No Need for a Core?

Moriko placed the compass on the pedestal and stepped back. The runes and wards on the door slowly faded, and then a set of marks appeared around the door, indicating the order to release the physical seals. She paid attention to every mechanism while she consulted with Mordecai. It was clear that unlocking the door put all of these seals under tension and when the door was next closed the rods were going to be pushed back into place as the tension released.

If the seals weren't opened in the correct order then mechanisms would bind and twist to lock the rods in place. And of course Mordecai appreciated the paranoid craftsmanship. Moriko squashed the irritated thought, she knew that his little 'reminder' last night had left her upset.

Not that he was wrong per se, but it was still an unpleasant thought. And Moriko had certainly not mentioned it to Kazue or Bridgette, though she couldn't stop from fussing over Kazue a bit that morning as she made sure that everyone had their best protective clothing and gear on, and had prompted Kazue to manifest her wings in case she needed to fly.

Beyond the door lay a short corridor that ended in a shimmering wall. The three of them approached slowly and carefully as they tried to make sense of the energies around the barrier. Moriko could only be certain that it was a ward and a dangerous one. Bridgette's training allowed her to work out a little more, there was some sort of spatial magic involved, but she couldn't make out the details.

"I think I've got this," Kazue said. Her eyes were half closed and unfocused, and Moriko could only assume she was in communication with her liminal spirit. "It's a sort of closed realm. Space has been twisted to only allow passage in one direction. There's a layer over it to keep air from touching it, but once you push through that, it's not letting you back out." She shuddered and opened her eyes fully. "Don't try to back out once you touch it, it's not letting go. There's a gradient, so it shouldn't damage anything so long as your overall momentum is forward, but if you try to back up then you might hurt yourself."

Moriko shuddered. "That's nasty. It could draw all your blood into your arm because there would be no back pressure stopping it. It might not take long for the skin to rupture."

Bridgette looked ill at the thought. "What sort of insanity requires this kind of ward?"

Kazue shook her head and said, "I can't tell. But I think it should be safe to pass through, it's going to try to draw all of you in once you touch it. We need to just not fight it."

Great. Surrendering control over herself to another was not something Moriko was good at. There were a couple of exceptions, but that was slightly different. Hmm. Or was it? Moriko smiled and said, "Understood. I'm trusting your judgment, so trust that I am waiting on the other side of it."

"Wha-?" Kazue yelped, but Moriko had already moved out of the kitsune's reach and she committed to her action was a small jump forward across the border. The feeling of being sucked into the barrier was disturbing, but she only had to let it control her body for a moment before she was through.

The smell hit Moriko first. It was sweet and musky with a sharp tang that cut through it in an unpleasant way. She almost wanted to think of it as the scent of rot, but that felt wrong. Rot seemed like it would somehow be healthier than whatever this was.

Moriko found herself in a small bubble that created a second ward against the things on the other side. This ward clearly did not keep the air out, but it seemed to work well enough against the surging mass of stuff on the other side. When Kazue and Bridgette followed a few moments later, the bubble expanded a little, forcing the growths to scrape along the ground. Moriko looked down to realize that the entire ground was scraped clean; this bubble was created by their passage.

"May all the gods preserve us," Bridgette whispered with wide eyes. Moriko couldn't blame her for the sentiment as she watched a vine-like extrusion slither across the barrier, its veins pulsing. A slit ruptured on its surface that oozed a mixture of vile-looking fluids, and from that rupture grew an eyeball. Half of the eyeball started growing facets like an insect's eye while the other half started growing multi colored fur. The fur abruptly turned green as it reformed into grass while the insectoid half of the eye collapsed into a circular maw that twisted to chew on the grass-covered half.

Mordecai's panicked thoughts cut through her horrified fascination. "Destroy it. Destroy it now, burn it until not even ash and dust remain, and even then do not stop. Obliterate every trace of anything that could have once been life. There is nothing to save here other than yourselves. It will try to infect you, do not let it. Hold on tight to your sense of self. And please, please come back to me, do not let this consume you. If you lose yourself to it, you won't die, and I'm not sure I could find your soul in there."

