I pulled free of my shed scale-flesh, exulting in my victory over the Lesser Core. Still, my thoughts were foggy; warped and distorted, jumbled by what surrounded me. Overwhelmed by the sheer scope of it all.

Countless things, sensed in a way that I could hardly describe. It was like the feel of a fast-spot, flush against flesh. It was like the touch of a slow-spot, its sluggish pace drifting ever onward. It was like both of those things, and yet neither of them.

It was time itself, slithering on and on, forcing the world to move with it. Shaping life with its touch; forcing it to grow.

I could sense it in the shape of the countless spores that drifted about in the mists, their lives brief and fleeting. It filled the great darkwood above me, its roots blindly raging and thrashing about. It flowed through the overfull tower-nests, their insides lined with green.

It was the potential that each held within them.

[Verdure Parasite] let me sense it all - and maybe more.

I let my mind focus on the nearest, basking in the new sensation. It flowed over me, and I imagined that I could almost touch it. Then, focusing a little more, I did more than simply touch it.

I pulled.

A current of time itself slipped free, stolen away. Its host fell dim, becoming almost invisible to [Verdure Parasite]’s power. I held the current within my grasp, feeling it wriggle and writhe, desperate to return to its owner.

Despite its efforts, I knew that it never would.

It was mine now, claimed for the Great Core.

Now I just needed to figure out what to do with it.

Elara’s lungs heaved; sorely needed air rushed into her body. Sweat coated her skin, cool to the touch. Valera struggled weakly below her, blades tossed aside and limbs pinned by a giant shield. Elara sat atop it, waiting for the last of her strings to vanish. Already they were growing weaker, lines of green and black fading away from moment to moment.

Beside her, Doran was pinned in a far more excruciating manner, limbs broken in order to combat the man’s prodigious strength. A gold and blue puppet watched over him, moving to act any time its strings commanded.

Elara shivered, looking away and putting a hand to Erik’s [Little Guardian’s Totem].

Soon, she would cut his strings again.

Just a little longer, now.

The Little Guardian had long since disappeared, slithering into the Nature Core’s lair. With his puppet still here, she doubted that he was in any immediate danger. She found herself looking upward, gazing at the giant branches of the darkwood tree. Leaves - likely far larger than she realized - formed a canopy overhead that blocked out the ceiling above, hiding any sign of the Collapse that had let the Core run rampant.

The leaves started to shake.

The city shook with them.

Tremors shook my scale-flesh, almost breaking my concentration. I could sense its source, seeing-yet-not-seeing the giant roots that spread throughout the many-nest. They writhed and shook blindly as the darkwood tree grew more frustrated with its failure to find me. A few of them I could sense in other ways, [Spore Puppeteer] giving me a constant connection to the spore-roots that had long been growing within.

The spore-roots, too, I could feel through [Verdure Parasite]’s new sense. They seemed to clamor for my attention, as if desperate for a sign of my approval.

Hopeful for a gift.

The stolen current of time twitched within my grasp, still trying to return to its owner. I could barely hold on, and every attempt to bring it into myself had failed. So, instead, I let it go - but not towards its former host.

The stream of stolen time connected to a single spore-root, latching on - and the spore-root became a shining beacon in my mind, nearly twice as clear as before.

I thought for a moment, then focused on the countless plant-flesh around me again, pulling at each one in turn. As I grew more used to controlling [Verdure Parasite], I started to pull from entire groups at once; great swaths of time-that-might-have-been, ripped away from the undeserving and gifted to the Great Core’s followers.

Soon enough, the beacon became a bonfire, fueled by innumerable streams of stolen time; each stream a symbol of growth that might have been, stolen from one source of plant-flesh and given to another. Fueled by stolen time, the spore-root flourished, spreading its roots further in a single second than it had in its entire lifespan.

The thought-light flickered, letting me see it with a new understanding.

Core Skill: [Verdure Parasite].

Description: One Bloom Stunted, Another Grown.

To that tiny spore, I realized, it had been the growth of far more than a single second - and to those I had stolen from, dim and near-invisible to my senses, it had been far, far less than that.

