Pain is a strange thing, a warning signal sent to the brain to inform you that you’re damaged. That you need to tend to your wounds, that maybe you should lie in bed rather than going out to sing, and dance, and play. It’s a useful tool, and unlike how it is for others it is something I have under control.

It’s not that it doesn’t hurt. I rather wish I could just turn off the pain, rather I simply don’t lose control over my faculties. I don’t easily faint, and I won’t lose control over my body, not easily at least.

That said pain isn’t the only cause for my current suffering.

My right arm has been healed, but in the wrong position. To say that the bone is disconnected is an underestimation of my problem. When my arm was severed, only a single muscle connected me to my errant limb, and that hasn’t changed since. The open wounds are sealed, but that’s it.

I twitch that connecting muscle and my arm rolls unnervingly around it. I try to ignore it.

My legs are… well, I don’t think I can really accurately describe them as legs anymore. The boots of my armour hold my flesh together in roughly the right shape, but my blood has stained everything below my waist. My mangled knees are misshapen and closer to my hips than they should ever be.

The healing potion has sealed all the wounds, but the shattered bones are… not fixed.

Every time I shift, the shards move about, cutting new paths through me. New wounds that won’t easily heal without the aid of an experienced healer.

All of this is easily enough to make my skin crawl in disgust. Even scar tissue is ordinarily enough to make my stomach twist, and my head light. Looking down at myself I feel like I should be fainting, but there’s something more important right now.

My disfigured body is nothing of importance.

My discomfort is nothing.

My pains are nothing.

I suffer for reasons worse.

Vii shivers beside me, covering herself with the one wing still remaining as she stares up at the ceiling, listening the same as I for the beast still bubbling in the room we left behind.

Eshya is still sleeping, Adler says that with the damage she’s taken she’s not likely to awaken for another few days. The drain on a person’s mana is far worse than simply the physical damage, and unlike the other monsters we’ve dealt with recently, she doesn’t have any means of recovering mana from her lost limbs.

I shuffle painfully closer to Vii and pull her close with the one arm that I still have, as I wait for the sounds of the monster above us to eventually leave us be.

We shouldn’t have attacked.

We didn’t know enough about the beast, and I’d thought that at the very least I’d be able to kill it with a full strike, or maybe leave it so wounded that we could escape it, but no…

It doesn’t have a body like ours, the split parts recombine too easily, and my main means of using annihilation is largely ineffective. The parts destroyed are still gone, I hope so at least, but I can’t simply use that to pull apart the rest of it. And what use is there to using flames against a creature already burning?

I ignore the bubbling above us, there’s no point to it. If it breaks through, even my best attack will do too little to save us, so there’s no point to spend so much of my efforts worrying over it.

The stub hanging from Vii’s shoulder, the remains of her missing wing, presses against my armour. It isn’t a clean wound The flesh that remains has been cut with violent chaotic swirls. A signature of my own magic. The healing potion didn’t smooth the wound out, simply covering the tattered flesh in skin, leaving twisted ribbons hanging in place of her missing limb.

I bite my tongue to keep my voice from escaping.

I want to scream in rage. I want to burn this whole world down, tear it apart and leave the wreckage strewn throughout the universe.

But I can’t.

I can’t even protect them from this one beast.

“I think it’s gone.” Adler sends in a message, still not willing to raise her voice in case it should hear us. That void made from silence and darkness, now our shelter, a shield that none of us easily break. The shining crystals are enough of a wound to it.

I listen, but the sounds of the bubbling liquid mass have disappeared.

“It could be tricking us.” I send. “It is… somewhat intelligent. What it was saying was translated by Chip into reasonably complex things.”

“It could be.” Adler acknowledges, nodding slowly. Her gaze tracking over us, and the wounds that we carry. This isn’t going to be something we can easily recover from.

“We get out.” Vii says, into my mind, pressing her face into my shoulder so as not to see the world around us.

“We get out of here, and we do amazing things. We see thousands of worlds and conquer most of them, we... we live through this. I don’t know how, but we do.” She says, her eyes stuck closed. “As long as I haven’t destroyed that future. I... I’m scared, Kyra.”

