Jasmine Flamesworth
The air itself felt diseased, thick with the coppery reek of spilled blood and the feral musk of the gnolls—if they could be described like this as they weren't like any other gnolls I have ever seen or heard about.
My daggers, usually extensions of my own body, now felt like lead weights in my trembling hands. What even are these mana beasts? The frantic question echoed uselessly in the hollow space exhaustion had carved within my skull. They weren't just gnolls. Something was wrong, very, very wrong. Their eyes burned with a feral, unnatural purple, devoid of intelligence or survival instinct, filled only with a ravenous hunger that seemed to warp the very mana around them into something jagged and sickly.
Their movements were unnervingly coordinated yet chaotic, a pack driven by a single, monstrous purpose: our annihilation.
We were a wall of desperate flesh and fading magic against a tide of snapping jaws and rending claws. Adam's spear flashed, a beacon of solidity amidst the chaos, but even his usually unwavering voice held a tremor now.
"Just how many of these creatures are here?!" he shouted, the fear raw and unfamiliar in its nakedness.
Helen, her face a mask of grim determination etched with lines of exhaustion, fought with the brutal efficiency that had earned her leadership of the Twin Horns, but the strain showed in the tightness around her eyes, the slight hitch in her breathing.
Angela, our wind support mage, was reduced to gasping, her mana reservoir scraped bone-dry, her spells now mere gusts that barely ruffled the gnolls' matted fur. Her warning cry—"Jasmine to your right!"—sliced through the racket, a lifeline thrown from a sinking ship.
I pivoted, muscles screaming in protest. My body, pushed far beyond its limits, was a symphony of agony. Every nerve ending shrieked. My own mana augmentation, the subtle flow that enhanced speed and strength, was flickering like a dying candle, threatening to gutter out completely.
The gnoll lunged, saliva dripping from yellowed fangs, its oppressive aura pressing against my skin like a physical weight. I raised my daggers in a feeble cross-block, knowing it wouldn't be enough. The world narrowed to that gaping maw, the stench of decay rolling off it in waves. This is it, a detached part of my mind observed. Stopping means death. But moving… moving feels impossible.
Then, a thunderous roar shook the very stones. The massive bear mana beast bonded to the elven kid we had stumbled upon earlier saved me. She was the only reason we hadn't already been torn apart minutes ago.
Her sheer, never seen before and primal power was a bulwark, a force of nature embodied in fur and muscle and tooth. With a terrifying surge, she bodily slammed into the gnoll targeting me, sending it crashing into two others like grotesque bowling pins. The impact jarred the ground.
How strong is she? The thought was fleeting, swept away instantly by the next wave of snarling horrors surging forward. Survival was measured in frantic heartbeats, not questions.
My gaze, almost against my will, flickered towards the kid huddled near Berna's flank. He looked impossibly young, younger even than I had been when Helen found me—a runaway noble kid, hollow-eyed and desperate—and offered the Twin Horns as refuge and family.
This elf boy radiated that same raw, palpable terror. His eyes, wide and luminous, darted wildly, reflecting the flickering light of Angela's last feeble spells and the unnatural crimson glow of the gnolls. He clutched Berna's fur like an anchor in a hurricane, his slight frame trembling. My heart clenched. He shouldn't be here. None of us should be in this festering hellhole.
Then, a shift. Subtle, yet seismic. A low growl rumbled from Berna, deep and resonant, directed not at the gnolls, but at the boy. My eyes snapped back to him. It was like watching a mask shatter. The terrified child vanished. His posture straightened, infinitesimally but definitively due to his injuries.
The frantic darting of his eyes ceased, replaced by a sudden, unnerving stillness. His gaze, when it lifted from Berna to sweep the carnage, held an ancient weight, a chillingly detached assessment that belonged to no child. A shiver, colder than any dungeon draft, traced its way down my spine.
From one of the numerous storage rings adorning his slender fingers, he produced an object that stole my breath. A beast core. But unlike any I had ever seen or heard of. It was larger than his palm, a swirling vortex of soft pink and pearlescent white light that pulsed with an inner rhythm that seemed to vibrate against my own flickering mana sense. It radiated pure, potent energy, a condensed star held in his small hand. The sheer power emanating from it was humbling, terrifying.
He held it gently, reverently. A soft, melancholic sigh escaped him, a sound utterly alien in the midst of battle. He curved his neck, a gesture of profound intimacy and sorrow, and touched the immense core to his forehead. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet, yet it carried through the snarls and clashes with unnatural clarity, laced with a grief that felt centuries deep.
"Mother," he murmured, the word a fragile thing. "It's such a shame we can't be together even when given this second chance." A pause, heavy with unspoken history. "I will have to borrow your mana core. I am sorry." The apology hung in the air, thick with regret.
His gaze lifted again, sweeping over the gnolls with an expression that shifted from sorrow to… disappointment? Contempt? He tilted his head, studying the corrupted beasts with the detached curiosity of a scholar examining insects.
"Aah," he sighed, the sound weary and strangely patronizing. "Really, Dad is getting out of shape." A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched his lips, chillingly at odds with the sadness of moments before and the youthful face that bore it. "Decay in you is so, so weak."
The words hung, cryptic and ominous. A gnoll, perhaps sensing a sudden vulnerability, broke from the pack and lunged at him, claws outstretched. Instinct screamed. "Kid! Look out!" My own voice was a ragged gasp.
