Liara would have traded a million points if only she could have had an Imperial machine gun team on her side, but alas, she and Apophyllion were far away from the forever war fought by those poor souls. How unfortunate for them that when warriors were finally required, the best they had was her. No, as the horde of Yabanchi scrambled their way to close the distance, Liara looked to her left and saw Talia had boldly rolled up and joined her in the front ranks of their defense. If the other girls even had a fraction of the courage in her friend’s heart, then maybe they stood a chance.
“Ice and stone mana users! Fire at will when they reach your range!” Dr. Holzer was pacing behind the girls and tapped his spare spear as he walked. “Fire users, wait for them to pass the first half of the quad, then focus a fireball at the biggest masses you can hit!”
“What about me?” Belle pouted and ignited the electricity of her sword. “Did my paladin already forget about me?”
“You’re in the same group as the air mana users. Wait for them to get to close range and engage as needed where they look like they might break through.”
While Belle scowled at Holzer’s back, he went over and tapped Liara’s shoulder as he went by. He said in a half voice, “Make sure you conserve your mana, you’re going to be tanking a lot of damage.”
Liara hefted her shield up and showed it to the old paladin. His eyes flickered in recognition of it for a moment and he gave the barest sad smile before shouting, “Get ready, they’re almost upon us!”
One of the students launched an ice spike as the first shot at the oncoming Yabanchi and speared a Gargoyle through the chest, bringing it down immediately. This elicited cheers from the rest of the watching students, but most of the other ice and stone projectiles were not as effective. A few Lurkers had their skulls bashed and another Gargoyle’s wings were shredded by icicles, but the real damage was with the students who had specialized with fire mana. Liara felt the heat and heft of a fireball in her hand and stepped up to throw it in the middle of a dense pack of Screamers. The explosive effect had the initial blast that gibbed multiple Screamers into burning pieces, but the fragmentation of the concrete shattered by the fireball sent deadly pieces of shrapnel into Yabanchis' eyes and severed blood vessels. Between Liara’s fireball and the two other senior girls who hurled one each, several dozen Yabanchi went down. Yet more came like a tide of unending evil.
[535 mana remaining.] Pellas hummed in her mind. With that boost from her Dragoon class, she had enough mana to cast another fireball right away, but she held off on it and decided to heed Dr. Holzer’s advice.
“Juniors! I need water on the rocks, now! Ice-attuned students, freeze it as they go!” Junior girls who had learned how to materialize basic water by that time in their studies obeyed Holzer’s command and ran to the pile of rubble the seniors were standing on and started covering the debris with fluid drawn from the air. The senior girls who were more attuned to ice mana froze the water as it was made and just in time for when the first wave of Yabanchi hit.
The Gargoyles and Lurkers made it first, with their increased agility and speed, but that was for naught as their greedy claws slipped and broke on the newly materialized ice. As they tried and failed to find purchase, the beasts were further pressed into the slippery stone by the Mylocks, Cadavers, and Screamers shoving in behind them. Liara watched a Lurker get trampled underneath the roiling multitude and felt a measure of hope when Dr. Holzer gave the next command.
“Ice, wind, earth, fire at will!”
A Screamer reaching out toward Liara had its torso blown out by a pulse of air that whizzed past her. She did not need to hear Talia’s grunt of satisfaction over the din of howling monsters to know who did that. Similar scenes of devastation repeated along the frozen palisade they had erected. Stones crushed bones, ice pierced hearts, and lungs were ripped from bodies by twisted air pressures to the point that the Yabanchi were no longer just slipping on ice, but tumbling on the fallen bodies of their allies. Between the combined attacks of the rest of the senior girls and the icy rocks, Liara thought they might turn the tide, but her veins became as cool as the rocks below her when she saw the Lurch slowly making its way through the Yabanchi crowd.
Though half of its eyes appeared to be gone in a giant mass of blisters covering its chest, the remaining eyes were intact, red, and bloodshot. Anger now suffused their gaze and it was staring directly at her.
Liara palmed one of her two remaining mana storage spheres and decided now was as good a time as any to use it. She cast it at the Lurch, expecting to see it fall in an explosion of gore like the rest, but it deftly spun on one leg and with the other kicked the storage sphere. The makeshift hand grenade harmlessly detonated overhead and the beast continued its advance. With two bounds of its giant legs, it first jumped on a wounded Screamer at the base of the iced rubble, and then propelled itself again off the other Yabanchi with a bloody crunch and onto the top of their defensive wall.
