…
Fritt stared, stunned.
He had fought beside Gold since the Eclipse. He had seen him wrestle beasts twice his size and endure thundering blows. He had never seen him tossed around like a sack of grain.
"Just how strong is this thing…?" Fritt feared this was out of their league.
He glanced at Ferra. Her face was frozen, pupils small, her stance slightly open.
"Focus!" Fritt roared, sprinting across the uneven ground.
His shout snapped her back. She brought the zweihander up just in time, the massive blade catching the lash. The tentacle coiled around the steel immediately, tugging, trying to wrench the weapon from her hands.
Fritt didn't let it.
He closed the last step and brought both clasped fists down on the tentacle in a hammer blow. As his arms swung, heat flooded them. They ignited, flames racing up to his forearms just as his fists struck.
The impact burned and shocked the limb at once. The tentacle recoiled from the searing pain, but the flames quickly faded away from its slick skin.
"Thank you!" Ferra snapped, resetting her stance. Her sword was still hers.
Yet it didn't feel like much of a victory, not with another storm of tendrils already gathering to lash at them. A cluster of tentacles drew back, then lunged together.
Before they landed, the air ahead of them warped. A single point seemed to twist, like something pinched space itself. The distortion compressed - and then detonated.
Flame and pressure burst outward in a tight sphere.
Ferra flinched at the sudden heat. "We need to get Gold!" Eyviria shouted over the ring of it. "There's no way he's not dazed after that."
Fritt's eyes widened. "That was… her magic," he realised. "It really just appeared from nothing…"
He gave a quick look towards where Gold's body had fallen. The creature's many eyes - if they were even eyes - never turned that way. Every limb stayed fixed on the four of them who still stood.
"I don't know why," Fritt called out, "but it doesn't care about him anymore. It's only attacking us."
There was no time to speculate. Tentacles whipped in again.
Fritt had to light his fists on every punch now, hitting and pulling back before the limbs could wrap him. Unlit fists caught and clung. He'd seen what would come after.
"Ferra!" he shouted between blows. "I've got a plan. Get ready!"
He didn't wait for her answer. He charged forward, straight into the creature's reach.
He hunched his shoulders, tucking his chin, protecting his head as best he could. It didn't matter. A tentacle snared him almost immediately, wrapping around his torso, pinning his arms.
"Grgh-!" The pressure was monstrous. The limb felt like a wet steel cable, thick as a log, trying to fold him in half. Every muscle in his body screamed as it tightened, eager to turn bone into dust.
He endured for barely a second longer, letting the tension build to a peak.
Then he let it out.
The eruption began at his core. Fire punched outward through every pore, racing across his skin. For an instant, Fritt was a shape of blazing fire, the tentacle around him searing, smoking, then burning.
At the same time, Ferra moved.
She was already there, having read his intention. As the tentacle jerked in pain, she dove the point of her zweihander into it, burying steel deep. When the limb recoiled, she dragged her blade along with it, splitting the flesh open in a long, grisly tear.
"SKREEEEE!" The creature shrieked. The sound was like metal scraping glass, like a storm shrieking through a narrow canyon. It bounced around the cavern and came back twice as loud, rattling teeth and numbing ears.
The butchered tentacle flopped to the ground, leaking thick dark blood. The slick fluid spread quickly over the rock.
Then, just as quickly, it thickened. The blood clotted almost instantly, clogging the wound.
"We'll need a lot more than one tentacle," Fritt coughed, dropping to one knee. His ribs felt like they'd been bent near breaking point. "And if I do that again, there's a good chance I'll just pop open and die."
Ferra intercepted another limb with her blade, pushing it away from him.
Fritt glared at the creature, then at Eyviria. "Can't you just blast that thing into oblivion!?"
"It doesn't work like that!" Eyviria snapped back. "And do you want to be standing next to it when I try!?"
Fritt's jaw clenched. "One tentacle out of… what, ten?" he muttered. "Not great odds."
They couldn't even move to retrieve Gold. Every step forward was met with another wave of whips and spears.
…
Gold's vision crawled back slowly, like someone pulling a curtain up an inch at a time.
He couldn't breathe properly. His mouth opened and closed what seemed like forever, chest not even lifting. His lungs felt like empty, useless sacks.
Then, all at once, a jagged inhalation punched through. "Gasp-" The breath tore its way in, burning, but it was air. Relief hit him hard enough to make him dizzy.
His right ear rang with a flat, shrill tone. Nothing else came through it. "Burst my eardrum", he thought distantly. It was the only explanation. From his left side, muffled and distant, came echoes - shouting, and the boom of another explosion.
"I'm so tired." He sighed.
The pain was there, but behind it was something heavier. A weight he'd been carrying for fifty years.
All he could think about was her, "Amara…" He whispered her name.
"I miss you." He felt lonely.
Ever since the Eclipse, he had walked. Job to job, city to settlement, desert to crater and back again. He remembered the rain, the roar, the moment everything was taken from him, over and over.
"Why am I here…" A nameless man, drifting.
Then warmth followed.
At first, he thought it was another wave of pain - but it wasn't. It was a glow, steady and soft, igniting behind his ribs. He looked down.
Two golden threads, like flowers in the wind moving freely, they sprouted from his chest. Slowly going somewhere.
"You must be the reason I exist," he thought.