Moriko had never heard her husband sound so afraid, and his last words were bone-chilling. "Kazue! Bridgette! Mordecai's terrified of whatever this is. Don't let it take you over, and destroy it all to the last and then keep burning it."

Both of them stared at her for a moment before turning to face the undulating mass of virulent life once more. The faint glow of this interior bubble began to fade, its creation clearly a temporary protection. Moriko was grateful for even that, stepping directly into that horror would have been almost impossible to cope with.

Bridgette's form erupted with green phoenix fire, a barrier and weapon in one. The air around Kazue scintillated with small shields of force while shadowy dream images began to flicker into existence. Moriko called upon Sakiya's blessings and divine might while wrapping herself in dark lightning and turbulent air.

The barrier creaked, then cracked, and finally gave.

Bolts of black lightning flowed out from Moriko, running and dancing along the ground to slam into the mass with explosive force, steam erupting from the vaporized flesh. The lightning tunneled into the writhing substance and jagged tendrils lashed out to grasp at it, dragging and pushing the hungry pustules away. Moriko didn't let the lightning fade after that and left a network of shadowy lines upon the ground, ignoring the dangerous draw on chi to hold that much shadow in place.

Blades of nothing and the winds of dark nightmares lashed out from Kazue, slicing and lacerating the oozing flesh into uncountable pieces, slowing its advance and causing the still-living pieces to turn on each other briefly, consuming themselves even as they were assimilated back into the greater mass. Kazue started crying as more magic welled forth, and Moriko got a glimpse of her wife's worst nightmares. A swath of not-quite-real forest spread through the virulent growth, wreathed in fire. Vague, flickering shadows could be heard fighting and the sounds of distant battle echoed forth.

Unending mass boiled and bubbled under the dream fire, Kazue's will and imagination crushing the mindless monstrosity's reality to fill it it with more fire. The trees began to fade, but the fire remained.

Bridgette's attack was the most straightforward. Phoenix fire could heal, but even at its gentlest, it would sear wounds clear of infection and putrefaction before flesh could be restored. What surrounded them was nothing but disease. The princess's aura of fire flared wider as she walked forward and the ambulatory cancer screamed as it began to incinerate.

But there was ever more of the mutating flesh flowing at them. Moriko couldn't wipe out the swaths that the other two could, but she could defend them. She could feel everywhere that the motile substance touched her web of shadow lightning that she'd lashed her own shadow to, and she used it to sling herself at every intrusion into their cleared space. A crash of wind and lightning accompanied every blow, shattering the pseudopods and appendages.

The formless thing was at least fragile, for it had no true structure in its ever-mutating substance. But every last bit of it was filled with an endless need to consume and devour everything, even itself, and it had an unholy vitality to it that made it incredibly difficult to destroy.

The web was too draining to maintain for long, and a sudden wave of blooming mushrooms with mandible-tipped tentacles nearly separated Kazue and Bridgette before Moriko blasted through it, sending charcoaled bits flying away. After that she collapsed her web into a simpler 'leash', grabbing onto Kazue's and Bridgette's shadows and dragging them closer together. Twenty feet was the most she could safely give them.

While they couldn't create an ever-widening circle this way, they could continually forge a path. Moriko became a guardian angel of air, lightning, and darkness as her body flickered constantly between the other two women, beating back every surge of encroaching tissue.

Kazue drew upon the knowledge that Ozuran had granted her and channeled her magic to create a sphere of roiling darkness that steadily plowed through the ceaseless gnashing of hungering life. Where it passed, swaths of lifeless gray were left behind. She'd never used much shadow magic directly, though the knowledge had enhanced her understanding of the mutable boundaries between reality and the many reflections of reality. But right now she needed to call upon the pure entropy of the void, and so it spilled forth from her, taking on the shapes of her nightmares, shaped into soldiers that hacked their way through fetid flesh, leaving trails of gray powder in their wake.

