Eshara knew she shouldn’t leave Hollis behind with those being the last words they had exchanged. She hadn’t trudged back to their refuge spot only to see if he could aid her with any final defensive spells. Nor even subconsciously so that he could force her into confronting that brutal possibility with Corvan. But also because it might be her last opportunity to speak with him in general.

  Hollis placed an unusual amount of faith in her, a trait she could hardly find odd in a person who used faith in the heavens as both his sword and shield. Yet he hadn’t seemed to identify the plain contradiction in their conversation—how he had expressed complete confidence that she would triumph over this threat, while also pointing out that even the Party of Heroes had failed. Ultimate victory perhaps, but at the cost of their lives. And Eshara was far from being one of the Heroes.

  A part of her couldn’t help but mull over that comparison as she forged through the dark cave passages. Her, contrasted against the five men and women she had once served. How she trod in the canyons their footsteps had carved out. For a hundred years she had tried to chase their shadow. Not even live up to their legacy—that would be arrogance. But to imitate, like a candle might a bonfire, since the world would still be warmer for the effort. Most days she felt that she had failed even in that paltry goal.

  What quality did they possess that she lacked?

  She shook away the inattentive thoughts as she neared her destination. She had accrued many regrets over the years, and she knew distraction would only add another to the list. Focus. Grief or jubilation could come after the task was complete, but until then, she needed to remain focused.

  The pulsating wall of flesh was where she’d left it; no monsters contested her progress there. Perhaps none remained. She had spent what felt like endless hours culling them.

  The grotesque material stretched from one side of the opening to the other, a mess of pink, red, and purple that she forced herself to scrutinize no matter how uneasy the sight made her. She wasn’t foolish enough to avert her gaze from the enemy.

  If her suspicions were true, through that erected defense would be the main body of whatever had been collecting townsfolk and the creatures of the Middlerose, mutating them into Titled-rank threats by the dozen. Thus, a monster into the 1300s at the very least. Likely higher.

  And, of course, Corvan.

  Despite her earlier determination, she couldn’t stop her resolve from flagging. She had faced many horrible situations through the years, not least the one she had made yesterday, after Hollis had evaluated the sickly villagers and concluded that many would be crippled or worse upon them slaying the source of the magical plague.

  Yet there had been little other choice. According to Hollis, only the Monk himself could have cured that personal handiwork of the Flesh-Weaver, and perhaps not even he. For all that the Heroes had killed the Cataclysms, none had been equal to those creatures, not in their domains of specialty. It had taken a whole team to kill each, after all.

  So Eshara’s singular choice had been to accept the casualties that would come from forcefully breaking the magic. She strove to imitate her prior Guildmaster’s team, and would accept long odds, even seemingly hopeless missions. But not just once or twice, she had failed to produce the miracle the Heroes themselves would have, and had come away wishing she had taken the safer path.

  In any case, Eshara was not delusional. She knew to sever the infected arm before the poison spread to the heart.

  She’d never had to kill her own teammate, though.

  Corvan was relatively new to the team. She wondered whether she would have dreaded this confrontation more if it had been Hollis—a thought she hated herself for having. In a strange way, though, she felt like she owed more to the newcomer than the longest-standing member of her party. Eshara would die for Hollis without a moment’s hesitation, and Hollis would do the same. She would understand, and he would understand. Corvan, while three years had passed since he’d joined, still felt like the newcomer, and thus her duty to him felt heavier. Her failure to protect more substantial.

  She shook herself, realizing that her thoughts were wandering again. Frustration spiking, her grip tightened around her sword’s hilt. I don’t even have proof he’s in there, anyway, she thought. Lay eyes on him first. Though she didn’t dare let herself hope otherwise.

  She gazed at the wall of flesh for a moment longer, working up her nerve. If this foe had wrought Titled-rank threats out of mere townsfolk, what would it have molded with a Titled adventurer as its putty?

  She squared her jaw and unsheathed her sword. Dispelling her hesitation, she struck forward.

  “[Crescent Triad].”

  From ten meters away, she slashed three times. The white arcs of energy sliced clean through the flesh-wall, biting deep into the surrounding stone cavern as well. Fountains of blood spurted everywhere. She grimaced and walked up, ignoring the rancid stench that suddenly pervaded the space, and kicked hard in the center of the three cuts. The triangular slab tilted, then impacted the floor with a wet thud. She peered inside, saw no immediate threat, and stepped through.

  An enormous chamber easily two hundred meters in diameter revealed itself. In the center was a pit she couldn’t see into, so, warily, she approached the edge and gazed down.

