Ludwig out of habit, used [Inspect]
[Inspect]
Name: [Thorn-Wombed Queen]
Title: Matron of Blooming Sorrow
Level: ???
HP: 9,000,000Hp
Class: Field Boss
Tier: Mythic Aberration
Danger Rating: ☠☠☠☠☠
{Status Effects}
[Thornroot Entanglement]
The entity is partially rooted into the terrain via cursed flora. Movement is limited, but area control abilities are enhanced. Spreads corruption wherever its roots reach.
[Wrathful Moon Infusion] The being is fully bound to the Dawn Islands due to the existence of Wrath Core. Damage scales with rage levels and proximity to lunar descent events.
[Rage of the Scorned Mother] Each minute in combat the Thorn Wombed Queen will gain one stack of [Rage] at 100 Stacks her overall speed, power will be multiplied by 100% for each minute afterward, and none of her abilities will have any cooldowns.
Abilities:
[Crown of Thornsong]
Unleashes a field-wide scream through the blooming thorns embedded across its body. This cry lowers enemy accuracy, causes hallucinations, and corrupts healing for 30 seconds. [Corolla of Dread]
Creates a barrier of spiraling thorn vines around herself. Absorbs the next 3 attacks, then detonates in a burst that knocks back and bleeds nearby foes.
[Funeral Bloom ]
Upon reaching 10% HP, all thorn blooms erupt, draining life from all nearby creatures. Enemies below 20% HP are instantly impaled by spectral roots. Can only be used once per cycle.
[Marionettes Minionettes] Any living being that is fully drained of their essence will become a puppet that serves the queen.
{Lore}
Once a human. A Queen, a sister, a daughter. Forgotten now.
Bound to the Wrathful Death by rites best left unnamed, the being now called the Thorn-Wombed Queen is no longer sentient in the traditional sense. Her mind has been uprooted, her will broken. Forever searching for her unborn child, ripped out of her guts upon its manifestation.
She does not remember who she was. But she remembers pain. She remembers betrayal. And through the blossoms that sprout from her open womb, that pain is given shape.
Wherever she stands, the land turns profane and unholy. Wherever she weeps, nothing pure may grow again.
Forever seeking, the one that would call her Mother.
***
To Ludwig’s left, nearly hidden by the line of bushes, a boy no older than twelve stood calmly. His clothes were simple, his eyes bright. He smiled up at them. Raised one hand and waved.
Next to him stood a figure clad in red and gold. The light armor was unmistakable. The cardinal.
Ludwig’s heart sank.
“It just keeps getting better,” he muttered. After all, he knows the boy, he’d seen him in the visions of the Mask of the Blind witness.
Ludwig’s lips shivered as he immediately pulled the said mask and placed it on his head. If he were to be revealed, seen or identified, all hell would definitely break loose.
Mot stood alone at the rim of the clearing, a boy in white linen with dirt-smudged knees and a grin that didn’t fade. His sandals barely bent the grass. The pinecone in his palm clicked softly as his fingers turned it over and over. He stared directly at Ludwig and waved, slow and deliberate.
Ludwig did not return it. Not because he feared the child, but because the child wasn’t someone to be mingled with.
Or rather, it wasn’t only a child.
Beside him, the Cardinal of the Order stood like a figure carved from doctrine, his robes stiff with sacred oil, his armor traced in threads of golden prayer-script. His mouth did not smile. His eyes did not blink. Clementine, the same man who brought an army of the Holy Order to the doorsteps of the Black Tower Academy.
All around, paladins formed a ring of steel and faith. Their weapons were held ready, but none advanced. Behind them, the Thorn-Wombed Queen still hung, swaying from roots that trembled as if in anticipation. Her tendrils pulsed like veins. Her absence of face seemed to stretch.
And the ground behind Ludwig cracked.
He turned. The Perturbants were nearly upon them.
Roots broke the soil like spears. Branching limbs lashed at the trees. Vines curled through the air like ropes soaked in blood. They were not running. They were sweeping forward like a tide.
