Vraxious—The Forsaken Lands

  Vrax and the others crept towards the mostly hidden old stone doorway peeking from under the logs and moss. Vrax was on his guard as he edged forward; they had probably killed everything in the immediate area, but assuming that was a fantastic way to get yourself eaten.

  Vrax made sure to stick Duchess and the devourers back into the menagerie along with their mounts before they explored further. They all fit, but fucking barely; he needed to expand his capacity again if he was going to keep trying to stick things like the bark bear into the menagerie.

  The doorway itself revealed the slightest hints of what the place itself might have been a millennium ago. The very thick door lay a stride from it, broken from the inside and now home to a small colony of gently pulsing caterpillars that were weaving themselves into cocoons exactly the same color as the moss.

  As Vrax stepped next to it, he could see deep engravings now filled with a red mold that fed on mana, clearly highlighting what would have probably been a security or barrier enchantment. The second broken door scattered across the small entryway that acted as a security chamber supported this theory.

  Oh… This is going to be good; anything the Elysians locked away was always at least interesting. Considering the Fleshborn right outside the doors, I bet I have a pretty good guess what this place might have been.

  Stereos had the same thought, peering over Vrax’s shoulder. “Please exercise an abundance of caution; double-door security measures and enchantments of this scale are not placed without reason. And given the immediate proximity to monsters puppeted through the ages… It is entirely possible this was a flesh crafter enclave.”

  “Why would we even want to go in there?” Jonathan asked, now more than a bit trepidatious about it.

  “If we get good cover, we can start a campfire and heat the chicken.” Torvald said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. He seemed genuinely confused as to why there were still questions about this.

  Vrax rolled his eyes under his helm and turned to give Jonathan a real answer. “Because why wouldn’t we want to explore the ancient, possibly filled with riches, flesh-crafter’s lair?”

  “Oh, do they really usually have treasure?” Jonathan asked, a bit mollified.

  Vrax started creeping inside. “I mean sometimes, normally it’s just monsters.”

  “Goddammit,” Jonathan sighed and followed a few steps behind Vrax.

  The broken doors led to a simple hallway crafted from tightly packed bricks that had black flowers clinging into the cracks. The flowers gently trembled with each of their steps and the shifting of their equipment. Vrax stopped looking at them curiously.

  Hmm don’t know what those are…probably reacting to sound.

  Before anyone else could make enough noise to potentially get themselves killed, Vrax flicked a coin hard against the corridor wall ahead. As one the flowers turned to it, shooting tiny jets of black liquid at where it had hit. Then they all shifted, still spraying as the coin rolled down the hallway. By the time that the coin's remains had rolled to a stop, the flowers had run dry, and half the hallway was covered in a gently sizzling acid that was seeping deep into the brickwork.

  “Ha, glad I checked.” Vrax flinched preemptively in case any of the flowers still had some pezzas to spray his way.

  Jonathan’s eye twitched in concern as he followed Vrax’s careful steps, picking their way across the still sizzling floor. The hallway led down to a set of stark stone stairs that had yet another wrinkle of the forsaken lands living upon them.

  A meaty, pulsing hunk of flesh with a single eye and muscular growths anchoring it to the stone was suspended from the nearby walls in the dead center of their path. As they met it eye to eye, its single pupilless eye suddenly gained a pupil that dilated violently.

  Egh, whoa, the hell is that thing? Man, today is great. I’m discovering all kinds of new critters. Probably shouldn’t try to adapt that though…

  As Vrax peered down at the round creature, its outer layer of flesh began unwinding from the musculature beneath like an orange simply slipping free from its own skin. A small limbless form fell to the floor, flopping from side to side for a moment aimlessly before suddenly going still.

  “Do we stab it?” Jonathan whispered he had his whips at the ready to strike while it was still far away. Torvald took his ‘javelin’ off his shoulder just in case. Vrax shrugged and kept watching in rapt attention.

  The fleshy blob slowly hatched, splitting open with a sick sound and splash of clear, thick fluids that ran down the stairs slowly. A wormlike creature only about the size of a fist uncurled its newborn body. Mana flickered across it, calling back the clear birth fluid to itself; it solidified and snapped into place, forming hoof-like short legs. The worm’s mouth opened to reveal an uninterrupted tunnel of inward-curving teeth. It began unevenly galloping up the stairs on its semisolid legs.

  It abruptly burst in a violent shower of gore, as did the flesh ball it fell from and anything else remotely living within a few strides, as Stereos finished his spell with a sharp flash of mana and a dark utterance. Nothing was left except a thin coating of red across ten strides of the stairs. “Absolutely not,” was all he said before gesturing for them to continue on down the now sticky stairs.

  Torvald nodded. “Yeah, that’s fair. I was about to throw the javelin; we both know he was thinking about it.”

  “I wasn’t going to adapt it!” Vrax said defensively and led the way once again.

  Probably…

  The stairway opened up to a somewhat unexpected sight. It looked like an ancient underground garden. Dim light still glowed from a myriad of uneven crystals set into the ceiling, obviously designed to simulate sunlight. Although now they only cast the room in an almost eerie twilight-like haze of blue-tinged luminescence.

