Chapter 31: 31. In conclusion

The castle seemed unassailable. Like an impenetrable fortress made to repel all but the most extreme of invasions. I was one of those extremes. 

Roots expanded beneath the castle, thick and strong. They spread from one wall to the other, directly beneath the ballista's that had made an assault on the castle seem so impossible before. 

Through many nights of concentration, I had grown the roots from a single apple seed. Beyond the roots, however, I had more things set up to take the castle down. My army of puppets stood ever at the ready to launch an assault. They hid on my tail amongst a forest of poison, toxins, and all things venomous. Lastly, I had practiced my spear throwing and was now confident that I'd be able to bombard the castle from a distance. 

All that was left now was to actually go through with my plan. 

The sun rose as I gave the command. Roots pulled themselves up out of the ground and swung about with wild abandon. 

A ballista, hit by one of the roots, was turned into a wreckage. Wood flew like bits of explosive shrapnel in one direction and the root swung in the other. Another root rose up and flung a ballista and the man closest to it straight into the air. Before another ballista could fall to my roots, though, the cultivators inside the castle reacted. 

They descended upon the roots in a violent, furious, storm. They cut them up with their hands, swords, and whatever other weapons they had. Then they moved onto the roots that were still underground. With just as much savage fury they pulled them up and hacked them to pieces. 

While they did that, leaving all but one of the ballistas unarmed, I moved in. I slithered toward the castle as fast as I could manage, the sound of my approach drowned out by the sound of cracking wood. But my cover could only last so long. Eventually one of the cultivators heard and felt the shaking of the earth and tracked it to its source. 

Me. 

We saw one another's eyes for a moment no longer than a breath. The cultivator snapped his head back to the rest of the castle behind him and cried out in alarm. One by one they all turned and saw me. Too late they ran to their positions, archers grabbed their bows and got on the wall, the sole ballista was armed, and the watchtowers started to glow with purple light. 

I formed a green spear in my hand and chucked it at one of the towers. The spear arced through the air and hit the side of one of the towers. Chunks of stone rained down on one of the walls. Archers scrambled out of the way of one another as they moved, some even abandoned the wall entirely. 

And then the spear exploded. Runes charged with my essence chained together and made an explosion strong enough to finish taking the tower down. Cut in half, it toppled down to the courtyard. A part of it clipped the wall and left the archers with even less space to stand. In their distraction they let me get even closer to the wall. 

The ballista was anything but distracted, unfortunately. A bolt as long as a car was launched at me, moving so fast that it was practically a blur. I shifted to the side as it came close, turning a shot that would have hit me in the center of my belly into one that scraped by me. Blood leaked out of the relatively tiny wound and poured down my side. A trail of red from which vines as red as the blood they spawned from emerged. 

A number of my puppets slid off me then and started towards the castle on their own. Arrows that had been uselessly bouncing off of my exposed skin changed targets and rained down on my puppets instead. 

I threw a spear in absence of the rain. One aimed at the wall straight ahead of me. It hit dead center and exploded a second later. Archers and stone were thrown into the air, a few were crippled, and one jumped off towards me. He got too close and I sucked the essence out of his body. It left him helplessly mid-air for a moment, whatever plan he had ruined and nowhere to dodge to. I let him fall and created another spear.

Before the pole arm could fully form in my hand a ballista bolt tore through the air. It arced above the castle walls. I moved as quick as I was able to the left, away from where I thought it was going. 

The bolt fell and struck me in the neck. 

My body went limp and I fell forward, landing on my belly and sending an me quake throughout my whole body. I felt my own breasts surge against me as I lay there, face buried in cleavage. Alive and almost dying. My regeneration kicked in and kept me on the edge of death, knitting the hole in my neck closed as quick as it could and turning my essence into blood.

More importantly, I had landed close enough to the wall for my army of puppets to do what they had been tasked with. They charged forward and jumped off my head onto the broken wall. Fighting amongst the debris, they pushed forward. Thorns shot out and poison filled the air. It wasn't enough to kill the cultivators, but it definitely hampered them. 

