She swallowed, heaving a sigh, feeling like her mind was swimming in an ocean of remembered events.

“I… it’s a lot. And I don’t know how much I can tell you.” She murmured, and felt Katherine’s right hand extend over her body, to grasp her left wrist, a gentle pressure that just stayed there as a sign of support.

“Tell me everything you can.” Katherine asked, earnest and soft, so she swallowed past the lump that was settling in her throat, and nodded.

“After we parted, I… spent a lot of days floundering around, trying to figure out how everything worked down here. Then I went to the Adventurer’s guild to register, and bought a [Haste] spellbook.” She began, but stopped once she felt the muscles in Katherine’s neck and jaw stir and flex, followed by her face.

Katherine’s face tightened in a way she couldn’t decipher.

“Why did you want to be an Adventurer?”

“I was stupid. And naive, and just… so fucking stupid.” She murmured, her voice hardening in self-loathing, feeling her chest tighten as her mind wandered to days spent in dirt-cheap inn rooms, waking up covered in sweat and sticky fluids with bile tickling the back of her throat and rope burns searing her skin, cigarette smoke mixing in with the scent of sweat and sex to make a miasma that seared her nostrils.

Her stomach momentarily clenched, but having nothing but a bit of blood in it, it didn’t even try to heave its contents back up through her throat.

“I just… I thought Adventurers were synonymous with free individuals, you know? People who did as they wished, moved where they wished, lived as they liked. I never wanted to go into The Factory. Just… find a team, maybe skirt around the sewers taking extermination quests, Level up, eventually leave Carmera and go to someplace nicer. The Kotetha Empire was… probably still is taking back the desert after the whole Ascendancy fiasco, and they always needed more adventurers to help. I’d wanted to go there afterwards, maybe with a couple Adventurer friends if they too got sick of the dungeon. Or… maybe you, if you didn’t… hate me.” She continued, her voice continually growing weaker and heavier.

She cleared her throat a bit, and grimaced.

“Could you get me a bit of water?” She asked, and after a moment of silence, Katherine nodded, and hurried to a sink at the other end of the room.

As she did that, she simply relaxed back into the bed, feeling anger spark in her mind the more she began to remember how she’d acted, what she’d done without a shred of forethought. God she wanted to just… find her old self and bash her skull in with a rock. How the fuck was she so stupid. Well, no, she knew the answer to that. It just didn't quite make accepting her past absurd naivety any easier.

Katherine came back, and she quickly drank the small cup of water, before gesturing to hand the cup back to her, and feeling immediate guilt for treating her like a servant.

“I-I can… take it back.” She offered, drawing the cup away from Katherine’s reaching hand.

A slow, confused blink, a tilt of her head.

“You’re exhausted and recovering. And I want to hear your story. Let me.”

With a slow nod, she gave the cup back, and felt the blanket until Katherine had taken her post beside her once more.

Before she could resume, Katherine sighed.

“Em. You’re my best friend. I don’t hate you. At all.”

“You should.” She replied quietly, instantly, and regretted it, feeling the flash of pain that crossed Katherine’s face. Fearing a little, that Katherine might follow logic and agree with her regardless.

“Em, the only thing you’ve ever done that has wronged me, is dropping freedom into my lap and walking away without giving me the chance to enjoy it by your side.” Katherine said, softly, and grabbed onto her wrist again.

Warmth and confusion warred for dominance in her head.

That- how could she even think that?

Her jaw trembled as warm tears dribbled out of her tear ducts, guilt stabbing icicles into her chest, and her throat tightened like someone had put their boot on it.

“I… y-your ba- your b-back.” She sniffled, gritting her teeth because why couldn’t she stop crying-

“Is not. Your. Fault.” Katherine ground out. “I don’t care about my back, Emhreeil. I’m not crippled, and looks hardly matter to me. It’s just a bunch of scar tissue. Stop beating yourself up over that. It’s been years.”

“B-But, all th-that pain. They would whip you…” She hissed out, before pulling her head back and digging it into the pillow under her. “Okay. If you say so, okay.”

“Okay, as in, you’ll stop beating yourself up over an old and forgotten bunch of injuries, or…?” Katherine asked leadingly, softly, and she gulped.

“I’ll try.”

