“Hrmu…”

As I awaken, a thorough sense of soreness and fatigue overtake me. I couldn’t think too well, with my body and my mind so fogged and glazed. Eventually though, I opened my eyes, and saw before how my limbs struggled to push myself up. I was laying flat on the ground, a hard ground. The realization that I wasn’t in a bedroll made my mind perk up a little faster.

As my vision cleared up, my memory returned to me.

That intense weight I felt, that horrible sound…It’s all gone. Like it never existed.

All I could make out were the tall, fuzzy outlines of trees in all directions. It was dark, and the ground was not the soft, inviting grass that I remembered it to be. Especially not with the splashes of red across it. It was a much different environment.

“Urgh…”

I put a hand to my head.

Think…think! What happened right before I blacked out?

I was being dragged by Alisson, and…of course there was that horrible feeling assailing all vectors of my being but…that’s about it…Alisson must’ve dragged me somewhere…But the environment is so different – Just how long was he pulling me for then?

I brought my head side to side, glancing for Alisson. However, other than some splashes of red in my glazed vision, I didn’t see the distinct yellow of his hair. Behind me, seemed to be the mouth of a tunnel. It looked vaguely familiar.

I decided that being on the ground was doing me no good. I shakily pushed against the ground with my arms. My muscles felt like pudding. Burning, exhausted pudding. The sudden use of my muscles prompted my heart to beat faster, and my blood soon rushed throughout my body. My mind exponentially spiraled back into action after that.

I took a deep breath, and my vision finally unblurred. I looked around in a moment of silence. My blood started to pump faster. My shaking arms suddenly tensed and I was able to push myself up as a sudden wave of adrenaline flooded into my bloodstream. I was so quick to stand that I felt lightheaded, and stumbled back. My eyes were wide at what I saw around me.

“G-guys?”

I called out hesitantly, still not believing my vision had truly unglazed yet. I stumbled forward through the scene, my head craning back and forth, my eyes sluggishly searching for a familiar face. I saw indents in the ground, clear evidence of a struggle. Trails…like something was being dragged through the dirt…

My hands automatically fumbled to my wrists, where I just barely managed to draw my baselards.

“A-alisson? Berein!?”

I shouted at a higher volume.

There was no moon out – Darkness surrounded me. The trees were but tall, imposing figures on all sides. I didn’t hear any insects, any birds, not even the wind was blowing. Everything was still.

So when Berein called, I could hear her clearly.

“H-help! S-someone!”

She sounded like she was in pain. The grip on my blades tightened, and I rushed toward the source of the shout on uneven footing; hoping that the blood I saw when I awoke wasn’t Alisson’s. As I ran, my body finally started to lighten up, and my head started to clear.

“Hold on! I’m coming!”

I shouted to Berein. Sticks snapped loudly as I homed in on the origin of her voice.

“Someone-! Help!”

Her voice sounded weak, and cracked. Something was off about it. Her tone? Her choice of words? Whatever. She was close. A thicket before me seemed to be the last thing between me and Berein.

I pushed aside the thicket, and crept through, my baselards up at the ready.

When I saw Berein, I knew I’d made a mistake.

She was strung up, her body limp. Her limbs were twisted and crushed like tinfoil, and blood covered her clothes. A tentacle had impaled her throat, and was holding her up off the ground. Its thin, pink cilia wiggling around in her open larynx made it apparent how she had still spoken. Her face was bathed in her own blood from her impaled throat. Her eyes, however badly wounded her body was, were still open dully, but clearly had lost any sign of life in them.

The tentacle stringing her up was of a familiar texture. It was unmistakable.

I didn’t have time to think though. The trap that I’d so painfully fallen for was sprung at me. From all sides around me, out of the brush surged a wave of flesh. Within the course of a few frantic seconds, I was utterly overwhelmed. I only managed to cut few of the tentacles before the rest restrained me. I didn’t have the time to prepare spells; I fell to the ground, completely ensnared. I violently thrashed back and forth, but it seemed my struggle only made the flesh around me tighten.

