“Uhhhhh…what am I supposed to do with this exactly?”

“It’s a vessel.”

“Okay. Alright. Gotcha. Righty-ho…” Lavenna tapped her fingers on her folded arms as her eyes shifted between Zexus and the corpse on the ground. A brief moment passed between the two while June and Avali watched on in silence from the side. “You know, when you went out there, I wasn’t expecting you to bring back a ‘friend’.”

“Neither did I.” Her Bonded replied, dry in his delivery.

“Who is she, exactly?” June asked from the sideline, a pebble hovering and bouncing up and down in her hand as she trained her control over her Ego. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like we’ve skipped over the most important question.”

Avali seemed to agree with the eldest of the group’s statement, staring at Zexus with a contemplative gaze. “Did you kill her?”

“And there’s the second-most important question.” Lavenna nodded along. “Please tell me you didn’t just off some random person and take their face off for the fun of it.”

The three stared at the man, and Zexus promptly satiated their curiosity with the same impassive demeanour. “From what I gathered, she’s a participant from team C of Orange Block. She was eaten by one of those leeches and converted into some sort of monster. The process had not been fully completed, so I tore the ‘shell’ that encased her body as a test.”

“Obviously that didn’t go well.” Lavenna sighed, petting her own tail as a way of calming herself down.

“She died within three minutes.” He nodded in affirmation. His low voice was without a shred of guilt. “The Abyssal energy seems to have departed from her body as the host is no longer functioning.”

“Abyssal? Are you sure?” The smile left June’s face, replaced by a complicated expression as Zexus nodded in response. “I didn’t sense anything off about the leeches before…how strange. There may be an Outbreak nearby.”

“Probably no need to overthink it, right?” Lavenna said, not nearly as worried as the former Delver. She had never left Hearthwood Isle and thus also never experienced an ‘Outbreak’. “I mean, if the Abyss is invading, things would be a lot worse around here.”

June shook her head. “Maybe you’re right…”

“Now that that’s clear, can you use this?” The subject was changed in an instant by Zexus, his mind focused on what Lavenna could feel was his main objective. The man certainly had his priorities.

Before she answered him, the Kitsune spun around and addressed their other group members sitting on steel crates. “Just so we’re clear, this isn’t some weird necrophilia thing.”

“Whatever you say.” Avali shrugged, her face a stone wall. “I’ve heard worse.”

“I was thinking you were going to use it for alchemy or something of the sort. Truth be told, I’ve used many human hearts on this or that.” June smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes. “Humans are just meat, bone and skin when they’re dead.”

Zexus nodded. “Agreed.”

“You two don’t have to be so edgy about it.” Lavenna frowned, sighing as she felt the first signs of a headache creeping up on her. “In any case, just don’t think I’m going to do anything weird to this.”

Hand to her temple, she whirled back around to her husband. “And you… you… you…”

Lost for words, the ashen-haired beauty scratched her head as her fox ears drooped and perked in quick succession.

“Let’s talk…alone.”

Grabbing him by the arm, she all but dragged the man deeper into their house-sized base. Once they were at the back of the room amongst piles of organised containers, Lavenna huffed at her Bonded with crossed arms.

“So let me get this straight,” She began, pacing back and forth between the shelves. Despite her anger, her voice was hushed, not wanting the other two to hear her rant. “You want me to use that thing. The corpse without a face, half its bones destroyed, and weird black veins all over its skin, as a vessel? I mean, we haven’t talked to mum yet, so this definitely isn’t going to be our official kid. But still, a vessel, meaning another ‘me’?”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Zexus nodded.

The Kitsune stared her lover dead in the eye. “You better think reallllll hard about how you answer this.”

She paused to let her statement sink in. “Why do you think this is a good idea? And you better be crystal clear about this because I am this close to strangling you.”

Unfazed by her restrained rage, Zexus chose to remain silent for a moment before giving his reply. “You wanted to repopulate your kind. Creating a body from scratch to house a Soul takes a lot of resources. For your methods of ‘cloning recreation’, an abundance of mana is required. That body will make the process easier, although it does need to be healed first, of that there’s no doubt.”

“Uh huh…” Lavenna narrowed her eyes. “And I’m assuming you have a genius plan to make that happen in this purgatory? We don’t exactly have a healer or high-tier potions on hand.”

“There may be a way.”

“Spill it.”

Tapping his holobracelet, a three dimensional map appeared between them. Pale blue light flashed across the room as he navigated the mapped out complex.

“I found two areas that looked to be medical centres. One north and another further south near to where I found the body. The north had a functioning ‘rehabilitation chamber’.”

“Right…”

“From what I understand, those devices can provide complete physical reconstruction.”