The senior next to Liara raised a hand to launch an ice spike at the Lurch, but in a blink, her head was missing and her corpse tumbled to the gnashing maws of the Yabanchi below. The baleful eyes never left Liara’s face and it lashed out with its whip arms at her. She blocked the attacks with her shield and spared any potential mana loss from her armor, but when she tried to jab it back with her spear, the end of its tentacle arms wrapped around the spear shaft and wrenched its tip away from its body. With its other whip arm, it lashed Liara right in the face, decimating her mana pool, and she wound up on her butt, staring up at the Lurch, but miraculously still holding onto her spear. With one of its tire-sized feet, the Lurch lifted a leg above her and was about to bring it down until the whip arm holding Liara’s spear was shorn in half and spurted blood like a hose.
Driven back by this sudden gust of razor-sharp air, the Lurch swept its gaze to the one who dared attack it and lashed out with its remaining arm. It was Talia, and the beast grabbed the rim of her chair and yanked the whole thing out from under her. Sent to the ground this way, they watched as it crushed Talia’s wheelchair in the vice grip of its arm and then whipped out again at Liara as she tried to stand.
Watching her friend get her feet taken out from under her infuriated Talia more than the loss of her chair ever could and she blasted the Lurch again with more air. This attack caused considerably less damage than before and only momentarily distracted it. This was enough time to let Liara jump back up and attempt to fire a mana pulse at the Lurch with her spear, but again it redirected the tip away from its body and tried to wrench the spear while it simultaneously lifted a leg to crush the grounded Talia.
Liara dropped the shield in her left hand and used it to deliver a left-handed fire mana strike that severed the Lurch’s other arm. Her natural hand blazed in pain from the strike, but having disarmed the Lurch so, gave Liara the freedom to ram her spear into one of its remaining eyes and blast a pulse of air mana into it. The attack forced the silent hulk to stagger back, every eye tearing up with blood, and a final blast of air from Talia sent it over the edge and into the crowd of Yabanchi below. Seeing her opportunity, a mana storage sphere followed the Lurch’s descent and ended it in an explosion that took out a chunk of Yabanchi along with it.
Talia’s triumphant smile dropped when Liara scooped her up and started taking them both toward the rear with the younger students.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you to safety,” Liara winced every time Talia shifted in her hands. Her left especially felt like she had broken something as it throbbed red and screamed murder.
“Like the void you are! I can help, we took that thing out together!”
“Don’t argue! I can’t concentrate if you’re just lying there for a Yabanchi to eat. I can’t risk your life like that!” Liara reached the gaggle of mostly freshmen and sophomores watching the battle from the student building’s exposed interior and set Talia down by them.
“Why do you get to decide what I risk,” Talia started to ask a question but was cut off by the screams of the girls around them. Liara looked where they were pointing and saw the doom they had all blindly fallen into.
While the seniors and junior students were casting back Yabanchi at the rubble, the Kort had been looming above, seemingly just watching. Yet from the rear, Liara could see pale tentacles slowly squirming from the watery hole the Kort’s main body protruded from and sliding toward the students whose attention was fixed mostly on the immediate threats in front of them.
Liara left Talia behind and shouted for Belle. For her part, the blonde girl looked back from a Screamer’s headless body tumbling back down the rubble wall and she saw the tentacles too. With a several swings of her sword, she ignited her blade and loosed waves of electric mana that sheared through many of the creeping tentacles at once, yet despite this, more continued coming in a wave of screaming flesh.
“Fall back, fall back to the building!” Dr. Holzer had seen the pincer trap too and was directing students away from their fight with the Yabanchi at the wall. Under his guidance, the girls pulled away from their individual battles and supported one another as they all ran back to the temporary shelter of the demolished student barracks.
Liara and Belle prepared their mana weapons to face the tentacles and remaining horde, but Dana spoke from where they’d placed her earlier in the back.
“Hold on, I think I can hold them for a bit.”
The air shimmered around the group and when one of the tentacles dived toward Belle it flattened against an invisible barrier. More Yabanchi and tentacles started clawing the space just a few inches from the group, but their futile efforts were rewarded only with a frustrated roar from the Kort.