Katherine nodded, smiling a little, rubbing her thumb into her left wrist at the pulse.

It was immeasurably comforting.

“Good. That’s all I can ask. But, we got off track. What happened?” Her friend asked, and she took a moment to think, to digest.

“It… long story short, I found a team. T-They looked decent, weren’t complete newbies but were looking for someone who could buff their party. Everything looked perfect. I bought a spellbook for [Haste], I had some minor telemancy and another spell that made sparks, but they told me they really wanted me to get another one. A light spell, because without light, fighting even a rat is near impossible in the sewers, and you never know when a lamp or a flashlight will break.I didn’t have money to buy that one, so they offered t-to…”

She trailed off, swallowing once, twice, trying to clear her throat as if it could clear the phantom rock that had nestled into its base.

“You used to like hugs. Do you want one?” Katherine offered, softly, and her clattering teeth tried in vain to grit against each other.

“Y-Yeah.” She warbled out, and then a moment later, she felt two hands settle around her shoulder and hip, dragging her to the edge of the bed, before warmth and softness enveloped her, Katherine’s hair tickling her nose as an arm wound around her back and waist to lift her up just a little.

Her left arm curled around Katherine’s shoulder, and she let out a shuddered exhale of relief as she placed her own head on Kat's left shoulder.

“Thanks.” She mumbled out, muffled even further by Katherine’s coat pressing into her face.

“Go on.” Katherine prompted, and she nodded, faintly.

Her coat still smelled like smoke.

“They offered to lend me the money to buy an [Illumina] spellbook. Gave me a long slip of paper, just a simple loan contract with a blood drop signature. Then, as soon as I’d signed, they… I- I don’t want to talk about it. Long story short, I became their slave.” She murmured, and felt every single muscle in Katherine’s body tense and flex, her grip becoming almost tight enough to hurt.

“Was it as bad as Irythiel?” Katherine whispered, steel in her voice, and she tightened her hug, trying to burrow into her friend to drive away the shame and disgust crawling under her skin like a thousand writhing worms, her stomach clenching painfully.

“Worse. My mom n-never… They we-were w-worse.” She spat out, her shoulders quivering, her nails digging into Katherine’s coat.

“I fucking hate crying. Why can’t I stop?” She warbled out, and couldn’t contain the little sob that followed.

“It’s okay to cry. I’d be a lot more concerned for your mental health if you weren’t crying, Em. The things you’ve gone through are harrowing to listen to. So, just cry. It’s okay. I do it myself, sometimes. You walked into hell, and I’m sure you’ll walk out of it stronger than ever with a bit of time.” Katherine murmured, poorly concealed rage in her voice as she forced her muscles to relax a little.

She spat out a sound, a choked, mangled thing between a sob and a bark of laughter.

“I’ve killed people. I killed people, Kat. I’ll n-never… I’ll never be the same. I’ll never be the person y-you rem-remember again.”

“That’s alright, Em. People change all the time. Besides, I don’t think you had a choice.” Katherine softly soothed. “What happened after?” She questioned, preventing her from replying to the first part of her comment, likely on purpose.

“W-We, we went to do a r-regular rat ex-extermination request. In one of the waste pits. T-They hadn’t real…” She cut herself off to choke down another odd sound that tried to come out of her throat, allowing her friend’s warmth to drive away the bone-rending cold in her insides.

“They hadn’t realized h-how many rats there were down there. And then, they asked me for light, s-so I gave it to them, and… there were so many rats. Not fifty or a hundred like we’d thought, it was- hundreds, just- just a wave of screeching fur almost as tall as we were. We tried to retreat, but couldn’t do so fast enough. We got overrun. I got overrun. T-They… ate my eyes, my skin, my f-f-” She gagged on nothing, a dry heave, her body coiling, legs instinctively curling up to her stomach and hitting Katherine’s ribs in her panicked rush to curl into a ball.

She could never forget the feeling of rotten teeth digging into her body. The grimy, sandy, branch-like texture cutting through into places that have never been exposed nor touched before, the unimaginable discomfort and revulsion, the searing agony of her flesh snapping apart like a network of strings and goo.

The feeling of her eyes being pulled out, trying to tug her brain out of her skull with thin strands of agony that snapped and tore.

Instead of letting go, Katherine gently shushed her, rubbing soothing circles in her back, barely reacting to the strike.

