I stare at her. It’s all I can think to do. Her eyes crinkle around the edges, her lips twitching. She looks at Kikito and back to me before sliding off the beast. It approaches the dead monster and sniffs it. It’s pushing eight feet tall without the antlers and they rise high above its head, fractaling chaotically until they come together at the top like a web made of bone. And they’re covered in velvet mid-shed, eerily hanging off the racks. Its fur is thick and black, matted in many areas. It has the body of a moose just bulkier than the creatures normally come, with thick legs that taper into savagely jagged hooves.

“Which one is Kelvin?” The beast suddenly asks, voice booming with a note from another dimension. It sounds like two voices layered on top of each other, one relatively normal by human standards, deep and rich, and the other an even deeper, cryptic tone.

“Him,” Mirana says and crouches down.

“It’s you,” Kikito says. She raises her eyebrows.

“You know me?”

”I saw you, in the sands. I saw that thing approach you.”

Her eyes darken. She shakes her head and focuses back on me. “Can you stand?”

“I’m not sure,” I say.

The beast nuzzles Mirana and Kikito and walks up to me. His snout is inches away: thick lipped on top and moose-shaped, no teeth filling the orifice. A dull green light glows from within.

”We’ll carry you if we need to. Come to the Sound Flayer,” it says, “that’s what I’ve called that thing since it started showing up. You can imagine why I may not have killed it yet.”

My eyes blur. “It ate her. There was nothing we could do.”

It looks over at the Sound Flayer again, snorts a misty sigh. “You need to absorb her to take the piece of Inbetween that made her.”

Kikito slides in front of me. “You’re gonna start explaining shit to us – he’s dying so if that’s gonna help him that’s one thing.”

Dark snorts angrily but Mirana puts her hand on its side.

“I wouldn’t mislead him, and you care about him. Look at who I am. Would I have his interests misaligned?” Kikito looks hard at her. Her eyes bore into his, soft crinkles around the edges with the ghost of a smile. He looks away first and then she looks at the creature. It forcibly relaxes itself.

“He must do this. She didn’t explain?”

“Forgive her if it’s been a fever dream this whole fucking time!”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I do understand, but do you want to continue risking your life in the wilds of these tunnels, or would you prefer a moment to breathe?” It asks. Kikito clamps his mouth shut. He moves to the side and the monstrous moose approaches me. “Hold onto me.”

I reluctantly grab his antlers and am yanked to my feet. Every step feels like I’ll fall the other way but I keep one foot in front of the other until we’re at the massive corpse. I’m about to ask what to do next but speckles of light pop out of the corpse. The lights increase in magnitude and gather above the Sound Flayer’s corpse until a noticeable mass forms. Then it swirls around the air and comes closer to me. I feel a pull towards and, when leaning in, it moves around excitably. It wants to be closer to me than any lover or parent could, and I’m compelled to let it in. A burst of light accompanies it, brighter than Kikito can stand and so he covers his eyes with his hand, and it slams into my body. It doesn’t knock me out but fills me with an indescribable warmth throughout me. My strength refills like a video game health bar and connecting to reality is suddenly so easy. I lift away from the creature’s side and breathe fully for the first time in a minute. Mirana and Kikito both relax and come to my side.

“Did it work, Dark,” Mirana asks and he nods. They look at me, both looking relieved at the sight of life flushing my skin again. One of the mushroom creatures hops up to the thing she called Dark and looks at him. An unspoken conversation passed between them.

“We need to leave. A corpse this large is going to attract all sorts of animals to it,” Dark says.

“Finally,” Mirana says with a sigh, “come on. I don’t know about you guys but I could bear seeing a tree again.”

“The surface?” Kikito asks hopefully.

“Not exactly. He’s going to show us,” and she climbs onto its back. Her hand reaches out to us and I take it. She pulls me up behind her. The warmth radiating from her body makes me want to cry. Kikito reluctantly takes my hand and piles up on Dark. He breaks into a swift jog, the mushroom creatures phasing in and out of the walls around us, pockets of green light into an increasingly brighter Willways again the further we move from the Sound Flayer. I rest my cheek on her back.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” I say.

“Me too. Do you regret it?” She asks. I chew my lips as I pretend to consider the world-ending consequences of my actions.

“No,” I finally say. I feel her nod and she doesn’t say anything else for a time.

We pass through winding tunnels, taking random turns at random forks, the blue glow fading and brightening in certain areas.The arched ceiling slowly rises, sometimes so high I can barely see their end. They suddenly surge even higher into the tunnels and the light fades. As it dies I see a warm green light at the end. The mushroom creatures phase out of the walls and stay out of them, instead running ahead into the lights.

“Is that the Grove?” Mirana asks.

“It’s supposed to be dark, but these Kobus keep putting up lights,” Dark responds with a grump in his tone.

“The Grove?” Kikito asks.

“My home–our home, me and the Kobus.”

“The mushroom people.” Kikito says. Dark’s head nods. He takes towards the light, separating into multiple orbs of green at a large entrance.

On the other side we come to an overlook: giant trees greet us, way too many to count and some reaching so high we don’t see their top branches. Green lights speckle the forest, unmoving like bioluminescent life on cave walls. I smell the outside for the first time since I started this mess, wood and decaying plant life. There’s a noticeable dark patch of the forest that Dark heads toward.

“I let them do what they want, but they’re not allowed to touch my resting grounds,” Dark says as a straggler dashes past us, tripping and rolling down the hill into the thick brush. Moments later it’s floating amongst the trees, joining a particularly bright part of the Grove emanating blue light. Still, I let Dark take where he wants to go, deep into the dark of the forest.