Chapter 181: Chapter 180: Coming Down

 

It took a while to find my answer, the darkwood’s dangerous roots poised above me for what seemed an eternity. For all of my eagerness to go back and do things better, I wasn’t willing to attempt it lightly. What if I was wrong? What if I wasn’t meant to go back? What if my current failure had a greater meaning than I realized?

There was no real way to know; not without going back in the first place. Not without seeing whether the Great Core would allow me to turn my failure into a false-life. Not without experiencing it for myself.

And that was the truth of it. There was no way to know.

I would just need to make a leap of faith; I needed to believe that I was making the right decision. That the Great Core would understand and approve of my intentions. That I had earned another chance.

When I thought that way, things suddenly became a little clearer. If all I needed was a leap of faith, I would just do that. If all I needed was to believe that the Great Core understood my reasons, I would just do that. If all I needed was to earn another chance, I would just ensure that my next life was proof that I had.

The roots came down, piercing through scale-flesh.

The world slipped away with a merciful quickness.

 

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My scale-flesh tightened; I felt as if I were wrapped in constricting threads, each pulling and twisting to ensure that I was as uncomfortable as possible. It itched with a near-unimaginable vigor, and only my lack of direct control over my own body allowed me to remain still.

Despite that, I was anything but uncomfortable. How could I be? I had been blessed; brought back from death yet again. The Great Core approved of my decision.

The thought was freeing, a confirmation that I was on the right path.

My spore-roots finally flexed, ripping me away from the remnants of shed skin that surrounded me with great jerks and twists. I hardly even noticed, as focused on [Verdure Parasite] as I was. I immediately went to work, mercilessly siphoning time’s potential for growth from the plant-flesh of the many-nest. Countless currents of time streamed towards my chosen spore-roots, forcing them to grow with a rapidity that far outpaced what I had seen in my previous life. There was no room for delay; with that in mind, I moved as quickly as I could.

My spore-roots flourished, breaking through the insides of the former Guardian’s plant-flesh with impressive brutality. I could hear the sounds of creaking, cracking darkwood as spore-roots took over wood-roots, claiming them for the Great Core.

There were other things that I could feel, too; things that I had hardly paid any mind in my last life, as focused on [Verdure Parasite] as I had been. Constant flashes of [FEAR], the complete and utter [TERROR] that many of the Coreless were experiencing. Knowing that I could continue to control [Verdure Parasite] and [Spore Puppeteer] even while immersed within a Coreless’ [Little Guardian’s Totem], I didn’t hesitate to throw myself in their direction.

The Great Core had sent me back so that I could do better; of course, I would do the best that I could. That meant defeating the Ascended and saving Needle, she-who-gave-the-first-offering, but that wasn’t all that I could do. There were others that could be saved alongside her, each a possession of the Great Core that might otherwise be stolen away by Tiamat’s retribution.

That was far from acceptable, an insult to the Great Core itself.

I needed to wipe that insult away.

Spore-roots grew in a tumultuous mass, stretching out in the direction that I needed. That done, I threw myself towards my Coreless without a moment’s hesitation.

The world shifted as I found myself looking through one of my Coreless’ eyes. He stood at the edge of the nest that housed the [Little Guardian’s Focus], an ore-flesh-tipped rod of darkwood held within his hands. He was screaming, pushing the rod forward again and again in order to halt his enemy’s advance. He was losing, too weak to do much more than delay the bad-thing. A bone-tipped limb caught the flesh of his arm, forcing him back in a flash of [PAIN].

I could feel the way that the nearby [Little Guardian’s Focus] worked to soothe that pain, wiping it away in pulses of flesh-mending power. Still, I realized that it wasn’t enough; the Coreless had already been defeated, in mind if not in body. He was afraid to return to the battle.

He had given up.

The Coreless turned, and I used his vision to jump towards another.