  Her eyes widened behind her visor.

  There, at the bottom, pulsed a Seed of Genesis.

  The giant, misshapen oval—vaguely reminiscent of a beating heart—hung from spindly strands of flesh hooking in all directions to the walls of the pit. It expanded and contracted in an irregular rhythm, a thump followed by three seconds of silence, then a thump-thump-thump, and so on, sporadic beats without pattern that thudded through her whole body despite the distance.

  Eshara went cold, seeing it. An [Inspection] confirmed that she hadn’t mistaken the monster’s unique appearance. She felt only marginally less horrified when she read a level of ‘1400’ beneath the creation’s name. That would make it one of the weakest Seeds mortalkind had ever found, though that was like saying ‘one of the weakest phoenixes.’ Still a threat to imperil whole teams of experienced Titled.

  As, she supposed, had been demonstrated in this very expedition.

  The Party of Heroes, early in their career, had slain one such creature of the Flesh-Weaver’s. A Seed of Genesis. Not a small, starved, newly awoken one like what hung beneath her, but one of the first and greatest of the Cataclysm’s projects. The Seed had forced tens of thousands to flee their ancestral forests, ceding their homes to the enemy—because, in a lament Eshara shared with them now, what other choice did they have? Not even the collective might of the elves, all of their Titled joined together, would be foolish enough to stand against a personal project of the Flesh-Weaver’s.

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  And then the Party of Heroes had stridden into that forest full of horrific monstrosities, cut their way through Titled-rank threats by the hundreds, reached the monster-mutator in the heart of the woods, and slain it. Subsequently leaving without so much as seeking a reward for reclaiming the many lost, millennia-old elven cities.

  It was perhaps one of the earliest indicators that those five were not merely world-renowned Titled, but the beginnings of a class of adventurers never before seen. Indeed, years later, they had vanquished their first Cataclysm.

  But a small, starved Seed was still a threat to make a kingdom tremble. In this new age, mortalkind would muster a response—entire dukedoms would not fall before the threat was put down. But towns? Cities? Likely. If the Seed took proper root—had proper fuel, like, Eshara supposed, she had delivered in the form of Corvan and now herself—some of the strongest individuals in the world would need to be summoned. The Oakwarden himself would no doubt volunteer, having a special hatred for the Flesh-Weaver, even among elvenkind.

  She had come expecting a nightmare, but not a Seed of Genesis.

  Somehow even that revelation held secondary importance in her thoughts. Because her eyes fell on a lone figure huddled near the base of the Seed, on the ground of the deep pit. As she watched, it tore itself out of a sac of pink, translucent material, spilling thick fluid onto the floor while an oversized black hand ripped through the membrane and scrabbled around. A warped face breached next, and though there were no recognizable features to link the creature to Corvan, she knew better than to hope otherwise.

  Here was the Seed of Genesis’s last line of defense—the final creature it had flesh-forged, desperately working until the very moment of her arrival.

  At least it sees me as a threat, Eshara thought grimly.

  Her eyes drifted to the pulsating lump of flesh. She could attack the Seed instead of Corvan. But while they held little offensive capability of their own, Seeds were durable, not something she could kill with a single blow. She couldn’t waste her energy trying to destroy it before Corvan himself had been dealt with.

  Steeling herself—locking away her mounting despair—she vaulted off the ledge above the pit, swapping her sword out for a two-handed hammer. Even before she had pinned on her first adventurer’s badge, Eshara had honed basic competency with all of the common weapons. Those forged of metal, at least. She was a blacksmith.

  She had little attachment to any weapon in particular; she merely picked the right one for the job. In this case, a massive hammer to deliver a devastating, kinetic blow from overhead.

  But though Corvan had only just freed himself from the sac of flesh, he met her attempted ambush with ease. He swiped out with his warped black arm and intercepted her—the blow denting plate armor and sending her flying.

  The sheer speed and strength of the attack shocked her. She had read the [Flesh-Woven Abomination]’s level the moment it had emerged, and 1300 was powerful, but not a higher rank than her own. Another reminder that level was far from a reliable indicator, no absolute gauge of strength. These were creations of the Flesh-Weaver. A Cataclysm. Even the spawn of its spawn would be stronger than most.

  Eshara flipped in the air and recovered, slamming to the ground and digging gouges into the stone with her boots as she slowed her momentum. Dropping her hammer into her inventory, she withdrew her sword—though she debated whether a spear would be better. The two were the most common implements of war for a reason. In combat, versatility and simplicity stood above most other virtues.

