It didn’t take Clay long to reach Mia’s old home. She was lying against the tree, just like the first time he had found her, with the difference that she had grown a lot since then, both physically and mentally.

Maybe a bit too much for her age, but the circumstances left them little choice. Her eyes were red, cheeks puffed, and he knew she cried all the way before falling asleep next to the tree. Walking over quietly, he decided to let her rest. They were safe around the poison, he could feel the pressure on his aura lifting noticeably once he had entered.

Of course the poison would accumulate inside him during his stay, but this was still far better than having to deal with the mess going on out there. The last time he had to face a foe this strong was the red furred bear. These awakened beast were still far too dangerous to just fight on a whim.

Without his Eruption and drinking all of that heart blood, he would have surely died. Thinking of this, he concentrated inwards, observing his inner lake, the place where his own heart blood was stored.

It was on a critical level even after absorbing the awakened dire wolf, but he already felt back then that something had changed, and now he had the time to get a grasp on what it was. Surrounding his inner lake was the river which purified the essence from the atmosphere and turned it into his own, essentially distilling it to the liquid he called heart blood.

This river had somehow enlarged and strengthened, it wasn’t a lot by any means but with how sensitive he was towards essence, it was impossible not to notice. The problem wasn’t the river nor the lake, but the countless streams, which ran from the lake through his body like a complicated network of veins.

These stream were what he used when circulating his essence inside his body to strengthen it. Now some of these streams had dark spots clotting them up. It wasn’t serious enough to stop his flow of essence, but certainly enough to hinder it, slow it down, resulting in a decrease in efficiency.

He could feel that just the circulation of essence, shaved away at these impurities, a bit after each rotation, but the process was painfully slow. If he held this pace he would need days if not weeks to fully purge these impurities, but that was the price he had to pay for burning essence that wasn’t his.

He skipped the whole process of distilling essence into heart blood and just burned that of someone else. He knew there were severe consequences for burning foreign essence, but he wasn’t able to pin it down. After experiencing it for his own, he definitely came closer to an answer. To his knowledge, there were only three people who had consumed the heart blood of another.

The first was of course Mia, as she needed it to live, her body only digesting heart blood and water. It had something to do with the roots covering her chest and heart. What exactly happened during the time when she was partially fused with the tree was still mostly a mystery to him, he lacked too much information to come to any coherent conclusion. I didn’t matter, the roots are a part of her and must have had a beneficial effect, else she wouldn’t have survived.

The second person was Emma, an old classmate of Clay, who died a brutal death, transforming halfway into some grotesque abomination of two species before dying. The last and most interesting was…

What was her name again? It was something with ‘Isa’. Well he didn’t really have a connection with that crazy woman, he was only intrigued by her appearance at the time, as she was what he would call a mutant. She somehow was able to fuse herself with a mutated cat, altering her outer appearance and presumably whole biology.

Most likely the amount and purity of heart blood consumed, played a big role in what happened, as well as your own purity. Emma clearly consumed too much and too potent heart blood, resulting in a gruesome halfway transformation.

Drinking some in similar strength or less would result in a short influx of essence, but would leave impurities. But how was that Isa able to fuse with another’s beast's heart blood?

Absorbed in his thoughts, Clay didn’t notice Mia’s poison clotting and gathering inside of him into the usual sludge, but instead of resting inside of him like usual it moved throughout his system, along his streams, gathering around the impurities.

He watched in awe as he witnessed the poison, clot around the dark spots as they once had to his own heart so long ago. After, the sludge formed substantially around the spots, it slowly began to burn as it absorbed them, feeding off the foreign essence to fuel its own growth.

The poison stopped seeing him as foreign, once he had survived, probably assimilating partially with him. These impurities were different, they were impurities to begin with because they were foreign and not his, and so the poison absorbs them.

Of course, he still had to deal with all of this poison later, but cleansing it was far easier and quicker than the impurities. His thoughts began to race, as his breath quickened, and he saw the potential of this discovery. He didn’t want to get exited too soon, but if he understood this correctly, he just found a way to remove all side effects from ingesting heart blood, while keeping all the benefits.

