“Hey, you still alive?” Alyx said, nudging Cass with a foot.

Cass grunted. She didn’t know how long she’d been lying there. Long enough for the minor cuts to scab over and for the general head trauma to have coalesced into a pounding headache.

“Eat this,” the swordswoman said, nudging Cass again in the ribs.

Cass groaned and flipped over.

Alyx stood over her pressing a mushroom in her face. A raw, glowing mushroom. Cass raised an eyebrow and cast a dubious look up at Alyx.

“Eat it,” Alyx said again.

Angel’s Grace

[A mushroom with natural magic properties, found rarely in desolate Safe Zones. If eaten within a Safe Zone, they provide miraculous healing at the cost of some stockpiled experience and all Focus and Stamina recovery. If eaten outside a Safe Zone, they kill the consumer, immediately.]

Oh, if that was all.

Cass shoved it in her mouth. It had a soft and airy texture more like cake than a mushroom, yet tasted like pork. It was a gross combination.

Her mouth tingled as the mushroom melted like sugar.

“Is it supposed to–” Cass’s question was cut off by a spike of pain. It felt like a rod had been shoved through her chest. Like another stabbed at her brain.

Her eyes unfocused.

She couldn’t breathe. She clutched at her chest. At her throat.

Her hands were on fire. Ants ran over every inch of her body. Their legs writhing over her skin.

She wanted to scream.

Someone was screaming. Was that her? Was that Alyx? Was that the world?

And then she was falling. There was nothing around her. Nothing but a roaring wind. It whipped all around her. It tore at her, ripping away clothing and hair and skin. It stripped her organs and eroded the bone.

Until she was nothing.

Nothing but a spark in the wind. A flame flickering in the roar.

Her flame floated above an endless sea. It was dark and still and deep.

In the center, directly below her opened a deep canyon. A crease in the dark. Water rushed in from every side. It poured endlessly into the crack.

And the crack screamed. In words she did not know. In words she could not comprehend. It screamed. Broken.

Begging for something that nothing could provide.

It screamed and she screamed back.

Her pain echoed off its walls. Her pain drowned in the roar of the rushing water. She and her pain cascaded down into that chasm.

As she fell, she shifted. Her flame became a snake’s tail.

She writhed in the air. But there was no escaping the pull of gravity.

She fell senseless and writhing into the dark. Oblivion held her. Cradled her at the bottom.

She was no one. Nothing.

A light broke the perfect darkness. It split the world from above. It shone down upon the snake.

The snake looked up.

A girl’s face, enormous and bright, looked down through the shining crack. She said something.

A name.

And the snake’s heart soared.

Cass sat up with a gasp, awake and alert, her heart pounding in her chest.

She blinked. She was again sitting amid the moss in the Safe Zone at the base of a small hill. A sky of crystal stars shimmered down on her from above. Some tall mushrooms grew from the hill’s crown, glowing faintly pink and green. On the far side, there was a shallow pool of water, glimmering in the dark.

Just to the right, lay Alyx, convulsing in the moss.

Cass scrambled to her side. What was happening?

Salos? Do you know?

He did not respond.

Alyx continued to writhe before Cass’s eyes.

Cass reached out to help Alyx but stopped short. Was one supposed to hold convulsing patients down? Something about keeping them from hurting themselves?

Or did that make it worse? Should she not touch her? Was it okay, since she was on the plush moss carpeting?

On Earth, she would have looked it up.

On Earth, she would have called emergency services.

On Earth, it wouldn’t be just her alone with the one other person in the world.

Cass ran a hand through her hair, grasping at the roots. She took a deep breath. Panic wasn’t helping. She needed to stop and think it through.

What did she know?

Alyx had given Cass Angel’s Grace. Eating that had been the most unpleasant experience in her life, but it was supposed to heal her.

Cass paused and looked down at her own body. It was still covered in dried blood and her clothing was torn to shreds, but it didn’t actually hurt anywhere, now that she thought about it. The cuts and lacerations were all closed like they’d never happened. There was no bruising.

Stamina: 54/54

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Focus: 225/225

Health: 41/41

Her stats were completely refilled too.

So, Angel’s Grace worked, it just felt like it was killing you as it did so.

Alyx had also been injured. Her arm had hung weakly at her side. There had been a long gash across her forehead.

Cass scanned Alyx’s face, but could not find the gash now. Her arm spasmed the same as the rest of her body, suggesting she was healed or healing.

Was this what it looked like to be healed by Angel’s Grace?

Cass grimaced. Good to know it looked almost as bad as it felt.

But, if this was the process, did that mean there was nothing Cass needed to do? Did Alyx need to just ride it out?

Alyx should be mostly healed by now. It shouldn’t be too much longer. Cass had been much more injured than Alyx had, after all.

Any minute, she’d stop convulsing and wake up.

In the meantime, Cass just needed to sit tight.

She stretched, experimentally. There was no muscle pain. No stiffness.

How are you feeling, Salos? Cass asked.

He did not respond.

Was that because he couldn’t or because he still didn’t want to talk to her? She bit her lip. Instinct said it was because he couldn’t. But reason said there was no evidence to suggest it was one over the other.

She shook her head. She could not just sit here waiting. She needed to do something.

Cass stood up.

She’d look around the area. Get a lay of the land. It was safe here, but there may be other useful supplies.

There were two doors to the Safe Zone. First was the narrow door they’d come through, connecting the Safe Zone to the secret study and spawning pools. From this side, the door was disguised as smooth stone. If she closed it, they would probably be unable to open it again, if they could even find it.

Would you know how to open it again? Cass asked him.

He didn’t respond.

She found a rock to prop the door open, just in case.

