God of Nothing

Murmurings outside squad doors greeted Aleph as he was finishing his unpacking. His disciples had gone along with the rest of the squad to catch some dinner in the mess hall, but the god of nothing wanted to wait for Rayse and fix up his things, and so he stayed behind.

Still, he was feeling a bit peckish himself, so when he sensed his wayward disciple's arrival, he immediately opened the door for them.

"!!" What greeted him was a shock. The whole group was a mess, and had unwittingly grown in size. Luke had passed out on the floor, exhausted and fully drained of mana, being tended to by someone he didn't know, and Brig, who was bleeding profusely, had somehow arrived with them.  Meanwhile Rayse, who technically looked the healthiest of them, was unconscious. Polo stood off to the side, trembling but mostly unharmed. 

Aleph quickly took care of the group, healing their immediate cuts and bruises. He took the wounded ones inside and plopped them onto the nearest cots. Thankfully none looked very life threatening, but whatever fight had come for them that would leave veteran soldiers in this state, it obviously wasn't good. He knew Polo hadn't been speaking as of late, and he wanted Brig to recover in peace so he turned to the newcomer.

"Explain." Aleph demanded, to which the young man instantly obliged. 

"Sir! We met them on the return journey. All of them denied treatment at the infirmary and demanded we deposit them here instead."

The young man saluted, regardless of the fact that he still wore his traveling gear that had no semblance of rank. Still, the person responded in a way that told him nothing, so he was quite irritated.

"That's not what I asked, child. Tell me who did this."

"Stop it, Aleph. You're scaring the man." A raspy voice interrupted them. Aleph's eyes widened as he heard who spoke, turning to the voluntarily mute squad member that finally broke his silence.

"Run along now, bud. Someone needs to tell the prince." He said kindly, before beginning a coughing fit.

"Y-yes sir!" The young man saluted once more, once to Aleph, and this time to Polo too, right before scampering away. 

Aleph stood with Polo in the hallway, listening to Brig's moans echo across the corridor. Aleph had treated the wound, but whatever ails him went far beyond physical. He had only given him first aid at this point, but given the proclivity of the demons on this world for nasty curses, he made sure to put him right at the top of the list.

"Come inside, child. Tell me what you saw."

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Rayse watched helplessly as the hospital wing was crushed into rubble. The entire building was pulled from its roots by mighty wooden tendrils that moved like snakes, slithering and wrapping itself all over it like it was a feast for the ages. It's trunk parted close to the top, revealing a hole lined with several rows of bone white spikes, and the snakes began to drop tons of packed earth and stone and human remains into the cavity.bThe other, smaller trees in the background swayed, as if celebrating their master's successful hunt.

The orange light of sundown painted the scene in an evil light, casting a sickening hue to this demonic desecrator. The sound of rustling leaves completed the picture, an evil sound that Rayse was certain sounded like laughter.

The earth had long released him at this point, but he stood as helplessly as before. Not only from the shock value of watching a tree eat a building, but from hearing Polo speak.

"That one's a herald. Saw it on the day they ambushed Vaynard." He continued. Luke stood agape, not at the giant tree monster that was eating a building, but at the man who refused to speak for months finally breaking his silence. He shook his head and took his weapon in hand, as if he had a mind to chop down a demon tree.

"I'm sorry about your parents, Rayse, but we need to get outta here. Connor," he turned to the side, smiling his formerly usual smile. "Can you take us back?"

The scout had pulled away from the beast with difficulty, and. It was a miracle he could still function, seeing as he also had a family that had just been devoured in that hospital wing. Must be the military training, Rayse thought. 

He was flexing hands, tightening his grip on his shield and spear. But the enemy was a tree. Without magic, how does he beat a tree? 

The squad around him had already begun to move. Not towards the tree like he had planned to, but away, back towards the fortress. He bit his lip til blood flowed, but he still stayed rooted on the spot. Eventually, his own feet took him, not into battle, but away.

Rayse's tears flowed as he and the squad fled the scene. He could hear the crunching of stone behind him, imagining the remains of his parents being devoured. He tried to rationalize it in his head. They were not only not in their best condition as a group, but they were against a herald and its army. The enemy did not pursue, likely as a consequence of being trees. But how did they even get here? Connor swore up and down that a forest was nowhere near here as far back as a week ago. He said so as they ran. Rayse thought back to that evil red eye, trying to remember where he saw something like that before, but all that comes to his head was the giant tree, eating what was left of his parents.

