Hand of The Eldritch God

Ren awoke after a couple of hours of sleep. His body needed little more than that per day to stay in top condition. Cella had taken a shift to guard them while he slept. She, on the other hand, needed several hours to recover, and during that time, Ren had sat in the darkness alone.

They returned to the journey upwards as Ren considered what trying to summon the Watcher would have done during the attack from the vampyres. If the watcher could only do a little due to restrictions, it might not have even been worth the summoning. If the being was so much more powerful than him, what resources would it cost him?

Ren had made up his mind to begin experimenting with the watcher.

They passed out of the side tunnel that they had entered inorder to rest, they left behind the burnt husks of the vampyres and all their victims. Ren didn’t even want to try looting the rancid corpses.

Passing back into the tunnel that led them upwards, the slope again returned to the high grade. It greatly reminded Ren of the tunnel he entered in the beginning, though it looked a deal different.

The upward ascent began to become a long path of boring climbs. The slope continued coming to sheer rock cliffs then evening out before turning into sheer cliffs again. The traveling was getting quite boring when the eyes of an insect came reflecting light from a crack in the cavern.

Shit.

Twelve sets of insectoid eyes opened, glowing in an ominous light.

“Run!” Ren called to Cella.

She began to dash up the sheer cliff face above them.

Ren gathered mana into his hand as a burning fireball appeared. He slammed his hand into the crevice where the eyes watched him. A fiery explosion let out, as a shiver went up his spine.

Several more pairs of insectoid eyes peered out from small cracks and crevices all around him. Cella had moved up the cliff face but had not yet crested the top.

Ren fired four splintered beams of flame which each caught a falling insect about to land on Cella.

Cave Devourer Lvl 8

Cave Devourer Lvl 7

Cave Devourer Lvl 6

Cave Devourer Lvl 7

The insects were the size of a cat, razor-sharp mandibles ready to render flesh. Ten-legged, and chitin armored, they were the bastardized piranhas of the Underdark.

A score of the insects funneled up from the crack Ren had released a fireball into. Ah, shit.

He cupped his hands and released a torrent of flame that drained his mana. It killed over half of them, yet more came regardless.

Ren began to dash his way up the cliffside. His dexterity allowed him to nearly run up the sheer cliff. Both he and Cella made it over the cliff at the same time.

“There’s a lot of them coming. If they’re slow, we can outrun them, if not. I’ll do my best to eradicate them.” Ren spoke quickly as he watched the cliffside.

“You’re not alone here, I may not specialize in fighting groups of small enemies, but I do have my uses. You’re not alone in this, I’ll do what I can.”

Ren nodded as he looked over the cliffside. In his ethereal sight, nearly a hundred of the crawling insects had pulled themselves from their hiding space in the cracks and crevices around the cavern.

A loud chattering sound came from the crowd of insects as three of a larger variant appeared. They called forth more of their kind as they poured now from the cavern even further forward.

Ren sighed as he called forth the eldritch energy that had become part of him. His fourth energy swirled inside him and he activated eldritch touch and fired three bullets into the crowd.

The larger variants of the devourers survived the initial barrage, and so he fired another two waves of eldritch touch empowered bullets slamming down into them.

The backlash of eldritch touch began to tingle throughout his body. His evolution and subsequent time spent being heavily influenced by the fourth energy gave him a great resistance.

The three higher variants of devourers died as eldritch touch corrupted them. Dozens of the creatures were coming from above them on the heavy slope of the cavern. Below, hundreds of them gathered under the cliff, beginning their climb towards the two. Above them, soon hundreds would gather to block their ascent.

Ren summoned the Watcher. His mana drained, as well as a small amount of his fourth energy.

Two twin black tentacles arose from a puddle of muddy black oil on the stone below them. The tentacles arose twenty feet high into the air before slamming downwards and across the cliffside. Fourty of the insects were crushed and damaged by the impact. The tendrils of black rose again into the air, some devourers clung to them, mandibles stabbed into the fleshy black tentacles.

Ren smiled as he saw the devastation.

Congratulations Eldritch Rouge Lv 15

+5 Dexterity +2 Willpower +2 Vitality +2 Intelligence +7 Free points

Ren allotted the free points to his endurance and vitality. Hell yeah, finally 200 HP!

Ren’s smile quickly faded as he turned to see Cella summoning her glaive. In her chitin armor, she went to battle the insects. As if dancing, she swung the glaive and spun herself to cleave the insects. Some of the creatures jumped at her, just in time, Ren shot two while cleaving another with his dagger.

Seven more of the insects came, Cella cleaved through three, taking a bite to an exposed portion of her leg. Green light shone, healing her slowly. Ren shot three himself, using his dagger to pierce the head of another as it jumped for his neck.

The two continued their dance, spinning and swirling around one another, Ren constantly regenerating bullets directly into the revolver. Cella called forth spiked growths from the earth killing nearly a dozen of the creatures. The remaining stragglers were slowed down enough by the spikes to be easy pickings.

Ren felt himself being heavily worn by the strain of the twin tendrils of oily blackness. The Watcher was far beyond Ren in terms of ascension, and all stats total. Perring towards the tentacles, he saw endless corpses from the devourers dying again and again.