Ludwig clenched his grip on Oathcarver. His hand trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the bone-deep instinct to destroy the incoming enemies.
And still, Mot waved.
The Cardinal raised a hand at Ludwig’s approach, not in greeting, but in warning.
“Halt, Intruders!” he called, his voice sharp and clean as a blade. “The field ahead is sacred. Step further, and we will strike you down where you stand.”
The paladins shifted as one. Dozens of blades tilted. Halberds crossed.
The Knight faltered. The Hunter swore beneath his breath.
“We’re not here for a fight,” the Knight next to Ludwig said quickly, loud enough to carry but not loud enough to challenge. “We’re fleeing the Perturbants. We just need a way through.”
“No one passes,” the Cardinal answered. “This is a place of judgment. You have brought corruption behind you. That makes you part of it.”
“They’re closing in,” Ludwig said, pointing behind. “You’ll be surrounded too.”
“If we die in the light, we are made clean,” the Cardinal said, “but we do not grant that mercy to the impure.”
‘God damned mule headed fools!’ Ludwig could only curse as the Perturbants were making the distance smaller by the second.
“We’ll make a stand here, if you get the chance or the way, run away,” Ludwig said to the Hunter and the Knight next to him.
However, the ground rumbled behind them. Where the Perturbants were coming, one of the trees twisted and collapsed, dragged down by a mass of writhing tendrils. Something screamed within it, then many screams echoed at once, then never again.
No sound came from the forest, and the incoming Perturbants were no more.
Ludwig looked back to Mot.
The boy was still smiling.
“Azathoth likes you,” he said.
The words weren’t loud. But they didn’t need to be.
They were heard.
The Cardinal turned sharply. “Saint Mot,” he said. “Have you not mentioned that Azathoth cannot interfere?”
“He cannot, for me, for you, and for the paladins, this is your own test of faith, but for him… it is different,” Mot said.
“This… please do not speak to that man anymore, it undermines our authority…”
Mot didn’t reply. He crouched and set the pinecone gently on the ground beside a tuft of blackened moss. “You smell like endings,” he said to Ludwig, tilting his head. “But not the kind this place understands.”
“I don’t want anything to do with you, or whatever you serve,” Ludwig said, low and steady.
“You already do,” Mot replied. “You’re just not listening yet. After all, you’re one who should be dreaming, yet dreams avoid you.”
Finding no reason to remain here anymore, as he still needed to find the Wrath Core bearer, Ludwig turned toward the tree line to their left. The terrain there dipped a steep slope, rocky and unstable, but not blocked.
“We’re not getting through them, I suppose, even with all… that” the Hunter said, eyeing the ring of paladins.
“No reason to, I suppose, let’s head out of their clearing, leave them to do whatever they want,” Ludwig said. He turned and was about to descend.
A javelin of bark and thorns crashed into the tree where they had stood seconds before.
The Source was the Thorn Wombed Queen.
“Shit, seems like she’s on to us,” Ludwig said.
“She knows we’re looking for that woman I suppose?” the Knight said.
“I don’t think we should stay here to analyze and deduce, another shot is coming,” the hunter said.
The three of them broke into a run, sliding down the loose incline. Soil gave way beneath their boots. Roots reached for their heels. But they didn’t stop. They fell, tumbled, scrambled downward.
Above, the Queen began to sing.
It was not a sound, not in the proper sense. It was a pressure inside the bones, a rhythm behind the eyelids, a breath inside the lungs that was not one’s own.
The paladins held formation.
And from far away, the other side of the arena, more Perturbants poured forward. Mot watched it all unfold with a child’s eyes and a smile too wide for his face.
Just as Ludwig’s group landed onto the massive circular arena, the Queen’s singing quieted down, though there was more than a few hundred paladins and clerics around her, though there was a pillar of the holy order, the Cardinal facing her, and even a Saint that served an Eldrich god.
The Queen’s entire being turned to face only Ludwig, “My child! I smell its scent on you! GIVE ME MY CHILD!” it roared.
“Fucking great…”