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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3432989" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 136SACRIFICEThe men of the Border Legion were tough men from a region known for dire threats, but none of them had confronted anything even remotely like the corpse gatherer.  While they had followed Dar’s blind charge into battle against this seemingly unstoppable foe, the creature had withstood their attacks without much apparent effect.  Now, as it simply absorbed their new leader, their courage began to falter, and they started to fall back. Varo thought he felt a slight weakening as one of his cure spells penetrated its resistances, but he too felt that their time was running out.  With both Talen and Dar consumed by the creature, their ability to harm it was rapidly diminishing.  And he was nearly out of spells, at least those with any chance at all of affecting it.For a moment he felt despair, as he saw the darkest prophecies written in the Codex Thanara come true in his mind. Then Shaylara’s yell drew his attention up, and he saw the young woman rush forward, a sword in her hand.  She leapt onto the same boulder that Dar had used as a springboard a moment ago, but whereas the fighter had leapt onto its knee, the scout sprang high into the air, driving the sword down with both hands into its chest, just above where it had absorbed Dar.  The attack hit where the creature’s heart would have been, had it been a mortal creature.  But to Varo’s surprise, the attack had an obvious effect; the monster reared back, and Shay’s weight dragged the sword deeper, opening a gash in its chest that trailed crumbling clods of packed gray earth instead of blood. Realization came in a flash.  She’s using Sextus’s sword! he thought.  The weapon, aligned earlier by Serah, could hurt the monster, and penetrate its considerable resistance to mundane damage.  But Varo doubted that even that would be enough. His suspicion was born out a moment later, as the gatherer smashed its hand into its chest.  Shay was crushed against its body, and when it pulled its hand away, the scout had been all but absorbed into its mass, with gray hands grabbing her, drawing her further in. Knowing it was useless, Varo touched the monster again, burning his last healing spell.  The cure light wounds spell dissolved against its spell resistance.  He knew better than to try his wands; the potency within them would have no chance whatsoever of harming it.  The gatherer, however, was beginning to shake.  Its protruding “head” shifted toward Varo, who clutched another scroll, ready to invoke a word of recall that would yank him out of there.  But before the monster could lunge for him, the bright point of light that Varo had seen earlier reappeared along the curve where the monster’s jaw met its face.  This time, instead of vanishing, it grew brighter, until Varo could see the white flames that appeared along the length of the blessed steel, and knew its source. At the same time, a gout of earth exploded out of the creature’s chest, and Varo realized that Dar was not giving up without a fight either.  And then, the thing just started to come apart.  Varo fled, running back as clods the size of wagons smashed into the ground, spraying showers of gray earth and dust around the area.  He was blocked as a huge mound—one of the creature’s arms—crashed into the ground in front of him, blocking his escape.  Clods glanced off of his body, and he flinched as a gravestone slammed into the ground next to him, having narrowly missing his head by less than a foot.Then, it was over.  The cleric of Dagos turned, and saw a new hill had formed where most of the creature’s body had collapsed.  Gray dust hung thick in the air, drifting into his lungs, making him choke.  The cleric started back toward the mound.  Something stirred in the dirt, and he headed for it, thinking it would be Dar, or one of the others absorbed by the creature. But the thing that rose up out of the dirt was not one of his companions.  Covered in dirt, Varo nevertheless instantly identified the gray, mottled flesh, the stiff movements, and above all, the unnatural aura of undeath that hung about the creature.  Even before it turned its vacant gaze upon him. And all around him, more zombies were stirring, rising up out of the remains of the corpse gatherer. Dozens of them. The battle, as it turned out, had not been won; if anything, it had just begun.</blockquote>

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