Chapter 46: The Sun Shines Through

"A-B-C-D-F-H-E… or was it F-E-G-H? A-B-C-D-E-H-G-F?"

Cupa held in a frustrated growl as she started again. In teaching her to read, Felix had first shown her a collection of symbols, each representing sounds which were strung together to form words- or as he'd called them, the letters of the alphabet. Apparently, humans and villagers were taught this at very young ages. Their children must have been naturally gifted, Cupa thought, because she'd grown out of being a spawn years ago and even she was having trouble memorizing so many letters and in what order they went.

"A… B… C… D… E… yeah, E… F… G… was the next one H or J?"

She couldn't even ask Felix for help right then, as the others would surely overhear and Cupa didn't want anyone else to know about her side project yet. Once they had some actual downtime for another lesson, she was hoping to recite the alphabet from memory for him.

"E-F-G-J-I-H-M-M-J… wait, no…"

Until then, she had a ways to go. Giving up on her attempts for the moment, she decided to ask something she'd been wondering about since the day the humans had come to Teras, but had never found the right chance to ask.

"You guys keep saying we're gonna meet someone called Gwendolyn. Well… who is she, anyway?" she asked, still in the saddle behind Felix and holding onto him as the bony horse stumbled through the sand.

Felix looked over his shoulder at her. "She's called the Diamond Knight. It's said she was an unstoppable warrior even before the invasion, saving people wherever she went. Nowadays she's the leader of a group that smuggles supplies under the Usurpation Army's notice."

"I've never met Gwendolyn myself, but her reputation is legen- incredible," remarked Celia. Her refusal to use a different word hadn't gone unnoticed, but Cupa decided not to remark on it. "Why, there are even stories of her killing a Wither by herself, armed only with a stick and the ink sac of a squid."

Melissa frowned. "You sure you heard that right, Cece? We have the same story in Tenebyss, but she trapped it with a row of pistons and blew it up with just one block of TNT."

"I'm quite sure. How could something like a Wither be brought down by a single TNT explosion?"

"It sounds more realistic than her killing it with an ink sac," Blake said.

"T-that's a perfectly reasonable theory for someone as talented as her!" blustered Celia, making a gesture of something hitting her face. "The story says she blinded the Wither's heads with the ink, before using the stick to break them apart!"

Felix leaned over and whispered to Cupa, "I'm not sure I believe it either. But it's a fun story for kids to tell each other."

She, however, was now wondering something besides Gwendolyn's choice of weapons. "What's a Wither? It must be strong if beating it alone is that impressive."

"It is," replied Blake. "I've never seen a Wither in person, but they're just about the strongest monsters you could possibly fight. Undead, three-headed, and vicious… the stories say they can even level cities. The good news is they don't appear in the wild like other monsters. They're built."

Cupa frowned. "Built? Like, you put one together to fight it? How?"

Blake took a breath as if about to explain, but after a moment's pause he deflated. "I don't actually know. Nobody in my village knew how Withers are built, only that they are. Does anyone else know?"

Felix and Melissa both shook their heads. Celia, on the other hand, was looking at the sand ahead of the group, her expression downcast. "I… I do. But I am not at liberty to divulge such information."

She looked around at them with a sigh. "To defeat a Wither is a task accomplished only by coordinated efforts, sometimes with small armies' worth of troops which suffer immense casualties. As such, the secret to their construction is known to only a select few across the old Lux Kingdom, House Lumis included. I am sorry, but I cannot share it even with any of you."

Cupa couldn't imagine something that dangerous. A part of her wondered if such a creature might be able to be transformed like she and the rest of Teras had been, but if Withers really were so fearsome then she doubted the Illagers could have pulled it off without destroying themselves in the process.

"Well," she told Celia, "when we meet Gwendolyn, maybe you guys can ask her what she fought with. Do you think she really took one of those down by herself?"

Blake, riding alongside Cupa and Felix, scratched the back of his head. "Doesn't sound likely to me, but I've seen enough over these last few weeks to think anything's possible by now. Still, I don't know who'd actually try to fight a Wither alone, unless they've got a death wish."

Ray was dying.

He'd backed away from the creature just enough as to not be struck by the full force of its explosion, but to say he'd reached a safe distance was an overstatement. The blast had slammed him against a shelf in the store so hard as to smash apart the shelf and even some of the stone wall behind it. In one fell swoop, his suit of refined havenite armor was destroyed, left as nothing but broken red shards of metal strewn along the floor. Ray supposed he was lucky none of the shrapnel had embedded in his body, but his armor hadn't absorbed all of the damage. He was fairly certain he'd broken a few bones from the collision, as several parts of his body were having trouble responding when he tried to move them. Human bodies possessed an innate healing factor, but so much damage all at once was beyond its capacity to recover from. His vitality was slipping away, as were what remained of his senses.

