by J. Carrarn
After pondering for a second, Solus realized he could try something that would help him too. Scrolling to the list of zombie evolutions, he found the one he wanted. Immovable force, the zombie version of the one he had just unlocked. It was an A class one, with strength and constitution, and it matched her racial choice even better than the mismatch she had now. Memorizing it as best he could, he began wiping out the class inscription she had.
"Hey, what… AHHH—" Tatjie's shout turned into a gasp, and then she crumbled in a heap.
Derin looked at her, his mouth wide open, the orb lying almost forgotten in his open hand.
"Is she…?"
"She is fine. I had to remove her previous inscription to give her a better one," Solus said as he began carefully inscribing the new inscription.
Halfway through, the same instinct that had made him modify the patterns he had given Sig and Skull exerted itself again. He changed a few areas without thinking, mixing them with things he knew while removing other sections entirely. Absently he wished he could do this at will.
The process didn't last that long, and when he finished, he saw Tatjie's form begin to change. Her incredibly long and thick arms shrunk until they fit her rapidly growing body better. Her chest enlarged, as did her legs, until a better proportioned, green, and yellow zombie lay on the ground. Her muscles weren't as bulky as before, but they were even more defined, and judging from her lying form, Solus thought she must have doubled in height. Her arms were still thicker and longer than normal but no longer dominated her entire body.
Derin moved closer and inspected her. Almost immediately he swallowed as his eyes widened, and he stepped back.
"She is going to be upset when she wakes up," he said meekly. Taking one more look, he quickly moved away and into the building.
Upset? Why? Solus didn't understand what Derin meant and stared at the quiet form of Tatjie. His mind was preoccupied with his own evolution, and he sat down, waiting patiently for her to wake up. He wanted to find out what the Immovable Force class did.
As the sun crawled up the horizon and into the cloud, Tatjie stirred, mumbling and grunting. Then, with a start, she shot up and looked around.
"Waddapened?" she asked, the words garbled and hard to understand.
Solus stared at her and grinned. "You've evolved!"
Tatjie smiled, about to say something when her fists clenched together. She blinked and raised her hand to her eyes, both whole now and glimmering with orange light.
"What?" she mumbled as she scrambled up and looked at her body. "What, what, WHAT!"
A look of rage crossed her face as she turned to Solus. "What did you do to me?" Her voice was a bit higher than before but still sounded like a crumbling building.
Confused, Solus gawked at her, shaking his head in wonder. "You wanted to evolve, and now you have. You are far more powerful than before, and—"
"And I look horrible!"
"You what?" Solus blinked as his confusion turned to annoyance. Her arms were still a bit too long, hands a bit too large, but for the rest she had a much more well-proportioned body, one that was a lot more suited for combat.
Tatjie stalked angrily toward him, her fists clenched. The top of her head now came to his chin, and as she stopped in front of him, she angled her head up.
"I liked how I looked, you rotbag!" Spittle flew from her green lips, spattering across his chest.
"You always change if you evolve! How could you expect to stay the same!" Solus retorted, confused and slightly dismayed by her reaction. His voice caused dust and small rocks around them to bounce on the ground as he lost control over it.
Tatjie seemed to grasp for words, her eyes widening as if she couldn't find what she needed to express her anger.
"Now I look like the others!" she finally croaked out.
Solus snorted, wondering what was wrong with her. He barely saw the punch coming when her fist slammed into his chest. It stung, and the force pushed him back a little. Stunned, he glared at her, just in time to see her step forward, a look of rage on her face and her fists shooting toward him.
"Turn me back!" Tatjie roared as she struck him.
Solus swatted one of the punches away, but Tatjie struck his abdomen, and he shoved back again. Anger rising, he automatically retaliated, slamming his fist against her head before he could stop himself. As soon as it hit, he knew something was off. It felt as if he had just tried to punch a mountain, and Tatjie didn't even seem to notice. Instead, she shook her head and roared again. Her fists shot forward, and she began striking at him as fast as she could.
