YUVEN

The Doom of Irimount.

So much worse than a typical Goliath.

Ripples fluttered at their feet with its powerful inhale and stained the essence with its crimson slobber when it oozed between its maw. Tendrils flayed underneath the scales of the wyvern turned Derelict, and it drew its neck back with a curdling, bloody hiss. Electricity ran through his feathers, a warning — doom. Yuven found Fenrer's chest when it wrapped itself around the cavern, then screamed. The teeth shuddered with the reverberation of its destructive voice. Pain flashed in his temples and the bile mixed with rust in the back of his throat. Adara brought her own hands to her temples with a soft cry of torment. Fenrer sank to his knees, the opalescent flames of the Auric Trance draining through his tears with his own soft groan.

It drove its claws into the walls with its wings wrapped with bulbous tumors. "Get back to the lift!" he screeched over it when its jaw locked in place, a rumble of crimson casting its throat in a dusk glow. Its lower mandible split as a snake to swallow prey larger than it. "Now!" Yuven grabbed Fenrer's shoulder when he lifted his head up in full awareness, and pulsed out his magick to touch the other end of the cavern, up into the lift's tube. His single step brought them through the distorted echo, but he stumbled out of it when it released another screech, a ripple of its own. His knees smacked against the water's edge, a jolt of pain cracking against his bones as Fenrer and Adara rolled into the lift when he pushed them out of his disrupted field.

Did it just...?

He gathered himself when it crawled onto the lake with another hiss. Heels in the focal points of the runes, he pushed magick beneath into a spring loaded burst of energy when it shambled for them, crying out its dissonant song. Blood fumes escaped the corners of its jaws, and he launched his magick through the lift when it burst into decaying, rotting flames, and Adara screamed in his ear with her hands still around her head.

It flashed out of sight the moment the embers smashed against Fenrer's golden shield when he slapped his hands together, and the circuitry of his runic expander lit up in protective might. Heat tickled his heels when he focused against the flames crawling beneath them, burning the air out from their lungs. His arse met the floor when the lift slammed to a sudden stop on the ground floor, and Adara waved to stop her own descent, with Fenrer hanging onto the tiny railing inside. "Get out. Get out!" Yuven shoved Fenrer and Adara out of the lift when crimson tangles slithered up the walls. The world shook with its pressure when they ran out into the open, into Irimount's endless fatalism.

"What was that?" Adara asked, shrill against his eardrums when they waddled further out of the spire's reach. "Gods! What was that?"

Yuven shuddered with the sweep of numbness stretching through his skin. "Don't cry out to the damned Gods now of all times!" he snapped at the continuous shake of death beneath them. "It's a Corruptor!" The truth sliced his tongue, and he scowled when distortion grew out of the buildings, with Fenrer's wide eyes revealing what the echo hid when he twisted his head to the spire with a soft gasp.

Information fell out of his fingers when a low roar pulsed through his head, the call of space and time. Yuven braced himself on his knees when it flew out of the hollow mountain, its teeth long covered by sickly scales of rot. Every flap of its wings scattered the snow of Irimount across the streets, and he snapped, "Go! Run!"

Its mouth opened wide, split apart as it took aim at them. Adara bolted smartly, but Yuven rushed for Fenrer when the monster lowered its snout with slight intent. His hands wrapped around his collar when the fumes fell around them in cascades of his shame, and he stretched out past its field of distortion, deeper into the one safe place in the city. Fenrer grabbed onto his shirt with a scowl of disbelief, but Yuven threw him through the pocket when the fumes sparked into death. Ice wrapped around his skin, but he left the copy behind to roll out of the downpour of blazing red taint. In the windows, draugr twisted around in synchronized intent when the wyvern sent another screech through the world's song.

Adara hesitated on the edge of the street, the failure of self-preservation.

"Run! Keep running!" Yuven gasped out with his sprint for his life when it flew higher into the air, then swung itself into a dive, a streak of its shadow speeding ahead of them. Adara ran. Fumes filled the alleys and crumbled the citizens of Irimount to dust. Yuven shivered at their wailing screams. No... not again. He threw his head back, but the Corruptor continued its hungry chase with its teeth trembling in delight when it curled into a Derelict grin. Yuven slid to a stop when it puked a fireball of decay over them, blocking one escape and throwing debris over their path. He threw a barrier up when one chunk flew at them, but it shattered his magick with ease, but split it into smaller pieces to rot at their feet.

Yuven grabbed Adara's forearm to guide her through the smaller streets, ducking his head when its wing smashed into one of the half-crumbled spires. Shadowy leashes wrapped underneath the street and burst out into tentacles of torment. Yuven stumbled when Adara tripped on a fallen banner. "Fuck!" she said and shuffled on her hindquarters when the wyvern revealed a single eye-socket through the too small opening. Yuven dragged her to her feet when it aimed at them through the gap.

"Try and land on your damned feet like your life depends on it!" He screeched along with it, throwing them both with a magick singularity when the flames curdled through the snow. It cracked through their separation, an inferno of red blocking the two. Across the haze, Adara stumbled on her own heels, and he scowled when it tore itself through the packed buildings, ignoring the stones dropping onto its head as it smiled with its depravity, though tilted closer to Adara, it's crusted third eyelids blinking rapidly, before closing in full when tarry liquids slipped past its maw. A deep, broken song rang out through his ears.

"...silver... phoenix... soul..." its Navei came out wrong, terrible. Monstrous.

Oh no you don't. Yuven kicked his foot through the snow, grabbing a mangled glaive through his hasty glyph and aimed between its exposed jaw bone. It cracked into the marrow, and its eyelids opened in full with one pupil trained on him. "Let's go, ugly," he hissed, and kicked a stream of icicles from underneath the street, where it smashed into the rest of its mouth. It writhed through the entrapment, opening its mouth in anger instead of its gleeful hunt. Its rotted teeth expanded over its lips with a rumble in its throat when it forced itself through, and its tail narrowly missed Adara's head, though she ducked and stared at him.

