Lemmy
She was able to dry off relatively quickly as Maria concentrated the heat around them on both of them, Bucket didn't mind being wet however, so Maria let them walk with them while dripping water. Other than the fae lord and the occasional predatory creature their journey was rather peaceful, and even then the creatures were often content with hunting down the now abundant wild life that prospered with the now excessive flora.
Thousands of bees fed on a field of seemingly endless flowers, drinking from the overflowing nectar as the bloomlight gave them nearly boundless energy. Lemmy never expected the surface to hold so much life, from the forest to the field of flowers, Lemmy still wasn't completely used to all the colors, fresh air and even light. But she much preferred it compared to the cavern! She wondered if the rest of the world was like this and tugged on Maria's dress to get her attention.
"Miss Maria?" Despite tugging on her dress, Maria seemed in deep thought, maybe Lemmy could ask her later…
—
Maria
The faelord from earlier… it didn't seem to recognize Maria at all, while they only met briefly beforehand, faelords rarely interacted with mortals on their own volition. So when that happened, it was often a memorable experience for both the faelord and mortal involved, so even in its madness it should've at least acknowledged her presence before it tried to kill her… or perhaps not? Fae are strange creatures by nature, so it wouldn't be that odd.
Yet she couldn't shake the feeling something else was amiss, it was theoretically possible to speed up a faelord's descent into true madness which would explain how it became so hostile so quickly, yet why would someone do that? It would essentially cut off the town from contacting anyone from the outside, had one of the Kakra tribes figured out to drive it mad? She wouldn't put it past them, but they didn't have particularly powerful mages or technology to do so. The more she thought of this, the more questions she had. Though unfortunately most would require the faelord to answer, which unfortunately is currently dead-
On the bright side however, they did manage to defeat it early on it's in madness, so hopefully it didn't harm anyone. Yet as she was deep in thought, she noticed something squish under her feet, a rather familiar looking one in fact. For a moment her heart froze and it felt as if the world had stopped-
—
Lemmy
Maria suddenly stopped, looking down she stared at a flowery vine, or is it a root since it's growing on the ground? Wait, that didn't matter! What mattered is why Maria was looking so intensely at it, and why she looked so worried. Was it poisonous? She was wearing some weird looking shoes but it should protect her.
"What's wrong?" She asked curiously, taking a closer look at it as Maria responded.
"Lemmy, look up at the moon, and Bucket? Could you check our surroundings?" She said as Bucket silently ran off as Lemmy gazed at the moon. While the moon itself didn't change much, the vines had slightly lost their color, their deep green and vibrant flowers had dulled, yet she noticed something else, it almost looked the exact same as the vine on the ground!
"Oh, they look the same! Wait… why is that a bad thing?"
"Remember what I told you about the bloom-touched?"
Lemmy thought of this for a moment, Maria mentioned it when talking about the moon and its various forms, well two of its forms. The previous form was the Reign of silence which made monsters hibernate, while this reign… spread something called bloom? It turned people into monsters, with weird flowers growing out of their eyes. Maria said they're bloom-touched, but didn't say much else about them… wait she remembered they talked about it a few days after leaving the city! But unfortunately, she saw something called a squirrel and didn't pay much attention to her-
"Erm, not really…" Lemmy said with a hint of embarrassment
"Ah- well we don't have much time, but essentially the plant uses an infected person's body as a form of transportation and means of growing… this vine is likely connected to a Bloom-touched that has been alive for over a hundred years, it likely knows our current location and alerted all the younger bloom-touched in the area or possibly region." Maria said in a calm tone, though a hint of worry flickered in her eyes.
"Okay, so how are we going to fight-"
"- No, we aren't going to fight them, I doubt we could flee either, so instead we're going to hide." Maria said, this time it sounded like she did not wish to argue or explain why at the moment, Lemmy felt like she should listen for now. Anxiety swelled in her chest as she saw Maria of all people worry.
Bucket soon returned, and simply pointed north and south. "Ah, pincer attack, clever." Maria simply commented before she tapped her staff against the ground, causing it to split open and consume the three just like before at the faelord's water mountain thingy. Though unlike last time, the top was see-through!
Then the rumbling came, hundreds of feet stomped more and more intensely as the two hordes closed in on their location. How many people were transformed by the Bloom? Maria hinted there were more Reigns than silence and Bloom, what were the others like? Were they as dangerous as this? Maybe Lemmy could ask Maria, though wait- was they really that dangerous? They were just people with monster plants growing out of them right? Lemmy could probably take them out on her own!
"Why don't we- Mgh?!" suddenly Bucket placed their hand over her mouth.
"Again, we're not going to fight-" Maria whispered, it was actually a bit soothing to Lemmy listening to her speak like that, but that wasn't important!
Bucket eventually let go of her mouth. "Okay, but why?!" Lemmy questioned in a hushed tone.