Solus growled deep in his throat, rage clouding his vision. He tried to push it back, knowing that he had to cool down, but then Tatjie punched him in the throat. The last bit of self-control he had kept him from roaring at the top of his voice as he stepped forward and began fighting back.
Dull, heavy thuds echoed throughout the empty streets on the outskirts of the derelict city, sometimes interrupted by cursing and roaring. It lasted for a long time. When the sun had climbed fully over the horizon and into the sky, a loud shout finally called a halt to the melee.
"Solus!"
Solus stopped mid-punch, breathing raggedly as he glared at the zombie in front of him. She was bruised beyond recognition, and a sheen of green liquid covered every inch of her muscled frame. Still, she wasn't unconscious. Two sharp orange eyes stared at him from inside the ruined mess, her arms shaking as she tried to lift one.
Bile and puss, what just happened? Solus recoiled and looked around in shock. Sig stood beside the building, looking at him with a curious gaze, while Derin and Tirella stood in the door opening. Both seemed afraid.
Everybody stared quietly at him until a ragged voice behind him broke the silence.
"Next time, don't change the way I look without asking," Tatjie mumbled between puffy lips before she crumbled in a heap to the ground.
Solus jumped forward, barely catching her head before it would hit the ground. A useless gesture as his fists hit harder. Staring down at her, he sighed in relief when he saw she was still breathing. Angry at himself, he turned to the stone container with mana-orbs and grabbed one. He stuffed it in Tatjie's hands and waited. Only when it started glowing did he sigh in relief.
Rising, he turned to Sig and shrugged as the other raised an eyebrow.
"She wasn't happy with her new form. She began hitting me and I lost control," he mumbled.
"We noticed," Sig said before turning to the city. "Are we going back out again?" He seemed to care little for what happened now that it had stopped.
Solus took a last look at Tatjie. She should be fine, he thought and turned to the stone basket with orbs. He grabbed a handful and stuffed them inside his waist container. Turning to the door, he saw Tirella drool as she stared at the stone container.
"Are you two ready to evolve?"
Derin looked at Tatjie and swallowed. "I am…" He took a slight step back after he spoke, his eyes on Solus.
Tirella didn't respond right away, and Solus looked at her. She was still staring at the orbs and only reacted when he stepped toward her. Then she looked up, confused.
"Can you evolve?"
She nodded but pointed at the orbs. "Give?"
Solus laughed and shook his head. "First, evolve!"
Pointing at the softly moaning shape of Tatjie, she frowned. "Evolve, then beating?"
A surprised laugh came from the side, and Solus frowned at Sig, who was grinning widely.
"No beating," Solus said, feeling a sense of shame that he had not felt before. Annoyed at the uncomfortable feeling, he stared at her. "Unless you want a beating?" he asked, uncertainly.
She shook her head, and Solus ignored Sig's laughter as he sat down. Summoning his status, he began looking through the old evolution patterns. He could hear Derin mutter something to Sig but ignored it.
Does this mean I also have to think about what they might look like after evolving? he thought, and groaned at the prospect.
/> —
Hours later, Solus looked at the silent, unmoving shapes on the ground. Derin's pattern had been more difficult to adjust than he had expected, and in the end, he had picked one he had never seen before, Energy Binder. He wasn't sure why he hadn't seen it before, but it was an older pattern, so perhaps he had gotten it before evolving to a pseudo stone elemental.
Tirella's, however, had been far more interesting. Instead of an entire pattern, she had only bits and pieces of what looked like an incomplete pattern. It was highly intricate, and it currently filled only a single partition of her enormous yellow mana-field, which was second only to his in size. It branched out partially into the others as if ready to be added upon. It also seemed to have grown instead of being drawn, something he had never seen before but somehow made a lot of sense to him. The root pattern in the middle was so intricate, Solus wasn't sure even his status window pattern could compete with it in complexity.