After a few seconds of harsh breathing, she growled through shuddering breaths, wiping the wet blindfold on Katherine’s shoulder as more tears just kept coming.

“I hate feeling s-so fragile. How did I kill two people without blinking a-and now I can’t even t-t-talk because o-of some f-fucking rats. I’m s-sorry. ” She ground out, feeling her nails protest against the leather they were stabbing into.

“Don’t apologize. You’re… not just human, but the expression remains. I won’t judge. Just take your time. When you’re ready, tell me what happened after that.”

“No, I…” She weakly protested, then immediately hesitated as she thought of what happened after… the rats.

Her unnamed furry companion was a wolf. If anyone knew there was a wolf alive, there would be a manhunt. And if that information somehow reached the kingdom…

There would be an army.

She hadn’t read up on why wolves were so zealously hunted. It was just a reality she needn’t look into, she thought, because nobody had even heard whispers of a wolf in centuries, beyond baseless rumors or botched attempts from mad Biomancers trying to bring them back for whatever reason.

But complete control over biology…

What if her friend decided it should procreate? How long would it take before he would have birthed a dozen other wolves, and a dozen more? It’s not like he couldn’t just change his gender on the fly.

What if he could concoct plagues to wipe out the Dungeon of human life? What if he didn’t need to?

The more possibilities arose, the more the vague threat of a lone, intelligent wolf loomed in her mind, and there was no doubt left in her that if the kingdom heard of this, the dungeon would burn to get to her… inhuman friend.

She really needed a name for him, at least in her head. Later.

The simple, current fact, was that she wasn’t sure she could share the truth. Not the whole truth. At least not yet. She didn't know when, but not now.

“We uh… w-wouldn’t make it to the latch anyway, we were getting overrun. And then… something broke the staircase. I didn’t get a good look. We fell down, crashed around the trash pit. My “teammates” all died. I didn’t. There was this… creature. Beast, maybe monster.” She murmured awkwardly, and felt Katherine’s encouraging nod against her shoulder, her hold tightening a little.

She wasn’t about to say anything that pained her like Katherine was probably expecting her to, but she still appreciated the gesture.

“It was… smart. And for some reason, it helped me. It brought me a healing potion, nudged it into my hands, and after I drank it, helped me by dragging me out from underneath the debris. We sort of just… hung around, after that. For what felt like weeks. Nobody came for us. Kat, it- it fed me. Kept me alive.” She whispered, and felt Katherine’s brow furrow within her mana field.

----------------------------------------

“Kat, it- it fed me. Kept me alive.”

She frowned in confusion.

Why was it so easy to form expressions around Emhreeil? She usually couldn’t even figure out what her facial muscles did, but now everything just… clicked in her head. To frown, do this. To smile, pull the cheek muscles back.

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Idly, as she considered Emhreeil’s words with suspicion and disbelief, she wondered if this was how normal people felt.

“The creature fed you?”

Em nodded.

“Y-Yeah… My legs were broken, s-so I couldn’t even stand up. I-It would just hold dead rodents over my head, and let the blood drip into my mouth.” Em breathed out, voice full of warmth.

What?

What?

Why did Em sound so fond of the memory?

She was so confused.

At least that part of the story explained how and why she had a vampiric trait. And the couple dozen parasites and diseases Lady Anna had to cleanse out of her system before they started showing serious, debilitating symptoms.

“Hold on. Are you sure it was an animal?” She asked, giving Emhreeil a comforting squeeze, rationalizing that maybe the elf was a little bit delirious or hallucinating at the time. Or maybe just met some kind of shapeshifter type with a mysterious streak.

“Yeah, Kat. It would growl and snarl, and it dragged me out from under t-the debris by biting into my clothes and dragging me out. It- I even cuddled with it at some point. I can’t tell you… what it is, but it wasn’t a humanoid of any kind. Four legs, fur. Kind of felt like a dog, but… very mutated.” Em mumbled.

She felt amusement trying to tug her lips into a smile of disbelief.

“You cuddled with some… unidentified creature? In a trash pit?”

“Well, no, in the pipes below it.” Em mumbled.

Trying to imagine Em even touching a stray kodzer or dog of her own free will was hard, but the mental image of her cuddling with some unidentified furry creature in some sewer pipe was just…

She felt like her brain was shutting down.