Thinking about the power he had when he drank the heart blood caused a shudder ran down his back. He still wasn’t quite himself, feeling the lingering effect of having burned so much essence at once, it was… intoxicating.

Placing his hand on his chest, he took a deep breath. There was no need to think, he should concentrate on recovering and finalizing his plan. The decision to look for other people had already been made, they just had to push the plans a bit ahead of time.

The problem were the moons. He didn’t know when or if they would return to being normal, but it didn’t matter, he now had a way to have unlimited essence, as long as he had heart blood and Mia’s poison. The former can be easily acquired from any beast, and the latter was stored in jars upon jars in their cellar, not to mention that he had the source with him.

Wiping a few loose strands of Mia’s hair to the side, he gently placed her head on his chest, slowly coming up with a plan, as he waited for her to awake.

******

A few hours later, Mia awoke with a startle. Shock turned into relief, upon seeing Clay, before anger took over, and he was barraged with an onslaught of hits. When she finally calmed down, she just laid against his chest, relishing in the fact that he was still alive. They both stayed like this until the sun rose from the horizon,

“You lied, didn’t you?” A bit startled, Clay first wanted to come up with another excuse, but decided against it. “I did.”

“Why?” The question was simple, and yet he hesitated to answer. He valued honesty. Yet besides the high chance of dying, he lied. No, he even expected it and did everything in his power to prepare Mia to survive on her own. She was strong, and internally he knew she would have continued without him. So why did he lie?

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“To be honest, I wanted to – No, I needed to believe in this lie. It wasn’t like you needed it, but more so that I had to convince myself that I would survive this. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, but in the future there will be no more kind lies.” She spoke with an unusual coldness to her voice, but Clay didn’t refute her nor comment further on the topic, she had to be strong. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t the one being taken care off.

Standing up, he held his hand out to her. “No more lies.”

Grabbing on to it, she gave a resolute nod, before raising to her feet, before proceeding to grab the spear from the royal ant. She kept on to it, even during the chaos.

Resting it on her shoulders, she asked, “What are we going to do now?”

“Well due to the current… circumstances we have to push our plans ahead, so we will go back home, and prepare to leave everything behind,” replied Clay with a bit too much enthusiasm.

Mia knew that he was just coping by showing that much enthusiasm, he hated it when things didn’t go after plan, but would never admit to it in front of her. Not that she complained, enthusiasm was better than fear. She preferred to go with the flow of things anyway.

******

The initial plan was to just quickly grab what they could and leave, but Clay hesitated. Since the sun rose, the pressure around his aura shield had noticeably decreased. That could be just the calm before the storm, but that was the first time since this anomaly started that the pressure decreased.

Their preparation were still in the early stages, and leaving so abruptly might not be the smartest idea. Especially when he considered that he had to idea what awaited them on their way to the next city, there might be countless more awakened beast, while he was rather certain that around their village were at most two.

Only the bone spiders and toads could have an awakened beast like the leader of the dire wolves he had killed last night. If so, it wasn’t unlikely that one of them comes visiting this night, should the void rise once again. But at least they are an open enemy which he can prepare for, beasts he has experience fighting against.

With the effect that Mia’s poison had on him, he can also now ‘safely’ consume heart blood to give him a temporary boost which far exceeds his normal capabilities. With this power, he felt like he had a high chance of winning against both the bone spider and toad, should they dare challenge him.

The only problem was that they were pretty much out of heart blood. They never stored much, as it would lose its potency anyway, and against the leader of the dire wolf he chugged every single vial they had left. They would need more, but going out into the wilderness and stirring up the hornets nest, also didn’t seem like a good plan.

Not to mention that most beast would have exhausted most of their heart blood by now, in trying to survive this anomaly. Biting into his thump, Clay tried desperately to come up with a plausible plan of action, but they were really stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Seeing how Clay struggled in making a decision became Mia, an idea. “Why don’t we go into the bunker?”

