The Abyssal Scourge

VICTORY WAS at hand, sweeping across the apothecary grounds as fast as the potion launchers were healing the sisters.

They fought with renewed fire, rallying behind Henrietta’s blazing advance.

Sweat-matted their brows, ash dusted their dresses and elegant appearances, but their stance was as firm as stone.

The unending tide of soul feeders was finally breaking. Their shrieks frayed at the edges, their bodies shuddering with every lethal attack.

“Drive them back into the abyss!” shouted one of the senior elixirists in transparent amber armor.

The apothecary sisters ran them down, continuing to show no quarter for these interlopers, when suddenly, some invisible command seized their collective will. Every sister stilled as a deeper vibration rippled across the fields.

It was like a low, resonant exhale from the land itself, forcing the soul feeders to recoil.

Some quivered before collapsing inward, as they were pulled back toward the same breach that had birthed them.

And then a silence, thin and unnatural, spread over the clearing.

Something massive pushed forward, and unlike the soul feeders, this entity was even more otherworldly. Words couldn’t materialize the indescribable, but qsome features became clear. What appeared to be a ribcage of obsidian-like bone, curled outward from a hollow core. Tendrils of black seemed to drip and retract from its joints—its apparition pulsating. Its head appeared elongated, with eye sockets and gapping expression—the darkness in them leading to endless voids.

It didn’t screech. It hummed with a low, maddening resonance that sent more than half of the vanguard clutching their skulls.

And they couldn’t even muster a cry, only a silent, hollow collapse, as though something was pulling the souls straight out of them.

A strangled whisper rippled through the ranks as the towering creature slithered forward.

Sisters who had stood firm through hours of slaughter now felt their courage diminish, their breaths snagging in their throats.

The battlements also fell to a hush. Artillery and wands were ready to fire, but the hands couldn’t muster the courage.

Not even the shellbacks dared fire. Their operators clutched the controls with white knuckles, gears ticking anxiously as if the machines themselves feared to provoke the entity.

The mana within each sister stuttered like a skipped heartbeat.

Henrietta’s grin faded as her gaze flicked from the cowering artillery crews to the motionless towers, to her sisters watching in despair.

It was surrender in the making.

But her lips curled not in delight this time, but in something fierce and resolute. “Dear sisters!” she announced. “This is our garden! No feeder, large or small, will submit it!” Her voice cracked across the field like a thunderclap. She swung her minigun forward, its barrels glowing in a hungry spiral of yellow and red. Henrietta roared, voice shaking with resolve, “Set your courage ablaze! Light up the sky with your fury! For Rudbeckia!” She unleashed a blistering stream of incandescent rounds that seared toward the abomination.

The shock of her cry jolted the nearest band into motion.

The shellbacks lurched back to life, their brass funnels yawning open as they released concentrated beams of light and echoing concussive blasts.

One by one, the siege towers caught the urgency. Gears spun, turrets swung, and heavy artillery thundered from afar, hurling mana-forged shells in long, blazing arcs toward the creature.

Attacks from all around burst against its ribbed void-shell in corrosive blooms.

But the creature answered with hunger. Its elongated gaping expression split even lower, and a suctioning wail howled forth, dragging loose soil, shattered stone, and even the bodies of the fallen toward its hollow core. Tendrils uncoiled like hooked serpents, latching onto the elixirists and ripping at their life-essence as if tasting it before flinging them aside.

Still, the apothecary sisters fought, though desperation showed in every ragged breath. Casters and gunners trembled in aiming their weapons to fire, and healers tirelessly dragged the wounded as far away from the fray as quickly they could.

For every volley that staggered the creature, it seemed to inhale the world around it, growing colder, darker, and hungrier.

Even so, the bloody, burned, and exhausted defenders of the apothecary held their ground, because they knew one truth: If they couldn’t stop this thing now, what chance would the smaller villages stand?

At that moment, the sisters continued to press on, but most were kneeling, hunched over, lying down, or exhausted at how helpless things were faring. There seemed to be nothing that could rid the Rudbeckia Apothecary of this threat.

