Blazing Then

Hot steam billowed from the churchyard, fiercely resisting the hailstorm.

The wind blew cold, temporarily pushing the steam aside, revealing a sinkhole filled with a gigantic braided mass of living fungal cables tangled into a single huge nexus. The cables were like a massive networking data center, stretching out in all directions, some as thick as an arm, others like a tree trunk.

A moat of hot thermal water bubbled around it, providing energy and warmth to the living mass. Bones, coffin fragments, and mineral-encrusted grave markers were threaded through the cords. The oldest parts of the nexus were covered in mineral crust, while newer portions were slick and pale. The nexus twitched and contracted at random, sending pulses of communication throughout its massive underground reach.

Left unchecked the mass would eventually spread globally.

Dilara and the apparition stood on the edge of the sinkhole, looking in.

“Abomination,” Dilara muttered.

“I remember it being less impressive.”

“COME. DIE. YOUR REMAINS. WILL NOURISH ME,” the wind moaned.

Hundreds of arm-thick braided cables began sprouting from the walls, turning the entire sinkhole into a living, writhing thing.

“Any bright ideas?” the spirit asked.

“Everything, everywhere, all at once. Together.”

“Together.”

Those cables closest to the pair thrust out to grab them.

The pair jumped in unison, landing atop a sliver disk that caught them mid-air. The disk dropped low, skimming over the bubbling moat, racing towards the center of the sink hole.

Cables burst forth from the mass, aiming for the disk.

A cloud of ethereal dancing silver swords surrounded the disk, severing the cables as they came at it in rapid fire.

Black lighting arced out from the cloud, striking the nexus repeatedly, turning patches necrotic gray.

The patches quickly grew over with new healthy matter.

Ray beams of silver light burst forth from the sword cloud, hitting the nexus in multiple places. Cables turned instantly to stone, cracking and fracturing away, breaking lines of communication.

Within moments new cords were springing out at the edges to reestablish the connection.

Thunder rolled above. Coconut sized hailstones pounded the mass, bouncing off. Lightning cracked, forking down, striking the nexus, jolting it with hundreds of millions of volts repeatedly. Steam rose from seams that burst open, only to knit shut almost instantly.

“IT TICKLES,” the wind howled.

The cloud of dancing swords increasingly thinned, revealing Dilara and the apparition, pressed back-to-back. Dilara wrote feverishly on her bleeding hand while the spirit wrote in the air in shorthand.

The disk spun rapidly, firing out arcs, beams, bolts, and missiles of black and silver magic. The constant barrage kept repulsing the onslaught of cables.

The cables were unrelenting.

“I am out!” Dilara shouted, tossing her quill aside. “Only you now!”

“Hold on!”

The duchess spun, wrapping her arms around the apparition as the disk gave out beneath their feet.

The apparition kept them both aloft as he bobbed and weaved, dodging one cable after another, firing off blast after blast of black lightning.

Dilara held on tight, feeling the apparition’s breathing become more and more frantic, turning increasingly ragged as he rapidly burned off all the absorbed life force from Anna’s blood. She could feel her arms starting to sink through his fading form.

“You are running out,” she whispered.

“I know,” the apparition admitted softly between gasps.

The pair’s rapid evasion slowed as they drifted closer and closer to the nexus beneath them.

A giant mouth opened in the center of the nexus, a thick tongue like braid swishing about hungrily.

“FEED.”

“ME.”

“Last thoughts?” the apparition asked.

“Magic is useless. Try the mundane.”

The apparition looked to the stylus in his hand. “Sure. Why not.”

He ducked aside as another cable came for them. “Oh. I still hate you.”

“I can die with that.”

The spirit pitched forward, dive bombing at the thrashing tongue, stylus extended in both hands as the world’s tiniest sword.

The stylus impaled itself into the tongue, shoving in all the way, as both the apparition and Dilara crashed right into the braided mass, rebounding them into the mouth of the nexus.

The mouth slammed shut.

A massive crushing force enveloped Dilara all over. She could hear the bones of the gauzed hand clinging to her shoulder crack and snap. The mouth tried to chew her but the black velvet of the pall resisted. Dilara held her breath.

Suddenly the mouth went slack.

Dilara felt herself falling backwards then landing on sharp volcanic rock. It stung but did not pierce her flesh.

She immediately sat up, finding herself inside a large void within the nexus. All around her the fungal cords were writhing and seizing as necrosis rapidly spread through the entire network.

Her eyes tracked to the source of the spreading destruction.

Stuck into the base of the tongue was the stylus, sucking all the life out of The Great Undeath.

The spirit laid beside the base of the tongue, looking increasingly more and more human and less and less like an apparition. He sat up slowly, looking down at his flesh toned skin.

“A-Anna?”

“No,” he replied, though he sounded just like her now.

“You have a body again.”

“It’s only borrowed,” Stylus replied, slowly getting up. “I intend to return it.”

They both looked to the stylus as it continued to rapidly drain the fungal network until every braided cord went limp.

The Great Undeath was dead.

In the skies above, the hail yielded to gentle rain.

Stylus stood and retrieved the writing utensil. He turned and approached Dilara.

Dilara’s eyes locked on the tip of the stylus.

“Am I next?”

“I can’t kill you with that pall on.”

Dilara looked at the gauzed hand pressed nearly flat against her shoulder. One finger twitched. It was severely wounded but still alive.

“Do not hurt her.”

“I’ll deal with you later. We need to get to Anna. Now,” Stylus said.

He summoned a black levitating disk. Both stepped on.