“I’ll save us.” I say, running my fingers through her hair. It feels as soft as down feathers, where the blood doesn’t wet it. Her warm, wounded body reminds me why I need to be careful, why I can’t just let my pride and my rage rule me.

I’m an empress, not a berserker, and not a beast. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that. When my Talent showed and for once I tasted true power, I forgot how to be cautious.

“Adler, Rudolf, we need to check the room.” I send to them. “Quietly, we do not want to invite our friend down here after us. Look for weapons, tools, anything that stores mana. We need an advantage against that thing.”

“We’re going to fight it again?” Adler asks, visibly aghast though she covers her mouth before she makes a sound.

“We might not get the choice.” I say, looking around the room.

“Shouldn’t we call for help?” Rudolf says, and I grit my teeth and stare up at the ceiling, tears streaming down my eyes as my rage tears my heart apart. My pride bent and soon bowing.

“I am about to contact Red.” I send. “I need you to focus on what we can do before help comes.”

“She’s still fighting a war…” Vii says, finally opening her eyes as she looks over at me. “If she leaves…”

“I know.” I reply, calmly as I can. “If she leaves her post. We lose the war. Our people die in the most awful ways imaginable, and we leave our allies to suffer the same.”

“What do we do?” Vii asks, trembling.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it.” I say, trying to keep my expression straight. “I want everything without compromise, but I’m not going to hesitate, when I truly have no other options.

“My empire, my people, my everything. I’ll give it all up, to see that you all make it out of here. I refuse to let any of you die.”

I swallow back my bile, my head light and dizzy as I realize the full consequences of this decision. Everything that I’ll lose in this choice. There’s a chance Red can make something work, but if she can’t…

Red and some of my people can be brought back to the ruins, away from Loekan, but I’ll have to get permission from Arduelle and Frey. Not everything is lost.

“We can wait.” Adler says, interrupting my thoughts. “Maybe there’s something here that’ll… maybe the rebels will come back and kill it for us.”

“And I’ll walk back on what legs? No healer is coming to us, we need to be carried and we don’t have enough hands and legs between us.” I reply, gazing up at the ceiling.

“Arduelle…” Vii starts.

“You think I haven’t asked?” I reply. “Her silence is… I’m half convinced that this was her work. She want’s me to… to become stronger, to do something for her. To kill someone for her. This could be her fucked attempt at getting me stronger.”

“Just like Red.” Vii chuckles, sniffling back a few tears before she starts trembling again.

“Except Red was weak, struggling to offer us as much as she did. Arduelle isn’t in that same position.” I reply, breathing slowly to force myself to stay calm.

Adler and Rudolf carefully move around the room, wary not only of possible threats in hiding, but also of anything that might make a sound. We still dare not even whisper to one another.

“Red. We need a rescue team.” I send to her, swallowing back my frustration.

“I know, I was watching.” She says. “Your rescue team is currently being put together, but they won’t be able to arrive for a number of hours.”

“How does this affect your battle?” I ask her, swallowing down my worries.

“It doesn’t, not by much at least. Nel will be leading the effort, Arn, Korgan and some of our better warriors will be with her. She’s also gathered a few others from the ruins. Students, I think.” She replies. “I won’t be able to come myself, and it would do you well to plan for their arrival. I’d rather not have anyone die because you left the fighting to Nel.”

“Understood.” I send back, sighing in blended relief and frustration, as I lean back against the stone ground. “Thank you.”

“It’s my duty.” Red replies. “You’re a decent enough leader, and you’re not as pitifully weak as you were, but you’re not yet good enough for your ambitions. Don’t die until you can actually live up to your promises.”

“I will survive, and I will change things.” I say, smiling as I let the tension escape my body.

“Nel. You’re coming for us?” I ask.

“Yes. I’ve been observing your struggle. We’ll be there in a few hours, just stay alive until I get there.” She says, saying nothing more. From her attitude she must be running herself ragged, just as I would be, or Eshya, or Vii.

