5.23

“What is with this obsession with the number five!? That’s the eighth party this week of young adolescents who thought they could assassinate me with only five people!” - The Revenant King.

Dawn rose on an unaware town.

“You sure about this?” Tai asked as Dustin looked at the wizard’s tower.

“More or less,” he answered. “It’s too late now.”

She nodded in return, eyes following Dustin’s own to the top of the tower. A large open-air balcony, overlooking the entire town.

Dustin’s fingers drummed a silver mirror, “Get into position as well.”

She nodded, breaking off and heading towards her planned position.

It can finally begin.

I reached the top of the tower in due time, feeling the icy cold morning breeze whip across my face.

Taking a deep breath, I looked over the town as it ‘normally’ appeared. Glancing over every nook and cranny of this large place, until finally, my eyes arrived at the town centre, where there were several sporages planted.

I activated one, the lime spores bursting out, signalling to everyone I was in position.

Raising the mirror, I looked into it, angling it so that I could see behind me.

Rotating around, I once again looked over the entire town until I- I- I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it…

“When someone directly observes its faces, it ceases moving,” Dustin said. “It is a very convenient weakness, someone looking at its entirety can stop it from acting altogether.”

“But it attacks your mind when you do,” Tai pointed out.

“Which makes me the best candidate for it,” the myconid replied cooly.

Dustin stood in a place much like a personal study. It wasn’t the classy kind, but a derivative of that idea. To any other person, the place would appear highly disorganised, but to him and only him. Everything was where he needed it.

Including It.

“We meet again,” Dustin said.

It was cautious now, not extending, warily considering its foe.

“Is this the third or fourth time?” the myconid conversationally asked, “I haven’t been able to keep track.”

Barely any acknowledgement from the other, there was no swagger in its movements as it stalked in a circle around Dustin.

Dustin considered his foe and his surroundings. It was only the third time he visited this realm, yet he could understand that there were rules and conventions to this place. He didn’t know them, but he could replicate the trick he did to harm his foe. Whether it would be enough was the question.

He looked at himself, realising his form was a mixture of his human and myconid one. Appearing in his prime with one exception.

He was missing an eye. Staring down a horror with only an eye of oceans wonder.

It would have to do.

Noam watched that bundle of sporages in the middle of the town square.

Only one had detonated, a Balm Sporage, Dustin was in position.

The Sneezing Sporage hadn’t been detonated. He would’ve detonated it if he didn’t make contact with the Accumulation.

“My turn,” he whispered. Noam fiddled around the contraption in his hand one last time, before he walked out.

The town was waking, people were coming out. Far fewer than there should be for a town this large. It made his job easier, in a morbid way.

Taking a deep breath, Noam put on his most assholish face. Then raised the megaphone to his mouth, “Good morning Lake Bayt!”

His voice rang out loud and clear. Attention, the makeshift megaphone worked.

Putting on a shit-eating grin, he cast his spell, “I was just visiting ya know and I want you to know what an absolute shit storm this place is! This backward-”

“We’ll need to deal with the townsfolk somehow.”

“Can’t we just tell them about the creature?” Tai asked.

Noam shook his head, “There’s a chance they won’t believe us, and we could spend anywhere from a few minutes to hours convincing them. Not to mention the panic.”

“And one more thing,” Dustin spoke, “we don’t know how the Accumulation would react.”

Dustin suspected it was capable of some low cunning, but how far that went was still in question. “The time we spend spreading the word is time we leave it unchecked.”

Its combat capability was still mostly up in the air, they knew it was comprised of dozens of serpent-like heads bearing stolen faces, but… “We don’t know if it has any cards up its sleeve, any last-minute aces. Putting the entire town to react to it may cause it to do something drastic.”

“And I suspect anyone really capable of helping would be killed already,” Dustin added. “The empty mage tower, the lack of any healer in this town… We’ll have to be going at it alone.”

They would be risking a lot of people for a minor numbers advantage.

“I think it would make our chances a lot better if it succeeds, but…” Dustin began, “If we do go this route, the worst thing won’t be it reacting drastically, but it not reacting at all.”

Tai scrunched her brow, but Noam caught on immediately, “It’ll make the townspeople think we’re bullshitting, all it has to do is smooth away the evidence and we come off as doomsday preppers.”

“Then how’ll we deal with the townsfolk?” she asked.

Dustin simply looked at Noam.

“-and that’s why all of you inbreds should marry a ferret!”

Shocked silence.

Then a baby started crying.

Then another.

And another.

Then he dodged a rotten fruit thrown at him.

Then another.

And another.

