A Relatively Powerful Mage

Sylvi limped along as best she could with several broken bones. Fortunately, Ashlyn hadn’t landed far away. Unfortunately, she hadn't fared much better than Sylvi, having sustained similar injuries, though they were slightly less severe. Vallo had come out of it the best of the three, but he had spent a lot of his mana using his bird form for several minutes.

They moved as best they could, leaving the clearing and heading toward the stone forest. Pursuers from nearby supply outposts chased after them, easily outpacing them. Fortunately, Sylvi was still deadly, even with her limited mobility. She easily picked off the first few Chixel that recklessly charged towards them. She didn’t have enough arrows to kill all of them, but it was enough to cause them to hesitate.

They made it the final few meters and ducked behind a massive stone tree, obscuring themselves from their pursuer's view. They weren’t safe, but it gave them a momentary reprieve to drink potions and check their supplies. Sylvi quickly made a makeshift splint, using arrows with the heads removed and some straps from where she had cut away her parachute. After stabilizing her leg, she created a second one for Ashlyn.

They limped further through the forest, away from the Chixel’s center of power. The forest provided them some cover, but it also made it harder for Sylvi to pick off would-be attackers. On several occasions, they were forced to fight in close quarters. Sylvi and Ashlyn were extremely limited in their combat effectiveness, as they usually relied on their agility.

Fortunately, Vallo made up for their deficiencies. While he wasn’t a skilled melee combatant, he made up for that with his Shapeshifting. He would start the fighting by slightly altering his form, appearing mostly like himself but bigger and more muscular. That was usually enough to overpower the smaller and weaker Chixel. However, in one particularly dire encounter, he had shifted into a brown bear. Sylvi noticed that it looked off, as some of its facial features looked incomplete or disproportionate. Fortunately, whatever flaw the form had, it still had more than enough power to crush most of the patrol and send the rest scurrying away.

“That was so cool. Why didn’t you use that earlier?” Ashlyn asked excitedly.

“The greater the difference in mass and abilities between myself and my new form, the greater the mana cost. Using that form drained most of my remaining mana. It’s also hard creating forms from memory; it's a lot easier if I’ve memorized and practiced a form ahead of time,” Vallo explained, though he looked slightly uncomfortable with the girl's praise.

As nightfall came, Sylvi felt relieved. Her Hunt of The Night trait improved her overall abilities and recovery rate, while her Umbral Eyes allowed her to see in pitch black without any issues. Ashlyn was similarly competent at night, leaving only Vallo at a disadvantage. While they couldn’t rest in one place, they were far more effective at avoiding confrontations.

Sylvi and Ashlyn moved better on the second day, thanks to the potions and their naturally high regenerations. They were far from a hundred percent, but they were far more effective in combat and at avoiding it. With fewer patrolling enemies, Sylvi felt confident they were through the worst of it. That night, they managed to find a secluded location and sleep in shifts. By the third morning since their escape, Sylvi felt close to fully healed and no longer needed to keep her leg in a splint.

She took the time to reorient themselves. She hadn’t been focused on directly returning to Celestia but simply evading their pursuers. While she wasn’t certain of exactly where they were, she realized they had unknowingly gotten closer to the front lines between the Chixel and Azala. She adjusted their course, leading them east, not wanting to get any closer to the ruins of Minneapolis.

They hadn’t gotten far when Ashlyn stopped and pointed. “There’s another person up ahead,” she said.

Before Sylvi could respond, the girl raced ahead to greet them. Sylvi cursed under her breath and moved to follow her. The person in question was a man in his mid-thirties with tattered clothing that had likely been looted from the city. The man looked at Ashlyn with an intense gaze, and a moment later, Ashlyn was stumbling and clutching at her head.

Sylvi didn’t hesitate, grabbing and firing an arrow in one fluid motion. The arrow flew true, striking the man in his chest with an empowered Devastation Shot. The power of the arrow blew a fist-sized hole through where his heart had been, killing him instantly. With her target down, she immediately scanned the area for signs of another attacker. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be another threat.

“What the hell happened?” Vallo asked in confusion as he helped Ashlyn up.

“I felt a sudden headache, and then my body stopped working. It still hurts like hell,” Ashlyn said as she accepted Vallo’s helping hand.

“It was an Azala,” Sylvi said as she retrieved her arrow and wiped it on the dead man’s clothing.

“Is it just me, or is there something off about this whole area?” Vallo asked with an unconscious shiver despite the heat.

Sylvi looked around and noticed what he was talking about. The normally bright and vibrant trees were now brown and dying. She eventually spotted the likely culprit: a black cancerous growth the size of a cantaloupe that had invaded the tree. As she stared at it, the growth expanded and contracted in a noticeable rhythm, like it was breathing into the tree. Now that she knew what to look for, she spotted several more growths on other trees.

“Let's get out of here,” Ashlyn said.

“Not yet. We need to know how bad this is, but we won’t be reckless. We’ll go to a nearby rise in elevation and survey the area, and then we get out as fast as possible. Assume anyone we meet is hostile,” Sylvi explained. Vallo and Ashlyn reluctantly nodded.

A system notification got Sylvi’s attention. It was a new quest, though the distinction of world quest made it stand out. The Azala had begun xenoforming the planet, and they were too close to the epicenter of their power. However, this made information gathering all the more critical.