Mom, dad…

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"Aleph!" 

The pair turned as Polo's recounting was interrupted by the door slamming open. a visibly upset Prince Vaynard. His cape and hair looked uncharacteristically disheveled, but he didn't care. He came here seemingly at the instruction of the young scout, who had stayed by the door this time, as if afraid of Aleph's wrath.

"Sid told me what happened. Is everything okay?"

Aleph turned back to redressing Brig's wounds. Despite the healing spells he put on him, the wound looked barely healed. He didn't notice it beforehand, but it was becoming more and more likely that this was the handiwork of an old adversary of his.

"I can handle this. More importantly, have you heard?"

The prince nodded gravely. "Yes. Heralds about beyond the gates, as close as half a day's march from here."

The young man gasped from beyond the door, making Aleph snap a look at him, making him shriek and flee.

"Don't mind the child, friend. He's had a rough day." Vaynard sighed. "This is far sooner than we anticipated, Aleph."

"I know, sire." He answered respectfully. His hand once again came away from Brig's wound, but this time the healing stuck. Aleph's hand glowed with a red energy, pricking him all along the skin like little needles.

Aleph pushed this energy onto an empty crystal husk before laying it on the table. Then, he began to redress the wound regardless of its current state. If the wound resurfaces once more, Brig will just lose even more blood. 

Aleph sat back once again, observing the bandaged injury like a hawk. Vaynard sat with him, taking the prickly red gem with a grave expression on his face. It was only after a while that they asked Polo to continue.

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They ran like mad, running back the majority of the way in half the time. Rayse dared not look back. The scene of an entire building being devoured left no small measure of fear in him, true, but he had also remembered where he saw the creature's eye from.

Lost's gem…

At the battle in the capital, Lost procured a gem that turned into a tree, which summoned . It looked similar to their portal anchors, but the one she summoned was alive. Multiple branches swaying in the sky, much like snakes… it was the imagery that set Rayse off. 

If the trees back there had a similar ability..

They were right to run.

They had mostly left the remains of the previous camps, and from here were open plains between the mountains with the fortress at the end of it. They traveled in silence, though he could tell that he and his companions were beginning to tire. Connor was the most fit among them. Even with the entire day spent out on the plains, the young man still looked like he could go. Polo looked fine too despite his malnourished appearance. Luke was gasping for air though, as was he. Their mana veins were severely burned back at Kyrios, and as much as they had physically recovered in the months since that time, it was clear that they hadn't returned to their prime forms.

Connor seemed to have noticed, but they kept going regardless. He adjusted their speeds soon enough, but the group had an unspoken agreement to not stop for anything. Still, he called for the group to slow down some minutes later as streaks of light flashed past them. They streaked across at blinding speeds, but Rayse thought he knew one of them. Sure enough, one of streaks doubled back, before landing on the ground and running along with them.

"The hell are you guys doing here!?" A familiar voice called. It was Brig, bloodied and bruised, but smiling at the sight of friends.

"Master Brig!" Connor called, saluting the former scout. Brig just waved him off.

"I'm not your boss anymore, Connor." He looked beyond the newcomers, back in the direction where he came from. Rayse looked too, sensing a malicious energy in the air. He kept running, but he stared at the place Brig was just looking at. Abyssal mana pervaded his senses, so massive that he couldn't pinpoint its location exactly. His mind sharpened as the energy heightened, the sense of urgency swallowing up his exhaustion.

He's not there anymore… he thought, turning his head just a bit more to their front. A rotund figure revealed itself in the distance. Oh, no. Rayse pushed his tired body to move, squeezing out a burst of energy to allay the coming tragedy.

"Anyway, we better get out of here before–"

"Siege mode!" He barked, raising the surface area of his shield just before a large metallic claw struck him.

Clang!

Rayse managed to block the attack, but the force threw him into both Connor and Brig. The spines of the dreadful gadget pinned them all to the ground, locking them in place.

"Hee hee hee hee!" The demon's laughter rang distinctly in his ears, far closer than it should be. Rayse tried to push off the thing that was trapping them, but a massive weight crashed down upon them even more. Brig screamed from beneath him, as he had been bearing the weight of them all. Rayse himself tried to squirm, but there wasn't much room to move in that wasn't punctuated by sharpened metal.

 

The cold that he felt in his stomach felt like an iceberg now. His mind raced past his exhaustion, trying to come up with a way to get out of this, but all he could hear was the echoing madness of Agony's glee.