Alice-

The pain was getting worse. This must be because of my adrenaline dropping. I watched a documentary with Izzy once. It was about a jogger that went over a cliff. By morning the pain had intensified because her body had coold down.

It had to be something like that. I’m sure Izzy would know for sure. He was smart like that. How would he handle this situation? He would take the beating until it was over. Until I came to save him, but there was no one else coming.

Shadow was really the only hope I had, but I doubted she would come after me, considering we weren’t really friends. She probably wants me out of the way, so she can have Izzy all to her self. Was I really just going to die here?

Maybe I deserve it, since I was the one that locked Izzy away. Now his alter was out to get me. To this day, I still wasn’t sure if I’d done the right thing. Turning my husband in like that and watching them take him away.

Maybe I should have run away with him. We could have fled the country and gone to live somewhere else. Just the two of us. We could have left all that crap behind and lived free.

Still, turning him in was a logical step. He had killed Jack and left Cain in a horrible state. How long before he did something else. It’s not like Cain was going to stay quiet either. It would have happened regardless and if I hadn’t done anything. Then I would have been seen as an accomplice.

I wasn’t crazy, so there was no excuse for me. Allowing Izzy to pay for his crimes just seemed like the best option. Not just because he was easily labeled insane, but because he needed help. Help that I couldn’t provide.

I thought if I could love him enough that that darkness inside him would go away, but it always felt like he kept me at a distance. He never wanted to talk to me about what happened and instead he would ignore it and tell me he loved me.

We were in love, but I could never get around that wall. The one around his heart. Instead, I only got access to the fuzzy exterior with an occasional glance at the bladed puzzle on the inside.

It wasn’t his fault. How could I expect to see his whole self when even Izzy hadn’t seen it. That was the issue with walling yourself off into multiple alters. I guess I finally got what I wanted. I got to meet Centa before, and now I’ve met Squirmy. No wonder he kept it hidden. It was all to keep people safe.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sudden sound of coughing from Squirmy. He stirred in his sleep. Then stretched his arms out and yawned, as if waking from a simple nap and not the LSD nightmare he seemed to be in a moment ago.

“He’s coming.” Squirmy chuckled. The guy sounded almost gleeful.

I wanted to ask who, but could only make a strange noise. My mouth flared up in pain. The flesh fusion of Squirmy’s lower half came undone, as he slithered his way out of the bosses head. Long spindly limbs grew from his tail-half allowing for better mobility.

He began crawling towards me. The sight filled me with fear. I absolutely hated bugs and now my husband had turned into one. How was I ever supposed to kiss that mouth.

Stupid developers turning my husband's alter into a boss. I wish I could get my hands on them and make them feel all the pain they put both of us through. I swear I’m gonna write a strongly worded letter, but instead of not sending it I'll actually send it! That'll teach them!

Not only was Izzy a bug now, but he looked like Cain. If I wasn’t strung up like one of those sex cartoons Izzy swears he doesn’t watch. I’d punch this dude in his stupid face and keep hitting him until his bones reshaped themselves to look like Izzy.

The tendrils holding me up began to lower me down coming to an abrupt stop once we were at eye level. Regardless of my position I refused to look him in the eyes.

“Don’t ignore me!” he snapped his grey clawed fingers causing my restraints to writhe.

They readjust themselves digging their shark-tooth-like claws deeper into my limbs and body. The pain no longer made me squirm. This was just how things were now. It was more of the same.

“Alice, why are you so sad? We're together aren't we?” He said while smiling like he dislocated his jaw.

I continued to ignore him. Attention was what he wanted and I refused to give it to him. Infuriated, he made the vines move once more. That was when I felt my left arm suddenly twist as the flesh vines pulled. I screamed as the joints in my arm snapped and came undone.

This was worse than what I felt before. I cried out, as the limb was rotated. The bones creaked and cracked as my flesh and skin twisted, bursting veins and arteries in the process. The pain was unbearable.

“Don’t fucking ignore me! It’s your own fault your in pain! Your absolutely worthless!” he yelled.

Izzy wake up…

Aku/Isaac

Climbing up the monsters back was annoying. The spikes gave me platforms to jump to, but the centipedes that showed up made it annoying to climb.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Wait what was I doing?

I activated my aura injecting water aspects into it’s steel shell. This turned all 22 layers into a squishy cloud like substance. I didn’t have enough aura to set up protections, so any hit would probably go right through me, but that was okay. Since I needed mobility more than defense.

My aura was still pretty dense, but with all the extra water. It would make the whole thing pretty soft. Great for shapeshifting, but not the best for protection.

It would provide a little defense. Mostly from blunt and poison based attacks. Blunt was pointless against this enemy. It wasn’t so much that I had poison resistance. It was more like the water aspects had a cleansing effect that would prevent poison from taking effect.

This water aura wasn’t that great since a simple wind aura would take care of any poisonous gas and the physical defense was garbage. I needed more earth aspects if I really wanted to ward off attacks.

Maybe I should add a few wind aspects just so I have my own airflow. After all, it was better not to get poisoned in the first place. The carbon can easily be converted back to oxygen with a little intention. It would be nice since there's so many fumes floating around.

