The creature’s mouth stretched wide in what might have been a smile—if smiles could split flesh like overripe fruit peeling from the bone. Its fangs glistened in the crimson moonlight, a jagged cemetery of broken teeth, each one dark with rot yet sharp enough to flay muscle from bone. It waddled forward on limbs that bent too many times, the sound of its approach a wet squelch of roots pushing through dead flesh.
The hunter staggered back, his boots catching on the writhing vines beneath him. His breath came in ragged gasps, his pupils dilated until only a thin ring of color remained around black voids. “It’s—it’s calling me!” he choked out, one hand clutching at his chest as if trying to rip out whatever had taken root there. His other hand trembled around the hilt of his falchion, the blade reflecting the Perturbant’s approaching form in warped fragments.
Ludwig didn’t flinch. He stepped forward, his movement precise, deliberate, the way a guillotine’s blade might slide into place. Durandal’s edge caught the bloody moonlight, the steel drinking in the glow until it seemed to pulse like a living thing. The sword’s hunger mirrored his own—cold, patient, and utterly devoid of mercy.
The Perturbant paused. Its head tilted, the roses embedded in its eye sockets trembling as their petals brushed against each other with a sound like dry parchment. One clawed hand—more thorn than finger—lifted in a gesture that might have been beckoning, had it not been so grotesquely wrong. The roots threading through its wrist creaked as they stretched.
[As an Undead, you’re not affected by Lullaby of the Flesh-Surgeon.]
[Increase in hostility due to the lack of control!]
The creature froze. For a heartbeat, the forest itself seemed to hold its breath. Then the Perturbant’s jaw unhinged with a wet crack, and it hissed, a sound like a thousand rose thorns dragged across bone. Its body coiled, roots snapping taut beneath its skin as it launched itself forward, claws raking the earth in a spray of damp soil and writhing tendrils.
Ludwig’s left arm snapped up. “Sit down.” His voice was flat, disinterested, the way one might speak to a misbehaving hound. “Bounds of Latvia!”
The earth erupted. Dozens of spectral chains burst from the ground, their links gleaming violet as they coiled around the Perturbant’s limbs. The creature thrashed, its shrieks rising to a pitch that made the hunter clap his hands over his ears, blood already trickling from his nostrils. The chains held fast—for a moment. Then, with a sound like tearing linen, the Perturbant’s body dissolved, its form unraveling into a tangle of vines that slithered through the chains’ grasp like eels through a net.
The hunter gagged. “Where did it—?”
“Quiet.” Ludwig didn’t turn, his gaze sweeping the clearing. The vines underfoot trembled, their movements too rhythmic, too purposeful. Above them, the trees groaned, their branches twisting in ways wood should not bend. He already knew where it had gone. The Perturbant wasn’t fleeing. It was hunting.
Unseen, the creature reformed. High in the canopy, the vines clinging to the willow’s trunk pulsed, their fibers knitting together into something approximating flesh. The Perturbant took shape inch by inch, its body dripping from the branches like sap. It hung upside down, its clawed hands spread wide, the roses in its eyes blooming wider as it fixed on the hunter’s unprotected back.
“Ludwig—it’s behind you!” Thomas’s voice was a whip-crack in his mind.
Ludwig spun. The Perturbant was already falling, its claws aimed for the hunter’s skull. “DUCK!”
The hunter didn’t hesitate. He hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, his face pressed into the loam as Ludwig’s chains lashed upward. The violet links wrapped around the Perturbant’s torso—and once again, the creature melted, its body dissolving into a rain of thorns and petals that scattered across the forest floor.
The hunter spat dirt. “I hate this.” His voice shook, but his hands were steady as he fumbled at the satchel strapped to his thigh. Three crystal spheres tumbled into his palm, each no larger than a child’s fist, their glass surfaces swirling with something that burned even through the container. “Screw it!” He hurled them in three different directions—into the undergrowth, against the trunk of a gnarled oak, at the base of a stone slick with moss.
The world erupted.
Fire bloomed in great, ravenous gouts, the flames licking at the mist until it recoiled like a living thing. The vines screamed, their shriveled lengths curling away from the heat, leaving behind only blackened husks. The Perturbant’s domain unraveled at the edges, the illusion of a forest peeling back to reveal the rot beneath.
Ludwig’s lips curled. “They’re not fond of fire.”
“Didn’t you learn a fire spell back at Bastos Manor?” Thomas’s voice was dry.
“Never had the chance to use it.” Ludwig raised his right arm. The air above his palm shimmered, then collapsed inward, condensing into a sphere of molten gold. His fingers flexed—and the fireball stretched, its form elongating into a spear wreathed in white-hot flames.
The Perturbant emerged from the last unburned patch of roots, its body reforming in jerky, stuttering motions. The roses in its eyes were wilting, their petals blackening at the edges. It barely had time to raise its claws before Ludwig’s arm snapped forward.
The fire spear struck true.
The impact sent the creature staggering back, the spear buried to the haft in its chest. For a heartbeat, nothing. Then—
-16,777
[You have applied: {Conflagration}]
The Perturbant’s scream was the sound of a forest burning. Flames erupted from the wound, racing along its limbs, devouring the roots that served as its veins. It thrashed, clawing at the spear, but the fire only burned brighter, hungrier. Where it stumbled toward the vines, they crumbled to ash before it could merge with them. Where it reached for the earth, the ashen soil puffed and moved away from the flames.
The hunter watched, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. “Ah,” he murmured. “The singing… stopped.” His eyes cleared, the fog lifting as the Perturbant’s influence burned away with its flesh.
Then the wind came.
It tore through the clearing like a living thing, ripping leaves from branches, sending embers spiraling into the dark. And beneath it, woven into the gale, was a howl—a sound so full of grief it made the very air tremble. The trees bent under its weight, their trunks groaning. The vines writhed, their thorns digging into bark and soil alike, as if the forest itself were trying to flee.
Something was coming.