Maria looked up, giving Lemmy a view of an inquisitive bloom-touched, looking at their footprints and eventually at where they were, its mouth was full of deformed teeth and dozen of thorns growing out of its mouth, its left eye was replaced with a flower while its right had begun to develop cataracts. It looked half dead already, like a corpse that refuses to rot any further. It violently twitched as it tried to figure out where the three were before screaming in frustration "Gruuuuhhhh!!!" It yelled while making a strange gurgling noise. Causing the mage to flinch.
Maria silently stared at it until it went away, though Lemmy could still hear hundreds moving around nearby. "I'm… afraid of them." Maria confessed, only now did Lemmy notice, she seemed stressed, she held her staff close to her body, her breathing was shallow, and Maria's eyes were focused completely above them.
Lemmy… did not like hearing that, Maria was strong, not in the same way as Lemmy, but she could probably kill monsters with a single spell from what Lemmy had seen, so why was she afraid of these of all things?!
"I- when I was younger, before I was even a mage, I took a job to help destroy a horde of Bloom touched-"
—
Young Maria
The sickly green bloom light shone down on the land, illuminating the bountiful fields that had enough crops to feed a city three times over, yet food was not what's on her mind. No it was the lack of people harvesting them, a Bloom horde had gathered nearby and vines were growing over several crops, not only killing them but also risking to alert every bloom touched in the region. So the Mayor had arranged a plan with anyone willing to fight, two groups would defeat the Bloom touched, the first would destroy the vines and attract the hordes nearby, while the other would seek out the ancient bloom-touched to kill it. It sounded like a simple plan, the reward was just some pocket change and a year's worth of rations, not a lot but- Maria hadn't eaten in days, her form was beginning to become thinner by the hour.
Unfortunately, Maria was assigned to the distraction group, in fact anyone who wasn't a professional soldier was assigned here, though at least they had a mage. So perhaps only a few of them would die horribly, and luckily for her she was given a small crossbow, so she was significantly less likely to die than the rest! They moved a mile away from the town to avoid damaging it, and prepared everything from Palisades to catapults. She walked up to one of them to better observe its craftsmanship, she wasn't that interested in the catapult itself, but more so in how her ancestors somehow fought off invaders using massive objects made of metal, and moved as if they were alive. Her home had hundreds of their husks littered across the forests, mountains and plains. Even after spending generations tearing them apart, they had barely understood the basics of how such large metal behemoths could move…
"So, what do you think the chances of us surviving this are?" a man wearing leather armor and a metal helm asked, he seemed to be a rugged yet somewhat charming man who welded a great sword.
"Hmm… my chances are pretty high, yours? Well… I hope the Mayor will cover your funeral expenses, assuming you have anything left to bury that is-" Maria joked with a smirk, well his chances were actually pretty low, but trying to make a joke out of it usually helped… sometimes…
"Ah damn, well maybe then I wouldn't have to listen to my brother flaunt about how he can use magic and how he's soooo much better than me." The man said while rolling his eyes. "Anyways, on the off chance I survive this, would you care for a drink lady-?"
"Maria, and I suppose a drink would be nice, though it's quite unusual for a man to ask my name without introducing himself." Maria pointed out, causing the man to rub the back of his head.
"I suppose you're right haha! I am Reginald, my brother is Marcus the mage of the distraction group. Hopefully his boasting isn't just for show!" He said rather joyfully despite the battle drawing near, most of the people here were just desperate citizens who wanted food. Maria doubted the mayor expects most of these people to come back alive… neither does she. So she readied her crossbow, headed to a hastily built palisade, and watched as a couple guardsmen hacked away at the bloom vines.
A red haired mage stepped forward in between the camp and guardsmen, faced the camp, and waved his hand around in the air. Maria's own hand felt a strange tingle… she wasn't experienced with magic, was this normal? She hoped so… she didn't want to worry about her health so soon. "Gentlemen, we face a threat that has troubled generations of our kin, transforming them into walking corpses with no desires other than to consume or corrupt us. While we may not permanently erase this threat from our lands, I assure you all that I, Marcus-" Maria began to zone out, she hated listening to speeches almost as much as she hated giving them. Though fortunately, the Bloom touched soon arrived to give her a very welcomed distraction!
At first, only about a dozen showed up, easily dispatched by the militiamen, then a couple dozen more… then nearly a hundred, Maria had lost count twenty minutes in, but shooting was far more important now. She aimed for the chest and legs, while head shots killed them. It turned out actually hitting a moving target was already hard enough, she didn't want to waste bolts of something that small and moving.