Still, this wasn't the thing that had drawn his attention.
A dark, almost palpable area was in one part of her mana-field. It pulsated sickly and seemed a larger version of the tar-like stuff around the edges of her pattern.
As soon as he saw it, he felt an instinctive revulsion toward it. His mana-field had appeared of itself, enveloping the dark area. An enormous drain of energy had followed, after which the black-area shrank. When it was finally gone, Tirella's mana-field had gained an odd sheen, not something new but something that had been buried below the previous tarnish.
Solus felt an odd familiarity and kinship as he touched it. It reminded him of his own mana-field, although he didn't understand why.
Instead of adding an entire pattern, he felt the same creative urge and decided to make full use of it. He took just bits and patterns, adding them where he saw fit. In the end, he fleshed out almost an entire section. Most of what he added was based on classes that increased intelligence. He hoped that it would make it so she could answer his questions. Besides those, he also added some of his own personal touches, guided by the sense of similarity between her mana-field and his own.
Shaking himself from his reminiscence, he looked at Derin and Tirella. He was pleased with himself. Both of their forms had changed, but not as much as Tatjie, who sat near the door, sulking. She was absorbing two orbs while occasionally glancing at Tirella. Most of her wounds had healed by now.
"Ready?" Sig asked. He had waited quietly and without complaining for half a day now.
"Almost."
Solus moved toward Tatjie until she looked up at him. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't say anything.
"Will you keep an eye on these two while we are hunting?"
Tatjie nodded, not replying, and Solus sighed as he turned away. Things had been so much easier when he had been on his own.
Moving down the ruined street with Sig, the city loomed ahead of them. Towering grey buildings cast part of the city in perpetual shadow, while occasional dust columns shot up in the air. Only the center of the city was quiet, a ruin of crashed and crumbled concrete. Dust swirled in the air, obscuring any detail.
As they reached the edge of the city, Solus jumped up onto the side of a building that had toppled over, crushing the smaller ones in its path. Sig floated up beside him and reverted to his solid form.
"Do you want to end the giant Wyrm in the middle?"
Solus nodded. He hadn't seen the giant Wyrm yet, and he wondered how big it was. Sig had said it made the normal adult Wyrms look like wyrmlings.
"Alright, follow me," Sig said. He turned into his cloud form and floated away, heading toward the center of the city.
A loud explosion resounded throughout the area as Solus jumped after him, shooting into the air. He crashed into the ruins of a building that crumbled below him, and he barely managed his next jump before he was buried under the rubble. Leaping from building to building, Solus left a trail of destruction in his wake as he followed the silently floating Sig.
At the center of the city, the great metropolis' towering ruins were replaced by massive rubble piles that formed a vast shallow crater.
Solus stood beside Sig on the remains of a large two-story structure on the edge of the massive caldera staring in silent wonder at the colossal Wyrm in the center. It glowed faintly, and not just from the thin layer of fine dust that coated it.
"How would we even begin to go about ending that?" he muttered to himself, gauging the height of the Wyrms head.
It was as high as the walls surrounding Skulltown, and staring at the glossy grey plates that shone in the sun, he swallowed. Even from this distance, he could feel the traces of stone and even metal in them. It was so densely entwined that the prospect of shaping it made even the gold he had practiced with seem simple by comparison.
That's why they consume the metal, he thought. A new emotion drowned out all the annoyance, fear, and anger from before. It took him a moment to figure out what it was: Awe. He had never seen anything this big, and he tried to imagine how long it must have been here, eating the scraps the ancients had left behind. With the thought came another. How long had the Wyrms been digging around the wasteland before he or the others had awoken?
"Do you think you can punch through its armor?" Sig asked hesitantly.
"No." Solus shook his head, wondering how they were ever going to end it. A second thought came, and he sighed. "Let's head back. We'll hunt a few more of the small ones and then resume the journey to Scathia's city."
