Doran’s gaze held steady, staring out into the mist. A few of the others stepped through his vision, their skeletal figures wraithlike and waiflike, battered by the effects of slow starvation. He had seen a few shove fistfuls of dead spores into their mouths on occasion, mechanically chewing and swallowing the grimy substance. Doran had his doubts regarding the nutrition it provided; he had even more doubts about the taste.

Luckily, his own captors hadn’t yet forced him to eat. Based on the state of the others, they would likely only do it if his body started to die. Hopefully, that meant it would never happen.

Surely, someone was coming - if not for him, then for Valera. The snake liked her, right? It would come. It had to.

Valera was somewhere nearby. Doran had caught sight of her once or twice, each time sending a wave of relief rushing through his limbs. Just seeing her didn’t mean much; try as he might, Doran couldn’t get his body to obey his commands. There would be no rescue coming from him. Still, it was good to see that she was nearby. Somewhere where he could know that she was safe, even if she wasn’t free.

His body turned again, walking past the strange Seeker’s corpse for a third time. It was crushed underneath a giant fragment of darkwood, plated armor crumpled below the overwhelming weight. The man - by the size of the corpse, he was sure it was a man, even fully enclosed within a fancy suit of armor as the dead Seeker had been - was a bit of a mystery. As far as Doran could remember, Verdant Grove only had a Nature Core. The armor the corpse wore bore the mana of at least two separate Cores - and one of them was something he had only heard about.

A Shadow Core.

The shadow-infused gem on the corpse’s chest flickered again, wreathing the armor directly around it in a thick coat of darkness. Damaged as it was, it didn’t go far. The gem was nearly shattered and almost spent, its abilities hobbled by a lack of charge. With each flicker of shadow, a bit more of its accumulated mana spilled free. In only a few more hours, it would probably be depleted in full.

Still, even in its ruined state, the thing was a marvel. Orken’s own nullsmith wouldn’t have had the expertise to create something like it. The man only worked in metal, and the effects he gave items were more haphazard than he liked to admit.

This was something different. Mana imbued into a gem, then slotted into already-enchanted armor to create a greater whole. While Doran couldn’t tell what the armor’s enhancement was, given that he could only look at the crumpled thing, he could still see how well the gem and armor went together. Every time the gem sputtered and its shadows reached out, the armor turned wispy and immaterial. Even the corpse contained within did the same, letting spores slip through the darkness with only tiny hints of resistance. If the gem had been a little less broken, it might have affected enough of the armor to cause the root to fall through the same gap, only to merge with the damaged corpse as the sputtering gem brought it back to reality.

It was even possible that the gem’s power was how the man had made it so far, though Doran couldn’t be sure. He had no way to know how old the corpse was. Sure, there was a terrible smell pressing against his nostrils, but the mist always smelled terrible. It just wasn’t a good indication, not in the way that it normally might have been. For all he knew, the mist hadn’t progressed that far when the man died. Maybe he had been breathing clean air in his last breath.

Then again, maybe he hadn’t. With the way that the spores slipped through the shadows created by the flickering gem, Doran was pretty certain that it would provide some protection. Maybe not in full, since he doubted that it would hold someone in immateriality for very long at a time, but it could have lasted long enough to take a safe breath - assuming that the wearer could breathe at all in that shadowy state.

He really was a mystery, the dead Seeker. Doran wondered where he was from. Had refugees from Verdant Grove found another city first, prompting them to send Seekers to retrieve the Core? Or had someone already been here and died in their bid to help?

Whatever had happened, Doran supposed it didn’t matter. The Core was still here, creating more monsters. They had failed.

For now, that was all he really needed to know.

Later, he told himself, he’d be able to look more closely. Later, when he and Valera were safe again.

Because they would be, he told himself again, his feet still trudging through the mist.

They would be.

Valera’s body almost stumbled again, the spores controlling it still occasionally struggling to master her enhancements. Her steps were ever-so-slightly out of sync, intermittent bursts of speed causing one part of Valera’s body to move faster than the other.

Of course, it didn’t really help her at all; she was still just as helpless as she would have been without them. Valera was nowhere closer to freedom. Still, there was something satisfying about witnessing their failure. It was a confirmation that, though they had tried to claim it, Valera’s body wasn’t truly theirs.

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t getting better. Little by little, Valera’s captors had fiddled and toyed with her movements, searching for mastery. Before, that almost-stumble might have been a full tumble; now, she only noticed it because she had been paying attention. The difference made her heart sink.

One of the poor souls gurgled a bit nearby, a bit of fluid catching in their throat. The sight made Valera’s heart skip again. Besides Doran, all of the others looked weak and unsteady; their bodies had been pushed to the brink by the spores’ ongoing control, causing them to waste away. Unlike her, these people would have no hope. They didn’t know that someone would come to rescue them. They didn’t know that they could be rescued.

Valera had seen the toll that took on the mind more than once in the ones they’d managed to rescue.

More than once, she fought against the spore-roots’ control, desperately trying to say something - to say anything that would help them hold out a little longer. She almost imagined that her throat pulsed, trying to form the words, but that was just it. Imagination. Her body wasn’t her own. The words would never come.

