Lotus

It wasn't very rare in Acoria to have to kill one of your own. There were countless aspects and nightmare creatures out there that could control you or your mind in some way, and many of them are too insidious to detect. Perhaps it was something in his pitiful condition, or maybe the lack of light in Lorial's remaining eye, but this felt different. There was nothing in his power he could do to save him, only save himself.

Arino had been sitting at wall of a large cavern, and the vines were thriving, more of them than when he had first entered the cavern. He was alone, Lorial nowhere to be found. He couldn't kill him, so he left instead. Now, all Arino had to do was wait for the man to end his own suffering, preferably in a manner which he would not hear.

Somewhere deep within the system of tunnels and interwoven caverns, was Lorial's body. Arino's dagger laid in his hand, stained with the dead man's blood. The veins behind his face were shifting and bulging, like something was squirming to get out. A red mist spread through the room when suddenly, the flower in his eye wilted and turned to dust.

In it's place, a grotesque humanoid mass of bone and silvery vines erupted into being. Red lotus petals adorned it like fur, with a single hungry unopened blossom laid in it's chest. The caverns shook with a mighty roar, which awoke Arino quite the distance away from it.

He smacked his head on the wall behind him, startled by the sudden shaking. 'He didn't kill it.' Panic began to consume his psyche as he scrambled to his feet, ready for death to come barreling down the tunnel at any point, but the stone beneath him felt soothing. It was a gentle whisper from the ground, but he was uniquely suited to interpreting it's guidance thanks to his [Blessed of Stone] attribute.

It was pulling him deeper into the broken ground, but he felt like it's goal was not just to sentence him to an early grave. It wanted to guide him towards a good outcome, not just an end to his journey.

And so, Arino followed the earth's pull. He did so through several empty caverns and long tunnels, descending hundreds of meter's deeper. He scaled steep slopes, and by the time he wanted to stop and take a break, he realized the ground was pulling on him more urgently. Whatever window he seemed to have to at least stop this Tyrant from fully blooming into a Titan was close to closing.

He had been following his only lead for hours, and now it was time for a mad dash towards uncertainty. He had no real hopes of killing the thing unless they were trying to destroy all this rubble with explosives, but who knows if killing it would end this trial of his? If it didn't, he was likely to suffocate or be crushed by the resulting debris.

'I may be the first among my people to conquer this Nightmare' It was a simple inference that the Sleeping, which he knows as the Nightmare Spell by it's introduction, would only turn it's bearer into an abomination if they failed. 'It's simple, I just have to survive.

Now, the pull was irresistible. It felt close too, like what Arino was being lead to was tantalizingly close. He had observed an increase in the size and quantity of the vines, as well as a deepening red hue. The ground was pulsing with urgency, which had Arino on the verge of abandoning the cautious pace of exploration he had followed.

He took a step, then another step, and finally, this one didn't have the pull of the earth. It was silent, and he had reached where he was meant to be. The realization dawned on him, and he set to inspecting the cavern he was in.

Vines stood stretching towards it's roof like huge bloodstained spines, and dark red lotus buds hung from the ceiling of the cavern. The ground was littered with torn clothing and broken pickaxes, but no bodies were to be found. The Silver Lotus was expanding his influence, and it wouldn't take long for it to personally inspect it's new territory.

Arino found a good sized collection of mining dynamite and was ready to set it up, but unfortunately he had no clue how to. A few accidental knots later, he had them set up roughly around the top of the cavern and the entrance the Lotus was likely to come through. Now, all he had to do was wait and keep the detonator. For this, Arino tied it to his left forearm with the intent of detonating it the second the beast saw him. It would take a split second for the charge to go off, so he had to do it immediately or risk being dismembered before he could set it off.

The stone was whispering to him again, and he turned and readied himself. He held a broken pickaxe head in one hand like a crude dagger, the detonator strapped to the other. A light silver armor covered his torso and forearms, and he was ready. Until the buds on the ceiling began to blossom that is. Small silver vine insects fell from them, and Arino knew his plan hadn't been deep enough. 'Damnation!'

As the Silvershells began to converge on his position, luckily at a turtle's pace due to their recent birth, he saw a disgusting mass of red vines and silver flesh, ornamented by a despicable lotus bud, whose petals were slowly turning red. 'I already failed Lorial once, I can't let him stay as this wretched beast.'

Determination let him hold his hand on the detonator a moment longer than he originally planned to, and the beast finally seemed to see him. Angry maws formed from between it's vines, and a guttural scream shattered his eardrums completely. He didn't feel the pain, perhaps due to the adrenaline, but the loss of balance made him stumble in bringing his hand to the detonator. Miraculously, the rocks he stumbled on settled in a easy foothold for him to step back on.

As if on cue, the beast shot out vines out to the little golems all over the walls and floor and pulled with all it's might, sending it forth with immense speed. That was where his vision blacked out and he felt a horrible pain in his chest, a vine had wrapped around something deep within his chest and he felt his very existence waver. It was squeezing his soul!

He felt a weak boundary between it and his soul however, and he remembered the [Silver Guard]'s ability to protect the soul. How unfortunate, that the tyrant's spawn awarded him what he needed to survive it. He closed his eyes, and in blissful silence, activated the detonator.