Instead of adding it in. I converted some of the water aspects back into hydrogen and oxygen. Then adjusted the frequency of hydrogen into oxygen. My control over aspects was pretty good when it came to my aura. The system didn’t mess with it.

Taking the squishy cloud aura I’d created, I reformed it into a caterpillar aura, then used it to cling and glide my way up the steep chitin on Squirmy’s back. My speed was pretty good and the centipedes I encountered were easy to avoid, since they couldn’t really lunge at me as well, because of the laws of gravity.

Not getting hit was currently a priority, so I didn’t attack them at all. Instead I continued to use the Heat Stones to create spells and attached them over the surface of Squirmy’s back.

Thanks to my new level of essence control, I was able to direct a larger number of spells at a time, and with the Heat Stones, I could easily form them.

Momentum and wind were still pretty abundant. Not as much as what Chikū had, but still a good amount for spell craft. Lorie did specify on fireballs not platforms.

I should have picked up more wind, earth, water and kinetic spells. There was still my manabolt and landmine spells, so I did have a few options, but a wind blade spell could easily be spammed. Weather that would be as effective on Squirmy as fire, I wasn’t sure, but at least I’d have more options.

I attached another delay fireball to Squirmy’s hide. They were pretty much invisible, so there was no way they would be found. As for the nasty little fireball I’d been cooking up.

Well… it’s foundation had grown into a labyrinth of weaving runes. Almost like it had become alive. At this point I was unable to edit the spell. It just kept growing on its own.

It wasn’t that concerning since it was incredibly stable for an out of control spell. For now I could keep it under check by limiting the amount of void going into it.

The aspects however were being replaced on their own. The spell seemed to be gathering wind and momentum without my intervention. It drew in heat aspects as best as it could, but there wasn’t a lot to go around. Which lead me to wonder how it was feeding the heat runes.

No matter how I looked at it, it just didn’t make any sense. How the hell was it replenishing the heat aspects? Considering how it seemed to be self-sustaining, was this even my spell anymore? It wasn’t until I took a closer look that I realized what was actually going on.

If it wasn’t for the hydrogen powered runes, I was sure the spell would die out on its own. The spell itself seemed to be powering itself with the extra heat it generated from burning fuel.

In truth, it wasn’t that complicated of a spell. All I did was add more wind, heat, kinetic, and amplification runes. The end result would take a while to fully power up, but whatever it would turn into would be super deadly.

As for the hydrogen powered runes, let's just call that an upgrade. I decided to form the wind runes out of a combination of oxygen and hydrogen aspects. The results made a much hotter flame and I could always inject more of it directly into the final product, like how I did when forming a Solarball.

That was okay. Wind was easy to get. Momentum was also easy to get. Heat would be a problem, but I could make up for it by feeding a few fireballs. My control over all the spells was pretty good. It was making my head hurt a little having to keep my focus on so many things.

As I went up Squirmy’s back I made sure to zigzag around covering a large area in my little spells. I couldn't wait to set them off. It’ll be like the time Cain tried to make a slam fire shotgun in our garage, only for it to turn into a pipe bomb instead.

I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen. It's not my fault he packed it so tightly. Sis still blamed me, since I hadn't told her, but Cain said he'd hurt buddy, so I had no choice but to stay quiet. She was always working and couldn't keep my brother from doing horrible stuff to me.

I took half a unit of heat aspects and fed them into another spell, but before I could attach it to the chitin on Squirmy’s back, a sharp tendril shot out from under the plating of Squirmy’s chitin and went for my chest.

Thanks to my quick reflexes, I was able to move slightly to the right causing the invading black spear to miss my heart. The bad news was that it had struck the artery in my left arm and was the only thing keeping my blood inside my body.

That didn’t last long though as the tendril tore itself out of me causing me to fall. My body plummeted hitting several spikes on its way to hit the pavement.

Somehow, parts of my body began to feel numb. That was when I realized I’d been hit with a paralytic and was unable to move. My health also seemed to be dropping rapidly.

There was a huge amount of poison inside me and since my aura wasn't fully formed any more, the passive cleanse was working unbelievably slow. With the pain in my aura creating a new aura felt like it would take too long.

My mind was racing as it filled my brain with multiple possible solutions that wouldn’t work. That was when I remembered what Zubu said. She said something about how Mr. Brutus filtered poison aspects.

I didn’t think I could do that in a reasonable time, so I did what I could. I tried to relax. Then began converting the invading poison into aspects. From there I expelled them from my left arm by fussing them with the blood that was rapidly pouring out.

It was just enough to allow me to move. With a breath, my aura came back to life as I reformed it into a hard shell. It only had about 5 layers but was all I had time to form. From there I gathered wind and momentum aspects into a platform spell. Then used two platforms to create a pillow like construct beneath me.

I didn’t want to come to a sudden stop, so instead I willed the pillow to move down as fast as I could make it go. As soon as my back touched it, it felt like I’d fallen off a house.

From there I gradually slowed the pillow down, until I came to a full stop. By that point I’d lost a lot of blood. I probably only had a few more seconds of consciousness.

With no time to gather what I needed. I simply withdrew a mid potion from my inventory and chugged it down hoping it would still work as intended.