It seems that spells will be my only means of escape. But, my mind was so flustered, that I could barely put one rune in front of the other in my head. I feared pain, after seeing what happened to Berein.

Instead, the tentacles dragged me across the forest floor with surprising strength. They were after all, quite small, and numerous, so whatever they were attached to was obviously a heavy anchor. As I was dragged away, still struggling despite the ever-tightening grip on my limbs, Berein’s strung up body faded from view. It still hung there, as if the beast had forgotten about it. It was clearly much more interested in live prey.

As the seconds passed, I formed more and more spells. I fired off one here and there, but because my hands were strapped against my body, pointing down, they weren’t very effective as there weren’t many tendrils there. It kept my hands there too, I didn’t bother debating whether or not it was an intelligent action.

Eventually, I was pulled into the air. Upside down.

“Celis!”

I heard Alisson’s voice before I saw him. By the time my brain adjusted to being upside down, I had taken in the scene before me. All the tentacles propping me up in the air, restraining me, originated from a single, amalgamous egg shaped beast. A Nursery. It sat atop a cushion of wriggling tentacles, some of which had strayed and were the ones holding me up. Others streamed across the ground into bushes and across the forest floor, into the distance. It didn’t seem all that mobile, but it was large, and hard as hell. Judging from the trail of disturbed ground, this thing had recently moved into this position. In its wake, some sort of sticky flesh was growing on bark and the ground, peeling and dropping off the surfaces it had contaminated.

Behind the Nursery a good ways was a stone structure. It had a few steps, then a stone base, followed by some sort of pantheon like building, all indented into a cliff in the forest. A large door sat squarely in the middle of the wall.

Alisson all the while was perpendicular to me and the Nursery. He stood with Enhérejär up over his elbow, breathing heavily. Blood covered his face, and his armor had been punctured in several places. He had a single healing scroll attached to himself. Judging by how wounded he was, he would be using more – That healing scroll was probably his last one.

“Alisson!”

I called back to him. Apparently seeing my open mouth, a tentacle squarely in front of my face shot toward me. Knowing the wiser, I shut my mouth in hurry. The tentacle slammed into my mouth. It felt like being punched, but miraculously I didn’t break any teeth. It did however, push my lips right against my teeth, causing them to be cut quite badly.

Rusty iron filled my mouth, but I knew acutely in my head that this was nothing compared to pain I could be feeling.

Alisson clicked his tongue. “We’re at a stalemate so you bring in collateral damage, is that it?”

Alisson cursed. Our eyes met. He frowned, and only stared down the Nursery for a second longer more before blitzing into action. Two knives plunged into the Nursery’s thick hide, before promptly detonating. The tentacles holding me shook, the vibrations of the explosions thundering through my body. With the beast clouded in smoke, Alisson dashed right for me. He leapt, and sliced at the tentacles holding me up. I suddenly felt my right side loosen, and fall toward the ground, the grip around me having been weakened. Alisson, now nose to nose with me, rose his blade again to cut me free with one last action. I was already imagining falling headfirst into the ground.

Instead, as Alisson’s blade started to fall, it suddenly locked still, like every muscle in his arm tensed at once. This was accompanied by a churlish squelch, like a knife impaling raw meat.

Noticing Alisson’s curious halt, I looked back to him. His mouth was open, his throat clamped, gasping, clearly in shock. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw it. A single tentacle had gouged into Alisson from his backside, and was now poking through his gut. Blood and entrails slipped off of the fleshy tentacle as Alisson shook, his eyes wide.

He was thrown off his feet as tendrils wrapped around his ankles and pulled. Enhérejär was thrown into the dirt as he was dragged across the ground toward the Nursery. The smoke had cleared, and through it, an unharmed beast sat still, feelers wriggling all around it in the air, as if it was eager. Alisson and I both struggled, but it was no use. I fired off spells that soared straight into the sky with no effect, and Alisson seemed to be out of mana from his prior fight with the beast.