  Steady again, she raised her new weapon and locked eyes on her target. Free from the birthing pod, Corvan stretched his limbs in an unnatural and jerky motion, then slowly turned to face her. He tilted his head, a curious gesture that made her skin crawl from scalp to toes.

  The man was, as any of the monstrosities were, grotesque to look at, and not just because she knew it had once been her teammate. The most distinguishing trait by far was the thick, bulbous six-foot-long arm that rested on the ground, acting almost as a third leg. His armor, weapons, and other gear were gone. No traces of his beastkin heritage remained. No traces of the man at all.

  Subdue him. Then I can save him. Killing isn’t necessary, not if I’m good enough.

  But triumphing over an opponent nearly her equal would be difficult enough. Trying to spare one? Pulling her blows? She knew in her heart that she would fail to measure up, would once more fail to deliver a miracle that the Heroes had done so easily thousands of times before.

  But she would try.

  She charged. The ground beneath her cracked as she closed the distance in a fraction of a second, and her battle against her once-teammate began in earnest. The arena disintegrated as she unleashed skills and weapon arts in rapid succession, and she exulted in, if nothing else, finally getting to vent her concern, rage, and grief.

  Yet, to her disappointment, she couldn’t find absolute distraction in the frenzy. Despite all her determination, a sliver of her mind stayed free, and it watched from the inside out, flinching with every chunk she carved from the creature's flesh, every slam of her hammer and crunch of bones or carapace, every thrust of her spear squelching when she yanked the weapon free from the body of her teammate.

  Her friend. Those injuries she was delivering were onto a man she should be protecting. And for all that the fight was the same as many others—in that sense very little could shock a Titled adventurer with a century's experience—the two of them were matched closely enough that she couldn’t pull her blows. That huge black arm dented her armor whenever her guard lapsed, a feat few opponents had ever managed. And already exhausted from slaying dozens of Titled foes prior to finding the Seed of Genesis, Eshara knew she had to end the fight. Decisively. Because if she didn’t, she would die.

  That itself might not have fazed her—her losing, at least compared to taking an ally’s life—but the knowledge she would be dooming hundreds more was unforgivable. She had chosen this path. She had chosen to be sword and shield to those not powerful enough to wield them themselves.

  And Corvan had chosen it too. The truth was, this was the fate of anyone who pushed back the horrors of the world. Those were infinite, and the defenders were few. Not even the Heroes had been spared from that inevitability. Viewed in that light, Corvan was only fulfilling his destiny.

  Just… too early.

  I should have been first.

  She hardened herself. She couldn’t afford hesitation. For every chunk of flesh she ripped from the monster, her own armor dented and cracked in return. Blood streamed from a half-dozen injuries. Even so, the enemy was in worse shape.

  She would win.

  For all her faults, she did tend to win.

  Is there any other way?

  There wasn’t, and entertaining the idea when she was barely keeping up threatened everything she stood for.

  Why did victory so rarely feel like victory?

  Did they ever feel like this?

  The opening presented itself, and Eshara acted without hesitation. The beast lay in a crater, stunned from her previous weapon art—vulnerable. She already worried that she would lack the stamina to destroy the Seed of Genesis when she won. She couldn’t allow this diversion to continue, much less attempt to subdue him without killing. She had failed, as a part of her knew she would from the start. An impossible task. For her, at any rate.

  She pulled her hammer into the air and charged a skill. The weapon didn’t tremble. She had promised Hollis that she would do what she must, and she was no liar.

  But…

  I don’t want to.

  The childish, pathetic thought rang loudly enough through her head that it shocked her. Almost slowed her attack. Almost.

  This is the path you chose.

  She was the savior, not the one who was saved. Those days were over.

  But I don’t want to.

  What you want doesn’t matter!

  There was one option available. If she was stronger, she might have been able to forge a new one from thin air—but she wasn’t, and couldn’t, and never would be. It was the price of weakness.

  She sent her hammer crashing downward, aimed for her friend’s skull.

  Crestwood would be saved. Some of the townsfolk would die, but rescuing some was better than none. Moreover, the rot would be cut out at the root. The infection wouldn’t spread to nearby cities, adding thousands to the casualty list.

  She would be hailed as a hero.

  Corvan would die.

  The world would continue on.

  A part of her begged to nothing in particular. A plea sent off to the heavens themselves, though the gods had never once answered her before.

  Please? that small voice whispered one more time, even as she watched the killing blow fall.

  And then, nonsensically, a voice answered.

  “[Zero Point Stasis].”