Love is powerful enough to transcend death. Throughout time there are lovers that always end up drawn to each other. Nothing but calamity awaits those that try to intervene. Then again, the same thing can be said about vengeance…

~Aine, Goddess of Love and Vengeance

The spell never hit—hell, it never cast. Crow climbed up the rest of the way, ignoring the Vodun’s screams. When he finally climbed over the railing and looked below, he saw a table had turned into a Changeling. It had latched onto the Vodun, and those trichomes penetrated the man’s flesh and shredded it. It mainly was surface wounds, but it looked ghastly.

Seeing a live one in its humanoid shape differed significantly from seeing it collapsed into a pile of foliage. Twisted vines made up its skeletal structure, and Crow could see them from where the Vodun tore through the leafy flesh that surrounded it. Green viscous blood poured out from where the vines were cut, but the overall depth and humanoid shape came from those thick layers of leaves.

He’d assumed previously that the trichomes were all over its body, but really they were only on the green foliage. The vines underneath did not have any. Overall, it had a fuzzy appearance and might even be considered cute.

At least until it turned its head around and opened its wide maw exposing rows of thorn-like teeth. Its eyes were orbs filled with a black tar-like substance, but floating in the center of them were diamond-shaped seeds. Those seeds gave of a yellow-green glow which made it appear even more sinister.

“Help. Me…” the Vodun called out. He’d managed to push the Changeling away, but Crow shuddered upon seeing his withered face. The creature was sucking the guy dry of blood and nutrients, perhaps even vitality. If the guy had hair, it was likely that it’d have white streaks through it. Still, the most disturbing part was the vibrant dark blue skin now looked grey-blue.

Crow sighed and pulled out his bow. The arrow screamed through the air as it was released and punched through its chest where its heart should be. Since it was Rootless, it still retained the vital organs from when it was once human--so the heart and brain were lethal targets. He summoned the arrow, and with his bowstring drawn to his cheek, he stared down the arrow at the Vodun. The man stared back as if he expected nothing less.

“Dammit,” Crow muttered, lowing his bow. He entertained the idea of killing the man but couldn’t make himself do it. As much as Crow knew it was something he should do, he felt like it was crossing a line. If the roles were reversed, he knew the man wouldn’t hesitate to end Crow. He could even claim he was offering the bastard mercy, but in the end, his conscience stayed his hand. It was a matter of honor, and maybe he was afraid. Each time he’d killed, it had been self-defense.

In the end, he turned away and found the stairway going up and left. There could be dozens of Changelings hiding in that room, so he couldn’t sit there and ponder his bottom line and thoughts on morality. He just couldn’t entertain killing a man that was already down.

The final thought that turned him away came down to karma. The Sluagh once mentioned being agents of karma, and maybe, as an unfated, that’s what he was too. Since fate couldn’t affect him, there was a chance that his actions held a higher impact toward his karma. It was a decision that tormented him because it lacked a definitive answer. So he stuck to his bottom line and hoped it didn’t bite him in the ass later.

Reaching the next floor, he turned to the left with his bow drawn and saw Mara—the real one. She was awake and staring back at him, but a sticky yellow fibrous material covered her like a cocoon. It almost looked like a spiderweb, but its woven structure almost looked like thin strands of seaweed.

He pulled out his falcata, hoping to cut it, but that sticky substance on the strands had hardened into something that even his blade couldn’t scratch. Carefully, he drew out his Night Fire, so it covered his finger and swiped downward. The thin strands curled and turned to ash under the intense heat, but he saw that it singed Mara’s clothes. He didn’t have enough control to completely prevent her from being harmed, but he also had no other options.

Minutes went by as he carefully cut at strategic places allowing Mara to pull off the rest. By the time he was done, he was sweating quite a lot. He lacked the Source to maintain that kind of fire for that long, and its destructive nature fought his control, making the mana burn even harder.

“How the hell did you get up here?” Crow asked, but before Mara could reply, she spewed out dark, mud-like goo. He had to swallow hard not to vomit. “Gods be merciful! That smells awful.”

Mara lunged forward and wrapped Crow in a massive hug, and squeezed him until he felt like his insides were about to pop out. He could feel her trying to hold back her sobs, so he rubbed her head, unsure how to console her. Eventually, she regulated her breathing but didn’t let him go.

“Something snatched me outside the tower and then climbed up the side of it,” Mara explained.

“Something?”

“I don’t know. It was like a turtle with a sucker-like mouth, and instead of a shell, it had these interlocking thorns that glistened with the same sticky substance he covered that cocoon with. Instead of legs, it had these pods with thin vines growing out of them. It was like five times bigger than me, and fighting back was useless.”

Crow scanned his memory to see if anything matched, and surprisingly, there was one.

“A Muirdris? I thought those things were water-based.”

“What is a Muirdris?” Mara asked, still trying to get all the sticky stuff out of her hair.

“They are sometimes called a Sea Bramble. It can actually inflate and contract, which makes them appear larger than they are. In truth, their mass isn’t much greater than yours. You should know it is also a type of Rootless. Which means it was once human and has retained its intelligence.”