Then suddenly, a bell tolled from the fortress’s clocktower. Its great tourbillon rotated within, spinning faster, glowing brighter, until light poured from the tower windows like liquid gold.

Mana rippled outward in waves, washing over the battlefield.

Every sister inhaled sharply as strength flooded their limbs. Wounds stitched. Fatigue thinned. Hearts steadied.

Henrietta straightened, letting out a heavy exhale, “Many thanks, Master.”

Even though the creature was capable of devouring and expelling mana against the sisters, it couldn’t keep up with their newfound tenacity. Each strike they made against it this time was so powerful and degrading, it was taking longer to recover.

Every tear and bullet hole was larger, more destructive. It soon got to the point where the light from the mana was eating away at its corrosive body, forcing it to let out its humming cry.

Only this time, it wasn’t detrimental to the sisters, because in addition to the rejuvenized mana, prayers from the fortress’s lower chambers began adding layers of protection once more.

Henrietta advanced through the renewed storm without breaking stride, the yellow glow of her armor flaring like a beacon against the darkness. “Now then!” she bellowed at the approaching nightmare. “Back to the abyss from whence you came!” She planted her boots, braced her weapon, and unleashed a torrent of incandescent fire. Her concentrated, nearly ecstatic, barrage carved through the creature’s warped anatomy, each round punching burning tunnels of light through its ribbed void-shell.

It convulsed, limbs splaying in impossible angles as fractures spiderwebbed across its elongated face. With a final shriek so low pitched it rattled the marrow of every soul present. It began to unravel, its obsidian bones collapsing inward as though swallowed by a greater darkness within itself. Tendrils snapped like severed cables, eye sockets melted, and the towering mass disintegrated into drifting ribbons of shadow that evaporated in the air.

In moments, the grounds were clear.

The creature from beyond the veil was gone.

Silence followed, vast and fragile, broken only by the crackle of smoldering soil and the ragged breathing of the survivors.

Sisters rushed to the wounded, lifting them from the cratered earth and lying them in rows where healers worked swiftly, hands stained with tinctures and blood.

The fallen were gathered with reverence, including those that were returned from the entity’s maw.

Their heads bowed, lips murmuring blessings as each body was wrapped in white linen and ringed with lanterns to honor their passage. Around them, the once-verdant apothecary fields lay ruined, rows of precious herbs scorched or trampled into mud, greenhouses collapsed like broken wings.

Yet as the last wisps of shadow dispersed, the clouds above slowly unraveled. Moonlight poured through first, soft and silver, followed by a tapestry of bright, unwavering stars. And under that quiet sky, the fields of the Rudbeckia Apothecary would start breathing again.

The next few days consisted of everyone trying to return to a state of normality, but an invasion like this proved difficult to recover from. However, the sisters were resolute and proceeded to handle relief efforts from combing the fields to providing recovery services.

The one who was most in need of this attention was Master Elixirist Rysa Strudelshausen from the clocktower at the fortress’s center. Though bedridden and depleted of mana blessed by God-King Dajayatan—as all Clocksoaths presiding over large districts possessed—she insisted that all of her subordinates and patients were cared for first.

* * *

One day, Aisling, Sirius, and Lucien emerged on the distant ridge. They halted at the sight below.

Fields were torn open, and sunset light glinted off shattered glass and still smoking craters. Tan-dressed seedward and gray-dressed bloomhand sisters labored in their kirtles to mend the fields.

Shock widened the trio’s eyes as disbelief parted their lips. For a moment, none of them spoke.

As one of the burgundy-dressed senior elixirists assisting wherever she was needed for the time being, Henrietta felt their presence before she fully registered the shapes on the ridge. She pivoted toward them, the tension in her shoulders easing as recognition warmed her features. Her eyes softened in relief and exhaustion, and a flicker of delight shifted across her face. “Lucien,” she whispered, breaking into a light sprint across the scarred earth to greet them. Under the settling hush of the fields, her approach felt like the first true breath after a long-held storm.