Theron

Just then, the roots of the Sacred Tree began squirming ceaselessly like rolling giant serpents, fracturing the earth beneath them. Twisting around one another and possessed by evil spirits from the Abyss, they steadily formed grotesque, colossal treants. Standing twenty to thirty meters tall, these treants brandished earth-caked limbs and let out rasping roars as they charged toward the soldiers of the coalition army. Boom! With a deafening crash, a dwarf fighting valiantly was flattened on the spot, splattering blood and shredded flesh across his comrade's face. "Damned monsters!" Several dwarven warriors rallied together. Mounted on rams, they charged toward the nearby treant like knights storming a mountain peak. Their warhammers slammed into the creature's trunk of knotted roots with dull thuds, sending wood splinters flying, but failed to inflict any real harm. With a savage sweep of its arm, the treant swatted the dwarven warriors into the air. Against such titanic force, the dwarves—barely five feet tall—stood little chance of resisting. A cruel sneer spread across the treant's wooden face. It plunged its arm into the earth, driving root tendrils deep into the soil. Boom! In an instant, thick roots erupted from the ground, skewering the airborne dwarven warriors through their bellies and disemboweling them. Their bloody corpses were left dangling from the branches in a gruesome display of slaughter. "No—!" Zayn's face flushed with fury, his eyes bloodshot. He raised the Hammer of Bedrock with both hands, leapt high into the air, and roared with all his might, "Monster! You will pay with your life!" Facing the leaping dwarf, the treant flashed another vicious grin. Its arm whipped out like a massive lash, dismissing Zayn as nothing more than another suicidal fool throwing his life away. "Come on, then!" Zayn brought his warhammer down with terrifying might. The strike smashed squarely against the treant's arm and snapped it clean in two, sending the thick roots flying through the air. In the next instant, the enraged dwarven king swung his heavy hammer in a wide arc and slammed it into the earth. The ground split wide, and jagged stone pillars burst from the soil. Boom! Boom! Boom! A stone pillar over twenty meters tall shot up directly beneath the treant, instantly impaling the massive tangle of roots from bottom to top—an exact mirror of how the dwarven warriors had just died. "Long live King Zayn!" "Crush them!" The dwarves hoisted their weapons and roared in triumph, cheering their king's valor on the battlefield. Looking upon that sturdy, indomitable frame, they seemed to see the heroic bearing of King Ed in his prime, and were moved to the core. Yet when facing these treants born from the Sacred Tree's roots, the silver moon elves hesitated, feeling constrained and reluctant to attack. Since childhood, they had been taught that the Sacred Tree was sacred and inviolable. Even though it had been corrupted into monsters by abyssal taint, their hands trembled at the thought of cutting it down. Noticing their hesitation, Rhea's figure blurred, teleporting straight to the front line against the treants. She slashed her longsword through the air. A crisp hum rang out, and a colossal treant let out an agonizing wail before crashing down. Its knotted trunk had been severed cleanly at the waist, the edges charred black. "Compatriots—do not hold back! This is not the true Sacred Tree, but vermin parasitizing it!" "Her Majesty Catherine's supreme purpose on this march is to purge these pests and return Therenia to the pure radiance of moonlight!" "General Rhea speaks the truth!" "For Therenia! Fight to save the Sacred Tree!" Roused by the battle cries, the silver moon elves steeled their resolve. Launching flaming arrows, they fell into formation and joined the fight against the wicked, rampaging treants. High above, the ancient gold dragon circled through the sky. Surveying the increasingly chaotic battlefield, he seized an opening and swooped downward, unleashing a torrent of scorching fire that reduced several orcs to cinders amid their shrieks of agony. Just then, a raspy bellow echoed from the crown of the Sacred Tree, and vague, robed silhouettes appeared in the distance. "You vile, treasonous rebels... You are traitors to Therenia... sinners of the elven race!" Vicious incantations reverberated across the battlefield. Within seconds, a thick, venomous fog rolled across the ground, riding a chilling wind as it swept over the coalition lines in an overwhelming tide. "What is that?" "Danger! Fall back!" Seeing the roiling toxic mist, the vanguard soldiers felt dread seize their hearts and hastily began to retreat. Yet