After walking for hours, I wasn’t sure how many, I finally came across a difference in the landscape. If it wasn’t for everything being so boring, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
A little bit ahead of us there was a change in the snows texture where it seemed to have some sort of indent in the shape of a square. I couldn’t be so sure though, my eyes could very well be playing tricks on me.
It could be a cliff or something, you never know. But… by the looks of it, it isn’t. There’s plenty of ground in front of it.
Once we reached it, Abs proceeded to make a shelter directly above whatever it was I’d been eyeing. I wasn’t sure if it was from him being attentive or inattentive.
What is it?
I shrugged my shoulders.
Ah, well, probably doesn’t matter too much anyways.
Before I could so much as decide where I was going to camp I could hear the large man snoring.
For whatever reason Abs’ forts seemed to fascinate Drifa, she was always trying to copy him. Her currently trying to make an igloo for herself and failing reflected that.
Oh yeah, she doesn’t have a tent. Well, it’s not like she needs one, she can handle the cold just as well as me.
Shaking my head I set up my tent on the other side of the room. Unexpectedly, I wasn’t able to slip into my tent first. I was second. At some point when I’d been building it (which was very quick) Drifa entered without my saying so.
What on Earth could she be doing. I want my tent back.
Sticking my face inside of my tent flap I was met with a familiar situation. Drifa holding a knife where I wanted to sit.
What?
I looked down to the snow where she was gesturing. She had written something there.
How did she even get the time to do all that?
Well, does it really matter?
…Not really.
“I’ve got an idea for how I can slow down the parasite a bit.”
I was immediately interested in what she had to say.
Anything to get rid of it.
I wrote back to her in the snow, “What?”
She seemed nervous as she wrote, “I could try cutting all the tentacles off of the thing until they regrow and then give them another cut. Kind of like a barber.”
I didn’t know there were tentacles… probably what stabbed through my chest.
I frowned.
The thing just got creepier the more I found out about it.
I wrote back in the snow, “Try it.”
She nodded and gripped the knife tightly.
* * *
DRIFA
I was quite nervous in all honesty. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing or if it was going to backfire, but it’s the only option I had.
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Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself before I got to work. Taking some of energy that was just merrily floating around my soul-core thing, I lured all of the tentacles out of Ismund so they were all where I could see them.
Maybe I should just call it a core before I figure out what the pieces are.
It took a while and I frequently lost a tentacle here and there as they became disinterested. I finally managed to corral them all in one mass once I learned how to do a bit of multi-tasking. So long as I focused on using my hands to kind of guide the energy as a visual, I was able to keep one chunk out of reach (barely) of the big mass of strings while I used a smaller piece of energy to guide the strays over like a sheep dog.
I can’t exactly keep the strings still while I cut them, I’ll need tension.
The micro tentacles all gathered together looked a lot like the hair of an old woman, except if that woman’s hair was extremely damaged and full of grease like she didn’t bathe. It was gross. I hadn’t noticed before, not really anyways, the tentacles had tiny mouths that snapped at the end like some sort of strange sci-fi alien.
I pit the tip of my tongue nervously.
Here goes, nothing for it.
Holding the knife in one shaky hand, I used the other to grip the ‘hair’ of the parasite. I hated it, so much. I made me want it dead so much more. I could feel it moving and writhing uncannily underneath my grip.
They went still for a moment: they didn’t stay that way for long.
They leaped forward, through my grip and burrowed into the wrist that was holding them, trying to escape up my arm. I was too shocked to scream as they bit and ate through me making me feel feint, sick, and panicked. I now had a deep sated hatred for them.
They have to die.
I tried to speak, but my throat was too tight to let out anything other than an unintelligible whimper.
Right, right, the knife! The knife.
I looked away from my shaking arm and the creatures snaking beneath the skin and focused on the base closest to the main ‘body’ of the creature.
I swung the knife down with my death grip and managed to sever a few of the tentacles. The bases still moved, but they were harmless.
I swung down again and missed chopping in the same place.
No!
I tried again, again and again. After probably eight or so messy, scared swings the whole thing was sheared and my arm was free-ish. Looking back at it I heaved.
The ‘hair’ was lodged deep underneath my skin and almost up to my elbow while the cut bottoms swished about with my movement like tassels, only if they occasionally twitched.
I did my best to steady my breathing but I didn’t do very well, seeing that I was still hyperventilating.
It worked. I need to get these out. How do I get them out? Will it infect me? Will it grow a new body in me or something? Did it damage my soul at all?
I stared my notifications, but didn’t find anything other than the injury of them burrowed under my skin. They weren’t doing anything. That was good, but they could start moving at any moment.
I didn’t know what to do with my good arm I stroked my face nervously.
I’m going to throw up…
Something flicked me in the head making me look up immediately.
What is it? Did the thing try to attack my brain? What if… oh, It’s just Ismund.
After figuring out what was bothering me so much, he grabbed my arm that had the skin hanging open a few inches to let all of the parasite’s tentacles inside jam-packed.
His face looked neutral, but his eyes told a different story, they looked at the wound like it was one of those monsters in the dungeon. Which I supposed it kind of was.
After finally slowing down my breathing a bit a choked out a broken sentence, “Can. You. Fix. It?”, before just trying to keep myself from crying out of stress. I didn’t think he’d put up with that. Especially with him living with this happening all the time.
Grabbing all the limp strings hanging out of my arm he yanked. It felt horrible. Dark spots started covering the edges of my vision.
Those little mouth things must be holding onto the inside.
That was the last intelligible thought I got out. As he pulled at a smaller section it only felt worse. It was all too much. Ringing and more dark clouds filled my vision as the world fell sideways.
* * *
ISMUND
She was out cold.
Whelp.
Moving on, I figured it would actually be easier this way. I didn’t like what happened, but it was a relief all the same, having those thread-like snake things removed.
The more I grabbed at once, the harder it was to remove, so I went for the tedious method of pulling them out from somewhere between 1-3 strands at a time.
After a few minutes, I had made a small dent… but with that also came bleeding. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it was steady and I couldn’t really fix it until I had everything removed.
As I went along I stored everything I was pulling out in my inventory so there wouldn’t be a mess and maybe we could analyze them more later to get a better idea of what we were working with.
Once everything was removed, well passed when I would’ve like to get to bed, I wrapped some bandages from the med-kit around her arm to try to seal off the bleeding. I could make some stitches, sure, but I didn’t have to right now, and I was quite tired. I’d done enough already, she could do them herself once she woke up.
Picking up my small, light tent I relocated it even further away. Walking back over to Drifa, I kicked some snow over her to hide the blood.
Finally, I got some sleep in my nice empty tent. I wanted to be rested for tomorrow, I had a feeling I’d be able to do something more interesting and productive.