The other entrance was an imposing set of double doors. They were carved from the same heavy stone as the rest of the temple and adorned with a pair of dancing, Chinese-style dragons. Cass was willing to bet that was where the Lord was supposed to live once fully grown and ready to eat invaders.

Directly opposite the double doors, just below the crest of the little hill, was a stone platform, octagonal and inlaid with glowing red runes. She’d played enough video games to recognize the return portal when she saw one and gave it wide birth. She didn’t want to accidentally trigger it and abandon Alyx now.

She climbed past it to the hill’s top. A copse of lightcaps the size of small trees glowed over her, pink and green. At their base, a bouquet of smaller glowing mushrooms grew up from the moss, a sea of glittering colors. Some she recognized from the other Safe Zone—shelps and spones and flintshrooms—others were new to her.

Mudcap - an edible mushroom with a deep earthy flavor.

Bouncy Agaric - a gilled mushroom known for its highly elastic cap.

Starlight Morel - an edible honeycombed mushroom with a sweet nutty flavor.

Cass collected the edible ones and restocked on Flintshrooms. Should she build a fire? Would Alyx like that, waking up to a campfire? The Safe Zone was doing more for her healing than Cass’s camping skill Beacon of Hearth and Home could, but she’d be hungry when she woke up, wouldn’t she?

If nothing else, it would give her something to do.

Cass climbed back down to the base of the hill. Alyx’s convulsing had slowed, but her eyes hadn’t opened.

Setting up the campfire was simple at this point. Elemental Manipulate a stone circle, put the flintshrooms in the center, Elemental Manipulate a flame into existence. Cass made herself a stone stool to sit on and a second one for Alyx when the fit passed.

Cass put the mudcaps and morels around the fire to get them roasting. Hopefully, they’d be nice and toasty by the time Alyx woke up.

When was she going to wake up?

Cass watched Alyx from her stool. She’d be okay, right? She’d wake up any second and be right as rain. Just like Cass had.

She wasn’t having an allergic reaction to Angel’s Grace, right? That wasn’t a thing that happened in fantasy stories. No one was allergic to healing potions or miracle plants.

But people were allergic to all sorts of things in real life.

Cass chased the thought off. These were useless worries. Alyx would be okay. They would get out of this place together.

Cass didn’t have to be alone.

Cass stared into her fire. It crackled quietly in the gloom. A light toasty smell filled the room from the roasting mushrooms.

She was safe. She had survived the Deep. As soon as Alyx was ready, she could leave.

So why didn’t she feel safe?

Why did she feel so cold?

So alone?

Cass’s hand drifted up to the necklace hanging inert around her neck.

“Are you there?” she whispered.

She hadn’t known him that long. What had it been? A couple of days? It was hard to say since she’d been underground the entire time. Not more than three. Five if you wanted to count the two she was unconscious for.

The point was, she didn’t know him.

She didn’t want him in her head.

She’d been just fine before she met him.

Well.

Maybe not ‘fine’.

She’d been lonely. Extremely lonely. Lonely enough to consider trusting a demon who’d tried to kill her.

And he had tried to kill her. It was easy to forget that. He had tried to kill her.

If she said that enough times maybe she would be able to make herself stop worrying about him. Maybe that would stop the fear lurking in her gut.

Was he okay? What had that core done to him?

He wasn’t just ignoring her. Nothing had changed. She had no new evidence one way or the other, but she knew.

She could feel it. She knew it the same way she knew how to wield her staff. It was unnatural but true knowledge.

Something about the core had knocked him out. The system window said the necklace was evolving. But what did that mean? How long would it take?

What would he be like when he came back?

He had to come back though. She needed answers. She needed to know what had happened in that last fight.

It was all hazy, but she could still remember the blood lust, the hunger with which she—they?—had fought the Caretaker. Those hadn’t been her desires.

She wasn’t even convinced they’d really been Salos’s.

Then again, what did she know about him? Only that he was a demon and that he didn’t use to be. Was it demonic to want to kill like that? Or was that just how assassins were?

Did it matter which it was? Who he used to be was largely irrelevant. He was Salos the demon now. If Salos the demon could possess her and fill her with reckless blood lust, that was a problem. Did it matter whether he’d wanted to do it to her or not?

She sighed, holding her head in her hands.

Hell. How much of this line of thinking had he been running after her accidental Command? How was she ever going to apologize to him?

How could they trust one another like this? He could possess her at any moment. She could override his free will with a careless Command.

Her stomach twisted. She hadn’t asked for this. She didn’t want this. There had to be a way to change it. To free them both.

Salos said there wasn’t. He’d said her best bet was to destroy him.

What kind of answer was that?

She grit her teeth. Someone had to know more about demons. Someone had to exist who could help them.

Salos didn’t know everything. Salos could be wrong.

She sighed. What was she even saying? What was the point in getting worked up now? It changed nothing.

She knew nothing.

It would be easier to be mad at him. If she could hate him. If she could yell and scream because he’d possessed her again. Because he’d tried to kill her once.

It would be simpler at least.

Alternatively, it would be easier if her worry was uncomplicated by that frustration. If her only concern was what that core had done to him. Should she have touched it? Should she have let the necklace absorb it? Should she have eaten it directly instead?

Instead, she was dumb for worrying. She was dumb for caring.

It would be easier if he was here with her. If he was talking to her. If he could just tell her what was going on.

Anything but this silence.

She wished Alyx would wake up.

She wished she had never been dragged into this, that she was still home with her siblings.

Her hand clutched tighter around the necklace’s pendant, as if squeezing it would somehow make him manifest sooner. As if squeezing it would somehow bring him back to her.

As if it would somehow make her less alone.