People started yelling at him as he laughed and ran, “I know what I said!”

Noam ran around the town, dodging thrown projectiles as he yelled insults into his megaphone, drawing as much of a crowd onto him as possible.

When he thought he had the entire town running awake and running after him, he quietly whispered.

“Catch these Hands.”

Dustin didn’t consider Noam’s build to be a good one.

It was spectacular in what it did, but when what it did, didn’t apply, then it was simply there.

Noam’s build existed to be killed. He was built to be an annoyance. Even if his ideal scenario occurs, in which he manages to taunt a massive group of enemies and activates CtH, he doesn’t have a good way to finish all of them off. He can fight that group for as long as he wants, but the moment he killed or took one of them out, the CtH buff would lose a portion of the stats and he would be weaker. If he fought a group with the intention to kill all of them, then he would eventually lose that critical mass of buffs and get taken down by the much smaller group when his stats were more manageable.

If there was anything his build excelled at, it was wasting anothers’ time and resources.

Which, in an odd stroke of fate, made him the perfect partner to Dustin.

While Noam kept the enemies busy, Dustin could build up his sporages.

While Noam can’t defeat those enemies in one fell swoop, Dustin can with enough preparation.

Together, Noam and Dustin’s builds were a duo that could face armies.

They already knew this, they already played it out against the hordes of chimera, they could repeat it a thousand times over against countless enemies.

But at this moment, the circumstances and enemy made this combination widely difficult.

And so, the third variable makes her play.

Tai leapt from her vantage point on the roof, a pale reflection in her blade briefly flashing before it was severed. She glanced upward, towards Dustin’s perch. Judging by how he stood, the mirror was facing somewhere near the front of the town. Somewhere in view of the inn. She itched to look, despite knowing full well what would happen.

Carefully glancing at the reflection of her blade again, the two bony white halves were slowly merging back together. Taking care not to look towards the end of the serpent, she slashed again.

It felt strange, like she was hacking away at mist. Physical attacks didn’t seem to harm it for long, so her role was simple.

Dustin was keeping the main array of heads busy, while Noam evacuated the town and Tai handled the stray necks from picking people off.

Then, once Noam got the townsfolk out, Tai would knock Dustin back to his senses and they would have an empty battlefield to use everything they had against that thing.

It wasn’t the smartest plan, but it was the best plan they got.

“I said it was called the Accumulation of White Lies but…” Dustin paused for a moment, trying to think of the words to best describe. “I don’t really think I fully understand its implications, just that this thing might not physically exist.”

“Meaning?” Noam asked.

“I mentioned to you Shadesmar a few times haven’t I?” Tai shivered as the myconid spoke.

Dustin nodded towards her, “The thing we face isn’t a physical or living thing that was born or raised or grew up. It is a concept born of something getting repeated and repeated until eventually, it accumulated into a thinking thing.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying whatever it is, it is similar to Shadesmar. Where Shadesmar was born from people’s fear of the dark, this thing is born of something else, but the principle is the same” Dustin explained.

“White Lies?” Noam suggested.

Dustin nodded, “Possibly. It is a concept and that is why I am most worried.”

He looked around at his companions.

“How do we kill a concept?”

No answer.

“Can it even be killed? Or die for that matter?” Noam asked.

Tai shook her head, “Yes,” she spoke with certainty. “It can be killed.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ve never heard of the Tale of Three Deaths haven’t you?” she quizzically asked.

Upon their confused faces, she recited:

“The First Death was hunted down by the Brother’s Three, who together became the Second Death.

And when the Brother’s Three grew old and weary, they were visited by the Many Mourner, who alone became the Third Death.”

“It is a story passed down everywhere on Branika,” she elaborated, “What it says is simple, nothing escapes death.”

“Not even Death.”

‘So it’s no longer a problem of can it die, but whether or not we have the means to make it,’ Dustin thought.

Currently, as the foe brandished the torn piece of his self, that answer was a no. It was more comfortable now, carefully considering him yet the inklings of the idea that the wound Dustin dealt was just a fluke.

Whatever Dustin faced, it was born of this plane. He wasn’t sure what it took just now, but after he looked over his faculties, he realised something was missing.

The feeling of admiration towards those who have achieved much.

“So this is my HP,” Dustin muttered. It came back of course, but damage here would eventually render one a vegetable.

Which was problematic given how Dustin thinks he damaged it last time.

The Accumulation attacked the mind by forcing it into a loop. Making it try to remember a face it recognised. Until eventually the mind short-circuited.

Dustin stopped it by shutting his mind down. Turning off the computer before it could crash. Leaving only the faculties that allowed him to strike. That method let him make a counterattack at the cost of him not being able to do anything for some time afterwards.