Horrifyingly fast, Alisson was pulled into the air like he was a bag in the wind, and further restrained as more tendrils built a tomb around his body. The Nursery dropped him loose in the air a few times, either because of his Opensen-enhanced struggles or out of enjoyment. His tails struggled with the tendrils as well, but were easily overpowered.

Alisson’s eyes were shut tight, but it seemed to me that it was not out of pain. It was concentration. A quick look at his tails’ tips, bubbling with red, told me what he was trying to call on.

A dozen tendrils all suddenly were redirected at Alisson’s tails. They pulled his tails straight out, unfurling them completely. From Alisson’s cringe, they seemed to be pulling quite hard. As if on cue, one tentacle rose above the rest, and with a flick at its tip, a blade shot forth from its length, like some sort of switchblade. It was made of bone it seemed, and was shaped like a small scythe. Without a moment to waste, the tentacle swung at one of Alisson’s tails.

I heard a crunch as one of Alisson’s tails was severed in half. He screamed aloud, but a tentacle shot for his mouth the same way that one had done for me. He was quick to stop himself, but he was still essentially punched in the face. The beast obviously didn’t want us squawking so that others could come and steal its catch. A moment later, the tension on Alisson’s remaining tail increased tenfold – I could hear as much from the gruesome strain I heard from his flesh, like some sort cry of pain from his very body. A second later, his flesh gave way, and the other tail was ripped out, taking along a sizable piece of skin and meat along with it. The chainmail and gambeson, meant to protect that part of Alisson, dangled in the wind, still attached to the flesh that had once been on his hip.

This time, Alisson couldn’t stop himself. He screamed again, tears only now welling in his eyes from how fast the beast had acted. Another feeler came soaring from Alisson’s side, and slammed into his jaw, hard. His head fell limp immediately, his eyes dull. The same tentacle, upon retreating, wrapped around one of Alisson cat ears briefly, but upon pulling it, and finding out his head came with it, it let go for whatever reason. Alisson didn’t react, either because he was unconscious or because he was already dead.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Alisson’s limp body was slowly lowered into the Nursery’s cradle of writhing tentacles.

All the while, I had watched with wide eyes from the sidelines. This was vaguely familiar. The same sort of scenario. Only this time, I was the sole reason Alisson was about to die. In that moment, that’s how I saw it. Overcome with this thought, I only stared, frozen, my hands quaking, not even trying to struggle.

Is this how it ends? I wake up, and then with no way to change the course of events, Alisson and I, are killed? It’s as if this was predestined. Like there was no avoiding it. Maybe this is what we get for grazing by death so many times, me and Alisson. After giving death the embodiment of a middle finger with our perseverance, it’s only natural the world would want to tilt things back into balance.

They say time moves more slowly when you’re about to die. When there’s a knife gouged in your throat, and in those last moments, while your body gurgles and spasms, your mind is at peace, simply in thought, not feeling a thing. Only for whatever reason, I’m feeling that now, when faced with Alisson’s death, and not my own.

I’ve been ignoring it for a long while, but now the thought has surfaced. The question of what I would if Alisson died. Before I met him I didn’t live for anything. I just followed orders, and milled around like a bee from place to place with same expression on my face.

Even if I survive…if Alisson doesn’t, what’s the point? What’s the reason in finishing the mission? If Alisson’s not there, why do anything?

Amidst those few seconds of my limp body and dark eyes, Alisson torpidly brought his head toward mine. “To survive…” He muttered, almost inaudibly, and my eyes opened from their prior dullness. “…The wolf must chew off their own leg…”

Then, all of sudden, Alisson locked his eyes with mine. His eyes were bright, burning, full of life, despite the blood pouring down his face and his clearly broken jaw.

“Do it Celis! Fire through your body! Now!”

The world fell silent as I heard Alisson and only Alisson. I glanced to my left arm, my eyes wide at Alisson’s words. I swallowed.

I looked back to Alisson. A tentacle shot for his neck, and his sudden outburst was quelled as he was pulled backwards into the beast. Still, I could see it for myself. His legs were kicking, his arms were shaking back and forth, and his head surged up, ready to bite with his teeth, despite his dislocated jaw.