Bridgette had become an inferno of phoenix fire, fueled by the living pyre around her. The green flame was now almost white with its intensity, and every time the nearest sections of mass mutated into plants, those sections were instantly wreathed in more fire. This fresh fire scorched away the nearby flesh before consuming the plant-like form it had wreathed, blazing like an eternal bonfire of flesh.

Darkness and light became Moriko's world, stretched interminably between them as she whispered prayers for guidance, strength, and healing. None of them were safe around each other at this point; Moriko's lightning leaked out every time she neared Bridgette or Kazue. Bridgette's fire was too intense, scorching Moriko's flesh at least as much as it healed her. Kazue's eyes had turned pitch black, and liquid shadow dripped from her wings. Just being near her tugged at Moriko's own vitality, despite the resistance that her shadow affinity gave her.

They were never able to create a completely clear space, but their wake of destruction thinned out the tides of consumptive flesh until it had started to break into isolated pieces. The air was thick with ash and dust, leaving the three of them coughing constantly. Whenever one of them spit out a glob of dark fluid, they immediately obliterated it. They needed to make sure they didn't give the substance more life to feed on, but even worse, Moriko was certain that at least some of the expelled gunk had begun to move on its own.

Almost every dreg of power had been dragged out of them, but still, the job was not done. The enclosed space still had small heaps of moving flesh dotted through it, the blobs writhing as they tried to close in on each other to devour and consume once more. The endless cycle was not done, but they could barely move. Moriko's right hand was missing two fingers, they'd begun to move on their own and she'd channeled lightning into the knuckles to blow them off and cauterize the wound. She couldn't count the number of smaller wounds on her body that had been either seared clean by Bridgette or drained of foreign vitality by Kazue, and her skin was covered in electric burns that sparked of their own accord.

Bridgette's body was covered in green-flame feathers, and her arms were crooked and held out like they were starting to turn into wings. It looked painful, and green-white fire constantly dripped from her like blood from a wound.

Kazue's skin had turned gray, and any time she spoke all Moriko could see of her mouth was a dark void. Even her red hair and fur had turned dull and ashen, and patches of fur had fallen from her tails like mange.

Moriko had managed to keep any of the attacking flesh from striking either of them, but the two were being consumed by their own powers and Moriko wasn't much better off. Even her prayers had run dry, and she knew why.

There was a limit to how much divine power a mortal could channel, and it was not much different from the capacity for mana or chi. The protective layer of spiritual energy around Moriko's soul had been scraped thin enough that she could feel the rawness of it, like her soul had been rubbed with sandpaper. Time and experience could expand her capacity in the future, but right now she was done with any spell of significance.

Despite the comforting presence of Mordecai's and Kazue's cores in her mind, Moriko was beginning to despair. She didn't see how they could finish the remaining lumps of madness before they collapsed.

A line of liquid silver flowed out across the ground in front of her, and Moriko blinked as her exhausted brain tried to parse out what this new thing meant.

Kazue's core told her to look where the silver had come from, and Moriko obeyed. The silver led toward the shielded mound in the center of this space, and a patch of it flashed with light. Moriko tried to say, "This way," but she only managed a croaking sound. Her throat was raw and she wasn't certain she had a tongue anymore. Was that one of the things she'd spit out? A worry for later.

Instead, she grabbed at Kazue and Bridgette, then pointed at the flashing section of the mound. They nodded and began trudging toward the dome. Moriko tried to follow but found herself floundering, and she grabbed onto their shoulders to be dragged instead. At some point, she'd completely lost the ability to keep her feet on the ground and now felt more like a helpless toy of the wind rather than its mistress.

The shimmering section of the barrier let them pass, but only into another contained bubble. This one seemed more secure, however, and matched up with a set of lines and runes on the floor. Nor could they see past the bubble.

The voice of the man who had set them on this path spoke from the empty air, "I am afraid this is the most I can do for you right now. You should be able to recuperate, but I will not let you pass until I am sure that all three of you are completely clean of infection. You do not need to worry about the blight outside; your work has eliminated enough of it that I can divert some of my strength from the barriers and begin cleaning the rest."