The corpse of the Broodmother did not remain still for long.
At first, Umbra thought the twitching was nothing more than the last reflexive spasms of a dying monstrosity, the lingering misfires of a nervous system too corrupted to understand that its master was already gone. But then the vast, ruptured mass of flesh began to ripple in a way that suggested intention rather than decay. The torn hide quivered in overlapping waves, like something moving just beneath the surface of a pond and a low, wet popping noise followed.
The swollen cysts that had studded the creature’s body, dozens of them, some the size of shields, others as large as helmets, began to rupture one after another. They burst not with explosive force, but with a sickening softness, splitting open and spilling their contents across the sagging ruin of the Broodmother’s corpse. Thick fluid oozed out in viscous streams, and with it came movement.
From within each ruptured sac, small shapes tumbled free. They resembled mites at first glance, though grotesquely oversized even in their initial state. Each was a pale, segmented thing with too many twitching legs and a narrow, pointed head that pulsed faintly as though it contained something luminous beneath translucent skin. They hit the mud with faint splats, then immediately began to writhe.
Umbra watched, spear held loosely at her side, as the Broodmother’s vast body began to soften in earnest. The holy wounds she had inflicted seemed to unravel the creature from within. Flesh sagged, liquefied, and sloughed off in dark rivulets. The once-massive torso collapsed in on itself as though its internal structure had dissolved entirely.
And the mite-like creatures fed. They scuttled over the melting corpse with frantic purpose, latching onto the dissolving tissue and absorbing it with alarming speed. The sound of their feeding was a chorus of wet suction and rapid chewing, and as they consumed the liquefying flesh, their bodies began to swell. It was not gradual.
Before her eyes, each mite ballooned outward, their segments stretching and thickening as they gorged themselves. The pale translucence of their bodies darkened with stolen corruption, veins of black energy branching beneath their skin like spreading cracks in glass.
“Ah,” was all Umbra could manage.
She excelled at slaying singular horrors. Anything from Colossal beasts and titanic aberrations that dominated the battlefield with overwhelming presence to man sized horrors that stalked in the shadows were her domain. She could cleave through massive limbs, pierce armored hides, and shatter divine cores without hesitation.
But swarms? That was Farah’s specialty.
Farah, with her radiant wings and her wide-casting spells that could wash across entire valleys, purging corruption in brilliant sheets of holy fire. Farah, who could raise her hands and turn an army of lesser spawn into drifting ash within moments.
Umbra’s jaw tightened. Unfortunately, Farah was not here. The mites had already reached the size of rabbits, their bodies grotesquely distended and slick with dark residue. There were dozens of them as far as she could see, perhaps more hidden beneath the sagging remains of the Broodmother. Each continued to feed with single-minded focus, paying her no heed whatsoever. That, more than anything, unsettled her.
With a grimace of distaste, Umbra strode toward the corpse. The mud sucked faintly at her boots, and the stench of liquefying corruption thickened the air. One of the swollen mites clung to a slab of dissolving flesh mere paces from her.
Halcyon’s Spire flashed downward, skewering the creature cleanly through its center. The spear’s sanctified edge burned where it pierced, and for a heartbeat Umbra felt a flicker of relief at the familiar resistance of impaled flesh.
The mite did not screech or thrash. In fact, it seemed almost… indifferent. Even as it writhed on the blade, continuing to absorb the melting matter beneath it, the other creatures nearby did not scatter or react. They did not turn toward her in alarm, nor did they bother to defend their kin. They simply fed.
Umbra frowned, then yanked the spear free in a single efficient motion and the creature split in half. For a fleeting second she thought she had bisected it cleanly, ending its existence as she would any other lesser spawn. The two halves tumbled to the mud, slick and twitching.
Then both pieces began to move independently.
The divided sections shuddered and folded inward upon themselves, flesh knitting with grotesque speed. Segments reformed. Limbs regrew. The torn edges sealed seamlessly, and within seconds two complete mites stood where one had been, each slightly smaller than before but already swelling again as they resumed feeding.
Umbra stared at them.
The battlefield, which moments ago had felt conquered, now seemed perilously unstable.
As she watched, another mite finished consuming a large slab of melting flesh and split spontaneously, dividing down the center with a wet tearing sound before reforming into two distinct creatures. The number of them was increasing visibly, doubling wherever sufficient mass had been devoured.
She tightened her grip on her spear, the leather wrapping creaking faintly under the pressure of her hand.
She might be in trouble now.
Umbra swung again, her spear carving a bright arc through the damp air before biting cleanly into another of the swollen mite-creatures. The blade passed through its bloated body with satisfying ease, sanctified steel parting corrupted flesh as though it were little more than overripe fruit. For the smallest instant she felt vindicated in the simplicity of the act, then the creature divided.
