Kai's Memories

Her eyes are drawn to the tree the moment the island appears on the horizon. It’s radiating a pale purple light, corruption interwoven with its pure magic, but she can sense that it’s struggling in a battle it can’t win.

Reach the tree.

She takes off up the cliff with her companions close behind, but the Maldrus knows what she’s trying to do. It’s calling to her, so weak and distant she almost can’t hear it. She has to get closer.

The moment the monsters guarding it fall, she breaks through them, brushing past glowing willowy leaves and ignoring the creatures snapping at her heels. Dezzy’s magic forces them back, giving her the time she needs.

Craft into one from the powers three.

The Shadow Tear, the heart of the Immaldur. The Maldrus itself. The tree’s weak, lingering magic, still stored here in the heart that opens up to her.

And her, the catalyst.

She has no idea what she’s doing, but her blood knows. The Shadow Tear disappears into the cage of bark, and when it opens again, sacred roots have locked itself around it. A staff.

The second she touches it, magic explodes from the source and all the Maldrus up to the blackened coast shrivels up and dies. Alistair whips around with his glaive as it washes over him, but all the corruption is gone.

The ocean is still sick with ooze, but the island is clear, the tree is no longer pulsating with dark energy. Everything has gone quiet.

“Is…” Dezzy looks around uncertainly. “Is that it?”

Movement catches their eyes, and they all turn to the cliff overlooking the wide coast. Something is rising, rising from the ocean with torrents of water cascading off it as it pulls itself up to the height of the island. And the longer they stare in shock and horror, the worse its twisted facade becomes.

This is the face of the Maldrus.

It’s horrifying beyond description, so colossal that it can’t be taken in all at once. All of Kai’s hope drains away in an instant, and she feels it now with conviction -- they can take on anything, anything except this. Their journey ends here.

And then power rips through her, the magic inside her flaring up so overwhelmingly intense that she feels she must disintegrate into dust.

She can’t remember anything else. Just bits and pieces, magic unlike anything she’d heard of even in legends tearing itself from her body. Its form wearing away. The beating heart, the core. A long, thunderous scream that feels like it’s coming from inside her, and if she thought that her form would evaporate before, then she must already be long dead.

And then she wakes up on the beach. Everything is still. The flaring power has died down a little, and she can think again.

Before her, the last of the Maldrus bubbles and sinks into the water, the viscous black goo dissipating until the sea is once again clear blue.

Dezzy is nowhere in sight, but she’s too drained to worry. Alistair stands there staring at her a moment before sinking down into the sand with her.

“Kai… What the hell?”

She has no answer. The staff, still pulsing with power, lies on the ground next to her. Up on the cliff with grass no longer coated in sludge, the tree whispers, already waking up. Even the sand feels healthier, less coarse.

Alistair is taking a break of his own, but he turns to her. “Is it gone?”

She shakes her head, lifting a trembling finger to point at the waves. Down. Far beneath the water, she can still sense it.

If they don’t end this now, it will just return to terrorize the surface again. But when they do…

This horror can finally come to an end.