Pupper cut through the still atmosphere of the mires like a bolt of lightning. Abraham had never moved so fast in his life and he was having a miserable time for it; screaming with panic every time the hound leapt through the air to give him a semblance of a window to breathe. With every jerk of her body, the powerful legs sent the trio leaping forwards on their wild search of the morning-time mires, distorting the mists and terrifying the local wildlife.
Abraham’s arms remained tightly locked around Luna’s abdomen. He echoed her laugh of excitement and joy with an equal utterance of terror as Pupper cut through the still air like a dagger through Monstrum tentacles.
“Yeah! Pupper go!” Luna shrieked, only to have her screams fall flat in the loud “Eeee!”s of her burnt-skin companion.
The wild sprint had a secondary effect - aside from the never-ending search for the Monstrum. Neither the mountain-dweller nor the subnautic had ever seen the gigantic wildlife roaming around the wetlands, but from atop Pupper’s back, they saw it all. The gators, the snapping turtles, the snakes, the lizards - lifeforms neither could have imagined in their wildest dreams.
After hours of sprinting, finally, Pupper signaled that she would like to rest. Of course, her skills at communicating with her human companions were - for the lack of a better term - lacking. Therefore, she did the best she could and simply laid down mid-air, coming to a screeching halt mid-sprint on a flat field.
On any other day, Abraham would’ve been ecstatic to embrace a beautiful woman - in fact, he was fairly certain he had gone through this exact scenarios in one of his pre-slumber states of sleeping, but dreaming and doing were two wildly different realities. Rather than instill her with calm through his stoicism, he screamed and grabbed on to Luna’s supple form with all her might, screeching as they slid to a halt on the moss.
He laid down on his fours on the moss while Luna praised the resting hound with rough pats on her chest, commending her for her speed and the amazement of their journey.
“O-Oh G-God…” Abraham spoke - his arms a rattling mess clinging to the moss as if terrified he’d fall into the skies.
“Wasn’t that amazing, Abe!?” Luna spoke excitedly as she wandered over the moss towards her retching companion.
“Y-Y-Yeah… I… I think I shit myself…” He confessed, though it was hard to tell. His backside had become numb from the slamming into the harness. She glanced at his furry pants, shrugged and clapped his back. “I won’t tell anyone. She’ll need some rest before we head out again. Did you see anything?”
He shook his head. They had moved at such speeds he hadn’t seen a thing past Luna’s wild hair. “N-No… nothing… B-But I don’t t-think we’ll find a-anything like this…” The Logoruum looked back at the white, fluffy creatures resting at her back - pondering whether she should dare take the massive weapon from the harness.
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“Yeah, I know what you mean… I’m not picking anything up. I think we should be able to - if they were here.” The presence signaled her agreement.
To her surprise, the crawling half-bald young man on the ground raised a finger and suggested: “I-I don’t have much experience with them, but… the ones in Anza were in a cave. And the ones Logan talked about were also in caves or houses or stuff like that. I don’t think it’d be up in the open, right?”
Luna hadn’t even considered it. For hours, she’d just had so much fun riding around on the hound that she’d just let the beast lead the way. But it made sense that the Monstrum wouldn’t just set up anywhere - they’d set up in Sitalii, rather than the seabed. She felt a pang of guilt rip through her stomach as she thought of the burning daylight and how, for a moment, she’d just lived in the moment - all too happy to escape the looming dread of the cull.
She reached for the bridge of her nose, grabbing it as if it would help her think more clearly. “Damnit… why couldn’t he have come back already?” She muttered into her palm.
If nothing else, then Logan could’ve set them on the right path - told them where to begin their search, at the very least.
“Egh… D’you think we could lure the information out of Serah? Pa’ would get suspicious pretty fast. He might be weird, but he’s not an idiot… and he doesn’t answer a lot of questions.” She muttered bitterly. Abraham sat down on his fur-clad buttocks and shook his head.
“She’d catch on quickly, too. But we’re smart people, we should be able to figure this out, right? I mean… if they really don’t stay out in the open, that should narrow it down, right? This place is pretty damn open, so if we narrow it down to anything that isn’t open, we’ve gotten pretty far already.” Luna nodded her agreement thoughtfully.
“Yeah, you’re right. If-” A discomfort shot down Luna’s back - from her neck and down to her buttocks. It wasn’t painful - not entirely, but it caught her so unaware it knocked her down on one knee. As if to apologize for the inconvenience, she felt a warmth wrap around her shoulders - another image or transferred emotion from the symbiote.
“Luna, are you-” Abraham immediately fell silent as he caught something shifting inside the back of Luna’s black shirt - like a snake slithering beneath the cloth.
Quickly, he brought his hands up, finally realizing how useful a knife or some other, smaller bladed weapon would be, as frying Luna was far down on his lists of wants in the mire.
He shrieked and fell back onto his back as the thing slithered up along her neck - a long, red growth, pulsating and hissing as it wormed its way to the top of her head. At its anterior segment, a thickening - more like a bulb or a knot than a tentacle, opened up as it had reached her scalp.
To him, it resembled a flower - at least until he looked into its mouth, where it appeared more akin to the inside of Isaac’s impressive nostrils; covered in hairs that seemed to hum with every breath Luna took.
The Logoruum was uneasy, to say the least. The symbiote had seen an opportunity to use its oddly anatomy to assist her and the function was clear… albeit a bit disturbing.
Whenever she breathed, she could feel the hot, humid air of the mire cool in the tube extending down her back and into her bronchi, meaning they were intimately connected, but still far apart. She could sense no other sensory input from the branch, but had the distinct feeling that the meat could.
“F-fuck…” Abraham muttered and rose up to eye the gory flower with unease. He’d heard her recounts of the ‘back-meat’ and had seen Logan’s unusual properties for himself. But he’d never seen it up-close, which prompted him to ask: “I-it’s not gonna… kill me, is it?”
Luna shook her head back and forth to verify that the bud still allowed her some free movement before stating: “Of course not. That’d be like me killing you. But damn that feels weird…” She confessed and rose up to slowly turn around.
As expected, the meat inside her back squirmed as she turned in the direction of the sun- the same direction that the flower had turned.
“I think she’s leading us to the Hive…”