They covered their mouths and coughed into their hands. Punches that should have been true displays of their might came out only half as strong. And my army, instead of getting demolished, was putting up a good fight. 

While I laid dying right outside. 

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Giant thorn covered vines rose up from my tail and reached my neck. With them I grabbed the ballista bolt and pulled. One tug. Two tugs. And on the third I possessed one of my puppets. 

A hand came flying at me as soon as I "opened" my new eyes. It hit me and my puppets head nearly flew off. But I recovered quick and maneuvered around the next fist that came my way. It hit nothing but air as I wrapped my false tail around my opponents leg. With a tug he fell and I fell upon him. My weight against his, we struggled on the ground throwing fists at one another. 

A strike hit one of my breasts, and in return I shot a wave of thorns at him. It was enough to end our short tussle. Them my puppet was up and slithering towards the next closest cultivator. A woman that noticed my puppet too late. 

She turned and was instantly forced to dodge a swing of my tail. Agility and speed kept her from ending up on the receiving end of the strike. It also allowed her to step into the open space left in my attacks wake and throw a strike of her own. It came just as quick as her movements and struck me in the face. I turned and got struck again. 

On the third strike the bolt was removed from my actual body's neck. 

I let go of my puppet and got up and roared. The cultivators, despite being poisoned and fighting for their lives, couldn't help but turn and look. A move that cost them. My puppets drew blood and I made a giant vine rise up out of the ground. Right beneath the catapult. 

As it fell, arcing through the air and back towards the ground, the watchtowers hummed. The purple energy that sat atop each of the three remaining towers turned blue and created a wall of light around the castle. It covered every side save for the corner with the broken tower. The hole however was too small for me to fit through. I was too tall and too wide. 

So I created another spear, looked through the opening, and took aim at the tower on the other side. My spear flew and hit the top of the tower, the explosion unnecessary for bringing it down. 

It exploded anyways and the entire forcefield disappeared. I was free to join the battle raging on inside. I did so and the tide instantly changed. The cultivators were forced back as giant vines and other plants grew from the ground. Some attacked the cultivators directly, some spread poisonous spores and deadly toxins, and quite a few transformed into more puppets. 

The battle was all but over at this point. The cultivators were retreating inside the castle and it didn't seem like they had a way to stop me. Which was all the confirmation I needed to start looking for the portal. 

So while my puppets chased the cultivators inside, I created a much smaller puppet, one that was about the size of a mouse, and took control of it. My point of view shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until I couldn't even see a fraction of what I normally saw. Everything was giant to me now rather than the other way around. It was a bizarre and oddly humbling experience. 

I felt so insignificant as I slithered past my own creations and into the castle. Feet the size of my body fell down all around me, each step a potential end to my puppet's life. Somehow, though, I made it past the thundering feet of my own army and into the castle. 

Cultivators continuously backed up from the entrance in am attempt to put as much distance between themselves and my puppets as possible. Their panic led to an even greater danger to my puppet than the army outside. Foot after foot came down in rapid succession. One man tripped and was nearly trampled to death before he managed to get up.

As he got up, however, he spotted my puppet out of the corner of his eye. 

"There's one inside!" He yelled out, pointing at me. 

The entrance burst into a further panic. Someone pulled out a sword, someone else charged a spell, and my puppet exploded. Poisonous gas filled the room, which would probably kill a few of the cultivators but not all. 

And I made another small puppet to send in. It was faster than its predecessor and slithered in unnoticed. Passing the entrance, my puppet made it up some steps and into a stone hallway. Fortunately, there was only one way to go. Following that one path I eventually ended up in what looked to be the main part of the castle. 

There was a large table, a throne, and the portal in the back of the room. It was made of black stone and looked near identical to the one that took me to the desert. 

I relinquished control of my puppet, and with one giant hand I reached inside the castle and activated the portal. The world fell away in strips of white. Gravity lost its hold on me, and then something grabbed me. Something ancient and so much more powerful than me. 

It took me somewhere Else.