The black shroud of Virion's Beast Will cushioned him as he flew a good thirty meters before falling and catching himself, landing on one knee. Dirt sprayed from beneath his claws as he dug in.
"Stay back, Lias!" He shouted, his voice barely audible over the slashing of vines
Another vine lashed out towards me. It was thinner than the others but still had a substantial girth. As it dragged through the air, I threw myself sideways and felt the space split where my head had been. My shoulder hit the grass hard enough to knock the breath from me.
I didn't get up right away. Just inhaled and exhaled as I calmed myself.
The cocoon pulsed with a heartbeat, the vines around it thickening with every beat.
That's Tess in there… maybe… right?
The thought didn't help. It made my hands shake worse and loosened the already feeble grip of my weapon.
"Virion!" I yelled towards the OAP who danced around the vines like a man at least half his age. I pushed myself up as I stumbled to my feet. "Talk to me. What is that?"
He came to a stop, finding peace in the chaos, but he didn't answer straight away. He was mesmerised watching the cocoon with an expression I hadn't seen on him before.
"The beast will," he said finally. "It's rejecting her."
"What?" My voice bounced inadvertently as my eyes snapped back to the hulking mass. "Rejecting her how?"
"Assimilation is supposed to go one way. The host learns to hold the power." His claws flexed against the dirt. "This is the opposite," he lowered himself and readied himself to pounce towards his granddaughter, "This is the power, the Beast Will, trying to control the host."
My hands inadvertently tensed at my sides. I didn't like the sound of that. I liked it even less when a fresh set of thorns split from the mass and turned, almost mockingly, to face us.
"So what do we do?"
"We survive until Tess runs out of mana," He didn't sound convinced by his own answer. "Or until Tessia can fight it from the inside."
Great. Fantastic plan. Leave it to the person to fight their way out. Very reassuring. What's next: wait for someone to learn how to swim whilst they're drowning?
I clenched my fist tighter as I gathered mana into my palm and let a thin ring of gold spread around my forearm.
"What are you doing?"
"Buying time." I stepped past him, boots sinking into churned earth. "You said it's growing. So let's stop it growing."
I dropped to a knee and pressed my palm flat against the nearest root. It was thick and tall, with its own faint warmth. Its gruffness chafed my hand as I rubbed it along its dark green, almost brown, length.
With an exhale, Heat rippled out from my hand as golden flame erupted along it.
It thrashed about; perhaps fire was an innate fear of the beast, given that it was a plant and all.
Could it even feel fear?
I mean, it's not just a beast but a plant too; could either feel fear in the first place?
I'm dragged out of my chain of thought as a black hand settled on my shoulder.
"That's it?" Virion appeared at my shoulder faster than I expected for someone who'd just been trapped behind a wall of thorns. "You could turn that thing to ash."
"I could turn her to ash, but I don't want to hurt Tess, cause if it's integrated with her, wouldn't they, you know, share pain?"
He smiled at me as he patted my shoulder. Then, without another word, shadow withdrew from his head as it spread from his feet and threaded into the ground beside mine, dark tendrils of his own magic wrapping around the vines like rope around a wrist.
Instead of fighting the vines, his own blood, he wrapped them, restrained them, almost like when a parent held back a naughty toddler.
A faint snicker escaped me as I pictured the old elf and a baby Tess doing as much.
Between the two of us, the cocoon's growth staggered. It still pulsed, still fought, but it no longer swallowed the room whole.
"You could've led with that," I muttered.
Sweat beaded along his hairline despite the strain barely showing on his face. I understood why a second later, when I felt just how much of myself the effort was costing. A small, controlled flame was somehow worse than the alternative.
The cocoon lurched as it strained against us.
A vine, thicker than my leg, tore free from the mass and swung down like a felled tree. I threw myself back, as I flicked up my wrist and dragged a wall of gold flame up on instinct. It caught the vine mid-air, didn't burn it, just seared the surface enough to make it recoil.
The cocoon groaned. Not literally for obvious reasons, but it let out what almost sounded like a scream. It was guttural, almost like stone dragged across stone. The emerald light between the vines flickered brighter, then dimmer, then brighter again, in time with something that might've been a heartbeat.
Tess's heartbeat.
"How long is this going to go on for?" I asked, because the alternative was thinking about what was happening to her inside there, and I didn't want to think about that.
"I don't know!" Virion's voice had gone rough. "Why have you got somewhere else to be?"
I let out a low grumble as I clicked and rolled my shoulder.
"What are you-"
"Ending this!" I shouted, gathering flame in both my hands. In the same instant, gold erupted from both my hands and from three points around me.
The vines recoiled from the sudden heat.
The four points of flame converged and ploughed their way through the thick foliage, scorching a path through.
"Virion, now!" I shouted as I let my spell collapse.
He didn't need telling twice.
The black shadow of the old elf shot forward through the gap I'd carved; he kept low to the ground, avoiding any of the squirming vines that continuously slashed and smashed down at him.
He weaved, he jumped, he danced his way through the onslaught.
He was a man reborn.
As he reached the base of the cocoon that held his granddaughter, he pulled both his arms back and drove both claws into the vines like a man tearing open a stubborn parcel. Thorns raked down his forearms, drawing thin lines of blood that he didn't seem to notice.
"Got her!" Virion called as the silver-haired princess fell into his arms.
He pulled her free in one motion, cradling her against his chest as the cocoon convulsed behind him, thrashing at the space where she'd been like it hadn't yet realised its prize was gone.
