield of force again, covering us as we took a break and Jasmine healed.

“Gods damn it,” Jasmine said, voice tight with tension. “I did what I could. This one’s still unconscious, though, and the other was too far gone when we got here.”

“You know the lessons,” Lasi chided. “What do you need to accept on the battlefield?”

“Not everybody can be saved, and nobody will be if we fail to save ourselves first,” Jasmine recited. “I know.”

“Good,” Lasi said. “Make sure it doesn’t interfere with your capabilities. We’re leaving as soon as you’re done.”

“I’m finished already,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The task of carrying the unconscious oathholder was given to Soren and I. Thankfully, they hadn’t been wearing armor and weren’t too heavy, but the cloak they had worn was sticky with their blood and it was no easy feat keeping them balanced between us.

We were approaching the edge of the battlefield, now. The offshoots were weak enough that even well-placed spells from Soren were killing them, and the cracks were fading into nothing.

“How’d you get into this line of business?” Soren asked me as we ran. “It’s an awfully shitty place to get into.”

“I needed money,” I said. “It was this or the military.”

“Kind of wishing I tried harder for the latter, right about now,” Soren sighed. “Same story for me, but I failed the entrance exams. Met my boyfriend there, too.”

“Does he adventure too?”

“Yes, but he wasn’t drafted and I wasn’t about to make him go.”

“I see,” I said, unsure what else to say. Casual conversation with strangers had never been my strong suit. “You’ll be able to see him again soon, hopefully.”

“Here’s hoping,” she said. “Professor Lasi is taking pretty good care of us, though.”

“This is as far as we go,” Lasi said, unintentionally interrupting our conversation. “Retreat further if you can. Take this man with you. There’ll be someone coming for you soon, if not an adventurer then the crown’s military.”

“I— yes, thank you,” the oathholder we’d saved said.

Soren and I carefully set the unconscious man down on the ground.

We parted for him, and he left without further comment, grabbing the still-sleeping oathholder by the ankles and unceremoniously tugging them along.

There was still more work to do, and hopefully we’d still be alive at the end of it.

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