Maybe there was still something he could do.
His hand rose, shaking but deliberate. He dug his fingers into the rubble, pulling himself free from the broken stone. Dust rolled off his shoulders as he stood.
"Gold!" Fritt shouted when he saw him. Even from across the cavern, Gold heard the hope in his voice.
The creature noticed too.
For a second, he urged to grab his sword - It was somewhere on the floor between them, forgotten steel.
His body moved on a different thought.
"Whatever," he muttered, oddly calm.
He inhaled once. Deep.
The heat that answered was different from his usual bellow art. It was sharper, cleaner, as if the golden threads had wound themselves through his heart and lit it from within.
Power flooded his limbs. His skin prickled, his bones hummed. When the first tentacle came into range, he knocked it away with his fist.
His fist blurred. The impact shook the entire limb sideways, the flesh rippling from the force. Another tentacle followed and he hit that too, both blows landing between one breath and the next. Each punch carried a burning pressure, enough to scorch even if for a moment.
"I can't keep using the bellow art like this," he realised, the back of his mind still logical. "If I try to chain too much into one breath, my lungs will collapse."
His body ached already. He didn't have the luxury of playing this slowly.
"Eyviria!" he called out, voice rough. "I need a distraction!"
She didn't hesitate. She thrust her palm forward and held it there a moment, fingers tensing as if squeezing an invisible sphere. Space ahead of her compressing.
Then she clenched her hand into a fist.
An explosion tore the air apart between Gold and the creature. Fire and pressure roared outward, smoke and steam blooming to cover its midsection.
"Did she think I wanted to run?" Gold thought. The blast was closer to him than he would have placed it, but he pushed the thought aside.
He took a breath again and moved.
He lunged into the teeth of the fading explosion, smoke curling around his shoulders. In that one leap, he closed almost all the distance. A tentacle reacted, snapping up to sweep his legs.
He stomped down on it.
The limb crumpled under his weight with a wet crunch, pinned to the stone. Cracks splintered out from the point of impact.
Before the other tentacles could catch up, he drove forward, hand outstretched like a claw. The creature tried to twist away, hauling its bulk back toward the water, but his hand seeked like a starving beast.
His fingers clamped around its neck.
The skin was smooth, tight over dense muscle, but his grip dug in like iron hooks. Flesh tore as his hand closed, nails raking through the slick surface and finding grip deeper in.
Sensing death, the creature thrashed, tentacles latching onto stone pillars and the cavern floor, trying to drag its body free.
"Just need to crush your skull…" Gold thought, nothing else left in his mind.
He filled his lungs. The breath whistled through his teeth, sharp. Heat flared behind his back, radiating outward like invisible wings unfurling.
His fist descended.
His fist met the creature's head with a sound like stone collapsing. Bone, cartilage and flesh all gave way at once. The impact drove straight through, turning its skull into a sinkhole of gore that sank into the rock in a ring around his hand, bits of shattered bone and pulped tissue fanning out.
When the motion stopped, his left hand was still wrapped around its neck - except now, the neck was no longer attached to the rest of its body. The weight hanging from his grip went slack.
It had died the moment it was in his grasp.
Gold let the severed chunk of flesh drop. His knees gave out soon after. He fell forward and caught himself with one hand, coughing. Dark flecks of blood dotted the stone beneath him as it dripped from his lip.
The others rushed in.
"Brother Gold! We need to check your injuries," Fritt said, sliding to his side. He slipped an arm under Gold's to stop him from collapsing fully, feeling the heat radiating off him like a volcanic rock.
Gold gave him a tired, lopsided glance. "Can't hear from my right," he muttered. "Burst my ear…"
Eyviria arrived next, peeling off one glove. "Your back is ruined," she said bluntly as she knelt behind him. "I don't see embedded fragments, but the number of cuts and scrapes isn't good."
She helped unbuckle and pull away his dented chestplate, revealing bruised and scraped skin, already reddening further under his natural heat.
Gold barely looked at the wounds. Restrana rarely feared infection, most diseases died under their body temperature. "Hard… to breathe," he admitted. "Lungs ache."
Eyviria pressed her palms against his back and ribs, fingers firm. She traced gently, feeling for breaks and sharp edges. "Your ribcage is intact," she said at last. "Your lungs are likely bruised from the impact."
Her expression turned grim. "We need to move somewhere safer. I don't know if we can continue the search with you like this."
The others shared worried looks.
"I'll grab his sword," Ajit said quickly, turning back towards where it had fallen.
Kavi and Fritt braced Gold between them and helped him to his feet, guiding him away from the water's edge. Ferra stayed slightly ahead, zweihander still out, eyes sweeping the surroundings. She had never felt tension coil this tightly in her gut.
Fritt glanced back at the corpse and shuddered. "What was that?" he asked Eyviria. "I've never seen something that frightening."
"I don't know," she answered quietly. "It resembled a night creature, but I've only ever seen one. And even then… this felt different."
A cold sweat traced her neck.
"Kavi!" she called. "Take samples. We'll mark this path for Retrieval later."
They didn't linger. They hauled Gold away from the cavern and into a safer side passage, putting stone and distance between them and the dead thing.
Gold's legs carried him for a while. Then the world started to tilt. He couldn't hold on any longer. The dizziness finally took over, consuming his sight as his mind blanked.