Fortunately, they didn’t have far to go, with a moderately sized rocky rise that jutted above the treeline only a couple of kilometers away. As they headed north-easterly, Sylvi noticed more and more growths, much larger in size than the previous one. They weren’t all attached to trees; some slithered across the ground like an overgrown slug.

Slyvi did a double take when she noticed a particularly large growth in one of the last trees before they crested the rise. It wasn’t just an amorphous blob of flesh; a fully formed eye stared at her impassively. The blob blinked, and then its eye retracted inside itself, disappearing from view.

Sylvi didn’t say anything, but she quickened their pace by a noticeable amount, almost jogging up to the top of the rise. When she got to the top and surveyed the area, she began to question if she had died and gone to hell.

In the distance, the trees had transformed into fleshy pillars with writhing tentacles. Many tentacles had various perception organs: eyes, ears, and noses. Others had large sacs that spewed spores into the air, making the nearby area hazy. The ground was covered in a stretched-out version of the growths on the trees, with capillaries running between the flesh trees like roots. Large monstrosities that appeared like giant humanoids with masses growing on them lumbered through the hellscape.

Ashlyn started throwing up her breakfast, while Vallo looked like he might do the same. Sylvi did her best to remain calm and in control, focusing on details with dispassionate precision. While she wanted to gather as much information as possible, she strongly suspected their location had been compromised when the first Azala had spotted them.

“Alright, now we can get the hell out of here,” Sylvi said, not needing to tell the others again.

They started to climb down from the rise, but they hadn’t gotten far when Sylvi got an update to the previous system prompt. Somehow, the quest had already been completed. What could have possibly gotten inside the hellscape they had just witnessed and won?

As Sylvi was pondering what could have happened, she felt something pressing on her mind. It projected into her head with an anguished shriek. Fortunately, it didn’t appear to be a direct attack as it wasn’t painful or attempting to seize control of her mind or body. It was simply a psionic scream that hadn’t been directed at her in particular. Judging by the confused and frightened looks the others had, they had a similar experience.

Sylvi’s eyes were drawn to the distant horrors once again. Before the psionic scream, the tentacles had slowly been wiggling about, but now they squirmed and writhed with frenetic energy. The lumbering humanoid monstrosities had gone from slowly lumbering about to moving with a sense of urgency. Numerous other smaller forms that were likely normal human sizes, which had gone unnoticed before due to their relatively smaller size, now scurried about like a colony of ants that had been disturbed.

Ashlyn and Vallo looked like they might be sick again, but Sylvi remained focused. She knew it would be important to gather as much information as possible. She tried to gauge the number of the Azala moving about, but the sheer amount of activity made it nearly impossible to get accurate numbers. However, she did see a mix of Human and Chixel hosts in various stages of transformation. Some appeared normal, indistinguishable from a normal representation of their species. However, others had varying numbers of tentacles protruding in seemingly random locations. Others had cancerous growths on the outside of their bodies.

“I can see why the Chixel were losing,” Vallo commented.

Ashlyn said nothing; her normal bravado had been replaced with abject terror. Sylvi also felt a creeping dread as thoughts of how futile their resistance would be threatened to overtake her rational thinking. Years of training couldn’t prepare her for this, but it did allow her to focus on the mission. That didn’t banish the emotions but kept them at bay for a while. She focused on the details and the objective. She reminded herself that none of this information mattered if they didn’t live to tell others.

“We need to move!” Sylvi ordered sharply, breaking the two others from their dark musings.

They raced down the rise as fast as they could without breaking an ankle. It wasn’t a sustainable pace, but it would hopefully get them out of this hellscape. Unfortunately, they were moving too fast to avoid all of the growths. Sylvi stepped on one and squelched under her boots before exploding in a spray of tar-like ichor. Some of the sticky goo got on her skin and immediately began to corrode through her flesh.

“Fuck!” Sylvi screamed, taking out a knife and scrapping the offending substance off of her skin.

In the brief few seconds it had been touching her, it had managed to leave a wound similar to a chemical burn. She was also forced to remove several articles of clothing and armor as the acid ichor dissolved through them and threatened to inflict even more damage on Sylvi’s skin.

Her boots were completely destroyed, almost completely dissolved within a minute. She also had to cut away portions of her pants, leaving her with a pair of tattered shorts. Fortunately, most of her upper body had escaped unscathed, though there were a few small holes where small amounts of the ichor had splashed onto her.

Now barefoot, Sylvi slowed their pace considerably. If she stepped on another of those growths, her foot would dissolve just as easily as her boot had. While she wanted to take each step carefully and spend hours escaping the dangerous hazards of the area, that might be just as disastrous as the sprint had been. Instead, she settled on a moderate jogging pace, carefully focusing on each step.

It wasn’t long before they were off the rise and jogging through the forest. Gradually, the contagion lessened as they made their way directly south, getting as far as they could from the epicenter of the contagion. Sylvi sighed in relief when they hadn’t seen any signs of the cancerous substance for several minutes.

They readjusted their direction, heading east toward Celestia, though Sylvi also had them heading slightly south, wanting a bit more distance from the blighted land.