“...wait,” my new Coreless said, vision focused on the group of tiny Coreless that crowded around the [Little Guardian’s Focus]. “Ev…everything will be okay,” they hissed, softly stroking the hair of the youngest. “We’ll be okay.”

A few of the Coreless found small hints of [comfort] in the noises that she made. Others didn’t. They must have recognized the same thing that I did - whatever comfort the Coreless was trying to convey was hollow.

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She was [AFRAID], and even the light of the [Little Guardian’s Focus] above her was unable to wipe away that fear.

The tiny Coreless resting in her lap turned his gaze upwards, lip trembling and eyes dripping fluid unending. “Will the Little Guardian save us like in the story?” he asked, radiating a tentative [hope] that many of the others lacked.

My Coreless’ breath caught in her throat. She turned away without an answer, one hand still stroking the tiny Coreless’ hair. She choked on air, an aborted sob trapped within her lungs, as her eyes found the other Coreless that sprinted and scurried across the cavernous room. Some moved alone, moving with purpose found in the damned and the determined alike, white-knuckled grips stretching across dangerous rods of darkwood. They were quiet in their determination, as if making noise would drain their will. Others moved together, not by choice but rather by necessity; carried along when limbs failed and hearts failed further, the [PAIN] and [FEAR] that slipped through them a palpable scent-taste in the air.

Those ones, like the tiny Coreless around my current bearer, were far from quiet.

I found my eyes turning back towards the little one below, a drip-drop of fluid wetting his hair from above.

“O-of course,” she said, whispering softly as a trembling hand stealthily wiped the fluid away. My vision moved again, peering into the shining eyes of one of the Great Core’s smallest followers. They were shining. Wet.

A measure of [resolve] pressed against the bearer’s mind, battling against the pervasive [FEAR] that all but consumed her. The [FEAR] never went away; it never even dimmed. Then again, neither did her [resolve].

“Everything will be okay, sweetie,” she said, breath catching once more. “Everything will be okay; we just have to wait and be brave, alright?”

“I can be brave!” the tiny Coreless said, baring his teeth. The other little ones made noises of their own, each one sending a new wave of nigh-incomprehensible emotions through the Coreless whose perspective I shared.

“I know you can,” she said. “You’re all so, so brave.”

She turned away again, looking to the side. My vision - her vision - began to blur, falling away to near-uselessness. Just like the last Coreless, I was forced to leave her behind. There was nothing for me there.

Burbling thought-hisses filled my mind as I jumped from one Coreless to the next, spore-roots simultaneously young-yet-old calling out for me and for each other. I wished that the Coreless could hear it; if they could, they would have understood what was coming. They could not and, to my horror, many of them appeared to have begun losing faith in the Great Core’s might, lost in the terror of facing Tiamat’s bad-things. I needed to change that.

I needed to move quickly.

Fortunately, that was something that I could do. Something that I had been doing, even as I tried to check on the state of my Coreless.

I searched for the Coreless that I was now sure would give me the greatest view of the battle. I had hoped to find other options while I waited; a way to save all of the Coreless, rather than just the one that mattered the most. It wouldn’t happen; they couldn’t all be saved.

Some, however, could be.

Enough to matter.

I found Needle, still alive and well, drawn to the beacon of spite that spilled from her like a fountain.

I found the bad-thing in her vision, an amorphous blob of stone trying to hew itself into some semblance of shape.

I found the spore-roots that called for me the loudest, grown quickly through the touch of [Verdure Parasite].

And then, before Tiamat’s Ascended could find its shape, I forced those spore-roots into a shape of their own. The great mass of tendrils stretched for one another, twisting and twining until their thought-hisses became one.

From the ruins of a nearby nest, a small sliver of the Darkwood Guardian lifted; a gold-blue tendril strong enough to hold Tiamat’s minions at bay for the time that I needed.

[Verdure Parasite] was still helping to take over the others but, for now, the single root would have to be enough.

The root flexed.

The root came down.