Even the agonizing pain and the sounds of carnage outside the ruined store were hard to focus on. Whatever he'd unleashed upon Granitetown was still howling, and the terrified screams of the populace were swiftly being drowned out by more explosions. Ray listened to the destruction, and in more ways than one he could feel everything crashing down around him. There he was, a Usurper in enemy territory, having unwittingly set loose a monster which was making short work of the city around it and preying upon the inhabitants. He'd only come to help deliver the materials for a beacon; what had gone wrong? Had the Ender Forge's information been incorrect? Had Overseer Fornax been misled?

But as his vision blurred, and tears fell under the cracked green lenses of his mask, he realized. By all he'd once held dear, he realized.

'This will go a long way toward helping you Far Landers win the war.'

He realized the point of the excursion had been to deploy this creature all along, to soften up Granitetown for conquest.

'Your Overseer even recommended you to build it for us. Senior Forger Benedict said she was quite sure you'd be the perfect one to do it.'

He realized the Ender Forge had known what was about to happen, and had left him to die in the explosion while they took shelter.

'Being a soldier isn't easy, and not everyone is up to the task. But don't you worry… we'll find another way for you to make yourself useful.'

He realized that Fornax, the one who'd taken him in and trained him, who'd kept him close in the founding stages of the Usurpation Army until he was ready to join it, who'd trusted him to carry out assignments for her…

…who'd reacted with apathy at the deaths of Lime Squad…

…who'd seemed so proud of herself when talking about Ray's accomplishments…

…who'd cast him to a meager security task as if he were an afterthought…

…who'd promised he could still contribute to the Army's efforts without fighting…

…had sent him off to die. And he realized the impetus had been his confession that he didn't feel good about fighting Inlanders anymore.

He realized she'd stopped caring for him the moment his usefulness had run its course.

"But she let me keep my Genesis Core!" some part of his brain, desperate not to accept the truth staring him in the face, argued. "She would have taken it from me if she didn't think I would come back!"

Ray couldn't move, but his thoughts turned to the sealed iron door into which the Forgers had retreated. There wasn't a doubt in his mind they'd escaped through the Nether portal and were waiting a while to see their handiwork, as well as to retrieve the light Grass Core from his body. He might not have been expected to return to Incursia, but they certainly would be.

A means to an end. That was all he was to Fornax, who'd only taken in a scared, starving child because he'd shown the potential to kill.

He was fading. His blurred vision was going dark, and the sounds were almost completely muted. Perhaps he had a few minutes left to ponder his failures, and the tragedy he'd brought to Granitetown.

"I just… wanted to help," he sobbed, barely able to hear his own raspy voice.

And he had. Now, the city would be much easier to conquer, and the citizens- if any survived- would be put in their places by the Usurpers soon enough. Something similar had happened back in Luxmouth; wasn't this the outcome he'd wanted?

"So much death…"

Lime Squad. Crimson Squad. Ruby Squad. Marshal Orion. Samuel. The people of Luxmouth. Felix. The Inland slaves. The people of Granitetown. And now Ray. The casualties were to be swept away by the Usurpation Army's advance, eventually forgotten and those lost never acknowledged again. He'd done his part wonderfully.

Ray wasn't dead. Feeling was returning to his body, his ruined limbs were beginning to move again, and his senses were coming back. His natural healing shouldn't have been able to make him recover from such injuries so quickly, and it was a mystery as to why he'd survived.

But he didn't care about answers right then. The pain and grief were fading, and in their place something else had taken hold. Something which burned in his core, flooding every part of Ray's body with a primal, unwavering determination to persevere in the face of death. Something which had motivated him since his time in the wastes- and which now commanded him to stand and act upon the injustice of it all. Something which dwarfed even his previous focus on Blake.

Raw, pure anger.

Ulrich's stakeout had proven worthwhile, in just about the worst way possible.

He'd been keeping an eye on the tool shop in lower Granitetown for weeks, observing the comings and goings of its patrons. On more than a few occasions he'd visited the store himself and requested repairs to his weapons- always a necessity for a mob hunter like him. But he never asked for work on his Netherite armor, no matter how much the pretty woman behind the counter offered it. That was his to take care of, and his alone.

It wasn't as if he needed the help with his weapons either; what he really wanted was to know what said woman was up to. True, Ulrich had no proof that anything sinister was afoot, but her charming eyes- dark purple in color- gave him enough of a hunch. Despite that, he'd known full well that he couldn't just accuse her of anything without further evidence. That would draw undue attention to himself, which was something he very much wanted to avoid. So his routine had been to passively observe the store day by day, hoping for something to happen which would prove he wasn't just being paranoid.