the poisonous fog spread far too fast. Like a crashing tidal wave or the scythe of the Grim Reaper, it sought to swallow every living soul in its path. Meanwhile, the abyssal monstrosities moved unimpeded through the venomous cloud, snarling as they pounced upon the retreating troops. "Get up!" A silver moon elf named Leander turned back and reached out, desperate to pull up a fallen comrade. To his shock, his comrade shoved him away with all his remaining strength, shouting hoarsely, "Run, Leander! Go!" In the next heartbeat, the venomous mist enveloped the fallen elf. His fair skin withered and corroded in seconds, dissolving away to expose raw, weeping flesh. Inhaling the poisonous vapor, he choked on dark red blood pouring from his nose and mouth. His eyes glazed over, and within moments, the silver moon elf was reduced to a horrifying corpse. "No, no... Karl..." Having narrowly escaped, Leander watched his fellow tribesman die before his eyes. Tears streamed down his face, but he could only grit his teeth and run forward with everything he had. "Get behind me!" Rhea called out in a low, commanding voice. Facing the suffocating cloud of venom, the half-elf paladin showed no fear as she raised her silver sword high. A twilight radiance blossomed from the blade like stars illuminating the night sky, holding back the corrosive mist and shielding the dozens of silver moon elves clustered behind her. This was the legendary paladin's Aura of Protection. Yet even with Rhea straining to hold the perimeter, many elves could not reach her in time and perished horribly in the toxic fumes, their lives claimed by the unseen evil. "This deadly poison mist... They have truly lost their minds, stooping to such foul methods." Grief flashed through Catherine's eyes at the sight of her fallen kin, but she quickly rallied herself. Urging her unicorn into the air, she raised her scepter aloft. "In the name of Sehanine—dispel this poison and sin, and restore peace to this land!" Silvery moonlight rained down upon the earth, bringing calm wherever it touched and instantly purifying the noxious fog. The twisted abyssal abominations caught within the silver rays burst into flame, wailing in agony until they crumbled into ash. At the same time, the wizards of the Arcane Hermitage raised their staves and chanted in unison. Drawing upon the currents of the Weave, they conjured a tempest that swept across the field, driving the toxic mist back upon itself. Zayn drove the Hammer of Bedrock into the soil. With a shuddering roar from the depths of the earth, a massive stone wall hundreds of meters wide rose from the ground to form an impenetrable bulwark against the remaining fog. High above, the ancient gold dragon beat his wings with thunderous force, stirring a fiery gale that pushed against the incoming miasma. Through the united efforts of the coalition, the terrifying fog was halted in its tracks, denied any further advance. From atop the distant Canopy of the Heavens, a dark humanoid silhouette descended slowly. It was an elf clad in ceremonial robes and bearing a staff, his ears pointed in the elven manner. Yet his body was webbed with fissures and his face weathered with ancient age. From his back sprouted eight slender, bristling limbs, grotesque and shudder-inducing. His pupils were pitch-black and lifeless, and beneath his eye sockets clustered four compound eyes like those of a spider, horrifying to behold. "What a hideous monster..." "Mother Goddess above... Can that even be called an elf? How could he become such a thing!" The silver moon elves murmured in revulsion, utterly unwilling to acknowledge the terrifying monstrosity as one of their own. The moment they laid eyes upon him, Catherine, Rhea, and the others froze, shock plain on their faces. They all recognized the drider's identity: the Grand Elder of the Elven Council, reverently known as the Voice of the Silverleaf—Theron Cullen. Though she had braced herself for the worst, Catherine had never imagined Theron would go so far as to turn himself into a half-spider monstrosity. To the young queen, Theron had been not just a teacher, but like a father. The venerable Grand Elder had personally taught her the history of the silver moon elves, instructed her in numerous divine spells, and shared the tales of the Moon Goddess... In Catherine's memories, Theron had been the hero who saved Therenia time and again, the very figure she had once dreamed of becoming. Yet now, after decades apart, everything had changed. Catherine was now the leader of the rebellion, while Theron had pledged himself to an evil deity, degenerating into an ugly, twisted monster, a pitiful drider. Her expression turned