The amount of empty nodes I’d gained from mowing through the horde of carvurch was staggering. It was beaten only by the ease at which Mortician and I pushed forward, grinding oil and rock to paste as we ran and slaughtered at the same time. It only took a single attack from my //ENDLESS enhanced self to down a carvurch, and Mortician was a whirlwind of deadly efficiency as they dismantled the ant-like slyk.

Oily slyk corpses caught in the undersea current drifted away as the stingprey carried ever onwards, crashing into their fellows and making our task ever so slightly easier. It was beyond obvious that the carvurch were not built for combat, but their electric mandibles could still leave a mark if I got too confident. I shifted my weapon into a gauntlet and wrapped my hand around a carvurch’s crackling weapon and held it before me, staring into its oily soul before I crushed it with one motion.

“One sixth of a mile to go.” Mortician informed me from my right, ripping a slyk in two as they spoke. They rose from a crouch and kicked another towards me while the freshly dead slyk drifted away, and I shifted my gauntlet into a spear to dispatch the helpless oil-insect. “Whatever slyk is commanding these carvurch will not be happy to see us.”

“If it stays in one place, that is.” I said loudly, to make sure my voice cut through the crackling and clicking of the carvurch. “Can you feel anything about it?”

Mortician shook their head. “We can confirm it is not a slyk we have seen, but that is all.”

“Great.” I muttered, impaling a carvurch as I fell into a low sweep that took out the legs of a half-dozen of the fuckers. They all died as their battery was stolen to invigorate me. “All this fighting is completely pointless. Want to make a run for it?”

“...We see no reason not to.” Mortician said after a moment’s thought. “Though we will need to turn and fight when we reach this mystery signal. Having an army of carvurch on our heels could prove a problem. Actually, that is a fairly good reason not to. No, we should not make a run for it.”

I nodded and noted that Mortician seemed to be getting snarkier as time went on. I sort of liked that they were developing a personality that didn’t remind me of a happy puppy. “Fair point. We should at least try fighting forwards a little faster.”

“That we can agree with.” Mortician said with a grunt of effort. Another carvurch died. “Take the lead. We will follow in your wake.”

That was easier said than done, or at least that’s what I’d thought. I turned and held my spear against my forearm, watching as more and more carvurch devoured their way out of the stingprey’s rock. If I had a wide area technique that could wipe out all of the slyk, this wouldn’t have been much of a problem at all. But all I had was my spear, //ENDLESS, and the petal-scales function that I still hadn’t really mastered. But what better time was there than the present?

I took a deep breath and activated floodpetal-scales, designating my spear as its target. I imagined the blade elongating and swirling around in a storm of sharpened death, pushing battery into the thought as the function took hold. Black petals squirmed forth from my weapon, coating it completely in less than a second, and then it was done. I had my spear, and it was covered in petal-scales. Nothing near what had happened with my shield when I fought the signaleech.

“Well that’s disappointing.” I said to myself, swinging my spear in an arc towards the nearest carvurch. My eyes grew wide as petal-scales flaked off of it to create a perfect mirror of the arc as it travelled, cutting through the carvurch without any resistance whatsoever. I didn’t even feel the bite of rock against the blade of my spear. And I could still feel the slash that hovered in the air before me.

“Cool.” Mortician commented, and I instantly felt a thousand times better about gawking at the strange function before me. “Can you control it now that it is no longer connected to you? Or does a part of you have to touch it so you can manipulate it?”

That was a very good question. I thought very hard at the slash to try and get it to move, and much to my surprise, it followed my command. The slash cut through the air in a straight line before me, cutting through the weak carvurch like soft cheese. Until I felt something catch in my stomach, as if I’d just been shoved forwards towards the edge of a cliff, and the slash came to an immediate halt fifteen feet from me. I didn’t know how I knew it was fifteen feet, but I knew it was fifteen feet, and I knew that that was the furthest I could command the function to go.

“Apparently I can.” I laughed, pulling the slash in close to me. I curled it so it wasn’t quite as long and let it hover just far enough away from me that it wouldn’t accidentally clip my fingers. “I bet this is what Nia felt like when she used her version of this function. I wonder if the petal-scales would be sharp if I made them from a hammer instead of a spear, or if the slash would be shorter if I made it with a sword.”

“We will have all the time in the world to explore those secrets. Together.” Mortician said excitedly. “Push forward. The sooner this is finished, the sooner we can join you in the flesh. Er, the oil and rock, for our case.”

“You’ve got a point there.” I laughed, the giddy feeling of discovering something new still bubbling around in my mind. I swung my spear in two more long arcs, creating two extra slashes as I did, and felt my battery start to drain a little faster. “Watch my back, Mortician. I’ll make sure nothing gets through to you.”

I fell into a sort of trance as we continued forward, slicing down every carvurch that dared to come near. It was strangely calming to split my attention between the spear in my hands and the three hovering slashes that carried exactly as much devastating power as the weapon itself, and in that calm, I found myself remembering my old life. But the memories weren’t as clear as before. They were glassy and muted, like watching a car wash through a window.

Dee and all of my old friends were still there. All the experiences–good, bad and otherwise–were still there. But they felt like things that had happened to me, not things that I had lived through. I felt like a completely different person. The fact that a few months could completely outweigh literal decades of experiences was terrifying, though, and made me think back on a lot of blurry memories with different glasses.

Maybe that person had changed. Maybe that friend had actually just decided to betray me on a whim, or out of some piddly-ass reason that just so happened to be on their mind that day. People weren’t iron-clad logic machines that never changed, but they also weren’t blubbering blobs of raw emotion that shifted on every new breeze that blew through. I needed to be careful about how I changed. About how I changed the people around me.

If Okeria only stood by Jun and I because he was scared of The End, then we couldn’t actually trust him. Because he’d betray us the second he found someone strong enough to protect him from the ensuing fallout. Mortician was quite literally being forged by my hands, and I needed to make sure they became their own person. Not some hollow soul that parrotted everything I said. Just meeting the stingprey seemed to push them towards that direction, but I had to make sure they kept going that way.

Slyk oil spilled around me in a blossom of death while I thought myself into a twist. Nia had put her trust in me with her dying breath, but she hadn’t put any expectations along with it. Keratily was a question mark for absolutely everything except for Jun. I never once questioned my connection to Jun, which probably should’ve worried me, but it didn’t. Which also should’ve worried me. And… that was really it. Six people, one of which was dead and one of which wasn’t technically alive yet.

It felt like far too little. The End would’ve been outraged at my completely leaving it out, but it was so far above me that I couldn’t question its motives. I’d die if it wanted me to, and I’d live if it wanted me to. Spending energy worrying about that was about as productive as worrying when the sun would go out.

My life would go on from this point. I’d leave this hazard, stop Endra, and then what? If I lived through that, was I supposed to go looking for humanity? I suppose I was, but would I be able to stomach seeing all those familiar faces with absolutely no recognition in them? Fuck, would I even care now that my memories of that time weren’t anywhere near as vivid?

My question was punctuated by a carvurch blocking one of my slashes with its mandibles. I snapped out of it and lunged to get at its rocky underside, slashing up and through it in one swift motion. I felt my blade catch on the rock, struggling ever so slightly to cut through the slyk. If that wasn’t a tell that the mystery slyk was close, I wouldn’t know what was.

“Mortician?” I asked, the unspoken question lingering in the air for a moment as they caught up. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten so far ahead.

“Yes, envoy. We are in range of this strange slyk’s influence.” Mortician said, confirming my suspicions. “All we need to do is dig down where no carvurch are emerging.”