  The plants themselves were a thick, head-high tangle of grey and brown shriveled things, not quite trees but not quite shrubs; they were so overgrown they wound across and through each other. The edges and very center of the room had black stone paths that were still relatively clear of plants.

  “Guards up, we need to clear this place before we start heating up any chicken.” Vrax gave Torvald a hard look and then took the lead, letting the others follow him as he edged forwards.

  Something was making Vrax’s paranoid danger senses tingle, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It was bad enough that he stopped near the first patch and reduced it to slag just to bring sunshine into the room. Sunshine heaved next to Vrax, almost confused at having nothing to immediately throw itself at.

  Sunshine began idly crashing forward, its revolting, ever-changing flesh uncaring about the branches it snagged against as its massive flowered head swung side to side looking for motion, unprotected by the mark of Vurune.

  Well, I have sound covered; if something so much as fucking twitches, Sunshine probably would see it before the rest of us.

  Vrax kept going forward, using his talent to carefully weave through the tangled branches, practically invisible, while sunshine crashed through them ahead to his left, and his party followed down the central clear path, fanned out slightly. Edward was basically hiding near the staircase.

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  Vrax did not like the prickling sensation up and down his spine; it was like something was tentatively tasting his soul, reaching out to still its obnoxious quivering near its peaceful rest. Vrax froze.

  That was an awful fucking specific thought there, Vrax… Let's see, I'm standing still, and yep…the sensation faded. There's something in here.

  He held up his hand to get everyone to stop and let Sunshine keep crashing ahead; if he was right and they were disturbing something eldritch, it would sure as shit make itself known whenever Sunshine got too close.

  Sure enough, a patch of branches reached up towards the ceiling as if grabbing something from the shadows cast eerily across the ceiling as sunshine got near. Sunshine whirled towards the motion, and the thing above was ripped by the branches from somewhere that wasn’t quite on the same plane as the rest of them.

  It was long, its limbs thin and branchlike, with four legs and four arms attached to a too-small humanoid body. It descended like a long-legged spider, almost daintily alighting on top of the tangle of branches as sunshine crashed towards it. It moved with supernatural grace, dancing across the tops of the trees towards sunshine.

  Sunshine bunched its roots and exploded towards the thing, dozens of tendrils sweeping in from every direction to snatch its prey. The creature put its too-long arms together in front of itself like a diver might and flashed forward in a crack of black mana and sudden acceleration. It dove straight into Sunshine’s maw and shot out the back of its body in a shower of plant matter.

  It somehow drifted down calmly from the last stride of its attack and alighted gently along the branches again. Sunshine was still going absolutely berserk, tearing trees from the ground and tossing them into its maw after it lost sight of the thing.

  Well...that's...not great. That thing is fast, and if it can just punch straight through sunshine…

  Vrax leveled his predator's gaze over their new opponent as the others fanned out even more for the fight. [Renosa Uluram Tier-1](lvl90) [Fleshbonder Of The Lorn] [Threat: Very High]

  What...no...is that an Elysian? How?

  Renosa flung herself again in a puff of dark mana like a bolt straight over Vrax’s head and into Jonathan in a tangle of limbs. He cursed colorfully, managing to deflect one of her slashes, but the next claw raked across his knee, carving open flesh, and then she was gone.

  Torvald was beset next. Her freakish limbs clasped to him from behind, tearing chunks from his torso. His wings exploded outward, tearing her from him, and he whirled, managing to grab onto one of the long limbs with a hand. He brought his hammer down with the force of a mountain, snapping the bone and pulling. Renosa shrieked, flinging herself away, with Torvald still holding half of one of her limbs.

  This is fucked! She is way too dangerous; if she hits Stereos, he’s dead.

  There was a moment as Renosa oozed from one shadow on the roof to another to another like they were interdimensional stepping stones. Vrax readied himself to summon damn near everything he had in his garden, but first he wanted to try something.

  “Renosa! Stop!” he shouted.

  Everyone looked over in surprise; Torvald’s wounds were already sealing, but he had fist-sized hunks ripped out of him. Jonathan was bleeding like a stuck pig from ripped skin that exposed the white of his knee.

  The thing oozed into another closer shadow and cocked its body in confusion and maybe recognition for a moment. Sunshine had finally seen it again and was starting to fling itself this way, so whatever Vrax wanted to try needed to happen fast.

  “Wave or something if you don’t want to fight!”

  Torvald looked at him like he was stupid and pulled his now beloved javelin.

  Whatever haze it was trying to fight through for a moment won, and Renosa oozed through a shadow and appeared next to Vrax, limbs shooting out blindingly fast. His shield only stopped the first before the next two punched through his armor and tore fistfuls of meat free. Vrax pushed a wave of miasma forward.

  It washed over her, savaging flesh and tearing small rotting pits across her frame, but her defenses were too high for it to be a lethal strike. She sent Vrax flying through the foliage with a savage axing kick that expertly wove around the trees somehow. Then she dove after Jonathan again, springing to the ceiling and then down at him.

