A searing agony tore through Rhys’s arm. Gloom-Striker mandibles had found purchase, a sickening crunch of chitin on flesh, leaving a jagged canyon of exposed muscle. A viscous, green-tinged mist-venom seeped into the wound, a cold fire spreading through his veins. He wrenched his arm free, breath catching, the world blurring at the edges. His body, fortified by the Mist-Lurer's strange gifts, resisted being torn completely, but bone glinted through the ruined flesh.
Time was a luxury he didn’t possess. Death lurked in every swirling tendril of Evermist, in every chittering approach. Permanent disfigurement, a future as one of Aethelgard’s many broken, was a certainty if he faltered. Yet, no respite for healing presented itself.
Rhys spun, Evermist curling around his outstretched hand. He avoided another lunge, the chitinous legs of a Gloom-Striker scraping inches from his face. A focused burst of Mist, condensed and sharp, struck its head. The creature staggered, then exploded, mist-essence and ichor painting the air.
His attacks were potent. The Gloom-Strikers, monstrous fusions of hardened chitin and animated mist-venom, were no match for his direct assaults. Their numbers, however, proved an endless torrent.
For every beast he shattered, two more materialized from the swirling white. They filled the gaps, their hunger insatiable, their chittering chorus a relentless pressure on his senses. The previous skirmishes, even against the larger, more aggressive Mist-Crawlers, paled in comparison to this suffocating tide.
They attacked without cease, without tiring. Evasive maneuvers, brief shifts in the Evermist’s currents to slip past their lunges, offered only momentary reprieve. He was already encircled, a lone island against a rising, monstrous sea.
Continuing this way meant certain demise, an ignominious end as carrion for these soulless horrors. Rhys felt the familiar ache of depletion deep within his being. His connection to the Evermist, usually a wellspring, now felt like a trickling stream.
Should the Evermist abandon him, even for a moment, his perilous journey would end. There would be no opportunity to find the forgotten settlements, no chance to fulfill the silent promise he carried. This, then, was his final gamble.
‘I need something faster, more precise than a concentrated burst. Something that demands less from my core, but still breaks their hardened forms. Think, Rhys. A way…’
Imagination was a desperate whisper in the storm of chittering mandibles. Calm thought was a forgotten art in this life-or-death moment, yet he had to conjure a solution. An evolved form of his direct Evermist manipulations.
His current technique was shaping the Evermist into concussive force, a directed wave to disrupt and destroy. But was pure force always necessary?
His connection allowed him to perceive the Evermist’s currents, to command its essence. Could he not sculpt it, instead of simply pushing it? Like a sculptor forming clay, but with the world’s very breath.
A possibility, thin as a wisp of mist, formed in his mind. No, even if it was improbable, he had to force it into being. His life hung by a thread.
If only a flicker of a chance existed, he would seize it. Rhys plunged his will into the last reserves of his Evermist connection. Every thread of his being screamed in protest, but he pushed past the pain.
Instantly, the Evermist around him ceased its swirling. It compacted, solidified into dozens of crystalline points, needle-sharp and humming with latent power. They were not mere illusions but hardened slivers of ethereal force, each the length of his forearm.
Dozens of Evermist Shards hovered, shimmering with an inner light.
With a guttural gasp, Rhys commanded them forward. They flew with the hiss of countless arrows released simultaneously, a whistling hail of death.
*HISS! HISS! CRACK!*
Holes the size of a grown person’s fist appeared in the chitinous bodies of the Gloom-Strikers. Their segmented forms buckled, mist-venom and black ichor bursting forth in sickening sprays. Several creatures collapsed, twitching, their forms dissolving into the very mist that birthed them.
In the immediate vicinity, not a single Gloom-Striker remained standing. The relentless tide had been swept back, annihilated by this desperate, unforeseen surge of power.
Rhys laughed, a raw, rasping sound that tore at his throat. He sank to his knees, utterly spent. Every atom of his being screamed for respite. Pouring out the last vestiges of his Evermist connection had brought him to the brink of collapse.
Not a flicker of strength remained, even in his fingertips.
Then, a tremor rippled through the Evermist beneath him. A soft, grinding sound, like stone shifting under immense pressure, reached his ringing ears.
Rhys, with bloodshot eyes, forced his gaze upwards. Despair, cold and absolute, flashed through him. From the mist-shrouded earth, a creature several times larger than any he had faced began to emerge.
Its chitinous shell, hardened like obsidian, shimmered with a faint, malevolent crimson hue, making it appear impossibly ancient, terrifyingly powerful. In that horrifying moment, its identity became chillingly clear.
