Elemental Manipulation has increased to level 6.

There was only pain.

There was so much pain.

Her ribs were crushed. Splinters of bone dug into her lungs. Every breath was a ragged, drowning thing.

Her legs were torn to shreds. She couldn’t look at them. Couldn’t look at the exposed bone and flayed flesh. Couldn’t even acknowledge how the left ankle was snapped in half.

And the blood loss.

Oh, she was still bleeding out, wasn’t she?

It would suck if she died like this.

She was pretty sure she should care. Everything was really far away again though. Was this shock? She was pretty sure this was shock. She’d probably lost her leg after all. A little shock was reasonable.

Would this count as camp? Probably not. She wouldn’t call an open piece of cave corridor camp.

Yeah, she was going to bleed out.

They never talked about that in the stories. When the heroes in the stories got beaten up fighting death-defying battles they always walked it off after. Or their allies got them the life-saving treatment they needed.

But she was alone. And she wasn’t much of a hero. Heroes saved people. She hadn’t seen a single person to save. It was just her. In life or death nonsense, encounter after encounter.

This was easily the stupidest way to die. She’d startled herself into this one.

It was the demon’s fault. The demon’s fault and years of being easily startled. Heroes weren’t easily startled.

You need to lower your Soul Guard! his voice rang like a gong in her head.

He was still on that? She would have laughed if she was physically capable. He still wanted to possess her after everything. She was dying and all he’d get was a dying body.

A vicious pleasure imagined him in her place. Him in so much pain he could barely think. His legs broken. Lungs too punctured to draw up the air needed to scream. Nothing but the consequences of his actions to keep him company.

What a reward she was.

It was almost enough to convince her to let him have it.

Almost

Damn it, woman. I can save your life, just trust me a little.

Trust him? That did get a pained, wheezing chuckle. It came out more as a strangled scoff, but that worked just as well.

Why would she trust him? This was his fault. He had gotten her into this mess. If he hadn’t startled her, she wouldn’t be lying here now. If he wasn’t locked behind Soul Guard, she wouldn’t be losing Focus every second and maybe she’d be able to think. If he hadn’t put the idea of fighting those rats, she would have done the smart thing and run when she’d been spotted.

If he hadn’t been her ‘prize’ she’d be just fine right now.

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You are losing Focus and Health too quickly. If you lowered Soul Guard you would start recovering Focus at least.

His words hurt. Physically.

He sounded panicked. She wondered why. Probably because if she died he’d be out a body. Who knew when the next one would come along for him to possess.

Damn. Damn. Damn, it all. He was muttering now. His muttering hurt. Louder he said, You are going to die if you do nothing. Is that what you want? Is that all this strange campground means to you?

Campground? Oh, he was still in her soul or something. Where Sibling Camp had manifested in her fight with him before.

Oh. Kaye and Robin. They were waiting for her, huh. Waiting for her to get back and tell them that she was okay. That the weird rift thing she’d been dragged through was nothing. That she was safe.

She couldn’t do that if she died here.

She couldn’t do that if she was possessed by a demon either.

Were those really her only options? She couldn’t stop the bleeding. Beacon of Home and Hearth was doing its best, but this was no campsite and even if it was, would the passive Health regeneration buffs and magic healing of this world be enough to fix her current state? Even with Demonic Vitality doubling those bonuses, she had a hard time imagining it magically stopping the river of blood gushing from her legs and pooling in her lungs.

And then, there was the ankle. It was broken. More than broken. It was only attached by ragged flesh. Could magic healing fix that? She didn’t know. She’d never been this badly hurt.

Short term though, she definitely couldn’t get anywhere on it. Moving was out of the question.

Was that it then?

She couldn’t move under her own power. She couldn’t stop the hemorrhaging. She didn’t have a skill to get her out of this one.

Her only options were to gamble on this demon or to submit to death?

She hated it, but she was definitely going to die if she just lay here bleeding out. Doing what he wanted was only probably going to get her possessed.

She hated that was rational. She wanted to spite him to the end. But Kaye and Robin were more important than that.

She lowered Soul Guard.

Thank you. His words didn’t hurt anymore. They sounded like they were coming from her chest instead of echoing around her head. If nothing else, that was an improvement.

Now, I need you to trust me quite a bit more. Do you think you can do that?

She didn’t, but she couldn’t exactly interrupt.

I need your permission for this next part. You will be perfectly safe, and you can end it at any time.

She had no idea what he was talking about.

Right now, you are much stronger than me. Even bleeding out and dying, your Resolve is significantly stronger than my Will. That means you can throw off anything I try to do to you without any effort on your part. Okay?

That was good to know if it was true and if she was alive long enough to do anything with that information. She could feel her blood pouring out, hot around her cold body.

Okay. With that in mind, I need to possess your body.

She regretted letting him out already, not that she had really been expecting much more. But was this really the time? Maybe for him, now, in her moment of extreme weakness, it was?

Wait, wait! Calm down. If I could just do it, I would have already done it. Even if I could without your permission you could throw me out immediately. But I’m telling you right now that you need to let me do it.

You are badly injured, but I am not. You have a spirit-body that will conform itself around the soul within it. So if I possess you, I will be able to walk us out of this with no problem.

You, on the other hand, are not walking anywhere.

Does that make sense? I walk us out and we—you—live. You refuse to let me do this, we both die here.

That didn’t make sense to Cass. Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe it was the particulars of demon magic.

She didn’t have any idea what souls had to do with bodies or why he would be uninjured in her very badly beaten one. But these were questions to ask if she survived.

What she did understand was she had to trust him if she wanted to live to get back to Kaye and Robin.

She wanted to refuse. Imagining his reaction to that final spite almost tipped her hand.

But Kaye and Robin were more important than that.