  Torvald intercepted her midair. In a thunderous crash that ended with him splattering part of her frame against the ceiling. He looked smug for just a second before a claw pierced through his midsection, ripping out a handful of entrails, and Renosa shifted back into the shadows out of sight.

  “Fuuuuuuccckkkkk…” Torvald groaned in pain as Jeff did his damndest to pull him back together; veins stretched out to snag and reel important things back into him.

  Vrax crawled to his feet and shuffled towards the rest of his party, already casting healing energy into both himself and Torvald. It wouldn’t fix everything mid-fight, but it sure might stop someone from passing out from blood loss, which was probably a fucking death sentence right now.

  They still couldn’t see where she had gone with her ravaged frame; Vrax assumed she was close to death with how much she had trailed an odd black blood all over the floor and ceiling at this point.

  They took the moment to circle back up as a party. Sunshine ambled next to them angrily looking around for its elusive prey. Stereos had a small cluster of crystallized blood droplets hovering above his hand dangerously.

  Where are you…?

  Almost imperceptibly the shadows under a nearby tree shifted as her gangly frame crept back into the same dimension as them. Sunshine’s head whipped that way, alerting everyone, and they proceeded to obliterate that patch of the underground tangle.

  Stereos flung the bloody shards so fast they simply pierced everything in the area for strides, riddling trees with finger-sized holes clean through them. Jonathan’s vine whips lashed out, snagging a limb and managing to tear it free in a shower of blood.

  Vrax leapt towards it, casting lances of miasma that scoured outwards, one from each hand, practically bottoming out his mana to do so. Torvald finished it all off with a painful throw of his javelin.

  The shredded remains of Renosa twitched in the now cleared patch of rot for half a heartbeat before Sunshine scooped up what was left and threw it into its maw like a man tossing a grape into his mouth. The fragments of long limbs stuck slightly, but Sunshine remedied that with a few tendrils and the crack of bone.

  Everyone breathed heavily and looked at each other to take stock; Torvald was by far the worst off. He had sat down to fish a healing potion out of his bag. They didn’t have any that were high-tier enough to use mid-combat, but the ones they had would absolutely help after a fight. Torvald chugged it. And Vrax immediately started stealing the bit of life left in the underground garden and channeling it into Torvald.He braced through the sudden wave of essence ignoring it to keep healing his friend.

  “Whoo, that was one hell of a fight!” Torvald boomed out and then winced sharply before just lying down.

  Jonathan pointed to his knee. “Could you, uh, send some healing this way once his guts stop trying to run away? Also, there better be some fucking treasure in here after that.”

  “The real treasure is the friends you made along the way!” Vrax said in a laughably cheerful tone.

  That elicited groans from everyone except Stereos. Edward, who was practically shivering in fright halfway up the stairs, let out a weak laugh.

  Once everyone was mostly healed, Vrax continued inspecting the room along with Jonathan, while Torvald started a small fire so he could heat his damned chicken. Vrax knew he could do it with his smelter moss even if they didn’t have a campfire, but he was looking forward to Torvald realizing that himself months from now and the ensuing indignation that would cause. So he didn’t say anything.

  The room was unnervingly stark other than the now very thinned-out forest and the lights above. There was a single doorway that led further on. It was obscured with rubble from what looked like a ceiling cave-in. Other than that, there was one small side room that hinted at a dark past.

  Jars lined the walls on clinical metal shelves. Their brackish contents long since reduced to unrecognizable organic slurry. Some of the slurry still had worm- or spider-like embryonic figures twitching within. One even held a half-rotted heart that beat with a sick, slow pulse so infrequently you had to watch it to make sure it wasn’t just a trick.

  The center of the room held a marble-white floor stained black with a drain set under a broad, slightly angled chair with thick metal restraints. Vrax cringed; this was almost certainly where they had made the very fleshborn they fought above. Something had just repurposed the bodies.

  Jonathan huffed and started sorting through a pile of gruesome tools designed for prying bone and cutting flesh. “Hey…now we are talking! I think this is made of alchemical silver!” He held up a bloodstained bone saw with a smile, pointing to its unnaturally perfect metallic teeth.

  “Uhh...great...guess you got your treasure?” Vrax asked honestly, a bit flabbergasted at how that was what Jonathan cared about in this room.

  There wasn’t much else of value to be found in the ancient flesh crafter’s workshop. Vrax briefly considered opening the jars to inspect what kind of half-formed weapons the Elysian had left behind. But his predator's gaze just returned a question mark, so he solidly decided against it.

  Vrax settled in next to the campfire in silence beside Torvald, who was happily eating a steaming drumstick.

  That wasn’t a weapon or a forgotten abomination. We fought against an actual Elysian. Or whatever she had turned herself into with her craft…. How did she escape the fall? Hell, what was that little pocket she was hiding in that was decidedly not in the room with us? It's almost like she had a skill like my menagerie and used it to shelter during the fall. But why stay…she was here for so long…

  Vrax trailed off in thought as the others shared scattered conversation, quite a bit of it being about the flesh crafter and if this meant they might meet more Elysians...or at least what was left of them on their journey.