“Matriarch…” The word was a broken whisper on his lips.
As all her subordinates had perished, the Matriarch Gloom-Striker finally revealed herself. Around her colossal form, smaller, but significantly more robust Gloom-Strikers began to materialize. These were the Soldier Gloom-Strikers.
They stood twice the height of the regular swarm, their mandibles thicker, their limbs armed with razor-sharp spurs. Once caught in their jaws, escape was an impossibility.
For every Matriarch, it was said, twenty Soldier Gloom-Strikers served. Compared to the legion Rhys had just fought, their numbers were few, yet their individual threat level dwarfed the entire previous horde.
Matriarch Gloom-Striker moved towards Rhys, flanked by her terrifying Soldiers. Her crystalline eyes, dark as polished onyx, burned with a primal, furious rage directed solely at him.
Her wrath must have been immeasurable, for a Matriarch to break her ingrained cycle and venture so far from her deep nest. While a Matriarch was considered a formidable entity, her true danger lay in the control she wielded over countless Gloom-Strikers.
A screech, vibrating with ancient anger, tore from the Matriarch. The Soldier Gloom-Strikers rushed forward. Rhys’s eyes darted, searching for a familiar shadow, a familiar presence. Drakk, if he was here, remained unseen.
A Soldier Gloom-Striker seized Rhys by the waist. A jolt of agonizing pain shot through him, seizing every nerve, stiffening his body like a rigor-mortised corpse. Yet, his mind remained unnervingly clear.
The Matriarch began to burrow into the ground, followed by her Soldiers. Even the Soldier that held Rhys plunged downwards, dragging him into the earth, into the churning, suffocating Evermist below.
Rhys’s body contorted, pressured by the compacting earth and the strange, fluid density of the descending mist. He had no idea how far they descended, how deep into Aethelgard’s buried past.
Suddenly, the crushing pressure dissipated. A cavern, vast and cavernous, opened before him. They had entered the heart of the Gloom-Strikers’ stronghold, their hidden nest, a grotesque warren carved from compacted earth and solidified Evermist.
The walls of the nest were slick with a strange, hardened mist-essence, making them unyielding, like petrified stone. It was a maze, far more complex than any human-made labyrinth. Even the most seasoned explorer would be lost in its twisting passages.
Matriarch and her Soldier escort led Rhys deeper into the nightmare, further away from the surface.
They arrived in a chamber teeming with countless larvae and pulsating, gelatinous eggs—the Matriarch’s nursery. Bones of devoured prey lay scattered across the damp floor, stark white against the grey earth.
Matriarch Gloom-Striker stood in the center, emitting a series of low, guttural sounds. Immediately, Gloom-Striker larvae, pale and writhing, emerged from various fissures in the walls. They were much smaller than regular Gloom-Strikers, their shells translucent, almost ghost-like.
Hundreds of these grotesque infants swarmed the walls and floor, advancing on Rhys.
The Soldier Gloom-Striker, which had held him captive, finally released its grip. Rhys fell helplessly to the ground. A paralyzing mist-venom, injected during the descent, spread rapidly, rendering him unable to move even a single finger. His consciousness, however, remained agonizingly keen.
The larvae, antennae twitching with eager anticipation, surrounded the helpless Rhys. They sensed their imminent meal.
They tore at his tattered robe, their tiny mandibles, surprisingly sharp, sinking into his skin. He couldn’t even scream, his eyes wide with unadulterated horror. The realization that he was being eaten alive, slowly, relentlessly, sent a wave of icy panic through his brain.
Rhys let out a silent roar, a primal scream that resonated only within the confines of his own mind.
At that moment, a deep, resonant pulse surged through his connection to the Evermist. It was not a flicker, but a profound, unyielding thrum, like a forgotten chord finally struck.
A jolt, like lightning forged from frozen mist, coursed through him. He felt… renewed. The paralyzing venom’s hold shattered, a brittle illusion. His Evermist connection, previously a trickle, now surged, a torrent of boundless potential.
Rhys screamed. It was not a cry of pain, but a declaration of defiance, a desperate, guttural sound that echoed in the cavern.
A plethora of Evermist Shards, sharper, faster, more numerous than before, flooded the nursery at his command. Amid the Matriarch Gloom-Striker’s wail-like cry of alarm, Rhys disregarded her. His focus was on the immediate, overwhelming threat.
Evermist Shards obliterated the larvae. They burst and tore apart like fragile, bloated sacks, their translucent bodies dissolving into vapor and ichor. The air thickened with the residue of their destruction.