Taking in his words, Lavenna began pacing again, her eyes looking up at the ceiling in thought. Tails and ears shifting, she would let out a drawn out sigh as she stopped before the man.

“Alright. Let’s go. June’s finished with the basic defense so it should be fine.”

“I noticed.”

“Don’t test me. You’re still on thin ice, honey.” Lavenna pointed a hard finger at him, stressing the last word in a threatening tone.

They returned to the entrance. With Zexus grabbing and holding onto the dead woman, Lavenna addressed their two comrades. Avali and June were chatting, the latter more than the former. They seemed to be getting along fairly well.

“Ehm. We’ll be going out for a bit.”

“I see.” June cast a critical glance over them. “You kids have fun.”

The Kitsune rolled her eyes. “... Thanks. Lock up behind, will ya? We might be out for a while.”

“Don’t be too long.”

They were just about to step out when both Zexus and Lavenna suddenly froze in their tracks. For the Kitsune, it was a peculiar noise that came from the branching corridors, echoing from the distance. Her ears twitched, turning from side to side as she tried to isolate the scratching and thudding noises, only to find them coming from all directions. Not all were coming towards them, but many were.

“Get back.” Zexus said, a hand gently pulling Lavenna into the room.

“June. Be a dear and quickly seal the door.” The Kitsune said.

“What’s wrong?” The mage asked, but did as she was asked.

Both hands held up, the dark-haired woman drew on her manacore and manipulated the stone beneath the doorway to rise. In an instant, the narrow opening had been sealed with a shake of the ground. Only the thinnest of cracks showed a glimpse of the outside. Zexus, who had set the body down to the side, held his squinted eye over one of these cracks, peeping into the other side.

“Not sure what that sound is but…” Lavenna placed her ears, human and fox, against the stone. Shutting her eyes, she listened intently.

The scratches and thuds had become clearer. They were unorganised, in complete disarray. Loud and fearless. Violent and aggressive. Evidently not that of a group of people, but monsters, and a horde of no small number. Distance covered quickly, shouts and screams could be heard here and there. A few were drowned out or faded, their owners likely fled. Many more were cut off without warning.

“Quite a few people are dying out there…” Lavenna pursed her lips, pensive. Her words became softer, barely a whisper as all four of them placed their ears against the stone.

“I hear it too…” Avali’s face scrunched.

For a moment, a rather inappropriate thought for their situation ran through Lavenna’s mind as she stared the young girl in the eye. “Her dimples are so cute!”

That tangent was stopped in its tracks in the next second as a new sound entered the cacophonic fray. Tapping and rattling.

“...”

Suddenly, a resounding click echoed from all around them. The few lights in the room turned from a pale white to an alarming red. At the same time, horns blared all throughout the complex, like emergency signals of an enemy attack in the dead of night.

Lavenna and Zexus glanced at one another. Her eyes asked a silent question, namely ‘what the fuck is going on?’. He simply shrugged as the lights returned to normal and the honking died down.

“Best guess, someone triggered something. That, or it’s a test.”

As soon as he gave his hypothesis, something slammed into the door. The stone held well enough, but the sudden impact was still shocking. While June and Avali instinctively took a step back, Lavenna and Zexus did not hesitate to hold the wall. Whatever laid on the other side was, without a doubt, something they wanted to keep there and away from them.

Another slam.

“...” Lavenna held a finger to her lips, cool as a cucumber as she shushed everyone. The two other women nodded in agreement, coming to support the fox and her Bonded with the door.

*Slam*

The ramming would cease after the third hit.

*Clack clack clack*

“Bones?” Lavenna looked up at her husband, conveying her question with a mental thought. “I also hear metal…and it’s cutting into something squishy.”

“Seems like it.” He peeked, and she followed suit.

In hindsight, the Kitsune wished she had not.

Standing on the other side of the wall was a humanoid. It had bones, meat and skin just like regular humans. Only, instead of a head, face and neck, the ‘thing’ had massive balls of throbbing, pinkish flesh stacked on top of one another and fanned out like a bouquet of flowers. If that was not horrid enough, these spheres with thick, dark veins had broken pieces of metal puncturing them from within. The sharp ends stuck out like needles on a pin cushion, drawing puss that oozed down and coated the creature’s shambling body.

“Oh Gods…” Lavenna held a hand to her mouth, trying to keep down the contents of her stomach. She averted her gaze in an instant, a single glance enough to drive her to the edge. It was only made worse when she caught a whiff of their scent, or at least what she thought was theirs.

It smelled surprisingly close to vomit.

“Nevermind, that’s me.” The Kitsune moved away from the door, trying to get as far as possible as quickly as possible. “Gods…we have to survive those? I hate this stupid program.”