After all, when you turned off caring about the people you’re looking for, there wasn’t much reason to act.

But still, he was not helpless.

A portion of the entity ripped away, peeling from its body like a page from a book. The growing smile on the Accumulation faded.

‘How the fuck did I just do that?’ he pondered before laughing.

“And so we fight a most esoteric kind of battle, yet so very boring,” Dustin spoke. “You too cautious to commit a major attack, me needing to buy too much time to hurry this battle up.”

He would have to hit it one last time before this was all over. To hurt it on this plane.

Dustin had to hope it would be the finishing blow.

Tai rushed through the town, blade flashing at blinding speeds as she slashed away at stray heads. The foe didn’t move quickly, so long as she was careful she could avoid seeing its face in the mirror.

Yet something was strange. There was little resistance, the remaining heads didn’t try to attack her. Tai just spotted them in her blade and attacked. The town was quiet now that Noam had evacuated everyone, too quiet it felt. Like a sound that she had passively blotted out just disappeared.

And she realised too late, the pale serpentine neck, gaunt and bony, she saw it with her own eyes. Without looking through the reflection of the blade, without seeing its outlines in mist and spores.

It no longer hid.

And Tai saw a face clearly in the morning sun.

The feeling of awe when standing in front of a thing greater than yourself.

The feeling of melancholy you have when you realised the world has changed.

The feeling of frustration you have when trying to get across a certain concept to a disregarding person.

Gone, damaged and torn from him.

It was after so much beating that Dustin realised they were on a battlefield of Souls. Psyche was their form and Will was their strength.

And Dustin was lacking compared to his foe.

He only had a single good attack and he was useless past that. So he stayed standing, a crumbling visage of his true self until he widened his eye.

“So that’s your play.”

Something was wrong.

Noam could feel it as he rushed back. His steps slowing as he went farther from the enraged mob.

And he realised that the world felt quieter. That there was a sound like birds chirping that had just been silenced. A sound that until now, he had just passively ignored, for the mind put aside sensory information that was constant and repetitive.

It was when the town rushed back into sight, that he saw it.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds of heads, each connected to a bony pale neck, reaching into the sky, each with a face. All of them staring at a single tower. He could feel it, that feeling of Deja Vu, he looked away from the creature, thankfully too far to make out the details of each face. But as he looked down, he saw the twisting and coiling necks of the heads Dustin didn’t manage to catch. He saw some circling the mage tower-like sharks, nipping at the stone, not long enough to reach Dustin, not stupid enough to leave him alone.

“Where was Tai?”

By the plan, she should be running up the tower to wake Dustin at this very moment. Yet something felt wrong. No, the plan was no longer effective. It hinged on the fact they wouldn’t be able to see the enemy. Now that it revealed itself…

Even a single look can prove fatal.

Gritting his teeth, he rushed into town, eyes kept down. Only seeing the shadows of the creatures that rushed him.

But that was enough.

A spin, a twirl, almost a dance, and three heads fell to the ground.

Even as he ran past the severed necks, he couldn’t help but see the stumps fading like mist, slowly rejoining with their severed portion.

He can’t look at his enemy.

It will be a matter of time before he’s taken out from an attack in his blind spot.

Dustin duelling the main form of the beast in a tower. Tai missing in action. Noam was the only piece on the board that could move.

Corvian Diluvian Medudian Himotonana Farraday the Middling rubbed his head. A strange feeling plaguing his mind, yet he could not quite put his finger on what it was.

There was a loud commotion outside, but the town had turned quiet afterwards. A bit too quiet he felt as he left his room. Trodding into the front room of his games store.

Yet something caught his eye. On the table, were five decks arrayed, a game in the middle of playing.

A Deep control deck.

A Dark Elf aggro deck.

An Orc midrange aggro deck.

A Gather the Party midrange deck.

And a Magus Nobalite OTK deck.

A player beaten down from all sides. Sustaining the greatest loss yet persevering until he shined the brightest.

A player who lingered on the side, believing in the safety of himself. Who became the first to die.

A player who controlled the field. Playing others like a fiddle and bringing them to wars they didn’t want to fight.

A player who was simply there, trying to gather his win condition. Yet never succeeding.

A player who was forgotten. Hidden in obscurity, it won an unexpected victory.

As Corvian tried to remember the game they played, he realised some of the players were gone from his memory.

His head jerked to outside, where the sun had risen yet the town seemed all the more sinister for it.

“I must do something.”

Gods were ever fickle in their signs and messages. It was up to the believers to interpret and act.