It never reached him. The gnoll simply… stopped. In mid-lunge. No impact, no flash of light, no deflection. One moment it was a blur of fangs and fury, the next it was an inert sack of flesh and bone, collapsing to the stone floor with a dull, final thud. Lifeless. Empty. Like a puppet with its strings severed. My mind stuttered, refusing to process it. Nothing hit it.
Nothing touched it.
The boy—no, this being wearing a child's skin—barely glanced at the corpse. His voice held a note of genuine, almost petulant disappointment. "I can just absorb decay from you and you die? Really?" It was an insult, directed at the very concept of the gnolls' existence.
Then, reality tore.
The immense pink-white core in his hand ignited. Not with light, but with a presence. An ocean of pure, ancient mana surged forth, vast and deep and terrifyingly cold. It wasn't a blast; it was an unfolding, a brief, horrifying glimpse into an abyss of power that dwarfed anything I could comprehend. It lasted only a heartbeat, perhaps two, before he withdrew the core, the overwhelming pressure vanishing as swiftly as it came, leaving my senses reeling and my soul shivering.
The effect on the gnolls was instantaneous and grotesque. A sickening, wet pop echoed, then another, then a dozen more, a macabre symphony erupting all around us. They didn't just fall. They… ruptured. From the inside. Limbs splayed at unnatural angles, torsos bloated hideously for a fraction of a second before bursting open in showers of gore and splintered bone. It was as if some invisible, monstrous hand had reached inside each one and squeezed until they exploded.
Pulpy flesh, dark blood, and fragments of corrupted bone painted the dungeon walls and floor in a horrific fresco of sudden, silent death.
The sheer impossibility of it froze the breath in my lungs. Wind magic? Impossible. To inflate a living being… mana cores instinctively resisted external manipulation of the mana within their own bodies. It was fundamental.
You couldn't stop a heart with water magic, couldn't boil blood with fire from afar, not without a direct, overwhelming connection to the target's core—a feat requiring immense power, concentration, and proximity. Doing it simultaneously to dozens? It defied every law of mana theory and practice I had ever learned. Yet, here was the visceral, nauseating proof.
"Oh, done already?" The voice was light, almost conversational, cutting through the sudden, ringing silence. The boy surveyed the carnage he'd wrought, the smirk returning, sharp and devoid of any childlike innocence. "And here I have just decayed the blood pressure in their bodies." He chuckled. A cold, dry sound that scraped against my nerves.
Then, the terrifying facade cracked. Blood, shockingly bright against his sudden pallor, trickled from his nostrils, seeped from his ears. His eyes, moments ago holding ancient power, rolled back slightly. His limbs trembled violently, like a sapling in a gale. He was collapsing, the immense borrowed power exacting its brutal toll on his fragile vessel.
"Berna…" The name was a whisper, barely audible, a desperate plea from a child once more. "Bring him… to a safe place… as soon as possible." The words dissolved into a sigh as his eyes fluttered shut, his small body going utterly limp.
Angela, ever the healer, instincts overriding shock, moved towards him. "We need to—"
Berna reacted. Not with a roar, but with a low, guttural growl that vibrated in my chest cavity. The protective instinct that radiated from the great bear wasn't just physical; it was a palpable wave of pure, primal warning.
The mana signature I felt then wasn't just deep as the sea; it was the crushing pressure of the abyss, cold and absolute. It screamed mine and touch him and die. Angela froze mid-step, her face blanching. The bear, Berna, gathered the unconscious boy with astonishing gentleness against her massive chest, cradling him like precious treasure. Then, with a speed that belied her size, she turned and vanished down a side tunnel, a blur of fur and protective fury swallowed by the dungeon's gloom.
Silence descended. A thick, suffocating silence broken only by the dripping of blood and gore from the walls, the ragged gasps tearing from our own throats. The stench of death and voided bowels was overwhelming, a physical assault.
"What…" Adam began, his voice hoarse, his sword hanging uselessly at his side, slick with dark ichor. He stared at the pulped remains surrounding us, his face a mask of utter disbelief. "What just happened?" It wasn't just a question. It was the sound of a worldview fracturing. One moment, we were seconds from being torn apart.
The next… this. A child wielding the power of a vengeful god, then crumpling like a discarded puppet.
"This place…" Helen muttered, her voice thick with revulsion. She wiped a spatter of something foul from her cheek with a trembling hand, her gaze sweeping the charnel house the tunnel had become. Her usual stoicism was replaced by a deep, visceral disgust. "Makes me want to puke." She spat onto the blood-slick stone. "Let's head back. Now. Regroup. Breathe air that doesn't taste of death." Her command was absolute, born of shared trauma. "We all need… some rest."
The word 'rest' felt laughably inadequate, a tiny bandage on a gaping wound.
No one argued. Words felt dangerous, fragile things that might shatter the tenuous hold we had on our own sanity. Angela was trembling violently, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her face, her eyes fixed on the spot where the boy and bear had vanished. Adam just stared at his spear, his knuckles white on the hilt. I looked down at my own daggers, sticky with dark fluids I didn't want to identify.
My body, finally released from the adrenaline vise, screamed its protest—a bone-deep ache, muscles turned to water, the hollow, scraping void where my mana had been. But deeper than the physical exhaustion was the profound, unsettling shock. The terrified eyes of a child. The ancient, detached gaze. The smirk. The impossible, grotesque deaths. The bear's terrifying protection. The blood leaking from the boy's ears.
We moved as one, a broken procession through the grisly aftermath. Each step squelched. The silence pressed in, heavier than the dungeon's stones.
The questions hung unspoken, thick as the dungeon's miasma: who was he? What was that power?