Seeing him in that moment, my cheeks heated. Not in a blush, but in a sudden resolve. I bit my lip, hard. Blood poured from my mouth, and my lip was screaming out in pain.

My mind taken off what I was going to do, I took a deep breath,

And fired a dozen spells from within my left arm.

Within less than second, the yellow flash blinded my vision, but I didn’t need my eyes to know that my arm, in that moment, was vaporized. Spells shot in all directions, one grazed my belly, drawing blood, but I didn’t even feel it in the presence of the far larger source of pain. The tentacles around me loosened substantially, and I fell lopsided to the left toward the ground. However, a few still remained holding me in the air.

On the ground in front of me, was Enhérejär. My right arm was still restrained.

Running purely on adrenaline, I reached out for Enhérejär with my left arm. Except I didn’t have a left arm anymore. Logically, I knew this, but I still glanced to my left on impulse to find out why my arm wasn’t in front of me. A dark red stub at my shoulder was all that was there. A body part of mine, that I had grown up with and formed alongside, was no more. Cells and muscle that I had trained, and had history with, were gone forever.

For some reason those were my first thoughts. I took the reins back from my wandering mind, and wrestled with my right arm as best I could. I launched off the few inscripts I had left from my right arm, not from within my body, but it still managed to sever and weaken some of the tendrils, and with one final pull, my right hand was freed. My legs were still ensnared however. With my baselard, I turned to slash at the tentacles, cutting through them and freeing my legs.

Free of any immediate threat, my body then was finally hit with the pain that I’d been not so much ignoring as I had not been feeling it. Like falling back into a single needle, aimed at your spine.

No, it was more like falling from a high place, and breaking your fall only with your left arm, except the floor is needles and glass, all after somebody shattered your elbow with a hot iron. And with a needle somehow. Fuck I hate needles. And fuck! It hurts!

I only let out one scream, grabbing my left arm, or at least, the stub that remained.

My body was reacting quickly. I could already see the area around my arm start to swell as blood poured, trying to clot the missing body part. Endorphins and adrenaline flooded into my bloodstream. I could feel this happen, like a sudden wave of focus and lightness that washed over my body, and I suddenly forgot that I had just lost a limb. The most pain I felt was from that graze on my belly from one of my own spells. It was odd how painful it was, in the sense that I’ve had worse. But, I can only imagine how I’d really be feeling, without my body releasing its cocktail of survival chemicals.

My logical first thought was that I need my healing scrolls, fast. This thought though was tossed out of my head quickly. Alisson was in front of me. It’s do or die. I looked up toward the Nursery, clamping my mouth shut, and staring at it with pure hatred.

I can worry about my wounds as much as I want when the enemy is dead, and me and Alisson are out of harm’s way.

A white, cooling flash blinded my vision. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel my pain for that brief moment.

“Everything.”

Was all that I heard, and I knew what Enhérejär wanted me to do. I dropped my baselard, and grabbed Enhérejär. As I lifted myself up, and broke into an unstable run toward the Nursery, I poured every last scrap of mana I had into Enhérejär. It probably wants to focus my mana, like what Alisson did with his Pictunee spell against the spiders. Forming my spells came naturally to me, it didn’t take thought, only my will, like walking, after having done it so many times. Add that to the laser-focused oxygenation of my brain thanks to adrenaline, and I managed to turn all my remaining mana into inscripts within seconds.

Within a few seconds, I was already point blank to the beast, and raising Enhérejär. The Nursery was sending tendrils to stop me, but they weren’t nearly fast enough to protect itself from getting hit at least once. I slammed Enhérejär into the beast. I was surprised that I managed to pierce the beast, considering I’m only using one hand. It wasn’t deep though, but nevertheless, Enhérejär released its built-up spells that I had scrambled together.

