Chapter 75: 75: Coming Home

Rowan huffed with exertion, moving his legs more through sheer force of will than via his actual muscles. The last week had been a series of long-running battles, with only brief moments of respite between each of them - and even those had been full of tension, with the possibility of being attacked by a new set of monsters at any moment. His team had been caught unprepared for what they had found; though they had left Orken with the mission to discover why the traders that had left for Verdant Grove had not returned, they hadn’t even arrived before they found their answer. One that they were not fully equipped to handle.

Verdant Grove was gone, and the few hundred refugees that they had met along the way were nearly all that remained of the once-populous city. As an important city in the area in possession of a relatively powerful Nature Core, it had been extremely prosperous. Far more so than Rowan’s own home.

Nature Cores were unique in that the most useful way humanity could use them was not through nullsmiths. And yet, that same method had led to Verdant Grove’s downfall. Rather than being almost constantly submerged in null-water like most Cores were, Nature Cores were allowed to gather power for set amounts of time; during that period, their aspect fields could grow in strength and range, exerting their will on any nearby vegetation or crops, forcing them to grow at an extremely accelerated rate. Given enough time, the Core would be able to transform the surrounding vegetation into its minions; what was once grass would attempt to cut ankles, roots would form into spears, mushrooms would release deadly spores.

Given enough time, that is.

Fortunately, the time required was meticulously documented. At specific intervals, the Core would be ‘pruned’, draining its strength within null-water and resetting it to keep the city safe. Once the danger was avoided, it would be released again, the cycle ready to start anew.

It was a potentially dangerous gamble, but one that many agriculturally-focused settlements used to gain extreme amounts of wealth. Food was an important commodity, and humans couldn’t survive solely on the meat of monsters - not without becoming dangerously ill, eventually.

Verdant Grove had long tracked the pruning of their Nature Core down to an exact science, and there had been next to no risk of something going wrong.

But something had.

Something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

It hadn’t been difficult piecing together what went wrong, though the why of it was another matter entirely. All of the refugees had either seen or heard it happen. A massive section of the ceiling above Verdant Grove had crumbled following a massive explosion, as if the World Dungeon itself had decided to ravage their city.

As large as Verdant Grove was, most of it had survived the hail of stone, but the explosion had occurred almost directly above the building that housed the Nature Core. It was buried under massive piles of rubble - and to make matters worse, just before it was due for another pruning.

Before they could reach it and save their city, nature itself had turned against them. Grass had turned to blades, roots to wooden spears. Many ran. Most died, or were simply left behind in the rush for safety.

There was no time.

When angered, nature was a dangerous and deadly thing.

Rowan and his team had done their best to protect the bedraggled refugees in their escape from the doomed city, but the World Dungeon was far from kind to travelers - and even less kind to a group of their size; where a smaller number might have been able to slip past sleeping terrors without need for a fight, a group of hundreds had no chance. Invariably, they had been attacked. Again and again, with only brief moments of respite.

Though many had perished in the battle within the city itself, a number of Verdant Grove’s guardsmen and far less of their Seekers had gone with the fleeing refugees. Rowan hadn’t bothered to ask whether they were there to protect the fleeing populace, or if they had abandoned the city to its fate.

He wasn’t sure he’d like the answer.

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Whatever the case might have been, their presence was the only reason that the monsters of the World Dungeon had been fended off; at the very least, they had enough warriors - enough bodies - to allow for some degree of rest on occasion.

Not enough, but some. Never quite enough.

Exhaustion had become an ever-present companion, one that Rowan managed to just barely keep at arm’s length - far enough away to not fall completely, but close enough to be dangerous. He knew that he wasn’t the only one struggling to keep it back, but what else could they do? Who else would fight?

And so, when they were attacked again as they closed in on the safety of Orken, he could only lift his spear again.

Rowan’s ears had long stopped ringing, and the itching sensation of blood dripping down his neck had been almost entirely forgotten. At the very least, it was enough that when another of those damn bats flew towards him, mouth open wide, he no longer staggered.

He didn’t even hear its cry. Maybe he would never hear anything again.

He flicked his spear outwards, impaling the monster on its end. It slid through flesh with almost disturbing ease, the glowing tip sharper than it had any right to be. He’d have to remember to thank Kal again when - if - he made it back home. The nullsmith always enjoyed that, and he really did do fine work.

Shaking off the corpse with a practiced motion, Rowan spared a quick glance backwards, nervously checking the state of the retreating refugees. More than a fair few of the flying creatures had swooped past the defensive line, but he couldn’t do more than hope that they would be handled safely. The screaming little things’ bodies were less than sturdy, and even a civilian could take one down with a strong enough hit. There seemed to be less of them than before, and Rowan hoped that it hadn’t cost too many lives.

He had greater concerns for the moment - at least, now that the screams of the bats hardly managed to affect him anymore. Before his hearing had given up entirely, the damn things had almost been the death of him, throwing his balance off at dangerous moments. He was still dizzy, but at least it was a constant problem, rather than something that could strike when he least expected it.

Now, it was the other group of enemies that was the problem. They pushed against the defensive wall that they had created, and sometimes managed to pierce through it, one of their many sharp limbs finding gaps between armor and shield. Unlike the bats, Rowan knew that these monsters would make quick work of anyone without armor - and even armor wasn’t always enough, a fact that was proven once again as another former guardsman - or a guardswoman, in this case - soon found.

Her fellows pulled her back, and Rowan stumbled in to fill the gap she left in their defenses. The world fell away for a few moments, shifting into a confusing mass of thrusts and dodges before someone pushed past Rowan from behind. He stumbled briefly, exhausted limbs and warped balance nearly bringing him to the floor.

By the time that he looked back up again, the suicidal man was already doomed; a mass of limbs and flesh piled over him, stabbing downwards again and again.

Suddenly, a brilliant blue flame shot over his shoulder, its immense heat forcing Rowan to flinch away in a blind panic. His knees buckled - first in despair, and then in utter relief when it ignored him entirely. Instead, it coated the pile of monsters, covering their limbs in fire.

He turned around slowly, noting that he wasn’t the only one to do so.

When he saw Captain Wren behind him, advancing alongside Erik, Doran, Kala, and Valera - who, for some reason, had a snake riding on her shoulder - he finally began to feel a little hope.

When the grizzled veteran raised one hand and signed a simple few words in the abbreviated hand signs of the Seekers, he smiled for the first time in a week.

Reinforcements here. Bringing you home.

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