Chapter 44: Into the Crag's Heart
The decision made, preparation was swift and grim. This was not a war party. Alistair would take only Thora and Kael. Thora for her hunter's instincts and unwavering loyalty, Kael for his deep, almost spiritual connection to living things, which might be the key to understanding the blight. They carried no resonance hammers; their weight and disruptive energy would be a beacon in the sensitive, corrupted landscape. Instead, they carried light packs with water, dried meat, and coils of strong vine rope. Their only weapons were Thora's bow and their bone knives.
Grok and Borak saw them to the edge of the territory, the new stone gate groaning open just wide enough for them to pass. The Graxian chieftain placed a heavy hand on Alistair's shoulder.
"The clan's forge-fires will burn for your return, Earth-Shaker," he rumbled, his usual gruffness replaced by a solemn respect. "Find what you seek."
The journey north was a descent into a memory of dread. The jungle grew quieter, the colors leaching away into shades of grey and muted green. The air grew cold, and the now-familiar metallic tang of the blight coated their throats. Kael grew increasingly quiet, his face pale.
"It is worse than before," he whispered, his hand resting on the trunk of a spiralwood tree. "The silence here is not peaceful. It is... dead. The tree has no song left. It is just... matter."
As they neared the entrance to the crags, the feeling of wrongness became a physical pressure. The entrance was no longer a simple fissure. The veins of glowing blue ore in the rock pulsed with a frantic, sickly rhythm, and the air shimmered with heatless energy. The bones that littered the ground were now covered in a faint, crystalline frost.
They entered the tunnel. The silence was absolute, broken only by the sound of their own breathing and the low, discordant hum that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. The polished stone felt unnaturally warm to the touch.
They moved slowly, Thora in the lead with her bow half-drawn, her eyes scanning the shifting shadows. They encountered no phantoms. The Deep-Dwellers were absent, but their presence was felt in the oppressive, watchful energy that filled the caverns.
Alistair led them deeper, following the pull of the corruption, the feeling that had become a compass needle pointing toward the source of the sickness. The tunnels twisted downward, the air growing thicker, the hum deepening into a vibration they could feel in their teeth.
After what felt like hours, they emerged into a cavern that took Alistair's breath away. It was the heart of the crags, but it was not the swirling nexus of blue energy he had seen before.
The great taproot of the colossal tree was here, but it was no longer a pillar of life. It was desiccated, its surface blackened and split. Wrapped around it, pulsing with a slow, vile light, was a cancerous growth of the same glowing blue crystal they had seen elsewhere, but here it was shot through with veins of the same sickly green that powered Varg's Reanimates.
At the base of this corrupted root, the energy coalesced into a swirling, silent vortex of blue and green light. It wasn't a wound; it was an open, festering sore in the fabric of the world.
[SCAN: CORRUPTION NEXUS. STATUS: ACTIVE. SEVERITY: CRITICAL. ORIGIN: EXOGENOUS/EXTRATERRESTRIAL. OBSERVATION: NEXUS IS ACTING AS A CONDUIT, DRAWING ENERGY FROM AN EXTERNAL SOURCE AND CORRUPTING THE PLANETARY LEY-LINE NETWORK.]
Extraterrestrial. The word echoed in Alistair's mind. This wasn't a natural disease. This was an infection. Something from *outside* had lodged itself here, in the planet's vital heart, and was slowly poisoning it.
Kael let out a choked gasp and fell to his knees, clutching his head. "The song..." he whimpered. "It is a scream. A scream of something... other. It does not belong here."
Thora stood guard, her bowstring taut, her eyes wide with a primal fear. "Alistair... what is this?"
Before he could answer, the vortex of light pulsed. A wave of disorienting energy washed over them. The world swam, and for a moment, Alistair wasn't in the cavern. He saw flashes of a cold, dead starscape. A shattered, crystalline vessel drifting in the void. A desperate, final act of ejection, sending a seed of this corruption hurtling through the dark until it found a green, living world to infest.
The vision vanished, leaving him dizzy and nauseous.
This was the origin. A piece of a dead star, or a dying ship, carrying this blight. It had crashed here, burrowed into the planet's core, and begun its work.
And Varg... Varg hadn't just found the blight. He had found a way to communicate with it. To make a pact with this alien intelligence. He wasn't just using its power; he was its willing servant, its voice, its general.
As this horrifying understanding dawned on Alistair, the corrupted root shuddered. The crystal growths glowed brighter, and from the vortex, a new form began to emerge. It was not a phantom. It was a figure, woven from solidified blue crystal and green necrotic energy, its form shifting, not yet fully formed.
But its face, contorted in agony and rage, was already recognizable.
It was a face made of crystal and light, but it was Varg's face.
The Blight-Bound had not just learned from the crags. He had connected himself to them. He was creating a new body for himself here, in the very heart of the corruption.