I held my tongue as a question dangled on the tip of it and shoved that curiosity and worry into energy to catch up to Okeria. Wood splintered under my feet as I let myself make more noise than I thought was safe, but even that wasn’t close to a match for Okeria’s haste and rising cacophony of heavy footfalls. He kept running like a man possessed toward a stain of light at the end of the corridor, which only grew brighter and brighter as I approached.

It had to be some kind of security. I’d known one person in my old life who’d had such a mastery over light that fighting them had been a terrifying and confusing experience, and if Scalovera had someone with a core like glow-moss buckshot, then we were in for a long and strenuous fight. My hand wandered to my knife’s handle as I raised the other filled with a ready-to-spawn hydra.

A brief crackle split the air. It was all the warning I got before Okeria exploded into electricity and motion, blurring into the opposing luminescence with a metallic rectangular shotgun in his hands. I grit my teeth and pushed off the floor with all of my might as gunshots and clashing metal rang out, followed by a strange wail that emanated equally from all the walls and floors at the exact same time.

That had to be the intruder alarm. “Shit.” I hissed, no longer worried about keeping quiet, and went to call on my consumables. Except I no longer had any active combat ones stored in Endless. My grit teeth turned into a full-blown grimace–I’d been a real idiot for thinking we could’ve gotten out of here without at least one massive and unnecessary fight.

My helmet flashed a warning as something flew out of the light at me. I threw myself into the wall with a grunt of effort and watched what looked like an arm soar by, smack into the ground, and roll in a semi-circle until the fingers were pressed up against the wall. Fingers that still grasped for a weapon they no longer held, and which glowed with a function that was somehow still active.

“Of course they’ve got a zombie as a jailor. Why the fuck wouldn’t they.” I groaned and finally drew my weapon. Wipe-away activated with a thought, and I was given six possible targets. Subtracting Okeria and Viri meant it would be a three on four. Both wipe-away and my helmet locked on to the one whose outline looked the most intact, and I slung my handful of hydra into the light as a preemptive strike.

A wet splat preceded a scream of pain. I closed my eyes for a moment and charged into the light, fully expecting to be blinded as I got even closer to the source. But just as the light grew unbelievably intense, it winked out completely. And the sounds of battle grew even louder.

“Blue. About time.” Okeria said calmly, even as he trembled with rage. He jabbed a finger at me, then at the three people opposite of him. “Kill one of them, and I’ll get another. Tell your hydra to keep one of ‘em alive for later.”

I blinked, then nodded in acknowledgement. Though I couldn’t help but notice Viri making herself as small as possible off in a corner, next to a fairly large alcove that was barred off from the rest of the room. One with a sunken floor that had filled with a relatively clear liquid. Staura blood. From the upper half of a body that hung by its wrists from white metal chains dangling from the ceiling.

Thorn. Still clad in spiky armor, slowly dripping blood into the pool below. I couldn’t even understand what I saw for a few moments as my mind tried to come up with explanations for what I saw. But there was no other explanation. Thorn had been split in two at the waist, strung up in an alcove, and left to bleed for however long he’d been there. I noticed his legs a moment later, which sat in the pool just a few feet away from him. How he’d managed to survive this long was a man-made miracle, as was obvious by the tube stuck up into the bottom half of his torso that pumped a healing potion into him.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I murmured. Somehow, this hadn’t been on the list of things I’d expected to see when we found Thorn. My disbelief was shattered by a bullet to the head, which broke through my helmet and embedded itself in a thin layer of impact-absorbing oil. The impact sent me sprawling back a few steps as my vision swam with a mixture of colours and visual noise, but I clenched my teeth and forced my eyes to focus on the person who’d just shot me.

Someone who seemed very surprised that I was still standing. Their faded green armor was angular, as if it had been hastily carved from stone, and had little pock marks all over it with tiny purple things inside of them. A flowery pistol that had begun to move away from me snapped right back to aiming at my forehead, and another bullet exploded forth from the other one that hadn’t stopped staring me down.

My petal-scales flowed from my dagger in a wide arc, blocking the bullet and three more that followed in the split second after. I split my dagger in two and added a few more slashes to the mix, then sent two of them at the gunman who was getting increasingly distressed at my continued existence. Bullets peppered the air around me and the slashes that wrapped me in safety. I advanced as unerringly as the tide, forcing the gunman to take a few steps back as my armor fully regenerated the head wound he’d given me.

Then my vision was clear. I was reminded that I had a lot of stats I wasn’t making the best use of at the moment, and the gunman was made to understand a moment later. His head jerked back in terror when I stepped into his personal space, then slid back even further as I opened his neck in a spray of sparks and watery blood. He dropped both of his guns and reached for his neck, sputtering out ragged gasps and terrified little noises that almost made me feel bad for him.

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Almost, but not quite. I spun and lashed out with a kick at the back of his knees, sending him crashing to the ground with a cry of pain and a gurgle of throat-blood. My foot met the back of his head, and a few more carefully-placed cuts ensured he wasn’t going to be getting up without losing all four of his limbs.