There would be no comfort for the poor souls around her, not until they were freed.

A rumble somewhere below cast vibrations through her boots, likely the remnant of some collapse in the world’s depths. From the strength of the tremor, it must have been rather large.

Valera’s body breathed in again, sucking in enough spores to replace the bits that had been destroyed by the carving pressed against her chest. She might have found a spot where the spore-mist didn’t overlap quite as much; the breaths that had come before were cloying and thick, enough that she would have coughed them up had the spore-roots not fought against her body’s response. Even so, it was more than enough to defeat the healing of the Little Guardian’s Statue.

She sucked in another breath. It felt lighter than before. She had hardly moved. The mist wasn’t just thinner. It was becoming thinner.

Hope sparked in her chest, lighting a fire within. The warm comfort that came alongside it intermingled with the pulsing heat of the carving against her chest, a reminder that she - and more importantly, the poor victims that had been stuck in the mist for much longer - had a way out.

Help was coming.

Crowds of the infected started to wander out into the mist together, searching for the cause. The spores had noticed the change, too. Unlike the others, though, Valera’s body didn’t wander away. Instead, it turned around and walked towards what she suspected was the remains of the Sanctuary. Doran’s body joined her, the man’s giant axe easily held within a single hand.

They stood at the opening in the rubble, like guards at their post.

Which was exactly what they were, she realized.

As she waited at her post, the mist continued to thin itself out more, cloying green giving ground to clean air little by little.

A mist-free circle formed ahead, letting Valera see around herself for the first time in a long while.

Her eyes locked onto a lone figure as it stepped into the circle. Gold-blue mist, only barely noticeable from where she stood, puffed into the air with his every breath.

Her mind stuttered at the sight, confused. Her body didn’t care. It darted forward, blades lifted to clash against mana-empowered steel.

She dodged back, wind brushing past her, as Erik’s mace swung in a counter. The man wasn’t fighting quite right. He was fast - faster than she remembered him ever being - but that wouldn’t have been Erik’s normal counter. He would have pressed her more with his sheer mass and trust in his defenses, trying to lock her down before she could maneuver around him.

Valera’s body twisted to the side a moment before Doran’s axe came down, the heavy blow forcing their opponent to brace against it. The spores in her body flexed, sending Valera hurtling around his upraised shield. She came in close. To her relief, his armor stopped her attack; her blades, sharp as they were, bounced off Erik’s armor in a shower of sparks.

Again, Erik didn’t react as expected - because this wasn’t really Erik, she realized, finally understanding how the man had walked himself through the mist without becoming its victim. The colors were the key. Erik was already infected by something else.

This was the Little Guardian fighting with Erik’s form.

Erik’s body bent forward, bringing his shield behind Valera and recklessly pulling her close against his chest - and then he bit her around the neck, throwing her away again a moment later. She rolled across the ground, clouds of dead spores working their way into her open mouth.

The wound at her neck throbbed and pulsed, the muscles starting to twist upon themselves uncomfortably almost instantly. The Little Guardian’s spores fighting against the Nature Core’s. Another pulse of warmth from the [Little Guardian’s Totem] around her neck lessened a bit of the tension, its healing effects wiping away some of the damage.

Her body moved again, trying to push itself upward. Her neck muscles twitched, feeling as if they fought against the movement. The Little Guardian’s spores again. Valera fought too, realizing that the spores were getting weaker. Without anything to replenish them, she would eventually be free.

It wasn’t enough. The spores flexed themselves harder, throwing her body upwards. She charged again, her body a mindless automaton guarding its Core. Valera tried to fight against every step, but she accomplished little. Maybe, maybe, there was a slight hitch - but probably not.

Steel rang against steel as Doran’s axe sparked off of their opponent’s shield once more. Despite coming from what should have been his blindspot, Erik’s body turned to meet her approach, mace already swinging. It crashed into her chest, the momentum of her own charge enough to knock the breath from her lungs. Only the strength of her armor kept Valera’s ribs from caving inwards.

Her body ignored that, choosing instead to lash out with one blade after another. Again they sparked against Erik’s equally-resistant armor. Valera could see the openings in his defense, opportunities to stab into flesh that she could have taken advantage of in an instant. The spores controlling her, less accustomed to armored fighting than she was, continued to apply brute force to the issue. The few times that they actually tried to aim at the man’s less protected face instead, he easily deflected the blows. Even at the speed her body could move, the attacks were just too predictable.

It almost made her laugh - would have, if she only could.

Valera’s body just wasn’t built for brute force. Doran’s, however, was. And yet, in just the same way, Erik’s body and armor was built to survive against force. They were locked into a duel of idiots, each hammering away at the other in the hopes that one would simply give in.

Still, there was something that kept running through her mind.

If Erik was here, being controlled by the Little Guardian…

He wouldn’t be here alone.

Valera started to feel a familiar prickling at the back of her neck, long-honed instincts urging her to turn around. Luckily, the spores didn’t listen.

They probably should have.