More tentacles surged from its hole and overwhelmed the individual Yabanchi who had reached the barrier. The smaller monsters’ roars of rage turned into squeals of terror as they found themselves being fused to the flailing tentacles that recognized no difference between meat. In less than a minute the Yabanchi who had made it over the rubble wall had been converted by the Kort and assimilated into the bulk of its body, their screams melted into one tune of overriding hunger that desired satiation above all else. There was no room for pitying the fate of the monsters consumed by their own in Liara’s heart, but she did not want to experience the same fate. She asked Dana how much longer she could keep up the barrier and the other girl shook her head.
“Not long. Maybe ten minutes tops.”
“What if you mana shared with someone?” Belle asked, but Jarron spoke.
“She’s pushed herself too hard, she needs rest or she’ll collapse, mana sharing or not!”
“You’re the one who pushed her this far, you heartless thing,” Pellas growled.
Liara put a hand up between her golem and Dana’s, forestalling their arguing. “We don’t have time to argue. That thing is going to kill us if we don’t kill it first.”
“Well, my mana cannon did not work, so if you have any ideas, I’m all ears.” Everyone nodded, their minds racing for escape routes or plans, but Liara replied.
“I do have an idea.” She quickly told everyone about the cafeteria battle and how she killed the Matriarch with a current of electricity.
Dr. Holzer mumbled, “So that’s how you destroyed my spear.” But Talia had a more shocked reaction and sat up from the ground as best she could.
“You could have killed yourself!”
“That’s what I told her!” Pellas cried, but Liara kept her composure and shook her head.
“It had to be done.”
“You could have just walked away,” Talia just kept giving Liara that hurt look with her green eyes like she had done something wrong and it started to make her mad.
“They all need to die! Every single one deserves to die, Talia, and I’m going to keep fighting with everything I’ve got until there’s nothing left!”
Talia still had the infuriating look of wounded confusion, but Belle replied. “I hate them too, but how exactly are we going to replicate your little cafeteria stunt with that thing?”
“She’s got a point girl,” Casandra drawled, “the mana requirement would be exponentially higher for a beast of that size and I don’t see a convenient backup generator on hand.”
Liara gestured to the hundreds of students gathered around them. The girls were terrified, weary, and overall just looking like they wished they were somewhere else, but when Liara pointed at them, Pellas saw the potential that she was seeing and spoke.
“We are surrounded by hundreds of backup generators! The students can pool their mana together for the required cost!”
“Oh! The blonde girl is an electricity specialist, she’d be perfect to conduct all that power!” Jarron piped up.
“Of course, she’d be the most qualified even if she wasn’t,” Cassandra said.
“There will be an issue with the Kort’s tentacles, she’ll have to be pretty immobile while she conducts the attack, probably striking the water the beast is in would be enough to transfer the energy.” Dr. Holzer was rubbing his chin and considered this plan.
“Liara can probably handle that.” Pellas chirped. Everyone nodded along and started giving input about organizing the students and transferring the pooled mana, but Belle held up a hand.
“Hold on, so you mean to tell me that we’re going to have every student here share their mana with one another and direct the flow to me, during which time I will then redirect all that accumulated mana as electricity into the Kort, and all the while Liara plays defense stopping those tentacles from reaching me and ripping my skin off?”
“I guess it does sound like a crazy plan when you say it out loud like that,” Liara mumbled.
“Oh, absolutely,” Belle sighed and straightened up. “Too bad I’m a sucker for crazy heroics. Let’s do this.”
----------------------------------------
Liara checked her stats for the twentieth time and tried to control her breathing unsuccessfully. She had been too lax with using her mana and now she was at three hundred and fifty mana. Not a good place to be and less than half of her maximum.
“Liara, you seem tense.” Dr. Holzer was one of the two people on the second floor with her, the other being Pellas of course.
“Of course she’s tense, it does not take a doctor to realize jumping out of a hole on the second story of a collapsing building would make someone a little nervous.” Pellas snipped at Holzer’s comment and Liara wondered if the golem unconsciously shared a little of the feelings that she had due to their bond. There was so much she didn’t know, the intricacies of the class system, the politics of the kingdom and conglomerate alliance, and even just her own full capabilities as a Magical Girl. It was so frustrating, but she refocused herself and came back to the present with the most pressing matter of her heart.