But there was soon a problem that Maria guessed would happen, no matter how many died, more would arrive! She kept shooting as fast as she could, at this point she didn't even need to aim, as long as she shot in the direction of the horde it'd hit something. Catapults shot out barrels of flammable oils, while some archers set their arrows alight to ignite the drenched bloom-touched. Magus created walls of fire to either burn to bloom-touched or force them into a kill zone where the crossbowmen could pick them off before the armed militia would take out the stragglers. It was a great strategy, Maria saw Magus smugly smile down at the sight while occasionally throwing fireballs at the horde. This went far better than anyone could've expected! Then, a strange, lumbering figure appeared-
It looked like a massive, worm-like creature covered in flowers and vines, its body resembled bark as it approached the walls of flame. Marcus looked shocked and tried to engulf it in a cyclone of fire, yet it seemed surprisingly unfazed as it spat out an amber colored substance that doused the flames instantly. It saw several of its smaller brethren burn, before covering them too in this strange substance. It slowed them down, but it did put out the flames, and when the sap hardened it created a primitive yet effective armor. Bolts and arrows bounced off these armored corpses, flame did not affect them, and the warriors that prepared to meet them in combat took longer to defeat them.
Maria saw five men quickly get pinned down, being beaten, mauled, and devoured as she could do nothing but listen to their agonized screams and pleads for a mercy killing. "Focus on the big one!" Marus yelled, barely audible from the screeching of the bloom-touched and the cries of the dying. There were still uncountable Bloom-touched, the Frontline was dying out, now there were at least eighteen dead and more quickly being overwhelmed. The catapults had already used most of their ammunition, yet behind Maria… the ground began to break apart.
Several massive tendrils broke out of the ground and aggressively thrashed about, crushing and thrashing anything close to them. Maria couldn't even tell if they knew where everyone was or just randomly hitting anything around them, she barely ducked out of the way as one nearly hit her in the side of the head. Yet her last shred of hope died out at the sight of the mage, fighting his hardest to kill the unrelenting horde- "I shall burn all of your kind to a-AAAGHHHHHH!?!" Marcus screamed in pain as a bloom-touched leapt over another of its kind, pinned him to the ground, and bit into his neck as a dozen others joined in.
The Bloom-touched reached the Palisades, crashing against it and attempting to climb it with their deformed claws. Maria managed to shoot a couple- but there were too many! Those who weren't crushed by the tendrils or dying from their more humanoid foes were fleeing, she- she needed to flee too! She took the few bolts she had left and ran off, her chest felt like it was burning, her hand began to ache, but she focused on trying to get out! She rushed past several destroyed tents, catapults that were being torn apart by massive vines, and screams of the rapidly dying militia filled the air as the bloom-touched broke down the splintering Palisades. One had managed to climb over the walls and attempted to jump on Maria, but she barely managed to roll out the way and shoot it in the leg, giving her more time to flee.
Yet, the pain in her hand was growing, going from aching to now feeling like it was stabbing her hands from the inside as she realized she was slowly losing her ability to move her left fingers, they barely responded when she tried to move them even slightly, making using the crossbow nearly impossible. More and more of the Bloom-touched broke in, Maria couldn't fight all of them off, in fact she doubted she could fight even one in her current state! She slid in a tent that was only partially collapsed, the skin on her hand began to tear apart and bleed as her heart raced, she hid under bloodstained cloth, broken wood, and a body… she couldn't tell if it was a normal dead body or the remains of a bloom-touched-
She heard the steps of several bloom-touched, all swarming on top of Maria's tent to devour the dead body, slowly crushing her under their weight as she heard flesh tearing and bone crunching. She placed a hand over her mouth, trying to not scream as the pain in her hand surged, blood now soaking the dirt below her as it poured out her wounds. She gritted her teeth, reached over to a splattered piece of wood and bit down onto it before several crystalline shards pierced out of her hand, "MGGHHHHHH-!!!" She let out a muffled scream as they glowed a violet-blue as Maria heard something hitting the collapsed roof… it sounded rapid, yet weak? Rain? No… the cloth wasn't getting wet from it, hail? But that should only happen during the next reign- did the mage do this? But he was caught by the horde of bloom-touched, and she was told he specialized in fire magic, not ice… she didn't question it, a chilling mist reduced her vision, but that didn't stop her, she simply rushed away, letting the mist cover her body and the sound of hail hitting the ground hide her footsteps.
Several hours later, Maria was drinking at a tavern, trying to forget the events as she heard of the other group's success in defeating the ancient bloom-touched, and later the other mage was found… she managed to see a glimpse of him as he was carried into town, whatever flesh he had left was bruised, torn, and bitten. He was sniveling and huddled into a fetal position as his mauled flesh tried to regenerate…
—
Lemmy
Her ears flattened as she listened, Maria's story sounded… scary, knowing the same type of monsters were above them, looking for them did not help her fears. Yet when she looked up, the Bloom-touched seemed to have left.
"Seems like they're gone now, but let's be more careful as we continue to walk, the vines can easily blend in with foliage so make sure to look closely when we go through more forested areas." Maria said before looking out of the hollow boulder, then helping the pair out as they began their journey again, now more cautious as they prepared for anything that could potentially summon the horde of bloom-touched again.