Sig looked at him, his jaw falling open and his face slack. It was the first time Solus had ever seen the other stunned, and he knew Sig had believed wholeheartedly that he would end the massive Wyrm.
"But…?" Sig said.
"Even if we could find a way to end it…should we?" Solus asked, taking a last look at the massive grey creature.
Sig didn't respond and silently followed Solus toward the edges of the city.
As Solus climbed and leaped through the ruins, a trace of familiar energy surged up from deep under the ground.
Standing still and wondering what would happen, Solus felt the presence of the enormous being far below the surface. It didn't say anything, but Solus felt its tacit approval at his decision to leave the great Wyrm be. It disappeared after a few moments, heading further below the surface, but the lingering sensation of approval remained.
He wondered why the being would care for the giant Wyrm. Seeing Sig disappear between the remaining buildings that towered in front of him, he jumped forward, quickly following him back into the city.
Molten rock
Solus trudged on, the stone pack filled with orbs thudding against his back with each step. The open wasteland stretched out before him, as it had for the last day. The light-footed padding of Sig beside him was hard to hear with the constant chatting coming from behind them.
"You're telling me there is no sun? You're making that up!" Tatjie was so excited her voice had risen to almost normal levels.
"I just told you there isn't," a sharp voice replied before sighing pointedly and continuing. "It is so hard to talk with you!"
"No, it's not! You are just not used to it, that's all!" Tatjie's low voice rose a little in pitch, like two massive rocks screeching as they slid against each other.
Derin groaned from beside Solus, where he had been walking since the morning in his attempt to get further from the constant chatter.
"Oh? I can understand Derin and Sig perfectly."
"That's because they are stupid! I've told you that before."
Sig snorted but didn't say anything.
"It doesn't matter, just tell me again about when you awoke! Come on, Tirella!" Tatjie said.
"I've told you about it twice already."
"But I enjoy hearing it," Tatjie nagged.
Solus tried tuning out Tatjie's whining, hoping Tirella would tell the story again. He had heard it before, but every time he heard it, he learned something new.
"Fine!" Tirella snapped. Then she sighed deeply and began r
etelling her story in a bored and annoyed tone.
"I awoke in a flat world with three moons in a dark red sky. They are the first thing I remember seeing, far on the horizon. All around me was what seemed to be an endless flat surface of yellow rock covered in a thick layer of dust. I was walking forward, without knowing why, but never stopping. I don't recall anything before walking. Shortly after my memories start, I saw massive explosions in the distance. I was curious and headed toward them. The journey lasted for a long time, and when I finally arrived, the explosions had long since ended. The flat, yellow ground was ripped apart, fissures and giant holes dotting the ground. All around lay the remains of many undead, most of which were missing their heads."
Tirella's voice changed, as it had the first and the second time she had told the story. The boredom and annoyance vanished and were replaced by a hushed wonder. She seemed to forget that anyone was listening.
"I traveled those desolate stretches for what seemed like forever until I ran into an enormous undead creature. Dozens of smaller ones surrounded it, ripped to pieces, some parts barely recognizable. There was a wide gaping hole in the side of the large one's head, and back then, I had no idea what it meant. Beside one of its feet lay something, something that drew me toward it. It was a small round orb, and as I moved past it, I managed to grab it without toppling over. The mana from that orb flowed into me, and I tripped. As I fell to the ground, I thought that my existence was done…"
At this point, Solus barely heard her words, the memories of his own awakening replaying through his mind. A few moments later, he realized she was still speaking, and he had again missed a part.
"...had scavenged the entire battlefield and found three more orbs. After absorbing them, I felt the urge to change. I headed back to the giant undead and entered its head. On the insides of its skull was an enormous yet intricate pattern! As I stared at it, something happened. My mana-field appeared, hovering around the giant's pattern. I blacked out then."
Solus stared at Tirlela, noticing that Tatjie and the others were also gazing at her, spellbound by the story.