Seeing this impossible turn, the Soldier Gloom-Strikers rushed forward, bellowing their guttural challenges. Rhys turned his intensified fury upon them.
The Soldier Gloom-Strikers, struck by the torrent of Evermist Shards, began to fall. The raw power now flowing through Rhys was immense, a leap beyond his previous limits. One moment, they were charging, the next, their limbs were shattered, their heads exploded, their forms collapsing into broken chitin.
Only the Matriarch Gloom-Striker remained in the nursery, a colossal, enraged presence. Rhys unleashed a volley of his Evermist Shards at her. They struck her obsidian-like shell with concussive force, but had no effect.
Her hide was too thick, her defenses too profound. A shimmering veil of hardened mist-essence, an innate barrier, deflected his every strike. Enraged by the deaths of her spawn and her soldiers, the Matriarch Gloom-Striker let out a high-frequency shriek. It was not a physical attack, but an assault on the very mind, on the senses.
The high-frequency sound waves struck the cavern walls, amplifying, rebounding, forming a destructive vortex of pure sound. Rhys screamed, collapsing, blood streaming from his ears. His eardrums ruptured, his brain concussed by the unbearable assault.
This was the Matriarch’s true weapon, a skill akin to an ancient terror. Attacking through amplified, agonizing sound waves was her devastating power. With bloodshot eyes, Rhys gazed at the approaching Matriarch, her immense form blurring through his pain-filled vision. She moved her antennae, a grotesque display of triumph.
*You won. Fine. Have it your way, you abhorrent beast.*
A raw, broken laugh tore from his chest, mingled with blood. With immense effort, he lifted a trembling hand, clenching it into a defiant fist. He would not scream. He would not beg. He would meet death with an unbroken will.
Matriarch Gloom-Striker plunged her mandibles, ready to strike, to tear him apart. Rhys shut his eyes, awaiting the inevitable.
Suddenly, a violent gust of Evermist ripped through the cavern. The Matriarch Gloom-Striker’s head, still contorted in a silent shriek, flew into the air, separated cleanly from her massive body. Her colossal form remained standing for a moment, headless, before collapsing in a torrent of green ichor and mist-essence.
Rhys, drenched in the foul fluids that erupted from the Matriarch’s torso, blinked. It was surreal—the body remaining, the head soaring.
Then, a familiar, gruff voice cut through the ringing in his ears.
“Come to your senses, you fool! How long will you lie there like carrion for the lesser mist-things?”
It was Drakk. He had, with a single, devastating strike, severed the Matriarch Gloom-Striker’s head, a phantom blade moving faster than Rhys’s mist-dulled eyes could follow.
Drakk glanced at the pulped corpses of the larvae and the shattered forms of the Soldier Gloom-Strikers, a grim expression on his face. “Still, you’re not entirely useless, boy.” He wasn’t a man for overt praise, but the words held a grudging respect.
Rhys had proven his resilience, his inherent strength. Though he appeared helpless before the Matriarch, any other soul in Aethelgard would have met an even swifter, more agonizing end. The Matriarch Gloom-Striker was a creature of immense power, a challenge even for the most seasoned protectors of the settlements.
His refusal to yield, his desperate defiance that had unlocked something new within his connection to the Evermist—that was what mattered. In moments of true crisis, human spirit revealed its core. Some bent, some broke, others burned brighter than ever.
Rhys, it seemed, was of the latter.
Sounds of chittering, a chorus of angry, guttural cries, echoed through the cavern. It was the remaining Gloom-Strikers, drawn by the demise of their Queen, hungry for vengeance.
Drakk let out his characteristic, rough laugh, a sound devoid of mirth, his eyes gleaming with a fierce, almost mad light. “Get up! How long will you sit there amidst the remains of your enemies? Do you plan to just lie down and let them carve you apart?”
“Get up! Even if you’re to die, let it be with a blade of Evermist in your hand, facing them down.”
Rhys gritted his teeth, the pain in his head and arm a distant throb against the roar in his ears. He didn’t want to appear weak, not in front of this old, infuriating protector. Not again. Even if he died now, he would not give Drakk the satisfaction of seeing him break.
*Damn you, old bastard.*
He pushed himself up, every muscle protesting, his gaze fixed on the approaching tide of chitin. The Gloom-nest filled with charging Gloom-Strikers.
Rhys screamed, a pure, unadulterated cry of defiance. Evermist Shards, now a veritable storm, exploded from his outstretched hands, tearing through the encroaching horde. In that deep, forgotten cavern, there were no bystanders. Only a storm of chittering monsters, a broken man wielding the Evermist like a weapon, and a madman watching, his own ghosts whispering in the shadows.