conflicted. After a long silence, she finally spoke: "It has been a long time, Elder Theron." "Or perhaps... the Elder Theron I once knew is already dead." "The thing clinging to life in this world is the monster that murdered him—a ruthless beast drenched in the blood of his own people, an insane zealot serving a foul god." "I am still Theron—the same Theron who guarded the Sacred Tree for a thousand years and saved Therenia single-handedly." Theron opened his maw, revealing venom-dripping fangs, and all six eyes fixed squarely on the distant elven queen. He shook his head and sighed. "Catherine, you are still far too young. You understand nothing..." "Had you been wise, you would have stayed quietly in the palace instead of stirring up trouble. Do you see our dead kin?" Theron turned and pointed a withered finger toward the mangled corpses hanging from the Sacred Tree, his voice sinking low. "They died because of you! You are the one who murdered them!" "Originally, we only needed to sacrifice a handful of elves each year to secure the Mother Goddess's protection. But because of you! You ruined everything, forcing me to offer the lives of over a thousand elves—" "Silence! Theron—no, you wretched monster, you are beyond redemption!" Catherine's eyes blazed with wrath. She raised her scepter and proclaimed loudly, "It was your lust to cling to your own power and status that drove you to slaughter them, butchering them as blood sacrifices to the abyssal fiend you worship!" "No!" Veins bulged along Theron's brow, contorting his face into a terrifying mask as he waved his staff. "Without me, Therenia would have fallen long ago! I was the one who saved you all! I was the one who gave you the chance to draw breath in this world!" "You should be prostrating yourselves before me, thanking me for my grace! Where was your so-called righteous deity decades ago when Therenia stood on the brink of total annihilation?" "It was I who gave everything, I who obtained the glorious power of the Eight-Armed Mother Goddess to halt the iron hooves of the Fadlan Empire and preserve Therenia's independence!" "Three hundred years ago, when catastrophe swept across the forest, it was I who stood forth to repel that dreadful elder evil and banish it into the Astral Plane!" "Five hundred years ago during the Abyssal Cataclysm, it was I who closed the Chaos Gate with my own hands and drove back the demon hordes!" "Catherine, what have you ever contributed to Therenia? Across this past millennium, every crisis, every calamity that befell our land was answered by me—" "Enough." The ancient gold dragon stepped forward, his voice cold and imposing. "Your hypocritical face sickens me!" "The past is the past, and the present is now. If you love comparing yourself so much, why not compare who you were at your birth?" "All you are now is a fallen monster who slaughters innocents in service to the Abyss! While Queen Catherine is the true monarch chosen by the people of Therenia!" Theron sneered, his face wrinkling into a hideous grin. "Gold dragon, your kind has always been the most sanctimonious hypocrites in this world." "You are nothing but an outsider. What could you possibly know of the blood and tears I gave for Therenia?" "I care nothing for what you say," Rhea declared as she stepped forward, sword raised, her voice steady and resolute. "I know only this: I will avenge our fallen kin and make the architect of this massacre pay the price!" Theron snarled, "Silence! You mongrel with human blood running through your veins, you are not even worthy to step near the Sacred Tree!" "Elder Theron..." Catherine looked at him, her gaze firm, her tone calm and earnest. "Lower your head and look at yourself. Your hands are soaked in blood, and you have become this hideous, twisted creature. Do you not feel disgust at what you have become?" "Out of respect for what you once gave to our people... I will grant you a dignified end, so that you may die remembered as the venerable Grand Elder." "Elder Theron, do not stray further down this path. It will only bring greater ruin upon Therenia." "No, I am not wrong." Theron ground his fangs together, his voice dripping with malice. "I gave everything for Therenia! The ones in the wrong are not me, but you—you damned rebels!" He threw his arms wide, glaring at the elven queen with mad frenzy in his eyes. "Once I sacrifice your lovely head to the Mother Goddess, Therenia will return to peace, and the long-awaited serenity will be ours at last." Before his words had fully faded, a colossal shadow loomed behind him as the roiling toxic mist converged, spinning into a dreadful vortex that threatened to devour everything in its wake.