Cold.
That was the first thing Aloe felt. The second was breathlessness. Water poured inside her nostrils and mouth, filling her lungs with the frigid liquid.
Her thoughts were sluggish but primal. If she remained here, she would die. But her mind was not that of an animal but a cultivator. She shifted her internal infusion to recovery. Perhaps she was no longer able to breathe, but as her body assimilated this new flow of vitality, it needed way less oxygen to sustain itself.
The regeneration stance couldn't create oxygen out of nowhere, what it did was make the body more efficient at using what it had available.
The coldness haunted her, threatened her. Without acuity, she was unable to see where she was, but she doubted it would have been useful when the Tehen was a river as deep as it was. Her body weighed her down, and the water in her lungs pushed her down with lethal intention.
The darkness, the coldness, the water, her stance… everything drained her strength.
Yet she sought for the air. Aloe swam upwards.
But the current was stronger.
She had been fooled by the surface speed of the river, the full force of the water was magnitudes stronger beneath it. Aloe grabbed the walls of the river, her fingers scraping against the smooth stone with all the strength she could muster.
But even though her fingernails scratched the stone and bled, her grip wasn't enough. The current pushed her away, thrashing her body across the river, only to violently impact against the wall of the other side. The hit forced her to gasp, pushing even more water into her lungs.
Her vision became blurrier and blurrier by the instant, the Tehen sapped her heat and strength by the blink, and her air was running out. No matter how much she could adapt to her environment with Nurture, humans weren't built to live underwater.
The current kept pushing her downstream and her thoughts were becoming more and more muddled, unable to come up with a response to her situation. It didn't help how the flow of the water was pushing and thrashing her head around, making it impact against the hard stone.
She couldn't even groan in pain, there was not a bubble of air left in her body. Her consciousness threatened to disappear at any moment now.
In her mental darkness, weakened by the literal one and the mushrooms affecting her mind, Aloe only managed to muster a thought.
Is this the end?
It was a pessimistic question. A half-realization of the situation she was in. A bit too late as she struggled to keep her eyes open.
Is this the end? Really?
Sarcasm, but above all, hate populated her thoughts.
After all I've gone through, after all I've endured, this is what it takes to get me down? A nince-damned slip and a bit of water?
Aloe would have laughed if it wasn't for the fact that there was no air to carry the sound.
I refuse.
She wasn't talking to anyone. She wasn't cursing the heavens. She wasn't even talking to herself. She simply refused everything.
Her mind recalled the many events that had brought her here: her sins and those of others. There was too much hate in her body, and it threatened to burst out.
I WILL NOT DIE HERE.
It wasn't the cry of a person desperate to live, but the curse of a spiteful woman. She wouldn't allow herself to die until she had accomplished the goals she had set for herself. Until she could taint her own sins with enough blood that it would overshadow the little drops that were previously shed.
Aloe donned potency.
There was no longer any need for recovery as no trace of air lingered in her body.
She wasn't fueled by air any longer.
Spite and life kept her moving in a macabre union.
A single push of her arms moved her meters ahead. When a little and weightless body like hers suddenly put as much force on an armful of water as seven men, common sense and physics stopped working.
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Even if she was drowning, even if she was dead-cold, even if the water in her lungs pushed her down and the water on the river pushed her downstream, Aloe pushed the water.
Her arms screamed at the violent force she was applying, but she cared not for their safety. They could break and snap for all she cared. What mattered here was that she lived.
She could only see darkness.
She could only feel coldness.
She could only taste water.
She could only hear silence.
But even if her nostrils were filled with unbreathable substances, she could smell victory.
Her consciousness was fleeting, but she felt the warmer air on her arms. Her body may have been submerged, but her hands found the surface. Without much thought, Aloe grabbed the ledge of the river and put all her might in her arms, throwing her whole body a solid meter into the air.
The collision against the ground was hard, but she couldn't care about such frivolities. The cultivator rolled on the ground and placed her face looking towards it as she proceeded to throw up all the water in her system. Even if she was out of the water, she was still drowning. She couldn't empty her lungs fast enough.
Instead of trying to think of a plan to survive, Aloe let her instincts reign free. Without so much of a second thought, she donned recovery, mustering the most infinitesimal fraction of natural healing she could muster to prolong her breath if just by a second.
