Giving up on trying to utilize the rune for the time being, Mason finished recovering and the two set off across the skybridge again. As he stepped carefully over a shattered chunk of the bridge that had been hit by the guardian orbs, he noticed something unusual just up ahead.

If anything could be said definitively of the city to this point, it was that it was a ruin. The city had been devastated by something he could hardly wrap his mind around. Everywhere he looked, almost everything that was loose was shattered or decayed, and even the foundations of the buildings seemed on the verge of collapse. Perhaps, if they hadn’t brought mana back into the city, it would only be a matter of months or years until large sections of the city truly crumbled into rubble.

More unsettling than the physical destruction was a lack of life that had left Mason with a chills-down-the-spine sort of discomfort. The strange white gremlins and the yetis were animated, but intuitively they seemed less than alive, which made sense considering the backfiring of the soul-preservation spell they had relied on for too long.

But Mason now stepped gingerly over the fine green tendril of a vine that wove up the path and into a crack in the ceiling. The tendril was yellowish, as if it were lacking some essential nutrient to truly thrive, but since it stretched almost a dozen feet from that crack it had clearly been growing for some time.

Leornal too, seemed to notice its presence, and even walked over to peer closer at the crack that it had come out of, making a quiet noise of inspection as he examined it. When he saw Mason watching him, he nodded quietly, and with a motion of his hand they began walking further into the building, looking among the rubble for any signs of a staircase or the next sky bridge.

It was as if this building had somehow escape the passage of time and the destruction of whatever had ravaged the rest of the city. Though the dust laid thick on every surface, and most anything fragile had still collapsed, much of it was still intact.

It must have been a manor of sorts, for a noble or governor. Paintings hung on the wall too faded to be identified as art, but distinct in the way the mana-powered lighting highlighted their distinguished places in the hallways and at the ends of the larger rooms.

In the corners of the rooms were display cases of all sorts, boasting everything from stone tablets to corroded metal sculptures and even some weapons which looked duller and rustier than the dagger Mason had found at Mowrytal’s campsite. The two adventurers both acknowledged that there may be valuable items to be found among this manor, but so much of it was in total disrepair that they knew there was no way they could waste the time sorting through it.

As they climbed the stairs to the second floor, Mason was stopped when Leornal gripped his shoulder, and put a single finger to his lips to indicate silence. They listened closely, and the young human quickly understood why he had been stopped.

There was a rustling noise, like someone digging or shuffling through a pile of junk, and that could only mean a new threat.

Mason whispered to Leornal to cover him, and then shifted into Shadowstalk. He moved easily through the area considering the dim lighting, and it didn’t take him long at all to follow the noise down a hallway and into a large room which seemed to have been wholly transformed compared to everywhere else he had seen in the city.

As soon as he passed through the doorway into the room, he was almost suffocated by the shift from chill, cave-like air to thick, humid, warmth. Plants covered the length of the room- looping vines and tall, leafy ferns grew plentifully amid large flowers of various colors, tall brown stalks, and even some very wide leaves like those which cucumbers grew to shade themselves. Looking closely, there was a vague sense of a long-lost order in the room as each type of plant seemed to prefer a section, but time had scattered the plants amongst each other.

On the far side of the room was the source of the noise; a tall, willowy figure was moving stones and piling them at the side as if trying to unbury something. Mason stalked closer, but between the thick plant-life and the tall pile of stones, he could hardly tell what the figure could be looking at. He did, however, get a better look at it, or her, he assumed. She resembled the yetis, but in her pallor she beared a lot in common with the gremlins too.

Her skin seemed stiff and thick, and something was distinctly wrong with her proportions. Though she was more slender than the yetis, and only a little taller than Mason, her muscles bulged unevenly. One forearm was enlarged, a portion of her stomach seemed to be swollen, and one of her feet was exposed and looked swollen and clubbed.

She worked diligently, and Mason deliberated on whether to wait for her to finish or to engage her. Before he could decide though, he heard the loud clattering of an arrow smashing against one of the pillars in the room, and the woman turned quickly toward it. She sniffed the air, then began to slink in the direction of the sound, bearing her weight as if it were bulky and unfamiliar as she moved.

Mason got a better look of her face, and saw that even one of her eyes was swollen, and the rest of her features were contorted as if they had been pressed against a sheet of glass and frozen that way. The woman snarled and hissed as she walked away from the hole she had been digging, and with an uncomfortable reticence, he admitted to himself that she was only a small step away from becoming as feral as the yetis.

Not willing to risk her attacking them while they moved on, he channeled his mana into his short sword to activate mana-blade.

Before he knew what was happening, the woman who had almost been dragging her body while moving to inspect the noise suddenly moved with unprecedented speed. Mason cried out as his arm was jerked straight up, and he looked to see the woman holding tightly to the blade of his sword, lifting it in the air.

He swore when he realized she was unfazed by its sharpness and its steel.