It didn’t work as well as I had hoped, but it still yielded some definitive damage. A sizeable chunk of the beast was blown away. The Nursery quaked, its main egg-shaped body bobbing and recoiling away. I saw my opportunity to rescue Alisson. He was almost completely engulfed in the beast, but the recent attack had seemed to freeze the tendrils that had been restraining him.

Despite this, he didn’t move. One glance at him and I knew why; He was unconscious. The tentacle that had wrapped around his neck had choked him out. I let go of Enhérejär, and leapt onto the beast, reaching into its cavernous mouth with my remaining arm toward Alisson. I grabbed his collar and pulled. He was surprisingly light, but the wound on my belly said otherwise.

I pulled, hard, and lifted him up to me. Although he felt light, my body wavered from his weight and I stumbled on my footing on the beast. At this moment, the Nursery suddenly throttled back into action, the tendrils that had been restraining Alisson now surged for the both of us.

Thinking quickly, I threw Alisson away from the Nursery. I wasn’t able to see him land. Tendrils wrapped around me, and in an instant, I was pulled through the air into the beast’s dark cavern of a mouth. Just that instant, the mouth in the beast that I had been pulled in through was closed.

It only hit me now what was going on. An intense panic filled my brain. I almost didn’t believe it. I was inside of the Nursery. At first I thought that I was bathed in darkness, but then my eyes adjusted, and I saw that the walls around me had faint red glow. I was surrounded by flesh on all sides. My limbs were quickly restrained by tendrils within the beast.

The Nursery didn’t give me any time to breath. A second later, a massive conical point was lowered from the ceiling. It was as sharp as a knife, but as wide as my thigh. It fell right into my gut, gouging into my intestines. I could suddenly feel my ribcage squeezing against my skin, pushed away by the massive chunk of bone that had slammed into my body.

The wind was knocked out of me. Very quickly a liquid was rising from my back, and was now at my cheeks. At first I thought it was the Nursery’s, like some sort of digestive fluid, but I realized with horror that it was my own blood. My struggling weakened after that, having suddenly felt lightheaded. Struggling like this might just kill me faster – I’m bleeding far too fast. My panic driven heart, despite the endorphins slowing down my heartrate, was beating rapidly. Phlegm fell from my mouth and that lightheaded sensation I felt only got stronger.

Other than the anvil-like weight crushing my abdomen, and the numerous tendrils now piercing my limbs, it was oddly comfortable in the Nursery. My eyelids felt heavy. I knew for certain though that if I dozed off to unconsciousness now, I wouldn’t ever wake up.

I quickly realized that the beast wasn’t only killing me. Small bumps on its walls that had before sat ideal, had peeled open and were now piercing me rapidly from all sides. They didn’t so much as wound me as they did hurt, they’re tips were too small for me to see, but they must’ve of been needle-like. My armor thankfully blocked the majority of these, apart from one that gouged itself right into my open left shoulder. Maybe it was pumping something into me, maybe within a matter of minutes I’d be turned into one of half-dead adventurers from before. Tears welled in my eyes.

What could I even do? One of my arms is gone now, and my remaining three limbs are restrained. I only have my stilettos, they’re not exactly useful for cutting through anything…and even then, this thing is tough, invincible even.

The sight of Alisson kicking and struggling flashed through my mind. It looked so pointless, so meaningless – But if he hadn’t struggled, I wouldn’t have been able to reach him in time. It was then that I saw some sort of bright white pearl, dangling from above in the mouth of the Nursery.

My face slowly turned into a scowl of anger.

Fight.

After being still for so long, the tentacles around me weren’t expecting me to resist any further; So when I suddenly curled my abdomen up, for a brief moment I was unopposed.

Fight.

My head shot for the pearl.

Fight!

I bared my fangs and bit the white pearl with all my strength, grinding my teeth back and forth, and shaking my head along with it. The pearl was oddly squishy. I suspected as much. What better place to put your central nervous system, then behind the unpierceable walls of your flesh? It’s not like any prey would ever try to kill you from the inside.

Despite only using my teeth, on what looked to be a tiny piece of the beast as a whole, the tendrils holding me tightened, and tried to pull me away, but it was too late. The beast’s body was undulating and quivering, its walls of flesh were oddly now wavelike in what I only assumed to be pain or fear.