She gasped, puked, gagged, and thrashed as her mouth and nostrils disposed of the water. Her lungs were burning. That wasn't how lungs worked.
She hit herself.
The motion was more of a frantic spasm than premeditated, but it did help her shake out of her fit and expulse even more water out of her lungs.
Air was hard to come by. Logic told her that she should be able to breathe on the surface, but heavens knew how much water still was in her lungs. Aloe tried to search for her camp, for the Blossomflames, but she couldn't see anything in this darkness. Recovery was keeping her alive, so switching to acuity was not an option.
Mindlessly, she crept forward with her arms. She only needed to go upstream and she would inevitably find her Blossomflames. But as she tried to push forward, the violent coughs seeped away all her strength. It didn't help that her heart was beating erratically.
Her consciousness switched on and off intermittently, her memories were as liquid as the cause of her detriment. She didn't know how or when, but she was standing up and walking, her active stance not that of regeneration but defense.
Not. Dying.
That wasn't how the toughness internal infusion worked. It wouldn't slow her death, it just made her more robust to any type of damage, but it wasn't of use once that damage was done.
Yet Aloe pushed forward, ignoring the pain and her dying body.
Walking. Slowly. No destination in mind besides forwards. Common sense had long stopped working, the only thing that mattered now was willpower.
It was impossible to tell where she was, all she could see was black. Her ears finally stopped ringing or being numb – she couldn't differentiate what the case actually was – but it didn't matter when her brain couldn't process the sounds. It all blended on the same nondescript noise.
The movement was fully automatic, there was no conscious thought behind her actions, especially when she was only awake half of the time. But in those moments of wakefulness, she felt her muscles tensing up, becoming unruly, and increasingly hard to contract.
The next moment she was conscious, she was on the ground.
The one after that, she was up again.
And down again.
And up again.
When was the last time she had breathed? Not that her mind could form such complex thoughts, but it tried either way.
Then, warmth.
The increase in temperature jolted her awake. She noticed the plants on her feet, the Cure Grass. She had trampled over the plants with her unconscious stroll. But that was of total inconsequence.
The fire crawling in her skin was not.
Not once before had healing been this painful before.
Aloe collapsed on her knees as her lungs began to burn even more than before. The Blossomflames' fire was healing her body, but like healing an arrow wound without removing the arrow's head, the water trapped inside her was boiling in her lungs.
The petite woman tried to scream as she writhed on the ground, but no sound came out of her lips, only more water and some steam.
She felt her body being cooked from the inside.
The pain threatened to make her pass out even when she was donning toughness, the internal infusion that brought her superhuman pain tolerance. Water shouldn't boil like that, especially inside of a person, yet it did.
Aloe spasmed and jerked around as her throat was seared by what should have been healing her. It was a feedback loop. The more her Blossomflames tried to heal her, the more damage they dealt.
She had suffered a lot, she had experienced a lot of types of pain, but as her innards were set ablaze she acknowledged this one was the worst.
It didn't matter she hadn't breathed for heaven's knew how many minutes, the Blossomflames and toughness kept her from dying. Instead, she experienced more pain.
Water. Fire. Steam. Pain.
Water. Fire. Steam. Pain.
Not only did toughness help against loss of consciousness, but so did the Blossomflames. The compounded healing of the four evolved flowers was so great that she wasn't allowed to lose consciousness.
The cultivator jerked, puked, ached, healed, and suffered, but above else, she lived.
Death wasn't an option.
And she learned to regret her decision.
At one point, once the word 'time' had lost its meaning, the Blossomflames stopped combusting. Perhaps they withered from their continuous conflagrations, but Aloe nonetheless coughed, her body jerking violently at the intake of air.
Then she laughed.
"Ha… ha… ha…" It was a painful crackle, a maddening recreation of her previously intoxicated giggles. "Hahahahahahahaha…"
Her diaphragm hurt from the rapid movements; her lungs still burned even if they were 'healed'. But she continued laughing.
All of this from one slip.
It was utterly comical.
By all accounts, a jest. But such trivial actions had shown her something. The frigid water had reminded her how her spark of life had slowly faded in this darkness. But the violent embrace of death had rekindled it.
Aloe laughed for she was alive. For she had recalled she had a will, the will to live.