And (N)one Shall Remain

“By the Might of the Courage of the North! [Shining Bulwark of the Heavens]!” yelled Bishop Uther as he invoked one of his fourth tier skills. Immediately, a far sturdier barrier of shining light formed behind his flagging [Shield of Faith], which was a weaker defensive skill he received from his second tier. The weaker skill took less concentration and time to cast, though, and with the Bishop’s stats would normally hold against most assaults with ease.

 

His opponent that day was not normal, however. Whatever the abominable creature was, its limbs were coated with some sort of power that did grievous damage to the Bishop’s defenses with every strike, and his weaker shield was already teetering on the brink of annihilation by the time he managed to get his stronger defense between them. 

 

He was glad that he managed to do so in time because moments later his weaker shield shattered before the claws of the strange creature, which he could not identify properly because its shape kept flowing around as if it had no fixed form. That and the creature also resisted his attempts at using [Analysis] on top of everything.

 

Those very same claw-tipped tentacles which eviscerated his prior defenses clashed against the [Shining Bulwark of the Heavens] but failed to break through the sturdier defense. As an experienced combatant, the Bishop could tell that his shield wouldn’t hold on for too long, so he would need to make use of his other skills to turn the tables to his advantage while it lasted.

 

As it was, the creature radiated some sort of strange, perverse aura that assaulted the minds of everyone in the vicinity, though not its own fellows somehow. The bishop chose to tackle that issue first, as it was the most far-reaching effect the creature brought to the battle since its arrival. Fortunately for him, he had a skill to do just that.

 

“By the Blessings of Innocence, [May the Gods Clear My Mind]!” intoned the Bishop as he used a skill he received early in his life, in his second tier, but had used so often to the point that it had evolved twice to its current form. In the past, the skill mostly helped people keep their minds clear and stable under stressful situations, which helped when he was consoling people who lost loved ones or the like.

 

In its present form, however, the skill was instead one that also functioned against every sort of foreign intrusion to the mind, which the Bishop expected the creature’s aura to be, given how he managed to remain mostly unaffected by it. He attributed that to his strong faith and powerful attributes as befit a fourth tier, as it was mostly the weaker people in the expedition that was affected.

 

Contrary to his expectations, however, his vaunted skill failed to completely relieve the expedition members from the ill-effects of the unpleasant aura the creature was giving out. It seemed to alleviate the effects somewhat, but not completely, which surprised the Bishop, as the skill never failed him before. That moment of surprise and inattention nearly cost him, and it was only the intervention of a Temple Guard that saved his life.

 

The creature had apparently taken that moment to focus its strength towards its tentacle-like limbs and delivered a vicious blow that went straight through the Bishop’s [Shining Bulwark of the Heavens], though most of the defense was still intact other than the single hole the strike created. Fortunately a nearby temple guard managed to bring his shield up and interposed himself between the creature and the Bishop before the strike could land on him.

 

That cost the temple guard in question quite a bit, as the blow was forceful enough to dent his shield appreciably and sent him careening off his feet, rolling on the ground a couple times before he landed flat on his back. Fortunately the man didn’t seem to be overly harmed, other than his left arm which held the shield and was likely broken by the blow.

 

Bishop Uther himself realized that he had no time to invoke another skill given the proximity of the creature’s limb and himself, so instead he swung his staff of office and struck at the offending appendage. The Bishop’s staff of office was a weapon in its own right, an artifact designed to amplify and strengthen his skills, while also serving as a very solid bludgeon when needed.

 

His strike was a trained – if rather basic – one and the metal staff struck against the tenebrous limb’s point, where the claw-like bone protruded. Clearly, however, the Bishop overestimated his physical prowess as the only thing his strike managed was to shove the limb away a couple meters without doing much hard to it.

 

In fact, he had to leap back to avoid getting hit when the limb whipped back towards him right afterwards.

 

Before his eyes, the single large tentacle suddenly split into four smaller ones, each still tipped with a claw-like bone shard. While the Bishop had a couple temple guards to help him by his side, the flailing limbs still put them on the defensive, as the attacks came from unpredictable trajectories and often aimed for their blind spots.

 

At first he thought that the creature merely had good sensory skills and could direct its limbs well even through the barrier, until he realized with horror that many small, black eyes with terrifying blood-red pupils had sprouted along the limbs that he was fighting against. Surprised by that transformation, he failed to notice something more important.

 

Namely that the limbs were growing thicker as Esperanza shifted more of her mass through the hole in the barrier and towards the inside.

 

She purposely kept the bulk of her mass “hidden” out of sight in the back of the tentacles, so the people she was fighting failed to notice the increase in mass until she already got most of her body through the gap. With one final slip, she moved the last part of her mass into the Bishop’s protective enclosure and allowed herself to fall to the ground before the startled Bishop and his guards.