I hissed with glee, realizing that the Lesser Core’s efforts would spell my victory. An extra second to grow didn’t seem like much; not when plant-flesh could take hours, or days, or weeks, or even years to develop. And yet, with plant-flesh so heavily infesting the many-nest, there was more to work with than I could handle - enough for a second to become a week, or a month, or even a year.

Maybe elsewhere in the World Dungeon, [Verdure Parasite] would be weaker; with less sources to draw upon, there would be only so much it could do.

Within the ruined many-nest, however…

There was just so much it could do.

I pulled and pulled at the plant-flesh around me, directing the stolen time to better uses, hissing happily all the while.

Kala didn’t blink when the tremors started, the nearby root beginning to thrash and writhe. Kala didn’t blink when it shattered a building, creating a deafening echo that drowned out the sounds of battle. Kala didn’t blink when it happened to plow through the crowd of monsters, smashing a great number of them into a pulp.

It wasn’t the miracle that they needed. In fact, it barely even mattered; more flowed in immediately afterwards, replacing those who were lost - and even those hardly mattered, either. A single monster alone would be enough to spell their doom. One that Kala had failed to hold off.

The Golem was still coming; all it had to do was reform a body. Everyone would die - and, just as she had run out of arrows, she had run out of hope.

Kala had well and truly failed; the least that she could do was keep her eyes open. The least that she could do was bear witness.

Someone screamed again from below, a terrified and broken thing.

No.

Another one soon followed, and another, and another.

The Guildhall shook as tremors ran through the city again, forcing Kala to her knees. Her arms dangled at her sides, hands forming white-knuckled grips around the broken shards that littered the floor. Pain wisped away again and again as flesh tore and healed and tore anew, blood streaming between her fingers in a never-ending flow.

No.

She stood up again, shoulders heavy with the weight of it all. Her hands still held fast to jagged shards of broken stone, the pain they caused going almost entirely unnoticed.

“No,” she whispered, walking forward to the edge of the balcony. The Golem had almost finished recreating itself, forming a hodgepodge of limbs and serrated spikes that didn’t conform to any true form. Like a child playing with toys, putting little thought into what it created.

And just like the smallest of children, uncaring of the destruction that it caused.

Those haphazard limbs started to move forward, pulling more stone from the ground with each step. A javelin formed, rocketing straight towards the Guildhall.

The stone missile whistled past her shoulder, forming a shower of fragments that dug furrows through her flesh.

Kala didn’t even flinch, too angry to react.

“Fuck you!” she shouted, voice ragged and hoarse with emotion. “Come on, you stupid thing. Hit me, then!”

That’s right, she thought. Stay focused on me. Even if I can’t win, at least I can distract you for a little longer. At least I can accomplish something, even if that miracle will never come. At least I can do something.

Bloody shards soared from her hands, flying towards the approaching monster. They bounced ineffectually off the ground, as useless as she had been in the end.

The Golem didn’t seem to care.

She fumed, turning around to reach for another handful. Shards dug into newly-healed flesh, slicing through the skin with disturbing ease. Her arm raised, ready to throw, and she whirled back around. The Golem’s arm was raised too, a newly formed javelin in hand.

It shot through the air and, for the first time, smashed into glowing armor. The armor held as well as could be expected when faced with such a devastating blow, but Kala’s body underneath was far less sturdy. She flew backwards, collapsing onto a bed of broken stone.

Blood-covered shards of stone clinked against the ground, slipping between weakened fingers. Her lungs desperately tried to wheeze past shattered ribs. Pain lanced through her side, paired with that horrible itching that she had quickly grown to hate. Her bones started to knit themselves back together, but the damage was severe; it was far too slow.

Kala coughed painfully, spitting out a gob of viscous red. Her vision wavered, nearly going dark; she pulled herself back up anyway, nearly slipping on a thick coat of blood and dust. She stood, limping back towards the balcony’s edge again. And then she saw it.

A miracle.

With a crimson smile, Kala let herself fall back down. The giant darkwood’s canopy rested above, the details of its leaves easy to distinguish with the acuity of her vision.

Each of them were lined with gold and blue.