"Run! Run!" Yuven screamed, then crashed another glyph of white into its horns. "Go!" He bounced on his heel when it took a step forward, and with its attention on the other doom, he bolted into a run, leaving concentrated bursts of magick underneath his heels. Bulbous blooms landed around the street, but he dodged one when it lashed out at him with a sickly scale. A draugr stumbled out of a building, only to get crushed underneath the Corruptor's clawed hind-limb, and it dug deeper into the marble pathways. Thoughts bounced through windows, and he threw himself out of another leash of hot, hellish flames. Onto his feet once more when it turned the corner, its movement hindered by its size, he growled, "What's the matter?" He bared his fangs. "Come on."

Its winged forelimb stretched over to the other side, and it shimmied itself around. Yuven broke into another run through the large street, but slammed to a stop when it shimmered to life on the other side, its spatial distortion ripping apart the nearby buildings, the air turned against the echoing world. He turned to the next street over, but another echo climbed out of the ground through space and time, flicking its bloodied tail into the buildings. In his peripheral, the other one came closer. Each one breathed solid fumes, with his back to the natural wall of Irimount, and the bridge too far away.

They all moved in tandem.

All reveled in their victory.

Chains slammed into bells in his ears, and he chewed on a painful laugh when it inched closer, its footsteps thumping the ground beneath him.. Stuck in the middle of Irimount, forced to watch as his own magick tore the grand city apart and murdered every innocent. Though he screamed for help, his only answer was the softest stir. Yuven squinted at the three of them, but faced the one ahead of him, its expression flattened and its eyelids closed.

You. I heard you. It was you. You're the one they really wanted. Yuven pulled up a glaive of perfect ice into his palm from a spinning glyph beside him, cornered, but not yet lost. He growled and braced his knees for the incoming impact. Its claws tore up the stones and scoured the city with their equalized magick. We're just twisted creatures, aren't we? He leaned forward, digging his fingers into the shaft, the way Neven taught him. Someone should've put us out of our misery. Energy wrapped along his spine when it writhed and spasmed with a shrill screech, in a ocean of visceral rot, the surface rippled with his own breath, with its shape so far in the distance. He adjusted his grip on the glaive when it sped up its giant pace, and twine wrapped around it and wriggled underneath his skin. And you're not so agile on this damned ground.

Glyphs came to life at his side, filling with the stagnation of death as he burst into the wings of life when the two copies crashed into each other's horns and burst into crimson worms at their collapse. The wyvern spit out globs of rot from its mouth, but he threw himself into his own spatial distortion, slipping out of it when it clashed with the Corruptor's as a white mirage gathered in his peripheral, a layer of violet shielding his eyes from the sickly fumes. Magick springloaded into the blade made of ice, he stopped in front of its snout, the world slowing with its lunge. He threw himself over a glyph and his feet met its horn. The glaive ripped its tongue in two, but he gave it no chance for reaction to send the glyphs downwards.

Snow danced on the epicenters, and Yuven growled when it shattered the glaive, but released the hell he readied.

Yuven grunted when its back lurched underneath him, and he sent a cushioned glyph when he found himself tossed through the air, and giant spikes slammed through its wings. Pain rocked across his spine, and he choked when his own bulbous glob came out of his mouth and slipped past his lips in a cascade of blood when he straightened himself out. His ears rang, and the ripples went still in the crimson river of his mind. Ice cracked, and the Corruptor flipped itself around, breaking its own neck to keep an eye on him. It faced him once more, and snapped its own neck into place.

Yuven held his hand underneath his chin at his crimson slobber, and scowled at his weakness when it took flight, its claws outstretched to pierce his soul.

"Yuven!" Adara said from around a corner, rushing to him. Into an early grave.

The corruptor took on a burst and came closer with its shadow.

Until it screamed and smashed into the building past them. It scrambled and drooped, and he twisted his head to his other side.

Fenrer held both hands out, eyes turned into jade crystals when he took one more step forward with a deep exhale, drawing his hands to his chest and kneeling downwards. The Corruptor followed his gentle, but no less forced motions when it slithered onto the street. Sweat dripped down Fenrer's brow when he stepped back, and the Corruptor followed in a hypnotized daze of the precious seconds of his life.

He's... mind controlling it?

Yuven let Adara assist him to his feet.

Fenrer's concentration intensified when it slammed its claws into the ground, its own eyes full of the same jade crystals, sliced through with veins. Until the control broke with its hum of a name.

"Molvasolevu... Pyren."

It broke Fenrer's hold with the power of a name, and mist embraced Fenrer when it twisted itself in a circle to escape its corner, and Yuven grunted when the wind of its movement knocked him back from his best friend. It leaped into the air, and its shadow grew smaller when it flew around the cradle.

"Fenrer!" Yuven ran for him when he fell forward, his eyes slipping in the back of his head. He put his hands on his back, but zoned in on the wyvern when it flapped its wings, tracing the cradle when Adara joined him.

"Is he okay?" Adara asked with one hand on the top of Fenrer's head. "What did he do?"

Have you gone mad? Yuven scowled down at Fenrer, who gave no response to his thought. "Mind-controlled it... which seems to have made it retreat..." His voice faltered when it continued to circle the area. Wait.

A ripple of familiar malice tore through his skin and flayed his memories when it banked for the middle of the city, and spun into its own wings, a beautiful expression of broken grace.

His terror grew tenfold when a red bubble grew out of the ground on the trails of the world's own veins.