“Efficient. Nice work.” Okeria said distractedly as he wiped down his shotgun. His opponent hadn’t fared anywhere as well as mine had, as they were currently painted against a wall that still cracked with the rage of Okeria’s attack. The third one, who’d lost a limb, shivered and shook as they took in the sight of their easily-defeated allies.

I stepped over to them as Okeria made his way to Thorn. His silence was terrifying, but the crackle of electricity and flow of molten metal that surrounded him like a planet’s atmosphere was gut-wrenching.

“What are you going to do to me?” The third whispered in terror.

“Hell if I know.” I muttered with a glance back at Okeria. “But hey, you’re the one guarding someone who’d been split in two tortured. Doesn’t seem like you’re about to take the moral high ground here.”

The third looked down at the ground in shame. At least I chose to take it as shame, since it meant these Staura had a little bit of humanity in them. Unless they were Endra’s slaves as well, which was very possible. Maybe that was why Okeria had killed the one Staura.

“Blue.” Okeria said flatly. “Knock out or kill those two and come here. I don’t know how we’re gonna deal with this.”

I flourished my daggers and shrugged at the terrified third. “You heard the man. Knocked out or killed?”

“Knocked out.” They managed to squeak.

“Suit yourself.”

The deed took all of thirty seconds. I wiped the blood and armor scraps from my gauntlets and joined Okeria next to the bars in silence as we stared at Thorn’s brutalized form. It was disgustingly vile. A torturous way to keep someone alive and useless at the same time.

Okeria broke the silence a few minutes later with a humourless laugh.

“Ya know, it’s a really good way ta keep someone imprisoned and completely helpless. Stick a consistent source of liquid blessing into someone, but not enough ta fully heal them, and force their armor ta spend what little battery it manages to regenerate on keepin’ the legs alive. So Thorn’s battery’s constantly drained, and his armor’s weighin’ him down, but he dies if he takes it off. I’ll have ta remember that for when we’re dealin’ with Scalovera.”

The murderous edge in Okeria’s voice should’ve made me shudder. Instead, I found myself nodding in agreement. “I’ve seen something like this before. Not quite as intricate, but we found someone who’d been kept alive and constantly wounded so they couldn’t fight back.”

“It’s efficient, I’ll give ‘em that.” Okeria said. He gently wiped his hand across the bars, and they split apart like dry grass. “Speakin’ of efficient, did ya feel Endra on either of those two? Or see any maggots in the wounds ya made?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t seen any signs of Endra in them, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Okeria hummed in thought as he waded into Thorn’s blood and knelt down next to the man’s legs. He picked them up easily, then brought them over to Thorn’s dangling torso.

“Well, let’s hope it ain’t as bad as I think it is. Nothin’ has been yet, so maybe now we’re in for a treat.” Okeria grunted and pressed both of Thorn’s halves together. A groan escaped the man who should’ve been dead, and the tension bled out of Okeria’s shoulders. “Thank the gods Dylan didn’t get ta him. Alright, give me a hand here blue. I need ya ta pull the tube out when his armor starts ta form around it.”

That seemed unnecessarily dangerous. “You sure? That thing could be shoved into his stomach for all we know.”

“Oh, it’s almost definitely shoved in his stomach. But we’ve got somethin’ that’ll heal him a little more.” Okeria snapped his fingers, and an invisible drone carrying four vials of the facility’s waters appeared before my eyes. “I’m gonna drop it in the hole left behind by the tube when ya yank it out.”

“Four of them, though?” I asked, then realized the answer to my own question. “Just in case he gets the trinket instead of just the healing effect.”

Okeria nodded. “Got it in one. Now wrap your hands around that tube and get ready ta pull. Thorn might not be as powerful as me or Acasiana, but his armor’s workin’ overtime ta try and patch him up.”

I wrapped my hands around the tube as Okeria asked and watched as Thorn’s armor knit itself together before my eyes. The metal formed a weld-like seam to begin with, then melted that weld to create a perfect join that left no sign of any damage. Before I was ready for it, the weld wrapped around the tube and tried to connect to whatever material the tube was made of.

“Pull!” Okeria ordered.

But I already was. “You don’t have to tell me.” I grunted and ripped the tube free with a wet, tearing pop. Some other things came out along with it, but I averted my eyes and let the tube drain into the blood below as I focused on Thorn.

The waters from the facility trickled into Thorn’s wound as it closed, creating a misty rainbow that split apart into the colours that made it up. Those colours snaked towards Thorn’s neck and began to form as a talisman much like the one I’d created, but before I could even warn Okeria, a second vial spilled into Thorn’s wound. This one’s liquid simply disappeared into the wound.

Thorn grunted in dissociated pain and slowly began to shiver. “O…Okeria? Sebastian? Are you two actually real?”

A startled little yelp escaped from the corner, reminding me that Viri was still here with us. “Okeria? Sebastian? That’s who you are?”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Okeria laughed. “Took ya long enough.”