I broke into a crazed smile. I wasn’t expecting my hunch to be right. This thing really is your weak spot!

I didn’t let go, and kept on grinding my teeth together with the ferocity of an animal. By sitting up like this, I was in fact digging the anvil-like spike even deeper and wider into my abdomen. I almost fainted then and there. But there was no way I was going to let that happen. If I died now, Alisson would follow. I want to see him again, I want to live!

The tendrils overpowered me, and I was brought back down. Not without taking a chunk out of the pearl with my teeth as I did, using the Nursery’s own strength against it. A few moments passed with no change, and I began to think that I really was screwed.

But, my actions spoke for themselves. I felt the Nursery’s tendrils weaken and weaken as the beast then suddenly fell over onto its side, and I went crashing into the wall. After about a full minute, the gyrations and undulating of the beast had finally stopped, and its tentacles were loosely hanging on me. Its mouth was now also slightly parted, evidence that it was not sealed tight like I feared.

I scrambled to free my right arm, and then painful pushed the spike up and out of me. For a moment, it was too heavy for me to move, and I panicked, but a combination of me shrinking away and pushing it out with my legs did the trick. I coughed up mouthfuls of blood. I could only imagine how much pain I was in that my body was keeping hidden from me.

I pushed my way out of the beast with my legs, dragging myself along with my one arm. As I emerged out into the open world, I noticed the sun had began to rise. I saw Alisson not far away, on the ground, face down. I crawled toward him. I saw the sheer amount of my own blood that now covered me, and how I left a trail of blood across the ground as I dragged myself

I came to Alisson, and flipped him over to face the sky. He was breathing. Enhérejär was tightly wrapped around the wound in his body from being pierced by that tendril earlier – But the place where his tails used to be was also in bad shape.

“We…we really made it…”

I exclaimed to myself with a hint of childish glee. After a moment, my head jumped with the sudden realization that I would die if I didn’t heal myself, and Alisson probably too. We’d both just bleed out. Our bodies may be incredibly resilient in the moment, but that doesn’t mean we’ll die after the fact.

I withdrew the pouch on my hip with all my scrolls in it. I opened it up, and flipped to the healing scrolls.

“…Huh?”

There was only one there. Only one healing scroll. I was out of mana, so I couldn’t use my own healing either. I sat there in blank realization for a long moment.

This has to be a joke. There’s, there’s no way-!

In a panic, I searched Alisson as well. He had no healing scrolls. As the seconds passed, I only felt myself getting heavier and heavier. One scroll…

I looked down to the large gash in my stomach, and my arm that was no longer there.

…Isn’t enough to heal either of my wounds.

I looked to Alisson. One scroll for him though…means he wouldn’t bleed out…

I sat there.

Really? Really? Why. Why do I have to make this decision? Why!?

The choice was obvious, logically and emotionally, it was clear as day; But I just couldn’t accept it. Will I really die? After fighting so hard to get what I wanted, after spitting in the face of death and taking my life back with my own teeth and blood?

I suddenly broke into a smile. I should’ve seen this coming.

This is the first time that Alisson has come to my aid, and failed. He’s always pulled me out of the brink of death. Such a close call that battle with Andestine was, and that time in Ipithid. Always coming to my rescue; But this time, my knight in shining armor failed.

I lost my life the second I was restrained. But I got it back in exchange for Alisson’s life, but then I gave my life back to Alisson in the end. It was fitting. Even if I was less wounded, I’d still make the same choice. I’d rather die than live without you.

With my last breath of consciousness, I put the healing scroll over Alisson, and collapsed loosely over his body.

I wonder how much you’ll resent me for this, Alisson. Finding your apprentice dead on your shoulders when you wake up…I’m sure he’ll punish me…

***

Addendum

A body moved across the ground, a trail of blood in its wake. It moved like an inchworm, all of its limbs being unusable. It came to the sight of what looked to be three corpses.

“…”