My heart burns with shame, rage, and a little bit of happiness. I know she loves us, but there’s still something special about her expressing it in moments like this. I just wish she wasn’t putting her own life at risk, this situation is already bad enough as it is.

Even so, everyone is still alive. There’s still hope that I’ll make it through this without losing anyone. I just need to focus, and think.

“Do you mind me looking through your eyes?” I ask Adler. She’s still looking through the room careful of making any sound that might alarm the beast above us.

“Strange request, but sure.” Adler says, shaking her head as I look through her senses. It’s a strange experience, but the momentary discomfort eases when I close my own eyes.

The room is clearly a storage facility of some sort, the shelving units filled with all sorts of strange and unusual things. Where the room above is clearly an armoury, down here is where they store things that they’ve gathered from the beasts in the dungeon below us.

Much like the collection that Nel has tended to in our own base, there’s all sorts of beast parts, crystals, plants, and on and on the list grows. There’s plenty of things here, but none of it seems all that useful in our situation.

There are no potions or powerful magical tools left sitting around down here. I don’t know if we’ll find that sort of thing in another storage elsewhere, or if they simply don’t have anything like that in this base.

The weapons in the room above seem more likely to help us, than these, even without the hands to use them.

“That chunk of bone.” I say, quickly changing my mind. “Maybe I can draw the mana out of it.”

Adler nods, picking it up and bringing it over to me. I don’t know what sort of beast it comes from but it’s mana dense, somewhere in the mid-liquid stage if I were to guess from how much effort Adler puts into carrying it. Unlike the stone and plants that I’ve tried draining, I can pull the mana from the bone without too much trouble.

I press my mana back into my empty mana battery and draw out the new mana from the large bone as Adler gets back to searching.

“So, we have mana.” I say over the chat. “What can we do with that?”

“Can you make bombs?” Vii asks, “Like those ones we used against Loekan?”

“I can’t quite make anything as good, but maybe I can do something smaller and with a shorter timer.” One of the first things I learned about magic was delaying the effect. Back then I shoved a fire spell into a rock to use it as a grenade, and theoretically I can do the same again, but I’m not sure how long I can make the spell stay still, especially the more powerful ones.

“My annihilation and fire magics aren’t much good against this thing, so I’m not sure if it’s useful at all.” I reply. “Adler’s water magic works nicely, but I’m not sure I can learn the trick to that before we’re forced into a fight.”

“I can’t spare that much mana for another fight.” Adler says quickly. “I can’t kill that thing.”

“That’s fine.” I reply. “I’ll figure something out.”

I need more than just annihilation. I should have been spending time on learning other magics, especially with how much easier it should be with the Skills loaded on my new Chip, but I’m not certain I can do anything in an hour or two.

For now, I need to work with what I have.

Adler stops, staring at another strange wall decoration. Woven roots, or vines, or something like it. It’s difficult to see clearly without much light, but it looks much like what I found in the room upstairs.

“Kyra.” Adler sends the message, continuing a moment later. “I think I’ve found something. No, rather, they’ve found us.”

“What, who?” I panic, trying to see what it is she’s talking about. All I see through her eyes are the same interwoven roots as from before.

They start moving, weaving through one another, to take on a new shape. Strange, but there’s surely strange plants in the dungeon, I don’t get it what’s got her frozen stiff as she is.

That is, not until I see a face form from wooden roots. The young creature, a woman, my Chip tells me, lifts an imitation hand and places it over its own mouth.

Other faces slowly form from the wall, the surviving rebels showing themselves to us. Looking at us curiously.

“Hello. You are recruits?” The words flow into my mind from a new contact. “I’m afraid the situation here is not currently favourable to us. If you could assist us in dealing with a certain beast, we can consider giving you a recommendation for our academy.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Skills & Stats

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 4110 units

~Mana distribution:

Category Current Max. Defence 40% 99% Offense 20% 94% Mana Sense 40% 100% Recovery 0% 77% Gluttony 0% 79% Misc. 0% 93% Efficiency 100% 100%

~Favourited Skills:

-Tag and Film

-Mana surge movement

-Annihilation defence

-Annihilation flame burst

-Annihilation net