I needed to sleep.

But it took me until daylight to dress all of Keeper's wounds. Tying knots with one arm, it turned out, was not so efficient.

Keeper hadn't spoken all night, either. The last thing she'd told me, immediately after she said my life was 'basically' over, is that I would be 'craving blood' for the next bundle of nights. She allowed me to drink my own, but it didn't taste all that pleasant.

The cravings bubbled more intensely as the night progressed, as did my desire to curl into a ball and lose consciousness for twelve hours. But by morning, I was glad to have covered all of Keeper's scuffs and scratches. There was a particularly appetizing cut along the length of her calf. I had wrapped it after the third try, the first two were stopped by excessive slobbering.

Then, Keeper finally spoke again. "Jesus Christ. There's way too much shit I gotta tell you."

"You could start with Jesus Christ," I said, limping my tired legs back towards the battle-torn clearing. Maybe I'll take a nap there.

She followed close behind. "It's just a phrase I picked up from the gods. Delilah, used to say it a lot."

More questions than I could feasibly ask popped up in my head. "What does it mean?"

Keeper went silent for a few beats. I turned to see she'd fallen slightly behind. So I stood to wait for her. "I think it was the name of someone she hated," she said.

"Million Eyes, that's fascinating." I snorted. "What a wonder, it works." I continued my exhausted limp as the girl shuffled up beside me.

"I'm almost scared, you know. You haven't asked any questions."

"I just asked one right there." I tilted my head at her.

"Any questions about you. You just accept it all. Like nothing happened. You're missing an arm for fuck's sake."

"I was almost scared you didn't notice." I spotted the tall rock through the tips of the trees and the path of carnage that led to it. A fallen log blocked our way, but more concerning was the pile of trees I'd effortlessly jumped over last night.

Keeper broke the brief silence. "You can't awaken anymore because you'll be hungry forever."

"What if I eat a lot?"

"You'll get hungrier."

I lifted my legs onto the log that blocked the way, straddling it. "So, I won't be able to call myself Hunger?"

"You can't be something you're a slave to. And without awakening, I don't see a world where you can defeat The Nine." She lifted herself up to the log and I reached my arm to help her over. The soft flesh of her hand, tender and warm.

"I shouldn't touch you anymore," I said, the building dribble coating my mouth. "It does get better after this, right?"

She only stared at me, concerned.

"How do you say we get over that?" I brought the subject back to our current predicament. The pile of trees in the way.

Keeper stared at it for a while. "Well," she said, "I don't think we can."

I shifted my gaze to her, blinking a few times in case I'd fallen asleep. "What?"

"Given everything we know, we can't get over those trees. We could go around them, but that's got its own problem. Wading through the underbrush, climbing out of that ditch." She jutted her head to point at it. "And our exhaustion, it all makes it kind of pissy to walk around."

"So…"

"We can give up," she said, "or…" The girl took a deep breath and held her scissors from the blade, out in front of her. "Grab them."

I did as she said, and her feet carefully floated off the ground. I blinked a couple of times. "What in the gods…"

"Put me on top and hold on tight."

I placed the weightless girl and her weightless shears on top of the fallen trees. She took one step backwards, and fell slowly on the other side. The shears levered against the tree trunk, into the air. The weapon raised on my end as Keeper gently lowered on hers. I gripped the handle tightly with my only hand, and the shears pulled me off the ground. Once I was high enough, I stepped onto the trees and slid down to the other side.

"But with new information," she started, then raised her brow expectantly.

"You can float?"

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Her shoulders rose and fell, and her eyes wrinkled ever scarcely. A short chuckle. If she weren't so drained, I'd bet she'd have fallen to the ground laughing. "Anything is possible. Just gotta learn a little more."

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I tried to rest when we got to the clearing, but I couldn't sleep with my constant desire to torture the blood out of something, and Keeper couldn't sleep for that same reason. So, we decided to walk back to the village. Well, hobble back might be more accurate.

It was slow, and since talking takes energy, silent work. I hadn't noticed it before, but I'd grown accustomed to a convenient lack of hunger ever since arriving in The Realm. Now that the feeling gnawed at my gut and my mind, few questions seemed of large enough importance.

"I have a question," I said, well into our hike back to the village of Stock.

Keeper grunted, half-lidded eyes paying me a quarter of her mind.

"Why wasn't I told Dream Essence burns Nightmares?"

The girl's eyes closed entirely. "Cause it doesn't?"

"What? But it burned its claw. More than that, destroyed it," I said. The sudden appearance of white smoke flashed in my mind. The explosions.

Keeper only groaned, then tripped on a root. Instead of falling she floated, gently spinning in the air. Shears included.

"Keeper?"

No answer.

"Are you asleep?"

Nothing.