Change wasn’t supposed to just… smash her in the face like this, but here it was. Some part of her was proud and intrigued at how different her friend had become, while another whispered to her that change wasn’t always good, especially if it came from such suffering.

“But, yeah, we sort of… huddled together down there. It was… nice to me, beyond some hiccups at the start where we were both tense and unsure. I would have died a thousand times over if it wasn’t there. It even used its own blood to feed me later.” Emhreeil whispered, her tone blatantly nostalgic and warm, and she couldn’t quite find the words to express the strange mix of emotions she felt.

The only one she could identify was a sense of disgusted, disbelieving wonder and intense confusion. She hadn’t even known that emotional cocktail was possible.

And…

Its own blood?

“I… okay. What happened next?” She asked.

“They f-filled the pit with poison gas to get rid of the rats that were coming back up. The- the mutant, or whatever it was, dragged me into the trash pit as it activated, and we fought between the gears against… a lot of rats. It protected me. I still don’t know why, but it did. After we fought off the rats, we just found some pipe and crawled into it. Then we just crawled and climbed around the sewers and some abandoned factories until we found an open tunnel that led us to a toxic sump. That’s where some… giant, aquatic monster found us, and fought my… uh, buddy. I ended up getting flushed into some… facility with those two Guards, and after realizing they wouldn’t help me, I killed them to… drink their blood. And live.”

Emhreeil’s voice quietened towards the end, but before she could figure out a way to soothe guilt that was entirely unnecessary, Emhreeil continued.

“I…I thought it died, but… just a few minutes ago, I felt it, fighting somewhere. Way up above.” Emhreeil finished, voice tight with worry and anxiety, her tone almost like she was asking her for something that she couldn’t quite piece together the contents of.

A few minutes ago. So that was what had woken her up.

She blinked rapidly at the wall, confusion making her mind stutter as it tried to parse through what she’d heard, backtracking in the conversation for a moment. The questions mounting with every second were swamping her head.

‘Way up above’?

How did the damn thing get up to the second floor from the bottom of the third, in just two days? Was it using lifts?

“I- how did you know you were going through abandoned factories?”

“Oh, I have… a Skill, called [Mana Touch]. I can feel things if I throw mana at them.”

That… she’d never even heard of such a Skill, likely because it sounded way too specialized and way too out of her league to even grasp the coattails of.

So she just nodded, grateful that Em had a way to navigate.

“Okay. And how did you ‘feel’ it fighting?”

“I… I think it might have a Skill. I don’t know. We could feel each other whenever either of us was fighting something. Position, where we were directing our attention, stuff like that.” Emhreeil murmured, and she pursed her lips, thinking.

Then her eyes widened.

“[Pack Hunter]. That’s the Skill it has. So it is definitely an animal of some sort. At least by origin.” She asserted, and a short silence stretched after Em nodded again.

“...How did you lose your arm?” She blurted out, then immediately winced, unwilling to put Emhreeil through the pain and trauma of remembering that when it wasn’t even something that mattered anymore.

Contrary to her expectations, Emhreeil giggled, a small, teary, but blithely sound.

“It got infected. I asked the uh, beast, to bite the limb off. Then I cauterized it with [Sparkburst]. Hurt like hell. A-And t-then, the smug little fucker started eating it like I’d given him a snack.” Emhreeil snickered a little her shoulders jumping, relaxing her body, her legs sliding back down to lay flat against the bed rather than pressing into Katherine’s side.

She just goggled down at the teary, laughing mess in her arms, wondering what the hell could possibly be funny about that, and breathed out, low and deep, letting the information sink in.

All that suffering, the betrayals, the apparently thousands of times she’d have been dead if not for some unidentified furry thing with [Pack Hunter].

Mutant dog, maybe? A Tillenhall experiment that they’d discarded again without thought nor interest in the harm it would cause?

She was getting sidetracked.

What she could easily focus on, was how easily this meeting could have never happened if just one thing had gone wrong. How unbelievably lucky she was that Emhreeil could even be there to laugh and cry and dirty her coat with fire and tears.