“This mommy wants to burn that bastard alive—no, I want to rip it apart with my bare hands.” Mara was well and truly pissed. That would have been alright if she didn’t look like a drowned rat, and Crow burst out laughing. At least until she punched him in the chest and caused him to lose his breath.

“Dammit, was that necessary?” Crow groaned. Mara grabbed his ears and pulled Crow’s face toward hers, and kissed him so hard their teeth were grinding together. After she released him, Crow tried to spit the taste out of his mouth secretly because that was nasty. Mara saw what he was doing and burst out laughing.

“Thank you, lover. I thought I was going to die,” Mara told him honestly.

“I won’t let that happen,” Crow responded with a grin.

“So, how do we kill that thing?”

“A Muirdris? Do we have to? If the lore is correct, those tentacle vines are electrified. Did you experience that at all?”

“Yes, the bastard paralyzed me, or I wouldn’t have been captured so easily.”

“They aren’t so tough on land, but I still think we should avoid it if possible. I know you want to kill it, but the two of us might not have that ability. Lily could help negate the lightning, but those thorns are also filled with toxins, or maybe that’s from the sticky stuff. Either way, it’s a fight we should avoid. Plus, there are Changelings everywhere, so we can’t trust anything.”

“Really?” Mara looked intrigued, so Crow told her his story. “Woah, that sounds way more vicious than the stories they used to scare us with. Let’s get a move on. If the Vodun are catching up to you, we need to move faster.”

Mara pushed him away and walked toward the stairs. Other than the frayed cocoons in the room, there was nothing else here. However, Crow took most of the webbing and sent it into his Soulscape. He wasn’t sure if Lily could use it, but he thought it might make an interesting fabric for her. The shimmering, near-transparent threads had a very high tensile strength. Crow suspected if he hadn’t had a heavenly flame, he wouldn’t have been able to save her.

Climbing to the next floor, they found themselves in a kitchen. The Muirdris was busy cooking and adding seasonings to a large cast-iron pot. Mara and Crow looked at each other, and all he could mouth was ‘what the fuck?’

Mara almost burst out laughing, so the two of them ducked behind a counter that ran nearly the entire length of the room. Other than their breathing, neither one of them made a sound. The problem was the stairs leading upward were in plain sight of the Muirdris. They both peered over the counter, staring at the giant creature.

Despite not having arms, it had tight control over those whip-like vines. It was even chopping up vegetables to the side while constantly stirring the boiling broth. The cast-iron pot inside a brick oven hanging from a fireplace crane. Its actions were well-practiced, and Crow could only stare in wonder. It must have been a chef when it was still human. It was the only way he could make sense of it.

But they had a challenge to win, so Crow grabbed the nearest thing he could find: a wooden mixing bowl. Timing it for when the thing turned to check on the broth, which was roughly every thirty seconds, he snapped the bowl underhanded. Crow made sure he threw it, so it didn’t go above the counter height. That way, the beast didn’t notice it out of the corner of his eye.

It struck the stairway wall more or less where Crow aimed it, and then it tumbled down the steps below. He was hoping the Muirdris wasn’t smart enough to recognize the sound was going away from it. The clatter went unnoticed initially, but as it bounced a few more times, the creature turned its inflated body toward the stairs.

“Dinner comes.” Its twisted jaw and mouth garbled the words it spoke, but both of them could clearly understand him. They froze in place, especially when it didn’t immediately move to chase after the bowl. Other than staring toward the stairs, it continued to do what it was doing.

Time went by, and each second increased the tension exponentially. Finally, the Muridris pulled the fireplace crane forward, so its cast-iron pot was no longer directly over the flames. It carefully set down its chopping knife without making a sound. Strangely, it dumped the chopped vegetables into the broth before silently moving toward the stairs.

Its body deflated, and its woven thorn shell tightened so that it too grew smaller. Underneath it, those vine-like tentacles wove themselves into legs. It was creepy how human that thing looked in its current state. Once it disappeared down the stairs, Crow and Mara rushed up the stairs to the next level.

“You think Acco will be fine?” Mara asked in a whisper.

“That weirdo? Despite his defeatist attitude, I have to admit he is much more capable in a place like this than you and me.”

“That’s true. You think that thing is the boss of this place?”

“I hope so,” Crow muttered while climbing the stairs. They’d already passed the number that would usually bring them to the next floor. After they climbed enough stairs for at least four floors, a cogwheel with a door handle on it appeared before them.

“Go on. Open it.” Mara said, pushing him forward.

“What the hell…?” Crow looked back at her, and when he saw her evil grin, he could only grin and bear it. He grabbed the handle but smelled his burning flesh before he felt it.

“To open the door, you must offer a sacrifice.” The door said.

“Will you take Mara?” Crow asked in a whisper but felt something smack him on the back of the head.

“This mommy will make you pay for that later,” she whispered into his ear before she wrenched it sideways.

“Joke! It was just a joke. I’d never let anyone take you—wait, how will you make me pay?” Crow grinned, and Mara playfully shoved him. However, his feet weren’t properly set, and he stumbled into the door.

“Sacrifice accepted.”

“What the fuck!” Crow shouted.