Huge pieces of flesh had been torn from the tentacles he had summoned. They were doing well, but Ren knew he couldn’t sustain them here much longer.

They pushed forward through what little remained of the insects in front of them. Several more kept popping up from small cracks and crevices around the area, but the flow from up top had lessened greatly.

As they passed over another cliffside, they were mostly free from the devourers. Ren felt the strain of his summoning start to eat away at him even stronger. Now even his vitality was being drained as the tentacles were using his own energy to sustain the damage being taken by the army of insects.

Ren cut off the summoning. A flood of relief washed through him as the strain on him suddenly vanished. He could feel himself weakened. It was not just his energies being lessened, but it was something deeper, a strain on his very being.

He sighed as Cella turned to him. “Ren, will you have it in you to run?”

“I don’t think I’ll last long. I feel tired to my very soul. I can build up a big enough attack to kill a lot of them, but I won’t have much of any power left to keep fighting afterward. If I do it, you’ll have to step in and take over. I might as well be useless after doing what I’m about to do.”

“Very well, I will hold back until after you unleash whatever you're holding onto.” She nodded and walked back, stabbing an approaching devourer as she retreated from Ren.

He stood at the edge of the cliffside. A large portion of his eldritch energy still remained, he brought it forth to him. Swirling the energy within him, he gathered the backlash of eldritch touch into a central location within his body. It was like a small rotten pea at the center of his stomach.

As the army of insects crested past the cliffside where the tentacles had held, he tried mixing eldritch touch into a ball of flame. The fire became an ethereal gray that no longer let off the light. The flame was unstable and he barely held it together, it was a struggle to keep it from exploding in his hands.

Gray veins of corruption began to gather at his core where the concentrated mass of it was. At his hands too, the gray veins began to shimmer with a lightlessness.

As the main body of two hundred devourers made it above the cliff, Ren released the attack. His body was nearly empty of mana, while his stamina and health were below half.

Ren fell to his knees as he went suddenly lightheaded as his mana was nearly depleted. He watched as a third of the creatures were consumed by the giant gray wave of flames that poured around the impact of the fireball. He gave a small smile before pushing stamina into his feet. With a great push, he jumped into the crowd as the center was cleared of the gray flames.

He landed in the middle of the army of insects. In a moment, the flames were gone, in their place, the devourers ran at Ren. Within seconds he was being jumped on by a dozen devourers who tore at him.

With a cry of pain from the mandibles tearing into him, he released all of the corruption built up in his body.

An intangible wave of energy pulsed from his body as the devourers around him slowed. They looked blankly in front of them, their eyes unfocused. The ones on Ren fell away as their bodies slowly faded into dust.

The ones further away slowly withered into old husks. The ones furthest away merely slowed and looked confused for long moments.

Cella ran and jumped into the midst of the chaos. Ren slid down to the ground unconscious. The glaive spun as she grew great thorny spikes around Ren, protecting him.

She cleaved through several of the devourers before one severed into the back of her leg. Blood poured forth profusely as she cut off the attacker’s head. Twenty of the creatures remained.

Growths sprouted all around her, slowing down and injuring many of the insects. Devours were parted left and right as the glaive swung and twirled around her in a blur. For every three she killed, a blow was taken. Not a scrape or scratch, but severed arteries, broken bones, and torn chunks of flesh.

In the minute she took to slay the remaining insects, she was torn into a heap of blood and broken bones.

Cella stood, her weight propped against the shaft of her glaive. The chitin armor was torn apart, her flesh barely in better condition.

Blood soaked the earth below her, both her own and that of the devourers'.

She clumsily walked towards Ren. She could feel it, death, coming for her.

She pulled back the spiked growths as she fell down onto the ground beside him. Her healing light shone all across her body.

The damage was too severe for her to heal quickly enough. Ren was unconscious below her, his condition unknowable to her.

She parted a small piece of her healing light to Ren as she touched a hand to his head. She felt herself dying and didn’t want to die alone in the dark.

Ren’s eyes fluttered open as Cella formed a pool of hot blood all around him. His eyes shot open at the sight, panicking, he grabbed her but she only gave a small smile as her eyes began to flicker. The healing light left him, as she prolonged her moments left to live.

Tears came to Ren’s eyes as an item appeared in his hands. “You’re not allowed to die…”

The essence of change bound itself to her. The healing light flickered and faded as instead streams of green light came in ribbons from her core. They wrapped her being and folded around her, the green ribbons flooded from her very soul.

Like a chrysalis, she was born anew. A mark upon the very face of her soul, the mark born from the breaking of fate, reshaped her. Unable to ascend, the essence had bound itself to her soul, allowing her to form a mark to be consumed at her evolution.

Cella’s bands of green ribbons unfurled leaving behind a new woman. She wore a gray plain shirt and black pants. Long black hair reached down her back as vibrant green eyes shone in the darkness. Her skin was no longer the sickly and lightless pale, a healthy rosiness arose in her face. She was no longer emaciated and starved. Her body was full and healthy. She was what she always wanted to be, a normal human.