“You said you felt the uh, creature, right? Somewhere up above?” She asked, and the remnants of laughter quickly subsided from Emhreeil’s skeletal frame, a sight which had her skin crawling with unease and a motherly desire to stuff her full of food until she looked like a balloon.

“Y-Yeah. I… I need to find it again. I… I wish I could stay with you, I-I want to, but I can’t just let it roam around, I can’t. It’s going to get itself killed. It probably doesn’t understand how much danger it is in. And… I can’t just forget about its existence. I don’t want to… abandon my friend.” Emhreeil gulped.

Katherine’s jaw clenched.

Try as she might to stamp down on such feelings, she couldn’t help it.

“So it’s okay to abandon your human friend, again?” She whispered, hollowly, her hug tightening, struggling to tell the chill of betrayal in her chest that Emhreeil was just a little dense and likely had no idea what was going on through Katherine’s head.

Rationality unfortunately rarely worked on emotions. Curse them.

“What? No.” Emhreeil hissed in reprimand. “I- Wait… you want to come with me?” Emhreeil breathed out, all her fire gone, replaced by surprised, hopeful awe.

Gods, this girl…

She was going to smack her one day.

“Why would I not? Em, of course I want to come with you, are you kidding me? I’m not letting you out of my sight again until I’m old and gray and stuck in a wheelchair.” She affirmed, voice firm. “Beyond protecting you, I also just… can’t keep going like this.”

“I- ‘Keep going like this’…?” Em whispered, voice distant, utterly still. “Are these… are your new employers like my mother?” Em asked quietly, her voice tight.

Then Katherine shook her head, and Emhreeil seemed to mentally stumble, expression shifting against her shoulder.

“No. I just… I feel purposeless. I want to be by your side again. If not as a maid, then as a bodyguard. Nothing else feels right. So yes, I want to come with you. Both for you and myself. And I can fight now. I’m not just a meat shield. We can find your mutant dog together, if it means so much to you, and I can protect you while you do that.”

And with those words, Emhreeil fell silent.

For ten seconds, it was awkward.

After thirty, it became a little concerning.

She pulled back a little, and felt Em’s arm tighten around her.

“Just… just give me a moment to think. You said…What did you mean ‘abandon me again?’” Em asked, sounding completely, genuinely clueless.

She sighed.

“Em, do you remember what you said when we… parted ways? You basically said I deserved to be free and live a nice life, that I 'deserved better’. Because you have a very guilty conscience about things you shouldn't. But you never asked me if I wanted to go and be free alone. It's not worth it, from what I've experienced. I'd rather be your maid again.”

Emhreeil shifted in her arms, growing lax.

“I-”

“No, Em. You pushed me away because you were guilty, and you were beating yourself up over things I didn’t care about anymore. You gave me freedom then just… left me behind. And I understand why. I don’t blame you. I know why you did it. But please don’t do it again. I don’t want you to leave me behind again as you go off chasing whatever it is you need in your life. Let me come with you.” She finished, softly and earnestly, and felt a full-body shudder course through Emhreeil.

“I-I hate crying.” Emhreeil ground out through a small series of shuddering gasps, and Katherine rubbed her back, nudging her head with her own.

Then Emhreeil took a deep, stuttering breath, and pressed her forehead into her collarbone as she began to speak.

“Okay. Okay, I- I’d love it if you came. I m-missed you. Not as m-my slave or bodyguard, though. Just my friend. B-But just promise me. When- w-when a sudden realization comes, promise me, you will not s-share anything to anyone about me or the… creature. T-To anyone. Ever. Please. I can’t tell you, not yet, but… please, d-d-don’t… don’t hate me.” Emhreeil rushed out, her voice wavering and warbly, gradually going smaller and meeker.

She squeezed her tighter, tight enough to feel the pressure in her arms, crushing her friend’s tiny form into her chest.

“I can’t hate you. Ever. No matter what, Em. I promise, whatever you can’t tell me, if and when I know, I’ll keep it to myself. I’d swear it on a Blood Oath.” She soothed, and barely heard the jumbled sound that Em sniffled into her coat, which vaguely sounded like ‘thank you’.

“...Let’s stay like this for a bit. We’ll grab your stuff and go to my apartment tonight. We can’t stay here.” She breathed out into the light fuzz growing on Em’s head, and felt her nod.

“Then, we’ll go find your friend.”

-

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