Well, something most definitely had happened.

"Run!"

"The kids, get the kids out of here!"

"It's coming this way!"

A Wither had burst free of the store and was on a rampage. Within minutes, the street was covered in debris and panicking citizens, each a prime target for one of the abomination's skull projectiles. Bodies were scattered about already, their skin decaying as black roses grew from them like twisted memorials. The few members of Granitetown's security forces in the area had taken up their bows and landed a few arrows on the Wither, but their efforts were essentially meaningless: with every victim afflicted by its corrosive projectiles, the beast recovered from any damage it had taken by absorbing their life essence.

Overwhelmed, the guards had shifted their efforts to just getting civilians away from the scene until reinforcements could arrive. The Wither, of course, was left unchecked as a result, and it lazily floated high above the streets in search of more easy prey. Ulrich, who'd taken cover in an alley as it passed by, realized it would be up to him to keep it busy and loaded his crossbow.

"Can I even do this? I've cleared out creeper dens and dungeons full of skeletons, but fighting a Wither by myself? It'd be suicide!"

But he could not- would not- bring himself to sit by. He saw it bearing down on a terrified group of children not far up the road and sprang into action, bringing up the crossbow and shooting at it from behind. The arrow lodged in its spine, and one of its three heads swiveled around to face him. A ghostly, skull-shaped projectile was flung Ulrich's way, which he avoided by throwing himself into a roll to the side. He hadn't drawn its attention away from the kids, who it was backing up toward an alley where they'd be trapped. Neither of the other two heads' attacks were landing, instead just detonating on the street to keep its targets moving.

"It's toying with them before going in for the kill! I need to distract it!"

He began to make his way closer and shot another arrow, but the head facing him countered with a skull that destroyed it in midair. With the children running out of space, he resorted to a bolder tactic: he leaped onto a pile of bricks from a destroyed building and pulled out a diamond axe from his inventory, throwing it at the Wither as hard as he could. The improvised attack worked better than he imagined, for the blue blade embedded in the back of the middle head with a crunch of the dark bones.

His efforts were enough to enrage the Wither and pull its focus off of the children, allowing them to make a getaway, but as it turned to face him he wondered if the axe had really harmed it all that much. Now with all three heads firing projectiles at him, Ulrich leaped down from his perch and ran back up the street, toward where it had come from.

"I can't do this alone, but I can at least keep it in one place until more guards arrive. Where the hell are they?!"

A skull struck him from behind, and he was thrown to the ground with a groan. Though his Netherite armor absorbed most of the blast damage, he could feel wither sickness setting in as his stamina began to drain away. His back had started to itch as well: it wasn't the full effect, but he knew his skin was steadily decaying. Ulrich scrambled to his feet and found a bucket of milk in his inventory, lifting his helmet to drink from it as he kept running. The withering effect disappeared, but he was still hurt and he only had the one bucket, so he would need to be more careful.

He ducked into the broken doorway of a bookstore, hoping he'd at least be able to take cover for a moment. That hope was dashed when he found a group of civilians still hiding inside, who'd been watching his battle through the smashed windows.

"What're you doing?! Don't lead it this way!" a human behind the counter shouted.

Ulrich snarled under his helmet. "Damn it all…! Fine, but once I get it away from here you'd better get moving!"

But he noticed something as he was working himself up to dash back into the street: the explosions had stopped. The Wither's raspy hisses could still be heard, so it hadn't left, yet it wasn't shooting anymore. There was another sound, a loud rustling like that of leaves during a storm. Ulrich's eyes flicked to the bookstore's windowsill, where a potted fern had started to vibrate before the plant tore itself free and flew through the air across the street.

It wasn't alone. Grass, weeds, flowers, and all manner of flora from the nearby buildings and planters were uprooting themselves and converging on the ruined tool and weapons store. The plants- especially the blades of grass- grew at supernatural speeds and entwined into enormous, tendril-like strands which were coiling themselves into a ball around something. Ulrich, peering from the doorway, could see the Wither staring transfixed at the growing mass of plant matter.

"The hell is that supposed to be…?"

When the last of the grass tendrils were assimilated, a pale green light shone from the gaps between them before the entire mass unfurled. A person was revealed in the middle of it all, plants spiraling around him so densely as to hide most of his appearance. Some of the floating grass looped around his body as if garbing him in strips of cloth, while the rest snaked to the ground in thick coils, picking up fallen weapons from inside the store and brandishing them around the person like a multi-limbed monster poised for battle.