I touched her shoulder—Succulent blood-filled flesh. Oh gods. She is asleep. I could easily… taste—No.

I retracted my arm from the girl and she spun again, this time in the opposite direction. She wouldn't even know if I tried a taste. No. Bad. But all I need to do is rip the bandages from her wounds and I could—Gods this is hard.

Instead of grabbing the girl, I reached for her solid, non-fleshy shears. The cool metal, refreshing against the tips of my fingers. She steadied and I led her to the ground. I had to fill her hood with some stones though, since the wind kept picking her up.

Maybe I'll give sleeping another go. I made a brief check of our surroundings, then dragged Keeper to the shade of a small ledge where tree roots from above breached through. I even went so far as to slip the tips of her weapon into the curling roots before I walked off, to make certain it didn't float away.

I brought back an armful of soft leaves, grass, and a few excessively bouncy flower stems I'd stumbled across, wrapped them all in my cloak, and laid my head on it. As soon as my eyes shut, hunger wrenched my stomach into a great big knot. My tongue salivated so intensely that I was drooling on my makeshift pillow in minutes. I turned over and ignored it.

Soon, visions of Keeper's raw, dripping flesh wavered before me. It started with memories. A long crimson cut: beading and breaking tension, a single line of blood falling down her leg. My tongue, travelling its length. I need to stop.

Then, my mind shifted to brewing even more lascivious situations. Keeper would wake me with her hand on my cheek. Then she'd slip her bloody fingers into my mouth and strip herself of the cloth that covered her wounds. After I managed to convince myself of the scenario's implausibility, my mind would try another. She'd wake me, dirt on her gash, in need of cleaning. She'd scream for help, blood gushing from every orifice, drowning her. She'd lay on death's door, and with her last breath, permit me to indulge in the refined taste of human, just this once. Needless to say, I could not sleep.

At least, not next to the girl. The smell of dry blood was similar to wet. And it stirred all manners of regrettable fantasies within me. I grabbed my pillow of plants and wandered off further from the girl. The smell wasn't so heavy this time, but I knew, in the back of my conscious mind, I could walk back to her. I might even do it in my sleep. What if I don't know where she is?

My mentor's words rang in my head. A lost man receives no soup from the town that searches. But so too does the town receive nothing from him.

I closed my eyes and spun around. I spun until my mind played tricks on me. Until it cried for me to stop. Until it struggled and pleaded and laughed and lost sense of reality. Until I could no longer hope to know which way Keeper slept. And then, I walked. Trudging in no particular direction, in as many directions as I could, through the underbrush, not caring to stumble, not caring to fall. I walked. Into trees, into rocks, into pools of water and mud. Tumbling, wet, tired. And getting back up again. I walked.

When I was sure to be deep into the forest, I stopped. My mind, though it still complained, had given up. It knew I was lost, and so was Keeper. I fell to the floor. Hunger still whined and whimpered. But whining and whimpering, I could ignore. I closed my eyes, enjoyed a few more fantasies, and finally, I fell into a deep restful sleep.

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I awoke as darkness faded to light. I was lost. For a moment, confused and lost. But soon, just lost. My brow was covered in sweat, and I wanted to find Keeper, mostly to drink her blood, but for other reasons too, they just didn't seem as important at the time.

I'd slept right next to a small pond and, strangely enough, regrown an arm. I suspected it to be a side effect of soaking in carnal cravings for over half a day, since the arm was black and devoid of detail, like my claw had been the previous night.

I stood, wobbled, and called for Keeper. I yelled her name into the trees, into the pond, into the air. There was no answer. Without much in terms of a strategy, I wandered the forest in no particular direction. If it was a bit brighter, I might've been able to find my tracks and follow the trail of matted grass, dragged mud, or broken twigs back to where Keeper slept. And as obvious as that seemed now, I hadn't thought of it in my delirium.

I called for Keeper a while longer, and eventually, I thought it pointless. She might sleep for another hour, or another five. I'd do better searching for a different creature's blood. And if it weren't a Mauler, she likely would've approved of my endeavors. Though, that's not entirely important.

I meandered through the woods, learning of their shape. The longer I strolled, the brighter it got, and soon I found myself taking particular notice of the plants. A vast majority of the flora in The Realm had been familiar to me. Oak trees and wild grass. Daffodils, snowdrops, bluebells. But many were complete mysteries too. There was a white flower that resembled a butterfly and smelled of mint. There was an orange one that twirled like a spinning storm. There was even one the color of blood. I suspected it was poisonous from the rash it left on the inside of my cheek.

And as fascinated as the flowers kept me, I was still lost. I yelled Keeper's name some more. But instead of the girl I called for, another one parted the leaves in front of me. One I did not recognize.

"Hello," she said. "What are you doing in the woods?"