Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a hero. Ever since the day the dungeons appeared, I wanted to be one of the blessed, fighting alongside my colleagues with the power bestowed to me by the Paragon.

The Paragon will bless me any day now, I thought, as I graduated from the fighter’s college with top marks.

Any moment now, I thought, as I risked my life for the heroes as an unblessed mercenary, surviving by the skin of my teeth time and time again.

Any moment, I thought as I bled out on the dungeon floor.

I heard the death throes of the dungeon boss echo through the stone hall as my hero clients finished it off with a burst of blessed light. I heard one run by me. I hoped it was the healer.

There was a whoosh of a sword being unsheathed, then a thud as a Lesser Demon was finished off. The hero stopped, then leaned over to look at me, giving me a once-over with a blank expression on his face. I squinted at him through my shock-induced blurry vision. It wasn’t the healer. It was the fighter, Eustice. He started to walk away.

“Hey!” I rasped. “I’m still alive!”

He stopped and looked back at me.

“I’m only missing an arm…I think…” I breathed heavily as I tried to assess myself. I was eighty percent certain I was only missing an arm, severed just below the shoulder. “Get the healer.”

He stared at me again. I had a bad feeling about him when I first met the party. He seemed like a spoiled rich kid; his armor was too shiny and his hands were too soft.

He took a knee beside me. “Garreth. That’s your name, right?”

“Get. The. Healer.”

“Garreth. I’m gonna be honest with you. You’re in shock. We’re not lugging you all the way back to the entrance.”

I stared at him, mouth agape.

“Plus, then we’d have to split the loot with you.” He tapped his forehead. “I read the fine print on the mercenary guild contract. If you come back maimed we have to reimburse you.”

“Clara!” I yelled, calling for the healer by name. “Clara, help me!”

I heard her yelp, then walk quickly across the dungeon floor. Eustice put his hand out, stopping her. “Don’t waste your mana. We might need it on the way back out.”

To my surprise, Clara listened to him. She stopped, and didn’t lift a finger to help me.

“Clara, please,” I begged through ragged breaths.

“I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “Eustice is right. I need to prioritize the other heroes. You’re…just a mercenary.”

She turned away. Eustice looked down at me and patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll tell everyone you died heroically.”

Stolen novel; please report.

I spit in his face. He scoffed, and stood up. “I was considering putting you out of your misery, you know.” He wiped his face roughly with the back of his hand. “But now, I think I’ll just leave you where you’re at. Have fun with your slow and painful death.”

I watched him walk away, turning back into a blur as my head swam.

They’d just left me there, to die. 

I couldn’t believe what just happened. How could they be so cruel? How could they view me as so worthless?

A quiet voice came from beside me. “Guess you’re expendable too, huh?”

It seemed that the Lesser Demon that Eustice had finished off wasn’t quite dead yet. It lay on the ground, its shadowy form shifting, struggling to stay in the shape of a demon. That made two of us who were victims of his mercy.

“Goating in your last moments?” I spat through gritted teeth, trying to hold in the pain. “Pathetic.”

The demon laughed. It was a cold, rattling sound. “I suppose it is pathetic to find something in common with a human.” Its shadowy form flickered, a sign of the last pieces of its consciousness fading from this realm.

My own consciousness was also hanging by a thread. I was losing a lot of blood way too quickly.

“Two abandoned servants, bleeding out at the bottom of a dungeon,” the demon sighed.

“Shut it,” I snapped, while weakly trying to rip my shirt to form a makeshift bandage. “I’m not…” I paused to take a breath. It felt like I was running out of air. “I’m not going to die here.” I could still make it out, I just had to staunch the bleeding a little bit…

It flickered again, then started to fade, ever so slightly. “Let me help you.”

I didn’t respond to it. I didn’t have time for its nonsense. I tried to unbuckle my breastplate, my fingers clumsy with numbness and slippery with sweat.

It reached out to me.

“No!” I tried to pull away from it. “I don’t—hngh—” I was trying to speak through the pain, but it was difficult. “I don’t need your help!”

Its shadowy hand made contact with my forehead and seemed to suck all the pain out of me. I was left feeling weak, cold, and tired.

“What did you do to me?” I rasped.

“You know we feed off suffering,” it said. “Don’t worry. It’s not enough to heal me. I’m too far gone for that.”

I slogged through my tired thoughts to find something to say to that, and settled on the only thing there really was to be said: “...thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” it said. “There’s nothing else I can do for you.”

We laid in silence for a while, shivering on the dirty stone floor.

“I’m not going to make it,” I said, the realization setting in.

“Me neither.” Its voice sounded far away now, as if it was at the end of a long tunnel. “Unless…” I knew what it was going to say. “...you let me in.”

It looked at me with silver eyes, a kind of expectant look on its murky face. I knew what it was referring to. It wanted to possess me. “We can stop each other’s bleeding,” it said.

Possession is a risky thing. Both the demon’s mind and the human’s mind are damaged beyond repair afterward, meaning that, if an exorcism is performed, there are lasting consequences. The partnership this demon was proposing would be permanent.

“Neither of us has to die for someone else.” Its voice was soft. There was an emotion there. Something like hope.

I looked at my bloodied hand, then held it out. “We can help each other.”

It smiled. “Thank you,” it breathed, and took my hand.

When I emerged from that dungeon, I would be a different person.