Before he could let go of the sword and run away though, an arrow crashed forcefully into her wrist. Though it didn’t pierce her soul-strengthened skin, there was definitely a visible mark where the arrow had struck and the force of it made her let go of Mason’s sword long enough for him to reel his arm in and sprint away into the plant cover.

He re-focused on Mana-blade knowing full well it would draw her ire, and began moving quickly back toward the door and Leornal hoping that when she launched herself at the source of mana she wouldn’t be able to adjust course fast enough to follow him.

A gust of wind told him that she had just rushed past him, and he turned back to see plants being torn up under her uneven feet as she charged. Focus activated and Mason could finally track her motions somewhat, and more than that, he noticed Leornal half-hidden behind a pillar motioning with his bow for Mason to get out of the way.

He did so in a burst of speed, diving out of the way just in time to see Leornal fire a mana-infused scattershot. The charge of mana had drawn the mutant’s attention, so she took the storm of splinters in the face and front side of her torso, barely slowing as they dug slightly into her.

Mason wasted no time launching himself out from cover and trying to put his full weight behind an attack to pierce her in the back while she was unaware. She twisted rapidly, failing to catch his blade but spinning fast enough to knock him away nonetheless. He rolled as he hit the ground and hopped back to his feet, casting around quickly to try and find out where his sword fell.

Leornal fired another arrow and shouted, “Take that you undead monster!” to give Mason some time to figure out his next strategy.

The sword was nowhere obvious, so Mason pulled one of his daggers out and tried to funnel mana into it to give it enough piercing power to do some damage when he threw it. It felt unusually exhausting to put his mana into it, and he wondered if he was less recovered than he thought from his fight with the guardians. Nevertheless, he sent the blade flying, and unlike the last time he attempted a throwing knife, this one hit its mark lodging itself shallowly between the woman’s shoulder-blades and causing her to turn away from Leornal once more.

“God, you’re a dumb beast,” Mason taunted as she turned to face him. He saw Leornal moving to a new position deeper in the room, and drew his staff to try and give himself a chance to respond appropriately when she attacked.

Her speed proved too much yet again. When she slashed at him with her clawlike and engorged hands, he almost didn’t have time to bring up his staff to block. Her attack was so strong that it took all of his willpower to not let go of it, and he was forced to use the momentum to throw himself out of her range, scrambling to his feet yet again and retreating a safe distance away.

He felt a sharp pain as his body tensed the same way it did when he tried to use Analyze with depleted stamina. It felt as if his body was trying to draw energy where there was none, like sucking on a straw in an empty cup, and it made him sway where he stood.

“You probably shouldn’t be this close,” Leornal warned, standing mere feet away from where Mason had retreated.

“Any chance you have a powershot left in you?” Mason hazarded hurriedly.

“Sure, what’re you planning to do?” the archer nocked an arrow.

“Kamikaze. I’ll probably be lucky to walk afterwards, so finish her off, alright?” Mason shot him a serious look then jumped out from where he had been hiding and rushed straight toward the mutant woman.

Demon knew that his strength wouldn’t hold out in an extended fight. Between everything he had handled in the past day or so in this city, his “fully” rested state was still nowhere near where he would be if he had a full night’s sleep and several good meals in him.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t draw deeply on his reserves. He took a deep breath and activated Focus, Mana Manipulation, and called upon the force he used to activate the spells in his staff as well as mana-blade. Pulling on everything he had, he drew every bit of mana he could to his staff. His attention was so concentrated on the single point he was pulling it all to that he didn’t notice the lights in the room flickering, or the sharp exhale that was forced from Leornal’s chest.

The mutant began to move to grab that mana for itself, but Demon already knew that he was going to suffer for this risk. He charged headfirst and flung the head of his staff out before him as he launched everything he had- his own body included- toward the mutant.

A veritable torrent of mana launched out of Demon as he flew. Though Torysen or an actually talented spellcaster could probably have drawn out more mana from their reserves, and anyone with a rune could probably produce an attack a thousand times more efficient, Demon knew that all he had to do was create an opportunity for Leornal.

As the mana and the end of Demon’s staff struck the mutant’s chest, she staggered slightly, but the force of the mana being soaked into the ruin of her soul-infused flesh softened her defenses just like it had with the yetis.

Leornal, meanwhile, concentrated on the force runes he knew, and the skill he could rely on for his Powershot. He drew his bow and felt the mana flowing within him, and with almost no hesitation he fired the instant Demon dropped out of his way.

The arrow fired like a rocket, tearing straight through the mutant’s chest and even cracking the back-wall that it found on the other side. Leornal grinned at the tingle of the power in his arms, and realized that was what his shot had always been missing. The mana beyond the arrow gave him something to focus on, to almost magnetize the shot to. It wasn’t quite a spell, but it was an improvement to his Powershot skill, and he quickly glanced at his status screen to see he had gained five skill points in it.

Making a mental note to definitely not mention that to Demon, he moved over to see if the kamikaze warrior was alright.