The two halves hit the ground and writhed, their edges puckering and sealing even as she watched. Each fragment shuddered violently, swelling as it greedily absorbed the residue of its own spilled matter. Within moments there were two where one had stood, both smaller than the original but no less alive.
Umbra’s jaw tightened. She adjusted her stance and cut downward in a wide sweep, catching both of them this time. The spear flashed, severing them neatly again. Four pieces struck the ground.
Then four became eight. The multiplication was not immediate, but it was swift enough to render the pattern unmistakable. Each division produced smaller instances, and each instance resumed feeding with ravenous focus. The more they consumed, the larger they grew, and the larger they grew, the more viable they seemed for further division.
Umbra felt a creeping sense of unease press against the back of her mind. She was woefully unprepared for this. Her entire arsenal had been honed toward singular devastation. She broke siege engines with her bare hands, she decapitated great worms, she’d even pierced divine cores. The battlefield had always narrowed around a central threat, and she had always been the spearpoint that ended it.
But this was something different. She could already see the pattern unfolding in her thoughts, and she did not like where it led. If each creature fed and divided, and each division fed and divided again, then the numbers would grow not linearly but exponentially. A swarm that doubled with every sufficient meal would not merely become a nuisance; it would become an inevitability.
A paperclip scenario.
The phrase came to her unbidden, a strange modern metaphor she had picked up during her time in this world. A system that relentlessly pursued its function without limit or wisdom, converting all available matter into more of itself until nothing else remained.
New Zealand would not survive that.
With a slow exhale, Umbra stepped backward, boots sinking slightly into the damp earth as she forced herself to stop attacking. Mindless aggression would only accelerate the problem. Every strike of her spear was, in effect, a contribution to their numbers.
The creatures continued to feed behind her, their soft, wet movements filling the clearing with an unsettling chorus. Some were already approaching the size of small dogs, their bodies darkening as corruption thickened within them. The remains of the Broodmother were melting steadily, providing a grotesque banquet.
Umbra closed her eyes for the briefest of moments and attempted to think.
What spells did she possess that might help in such a situation? Her knowledge of magic was practical and limited compared to Farah’s vast repertoire. She knew how to reinforce her body, how to sharpen her weapon, how to call her spear back to her hand. She could wreathe Halcyon’s Spire in minor flame, enough to sear wounds and prevent regeneration in certain beasts.
Incineration would likely be the answer. Fire that did not merely cut, but consumed entirely, leaving nothing behind to divide.
Yet the most she could muster was a modest enchantment along her blade, a thin sheath of heat that would scorch whatever it struck. That might slow them, perhaps even prevent division if she burned them thoroughly enough, but to incinerate dozens, soon to be hundreds, of rapidly multiplying creatures? That was beyond her usual capacity.
Her strength augmentations would serve little purpose. She could crush the mites beneath her boots, grind them into paste with raw force, but if even fragments could reform then brute strength would only create more of them. Speed would not solve the fundamental problem either. No matter how quickly she struck, she would be fueling the very threat she sought to contain.
And with every moment she hesitated, the Witch of the Void gained more time. That realization burned far more painful than any physical wound.
The Witch was somewhere out there, weaving whatever schemes had prompted her escape to begin with. Umbra had sworn to pursue her, to ensure she could never again endanger another world. Yet here she stood, stalled by an unintended consequence of her own victory.
Her grip tightened around the spear until her knuckles whitened.
“Oh please,” she murmured, her voice low and strained in a way it rarely was, “Truth, Justice, Harvest, grant this insignificant soul guidance.”
Umbra did not pray often. It was not out of arrogance, though some might have mistaken it for such, it was more often than not she could see a path forward through sheer practicality. If a door was locked, she broke it, if an enemy stood before her, she felled it, and when the path grew uncertain, she had allies… had Farah, whose counsel and power filled whatever gaps her own abilities left.
When she had been human on earth, she had walked largely alone. A quiet woman who kept her thoughts guarded and her circle small. The portal that had pulled her from that narrow life had forced her to lean on others, to trust in companionship and shared burden. Over years she had learned that she did not need to carry everything herself. And yet now, torn once again from the comfort of that partnership, she found the old instinct creeping back in.
These creatures seemed almost indifferent to conventional wounds. Some continued feeding even after half their bodies had been blasted away, only dividing further when sufficiently damaged. Limbs could fall off, torsos could rupture, and yet so long as a fragment remained viable it would reform.
Bombs might work. Heavy ordnance, something capable of reducing the entire mass to ash in one catastrophic strike.
But that would mean devastation on a scale she was not willing to accept lightly. Infrastructure would be destroyed, lives would be disrupted, and if even a few mites survived the blast, scattered beyond the perimeter, they would simply begin again.
They would keep eating and eating until there were many, and then more than many, until there was little else left to consume.
Umbra exhaled slowly, the weight of responsibility pressing heavily against her shoulders.
