A Teaser for Tuesday
Tis Tuesday teaser time once more!
Here is an excerpt from my new book, Bloodlust: Iron Faction.
This one is a little weird. The Shugothoth is a thinking disease, while Lignam is a simulacrum created from an evil Gladiator and a vampiric plant that took root in a cultist. In a cosmic sense they both want to shift the world and the use of magic away from the Domains of the Chosen.
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The air was thick and strange now. As Lignam came closer to the source of the power he sensed, the Shugothoth sent swarms of bees and blood wasps to assault him.
These proved to be a growing nuisance, for though the grim totem quickly broke each wave, close to the heart of its power the Shugothoth seemed more willing to face pain.
Tiring, Lignam paused to channel, tapping into the power of the elements. He did not like invoking the old magic that he had retained from previous lives, but he could not deny that it had its uses. He wove the pattern and cast his spell. After a moment, his armour began to glow with heat. The insects all around him curled up and fell from the air or were simply burnt to ash. Lignam himself was subject only to minor discomfort from the heat.
After several minutes, the insects let up, and Lignam ceased feeding power to his spell, letting it expire. His armour cooled and, as he pushed forward, looking around, he realized that the annoyance caused by the insects had hidden a change in the jungle from him.
The Shugothoth was capable of creating predatory trees and warping living things, but in the place that Lignam’s senses brought him to, it had altered the entire ecosystem. Every living thing was warped and changed.
Enormous trees bore egg sacks containing an army of monstrosities like grotesque fruit. As Lignam watched, one of these eggs split, birthing a multi-headed serpentine creature that proceeded to eat the remains of its own placenta before undulating toward the centre of the infected jungle.
And there, beyond dozens of such acts of tainted parturition, Lignam beheld the source of the power he could sense; an enormous grove of festering, pulsating trunks with limbs like a kraken’s arms dropping down from the canopy. Hives of deadly blood wasps ringed that inner grove, vomiting forth clouds of the vicious little creatures, defenders that could thwart even him.