Hissing, the Wither finally began to fire its skulls at this new target. None of the projectiles came close: grass coils lashed out with astonishing speed, swiping them out of the air with the weapons. One of them swung low, an iron axe entangled, and wedged its blade into the beast's midsection. As it roared and shrieked, attempting to back away, the grass was yanked down, and the axe tore a pair of its lower ribs off.

The Wither's flight became jerky and unbalanced, and it could not dodge another coil which wrapped around its exposed spine. Ulrich had seen it destroy blocks on contact, yet the plants seemed imbued by a mysterious power flowing from their commander, and held fast as they ensnared the beast and dragged it out of the sky. It careened into the street below, where it was set upon by yet more grass appendages. Swords and picks and axes relentlessly bore into it from all sides as the person approached, and when the tools broke the plants spun themselves into thicker tendrils to bludgeon their howling target.

Ulrich wasn't the only one watching. The people who hadn't yet fled were beginning to look on from the sidelines, horrified but awed at the display before them. He took a step out into the street, drawing his crossbow again, and barked at the onlookers. "It's not safe! Get away from here!"

Not all of them heeded his advice, but the Wither ended up helping to convince them: it let out a deafening screech, and the grass encircling it went still then crumbled away. Wisps of yellowish energy were swirling around its bones, and despite its injuries it took flight again, this time staying very low to the ground as it charged for the newcomer and fired another skull. The remaining grass coils formed a shield in front of their master to take the hit: he was protected, but a hole had been blown in his defenses and he'd run out of spare plant matter to use. Ulrich saw some of the blades wrapped around his forearms uncurl as a last resort, exposing an inch of ghastly gray skin, and paused.

"Who… IS that?"

There would be time to find that out later. The newcomer was backing away as the Wither rushed for him, and he had to throw himself aside to avoid another skull. It turned to follow him, single-minded in its focus on the stranger as he tried to put more distance between them. Ulrich fired at the beast, but his arrow didn't even get its attention when it bounced harmlessly off its glowing body. Another two arrows fared no better; the energy infused in its bones seemed to protect it from projectiles.

With no other options, Ulrich pulled out one of the few weapons he had left, a sword with a diamond blade, and charged for the Wither from behind once again. It was too caught up in its pursuit to hear him coming, so he was given a free shot at it. This time, he leaped at it and jammed the sword through its damaged ribcage, cutting into its spine in the process. The Wither shuddered and bucked, throwing him off but leaving the sword and his axe from before still embedded in its bones. One of its heads spun to look at Ulrich, and with his crossbow useless he had no choice but to back away before it could retaliate.

"Hey!" he yelled at the stranger with the plants. "Go for the weapons stuck in it!"

He looked taken aback to be addressed, but nodded and held his last pair of long vines ready to be lashed out. The Wither charged for him again, closing the distance between the two with a roar. Time seemed to slow down for Ulrich as he watched the stranger's plant tendrils whip around the beast in arcs, their tips wrapping around the handles of his axe and sword. They went taut and tore the weapons free, further damaging the ribcage and breaking a hole in the central skull in the process. The Wither rammed into the stranger, knocking him away, but he used the momentum to his advantage. He pulled back on the plants in midair, and the weapons swung to either side of it. As he brought them together just before landing, he screamed out a single word.

"FORNAX!"

The stranger hit the ground with a grunt, the last of the plants falling away from him. He was helpless, but his efforts had paid off: the axe cleaved the Wither's spine in two, while the sword slashed through its necks, severing all three heads. Its body went still and clattered to the street in a noisy pile of black bones. As Ulrich approached the remains, they crumbled to dust before his eyes and left no trace of the monster apart from a white crystal the size of his fist.

"That's a Nether Star… I've never seen one in person."

"They did it! They really did it!"

"WE'RE SAVED!"

"Everyone, it's over!"

Around the street, the remaining citizens were emerging from hiding to find their loved ones and assist the injured. Many, however, were also starting to cheer for the victors, having watched the skirmish to the very end. Ulrich wanted to shout at them for staying and putting themselves at risk, but he was too tired from the fight. He looked back at the stranger, only to see him being dragged out of the street and into the tool store by a pair of humans. The last of the plants fell away from his unconscious form to reveal he was a deathly pale young man dressed in little more than rags. Ulrich's eyes narrowed when he saw the woman who ran the store with them, looking around at the cheering citizens before she and the two men disappeared deeper into the store, bringing the mysterious savior with them.

The mysterious savior who bore a striking resemblance to the rogues from the Far Lands he'd heard about.

Ulrich retrieved his sword and axe and started after the group, ignoring the people of Granitetown who were taking stock of things. He didn't put the weapons back in his inventory, for they had not seen the last of their use for the day.