She needed help. But would her prayer even reach beyond this sky? The gods she knew were mighty, radiant beings whose power dwarfed that of any mortal spellcaster. Yet they were not omnipotent. She understood that better than most. The war against the Witch had drained them severely and their intervention had been costly. Their recovery was far from complete and this was not their world.
She did not know if their voices could cross whatever barrier separated realms, or whether her plea would vanish into the indifferent expanse between.
Still, she lifted her gaze skyward as the swarm behind her continued to grow, and she waited hoping that even in a foreign land, someone was listening.
“LIVE FIRE! O SERIF EVIL!”
The words rang across the battlefield with such force that Umbra felt them in her bones before she fully registered what had been spoken. For a fleeting instant she believed she had shouted them herself, that the desperation in her chest had finally broken free in a roar of divine authority. The phrase echoed strangely in the air, folding back upon itself with perfect symmetry, each syllable striking the next like mirrored steel.
The mud at her feet trembled.
The sky above, already bruised by the encroaching evening, seemed to darken further, not as though night were falling, but as though something vast had turned its attention downward. The air grew heavy and charged, the mites paused in their grotesque feeding, their swollen bodies twitching as if sensing a shift in the fabric of the world.
Umbra’s grip tightened around Halcyon’s Spire.
For the briefest heartbeat, nothing happened.
The silence that followed was not empty but suspended, stretched thin like the moment before a lightning strike. Even the distant shouts of soldiers faltered, as though the entire landscape had drawn a collective breath and forgotten how to release it.
Then the heavens answered.
From the clouds overhead, points of brilliance began to form, first as distant sparks and then as blazing apertures of unbearable radiance. They multiplied rapidly, dozens of them igniting across the firmament like stars being born in fast succession. The light was not wild or chaotic, but focused, deliberate, and impossibly pure.
And then they fell. Pillars of divine fire lanced downward from the sky, each a column of incandescent judgment that struck the earth with surgical precision. They did not explode outward in indiscriminate devastation; instead, they descended like the measured strokes of a celestial brush, touching only that which was tainted. Where the beams met corruption, there was no resistance.
The sickly trees that had twisted and blackened under the Broodmother’s influence ignited instantly, their bark flashing from diseased gray to white-hot brilliance before disintegrating into drifting ash. The ground itself hissed as patches of festering rot were seared clean, the foul ichor evaporating in sharp bursts of steam.
The mites had no opportunity to divide again when each pillar that touched them reduced them to nothing in the span of a breath. Their swollen bodies did not split or reform; they simply ceased to exist, consumed entirely by a fire that left behind neither fragments nor residue. The grotesque chorus of their feeding cut off in uneven succession until there was only the roar of descending light.
Even the creatures Umbra had not seen, the ones lurking beyond her immediate sight as she had fought her way here, were found and purged. Divine flame curved and angled in midair, seeking out every pocket of corruption hidden among roots and ravines, striking with unerring accuracy. What had moments before been a battlefield teetering on the brink of exponential disaster became a landscape of cleansing brilliance.
The pillars lingered only long enough to finish their work. Then, one by one, they thinned and faded, drawing back into the heavens as though recalled by an unseen hand. The oppressive stench of decay was replaced by the crisp scent of scorched earth and something sweeter beneath it, something like rain
Umbra stood in the center of the newly purified clearing, her spear lowered slightly at her side, and felt something within her chest expand until it nearly ached. Relief flooded through her, the weight of the world on her shoulders easing. She had not been abandoned and her voice had not vanished unheard into a foreign sky. Her heart swelled with a gratitude so intense it bordered on reverence.
Slowly, almost fearfully, she lifted her gaze upward.
Her eyes scanned the clearing heavens, searching not for fading light but for its source. The clouds above were still illuminated faintly, their edges glowing with residual brilliance. For a moment she saw nothing but the afterimage of radiance burned into her vision.
Then she saw her.
Hovering in the open air as though the sky itself bore her weight stood a figure wreathed in soft, luminous glory. Pure white wings extended from her back, each measured beat steady and controlled, keeping her suspended with effortless grace. Feathers caught the dying light and reflected it in shimmering halos of their own. Around her head hovered a delicate starburst of golden geometry, a radiant pattern that pulsed gently like a living crown.
It was Farah.
She glowed not with blinding intensity, but with a warmth that felt achingly familiar, like sunlight remembered after a long winter. Her robes drifted around her in the lingering currents of divine energy, and her presence filled the clearing more completely than the pillars of fire ever had.
Umbra’s breath caught in her throat.
After all the uncertainty, after the fear that her prayer might never have reached beyond this familiar-yet-alien sky, the answer had come not merely as power, but as the one soul she had hoped beyond reason to see.
Farah looked down at her, a serene smile graced her lips. Then she descended.
Actually she descended pretty fast, and she wasn’t slowing.
“My lov—” She cried out in rapturous joy as she collided with Umbra with enough force to break several bones.