My knees gave as exhaustion set in. I caught myself on the hilt of my sword, still buried in the dirt where I'd left it, and hauled myself upright by sheer stubbornness.
"Is she-"
"Breathing?" Virion knelt, laying her gently across his lap. "Barely."
I crossed the distance at something between a run and a stumble and dropped beside them. Tess looked wrong in a way I didn't have good words for. Her skin had gone the colour of old parchment, faint green veins tracing beneath the surface as if something were still growing beneath her flesh. Her hair had darkened at the roots, silver bleeding into something closer to black.
I pressed both palms to her sternum and let warmth spill out from me.
Golden warmth enveloped her for the second time, though this time it did not singe at her vines.
The green beneath her skin resisted at first, curling away from the heat the way the vines had. I didn't push. I just kept the flame low and patient, the way you'd coax a stray closer instead of chasing it off entirely. Slowly, achingly slowly, the veins dimmed. Her breathing eased from something ragged into something almost normal.
"...Thank you," Virion said quietly, watching from over my shoulder.
I gave the man an awkward smile as I nodded at his words. "It's noth-"
Behind me, a faint creak sliced through the artificial calm.
"Gramps? Lias? What's going on?" My brother asked, closing the large doors behind him.
"Surely you could've got here 5 minutes earlier…" I grumbled as he strode towards us.
"Sorry, sorry, I got held up-" Arthur's words died the moment his eyes actually landed on the wreckage behind us. "What in the actual hell happened in here?"
"It's uh… a Long story."
"Damn right it is…" Virion added as he ran a hand through Tess's hair.
"Ask us later." I still didn't have the breath to give him even the short version. "Just-"
The mound of vines behind Virion gave a violent shudder.
"Arthur, move!"
Of course he didn't. My idiot brother had never once done the sensible thing first in his entire life, and apparently a room full of murderous foliage wasn't going to be what caused him to change, because he was still rooted to the spot when the whole ruined mass reared up and lashed out straight at him.
"What th-" He got his arm up just in time, catching the first strike across the forearm instead of somewhere far less forgiving, but the force of it spun him hard into the doorframe behind him.
"Arthur!"
I was moving before I'd finished deciding to, dragging my sword back out of the dirt, my arms screaming at me for even considering it. The vines weren't reaching for Tess anymore. They weren't reaching for Virion or me either. Every last tendril in that chamber had decided my brother was the only thing left worth killing.
"Why is it-" He rolled clear of a second strike, coming up with his own teal blade drawn, a thin line of blood already tracking down his cheek from somewhere. "What did I do? I just walked in!"
"This is all your fault!" I spat as I gathered mana towards a point 5 meters ahead of me. A plume of golden fire ignited the thick green vine, sending it squirming, distracting the beast from my brother.
"Hurry up, Art!" I shouted as I extended my palm and shot a second fireball towards another knot of vines to my left.
"Hurry up and do what?" he called back as He rolled again, teal blade flashing up to deflect a thorned tendril aimed at his throat. Sparks scattered where 'steel' met wood, and he grunted at the impact travelling up his arm.
"Why does it want me specifically? I didn't even do anything!"
"Didn't you kill it or something?"
"…"
"Oh, don't give me that look!" I berated him as my eyes narrowed towards the embarrassed teen.
Virion staggered forward with Tess still cradled against his chest, torn between shielding her and joining the fight.
Though that choice was made for him as a thin vine wrapped itself around her dangling ankle and yanked her free from his grasp.
A second, third and fourth vine gripped each of her limbs. They pulled the silver-haired princess into a ball as thicker vines wrapped her up.
"Shit…" A heavy groan escaped me as I turned towards the rejuvenated cocoon.
It pulsed faintly like a beating heart as both the vines that encased Tess and the thick root-like vines at its base began to flail back to life.
I clicked my neck as Virion stumbled towards me.
"Give an old man a hand, boy?"
I made up the distance between us as I lifted up and held his arm over my shoulder. Lugging him back to his feet, we watched in a mix of wonder and horror at the sight before us.
However, before either of us could move, a small orb no larger than a marble shot from behind us and towards the cocoon. It sparkled a myriad of colours under the high artificial daylight.
"What?" Virion mouthed as he looked back over his shoulder towards my brother.
It plunged into the cocoon, almost phasing through its 'shell'.
Light violently began to escape the mess of vines as they began to ripple with its force.
Before I even had the chance to wonder what was going on, an explosion of Light and wrath occurred from within the cocoon, revealing a menacing, naked, black-haired Tess.
The orb sank into her stomach where her mana core was; Tess's sickly complexion that shrouded her when Virion held her disappeared as she went back to normal... no, beyond normal. Her now-flawless pearl skin seemed to literally radiate as her black hair returned to its original gunmetal-silver hue.
Her physical appearance wasn't the only thing that changed. As the orb disappeared completely inside her abdomen, Tess' unconscious body was completely covered in an aura I had never seen before.
She looked divine, like an angel incarnate, as Emerald flame radiated from her unconscious but floating form.
As her aura spread beyond her, the once dark and dead-looking vines were given new life, shifting their colour from a desolate brown and black towards a beautiful and serene jade.
Instinctively, I reached towards her flame.
I had never been afraid of its warmth.
Faint embers of my own gold shuddered in response to her light. Though all trace of her own heat had faded by the time the emerald warmth neared me.
With the Aura's withdrawal, the elf princess fell, being caught by my brother, who held her tight.