“The bunker…?” Frowning in confusion, Clay suddenly turned to face Mia with a look of realization. “The bunker! Of course, we could use that. I already forgot about it, good that you are thinking along.”

Going into the cellar, he stood before their bunker, his initial excitement stifling a little. What they lovingly called bunker, was nothing more but an old metal cooler, long cut off from any power, not that there flowed any more power anyway.

The idea was to make use of the fact that metal pushed essence away from it, which included the influence from the atmosphere. They already tested it and even if though the metal didn’t shield them completely from the atmosphere, due to lacking in thickness, was the protection still substantial. But now it even served a second use.

It would keep their own aura inside the cooler, stopping it from leaking away. After thinking it over, Clay realized that the dire wolves must have sensed his aura somehow, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint his location so accurately.

Standing beside him, Mia asked concerned, “You sure that we are both going to fit?”

“Pff, no problem we will just make some more room… somehow,” replied Clay mumbling the last part.

“What was that?”

“Oh nothing, let’s continue with our preparations, shall we?”

Going back up, Clay quickly gathered some essentials like rope, cord, a flint and steel, a water flask, the map (which he still hadn’t quite figure out), some bandages, a good portion of the dried meat and his trusty hunting knife.

Looking at the bag, he was quite satisfied until he saw his own clothing. Mia still had the leather armor he had made for her, not much more than dust staining it’s polished glimmer. It hasn’t even experienced a single real battle yet.

But he himself was already desperate enough to use his unfinished prototype, of which the last was destroyed during the fight with the leader of the dire wolves. Of course, he still had the cloak from the dire wolf he had made so long ago, but that was it.

There was no more leather armor he could use and even if he had, he would be reluctant to use it, as past fights have shown how little protection it offers. The damage which the leather armor absorbed was compared to his regeneration meaningless.

Hours upon hours spent in his little workshop repairing and refining, armor was often reduced to scraps in but a single fight. Well there was this one thing he had in mind, not even a prototype, but more so a concept he had started to work on long ago.

For months now he had gathered the silk from the bone spiders, but not the one they used to traverse on the forest and graced every tree in their territory, but specifically the strong treads spun between their spikes, which they used to absorb trauma.

If he learned one thing when fighting against the bone spiders, then that he never once was able to cut these threads. He already used them for the straps of his mask, which also gave him this idea. A fabric made out of their silk, would not only be close to impossible to cut, it would allow to just sew patches of leather or other fabric unto them.

The fabric itself would work like a cushion for trauma, and if he was cut, the loose structure and flexible nature of the silk would allow claws to pass through, instead of severing the threads. The leather or other fabric on top would be just replaceable patches to better protect against the elements and injuries.

Gathering this much silk was more than a little challenging, but he should have enough by now. Which made it that more unfortunate that there wasn’t any time left to make grand preparations. Well, he had to work with what he was given.

******

Time quickly passed during their preparations, the short day ending, in a beautiful twilight, as Clay and Mia stood before the cooler, cushioned with blankets and pillows on all sides. Seeing the size of the box made him wince a little. He really didn’t want to spend an entire night in that box.

As the sun finally fully vanished and dusk passed, Clay suddenly halted in stepping into the cooler. Mia who was already sitting inside looked at him in confusion, then out of the small window and then back at him. “Hurry up already! The sun is gone.”

Relieved, Clay smiled, letting himself fall to the side against, the railing of the stairs. Startled, Mia jumped up from the cooler, ready to stop his fall, but he signaled with his hand that he was fine. Stroking through his hair, he rested his head on the railing, looking at the dirty and with dust coated ceiling. “It’s over.”

Getting out of the cooler, Mia looked through the small window, seeing the moons not rising in union, forming the void, but instead the old moon rose darkly alone to the peak, looking darker than usual as if it had exhausted itself, followed by the blue moon who too seemed to have lost some of its glimmer.

Pulling out a notebook, Clay made a single stroke with his pencil. “We have 42 days. After that, we will most likely have to manage this void once again.” Turning to Mia, he laughed. “We should make the best out of that time, right?”