 

They only noticed the anomaly by then, when it was far, far too late, as Esperanza was already inside their strongest barrier. It had only taken her so long to push herself through because the damned barrier kept trying to recover the damage she caused to it, which resulted in a prolonged tug-of-war between her forcing it to remain open and the barrier attempting to close on her. Now that she no longer exerted pressure to keep the barrier open, it sealed shut behind her.

 

Which left the Bishop and his three guards locked inside its perimeter with Esperanza.

 

Esperanza herself reassumed a more human-like form – she still felt more comfortable in that shape compared to going full amorphous, especially when fighting – but deliberately made her form appear particularly monstrous to demoralize her opponents. She shifted to a wrinkled humanoid shape that had eyes and toothy maws all over its body, the eyes all staring at her opponents unnervingly.

 

She got the effect she wanted as one of the temple guards inadvertently stepped back in fright upon seeing her, and even the Bishop looked unnerved by her appearance. Naturally, that hesistance of theirs presented an opening that Esperanza pounced upon. As their attention were directed to her “body”, she elongated her legs into tentacular limbs that slithered over towards the legs of the one temple guard that stepped back in fright.

 

Before the surprised man could react, Esperanza’s limbs already tangled themselves around his legs and yanked hard until he fell flat to the ground. At the same time, Esperanza split her arms into three claw-tipped tentacles each and whipped them towards the other three to prevent them from coming to the man’s aid.

 

The bishop and one healthy temple guard managed to block or avoid Esperanza’s strikes, but the other temple guard already had one of his arms broken by Esperanza’s blow earlier in the fight, and only managed to block one of the tentacles. The other one pierced into his shoulder blade as the man grimaced in pain.

 

That grimace turned into a horrified scream mere moments later as the claw that tipped the tentacle shifted around and split into myriad sharp teeth in a maw that gnawed its way through the man’s flesh from the shoulder. Similarly, the man Esperanza took down started screaming in pain and horror as her tentacles grew maws and started gnawing on the man’s leg.

 

It was obvious that the Bishop and the remaining temple guard was in distress upon witnessing the suffering of their compatriots, so Esperanza allowed them to slip through her strikes on purpose. As she expected, the two rushed towards their screaming compatriots, unaware that their reaction was well within Esperanza’s plans.

 

The last temple guard never made it far before one of Esperanza’s tentacle-limbs skewered his right knee from behind. Before the man even hit the ground, another limb that already grew a maw forced itself into the man’s open mouth and began devouring him from the inside to his muffled screams. Even with the obstruction, the man still managed to scream loud enough to be heard by the Bishop.

 

Normally Esperanza would have killed her victims swiftly rather than in a slow, horrifying, and rather excruciating manner as she did then, but she noticed how the Bishop was visibly disturbed when she did what she had done, so she kept it up in the hopes of forcing the man into a mistake. The Bishop was a powerful one, so Esperanza felt no shame in pulling out every trick she could use to tilt the tables to her favor.

 

Fortunately she had read the man right. While the Bishop had some experience in battle, he was clearly unused to seeing his compatriots being eviscerated in some gruesome manner and flinched for a moment too long. Long enough for Esperanza to grab his staff with two of her limbs. With her many limbs, Esperanza then catapulted her “main” body towards the Bishop, turning her form into a wider, thinner sheet as she enveloped him within her. 

 

Trapped in such a restrictive position, the Bishop still tried to resist with what skills he could use from the position, but Esperanza simply shifted her form to allow any offensive skills the Bishop used to pass through unhindered. At the same time, she tightened and constricted her hold on the man’s body until he was left unable to move any of his limbs.

 

Since the man had openly invoked the name of his gods – and being a Bishop of the temple, as she heard the temple guards address the man, he was likely a devout and religious one – Esperanza found herself unable to resist putting in one final jab to the struggling man. She opened one maw next to the man’s ear, and in clear, human tongue, said words that drove the man into impotent fury and despair.

 

“Where are your gods now?” she whispered into his ear.

 

While the Bishop wailed in anger and despair, Esperanza shifted the maws she had been using to try to gnaw on the old man into drill-like fangs as the artifact robes he wore proved to be very difficult to bite through. Instead, she bore small holes into it and slithered parts of her through the holes before she started to rip the Bishop apart from the openings she created.

 

Bishop Uther perished in a painful and gruesome manner that day, his sincere and despairing prayers to the Gods he worshiped all his life left unanswered as a Messenger of their old enemies tore him apart piece by piece until all that was left intact of his body was his severed head.

 

The decapitated head served as a silent testament on how little the Gods of Ephemera – actual or fake, usurper or native, new or old – were able to affect the lives of the mortals that still existed there, and the Bishop’s death simultaneously sounded the death kneel for the rest of the expedition he led, especially once they caught a glimpse of his gruesome fate.