“Dr. Holzer?” The tone of her voice had the paladin edge closer and he instinctively put a hand on her shoulder. “I might not make it back.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Don’t say that, Liara. Of all the people here, surely, you are the most likely to see this to the end.”
“Thanks, but you kind of have to say that.” Liara shrugged off his hand and pointed at the floor beneath them, where the rest of the students were organizing in anticipation of the plan’s execution. “I never got to know anyone here, they all kind of made fun of me or ignored me, except Talia. You talk about making it through, but I would have quit the academy years ago if it wasn’t for her.”
Dr. Holzer’s face twinged as self-reflection slammed his conscience. He was fully aware that he was a part of the miserable experience that Liara had endured these last three years.
“So promise me, while I’m out there, protect her for me. She’s the only source of light I’ve had and I love her as much as I did my sister, maybe a little more, because she’s my best friend.”
The stodgy paladin made a bow, fist clenched to his chest. “Of course, Magical Girl, I will protect her and the others with my life.”
Liara put a hand on his shoulder this time, the waves of fear in her heart a little more controlled. “Thank you, Paladin.”
Pellas floated by their heads and wrapped them both with his arms, “Aww, very touching you two, but my internal timer tells me that it’s been five minutes. They should be finished with their preparations beneath us.”
Breaking away from Dr. Holzer, Liara looked down again from the half-destroyed room she was in. Beneath her, the roiling mass of tentacles looked like a sea of the condemned. Pathetic hands reached up and were crushed by the bulk of other tentacles. Consumed corpses wailed until the tentacle they were fused with ground their faces into the rubble, but they all sang with one voice joined together in their demented choir of pain, signing to anyone that might give an ear to their misery. In the faces of every twisted expression below her, Liara saw the potential future of her fellow students and she would rather die than let that happen.
[Just like we discussed. You got this.]
Liara hesitated for only one more moment and then jumped from the second floor. She aimed for a patch of ground that was clear of the tentacles and would provide her a route to run from them. The idea was that she would jump and roll in such a way that she would not only avoid using mana to mitigate the damage but would also allow her to have a running start in leading the Kort’s attention away from the others.
It did not work as planned.
The rolling landing that she was supposed to pull off ended up being a spine-cracking fumble that would have dislocated Liara’s shoulder had her armor not absorbed most of the blow. As a result, Liara’s armor warning indicator immediately flared up and started shrilling its low mana indicator. Pellas screamed in her mind.
[Liara, your mana is at less than two hundred, get up!]
She did not need him telling her that, as she had already scrambled to her feet and swung to face the main mass of tentacles still trying to breach Dana’s barrier. With a blast from her spear, a chunk of flesh was blown off one of the many searching tentacles, but to her chagrin, not even one moved away to give chase. The plan had only been in motion for less than thirty seconds and it was already failing.
Liara built up mana in her body in a way that she was still not too used to and activated her “hallucination” mana skill. Pellas saw her mana drop by another fifty points and understood what she was trying to do, so he decided that rather than complain about how low her mana was getting, he would help with this desperate action. Alongside Liara’s lesser hallucination skill, he activated his mimicry and lesser suggestion golem abilities.
Normally, any one of these would have been shrugged off by the Kort, as it was much more powerful and intelligent than a stock-stupid Screamer, but the combination of shifting shadows flaring up, the screams of dozens of girls erupting, and Pellas’ suggestion pinging against its mind was just enough to draw the ire of the great beast. Like a flood, the majority of the tentacles stopped their probing of the student barracks and moved their seeking hands to Liara and Pellas.
Again, Pellas’ shout in Liara’s mind was unnecessary, as she had already started to do it.
[RUN!]
Liara had a reaction stat that would have made her faster than most professional sprinters, but even then, she barely kept ahead of the surging tentacles as they sought to snuff her life. She led them in a large circle around the hole of their owner, and the Kort looked over her, casting shade as she ran to the other side of its body and into the shadow of imminent death.
So many more tentacles had crawled from the depths and moved to block Liara’s way that when she tried running straight away from the Kort’s direction, she found that way blocked off. Indeed, everywhere she looked, tentacles swirled and rolled in interlocking formations, making walls of hungry mouths that clamped and ground in demand for her death.
A new voice tore into her mind and violated it with its intrusiveness.
[YOU HAVE FAILED HUMAN. YOUR SACRIFICE WAS FOR NAUGHT. EVEN NOW, YOUR FRIENDS DARE APPROACH ME AND SHALL SOON JOIN MY SONG.]
The mental force dug deeper and dredged Liara’s past traumas, of the past day and past life on another world. The flailing hands on the Kort’s tentacles turned into the grasping claws of the wicked dead. Screaming became laughter and Liara’s sister begged her to help. The flames and ripping hands and peeling flesh. The shadows with eyes and mad men dancing in the ashes of family they had sacrificed. The Kort’s psychic pressure to break Liara backfired and activated a skill in the pale young woman. Her vision turned red and she charged the nearest mass of tentacles with blood lusted abandon.
Her strikes had a force that should not have been contained in such a lithe body and she used mana borrowed from a precious source when her pool reached zero. The tentacles shied away now, the frenzy of blows and mana blasts were overwhelming even the tide of flesh that should have crushed this singular human. The Kort stopped playing with its food and focused, the other prey momentarily forgotten and pressed with everything it had against the slayer.
On the blood-slicked rubble of Apophyllion Academy, Liara fought the most important battle of her life
----------------------------------------
Talia watched Liara eat dirt and worried for a second that her friend may have broken her neck, but thankfully she jumped up from the dirt and did something that must have caught the Kort’s attention. Every tentacle moved away from Dana’s barrier and a hush fell over all the watching girls. They all thought the same thing, but did not say it. Liara had probably just given them her life for this chance, now would they take it?
Dana dropped her barrier and slipped into unconsciousness again, this was their moment. Belle led the assembled students of all ages. From freshmen who had not even gone on their first orientation battle to seniors who still held hopes that they might be chosen as Magical Girls too, they marched with a singular purpose, every one of them a Magical Girl at this moment, if only for the courage they showed in the face of overwhelming death.
And Talia was left behind.
Dr. Holzer had come back from the second floor and was with her, as well as the unconscious Dana, and while they had been left because they both had no mana to share, Talia had been left because she had no legs to carry her where she wanted. In this moment, where everyone else had the choice to put everything on the line, Talia felt her most bitter and despised the lot life had dealt her at birth.
Belle decried her for her family’s money and connections, but there she was born with legs and a mother who all that guaranteed she be chosen as a Magical Girl. Now, she was the hero of the story, golden-haired and striding toward the monster with sword drawn. Was it too shameful that in the darkest recesses of her heart, that Talia wished she would fail and be dragged down by the beast?
Of course, she did not actually want that to happen, but the black thought pulsed in her heart like a sick hope that desired to share her misery with others. Yet in the glory of the following moments witnessed, this sick hope was thoroughly disappointed.
Belle and the host of students had reached the edge of the Kort’s hole and bunched up in a semicircle around the electric Magical Girl. They laid their hands on one another and the force of hundreds of mana users power swelled in the air like a crackling presence being born from their collective effort. And it was all being focused on Belle.
Her mana sword glowed with the electric blue power of their mana focused into one spot and Talia had to admit she was impressed that the girl was not being fried on the spot by so much power running through her. Even from so far away, the air felt magnetizing and made Talia’s hair stand up. Looking away from the sight for a moment, Talia looked at the mass of tentacles on the other side of the Kort and felt like a part of her died when she realized Liara was hidden in the midst of their roiling mass.
The scream of the other students tore her teary gaze away from where Liara was likely dying and she saw the horror of yet another tentacle shooting out of the murky waters and toward Belle. Talia would have screamed too if her breath wasn’t caught in the intensity of the moment, but Belle was quick as she was smooth and struck at the tentacle with the point of her sword.
Their plan had been to transfer the electrifying energy through the waters pooled up in the hole, but direct contact was just as good as the blade entered the face of a desperately hungering Kort victim and sank all the way to the hilt before the tentacle stopped. The entire body of the Kort stiffened and Talia watched as the rest of their lives were decided in a single moment.
It became strangely quiet and Talia realized that it was because she had become used to the incessant moans and screams of the faces adorning the Kort’s body, but every miserable visage had stopped their struggling and slackened into blissful relief. A sweet smell drifted on the wind and Talia gagged when she realized it was burning flesh, smoke pouring from the orifices of the Kort’s mouths.
Belle was so focused on pouring every ounce of the overwhelming power she felt swirling in her body and into her blade that she did not see the scattered party of Yabanchi Screamers come crawling over the rubble and toward the defenseless girls. Talia and Dr. Holzer did notice though and when she looked up into the face of the paladin, she could see that he was torn watching the smaller beasts clamber toward his Magical Girl.
“Well, go on Dr. Holzer! Go help them!”
He glanced down at her, still not leaving her side, and she punched his leg.
“What are you waiting for? If they attack them now, then the whole plan is ruined! Go!”
His mind was made at that moment and Dr. Holzer leaped into action. Though he was still wounded from earlier, his bond with Belle and the greater restoration from Liara had lent him strength. The incoming Screamers were met with a fearsome Paladin whose spear was like a fusillade of deadly jabs that poked eyes and throats.
While Dr. Holzer performed his deadly dance, girls started disengaging from the cluster around Belle. It was freshmen at first, tapped out of mana due to their less matured reserves, then seniors who had spent too much in the previous battle. One by one they drifted away and back towards the direction of the shelter, everyone watched the only girl still standing by the Kort and prayed for her success.
Belle Noblesse stood in the gap between them and gave everything she had.
Talia wouldn’t have believed it unless she had seen it. At last, Belle collapsed, her small frame so very tiny against the backdrop of the towering monster. Dr. Holzer finished off the last Screamer, ran to his fallen charge, and cradled her, heedless of the tentacle now slumping back into the water hole from whence it came. Every student watching feared the worst as the Kort stayed there, upright and unmoving, but with the slow collapse of a thing so massive that its existence defied natural laws, the Kort’s main body fell for an eternity that lasted a handful of seconds and smote itself on the shattering embrace of the earth, it’s terrible choir forever silenced. It fell directly on Doctor Holzer and Belle Noblesse.
The plume of dust and debris from the Kort’s death fall sent a cloud that scattered every watching student. There was no Magical Girl to guide them or Dr. Holzer’s voice to command them. The only voice of reason in the ensuing confusion was Jarron’s, but his annoying shrills for order were overwhelmed by the chaos of every woman looking out for herself. Except for one.
Talia had clambered onto a piece of rubble and her eyes sought one thing among the dust and giant sprawling body. She prayed for one thing and it was answered by a spear being thrust from a cluster of tentacles on the far side of the Kort’s corpse.
“Liara!”
Her friend must not have heard her voice over the din and distance, as she immediately started running toward the remaining Yabanchi in the quad. She was like a Valkyrie of death, chasing down Lurkers and Gargoyles and spearing them into the ground. It was unsettling to see her, the once placid girl with an expression of such mindless rage. It was as if she had become like the very things she was slaying.
Talia slid off the rubble and sat there, feeling like she had lost something precious, when she heard a small voice from the interior of the student barracks building.
“Help.”
The green-eyed girl sat up and listened. The cry came again and she recognized the voice. Ms. Stark! She must have survived the collapse of half the building after all, but the way she was mewling for help sounded like she was injured.
There was no one else close by she could tell. Belle was crushed, the other students were running around scared, and Liara was slaking herself on the remaining Yabanchi. Realization hit Talia like a brilliant dawning; the only person who could help was her. It was scary, facing the empty building without her chair or working legs of her own, but also marvelously tempting as Talia remembered the tale of Yula.
There was no light to guide her, just a begging voice, but what ground did Talia have to stand on if she were to be chosen as a Magical Girl today? While everyone fought and slew Yabanchi, she just had to be rescued and taken care of, just like everyone did, every single day of her life. If she had to prove herself, then she’d have to put aside her fears and crawl into that unknown darkness. They’d see, the heroes of Apophyllion, Liara the Slayer and Talia the Bold. One chosen for her killing and the other for her selflessness. These impulses dragged Talia’s useless legs behind her as she crawled into the barracks building and to Ms. Stark’s voice.
There was no light, but Talia had a vision. If Liara had a spider, then Talia’s golem would be a butterfly, for when she was finally a Magical Girl, she’d be transformed and she’d finally be able to prove herself to others and stand beside them.
These hopes carried Talia into the barracks, born aloft on the wings of desires unfulfilled, and gave her strength to continue crawling deeper into the beckoning darkness.