The forest had become his coffin, and someone forgot to mention he was supposed to stop moving.
Months of running. Left arm gone at the elbow, hacked off by an Illuminatus who'd screamed about justice while doing it. Righteous bastard. The stump had stopped bleeding weeks ago, cauterized by some Intention meant to freeze his lungs. It hadn't worked. Pity.
Foreign Intentions warred in his flesh like parasites fighting over a corpse that hadn't gotten the message. One burned through his liver, blackening it. Another froze chunks of his intestines solid, he'd shit ice for three days before that section died completely. A third just rotted whatever it touched, spreading like mold through meat.
Nalla pressed his remaining hand against the hole punched through his shoulder, gift from a Condensa with a spear and delusions of heroism. Blood leaked between his fingers. Had been leaking for so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to be dry.
Generous of me, he thought, stumbling over roots that seemed placed specifically to trip dying men. Feeding both forest and parasites. Charitable, even.
Behind him: steel singing against steel. Boots crushing undergrowth. Voices calling coordinates like butchers discussing cuts of meat.
Not a mob anymore. An army. Organized. Patient. Absolutely fucking furious.
"There! The demon slows!"
Demon. The word had lost meaning somewhere between the third assassination attempt and his spleen dissolving. They could call him whatever helped them sleep.
"His Intentions fail him!"
He almost laughed. Tasted copper and something bitter that might've been his pancreas trying to escape through his throat.
Intentions? What Intentions? Every bit of chaos energy in his body belonged to someone else, someone who'd wanted him dead badly enough to carve their hatred into his flesh. They were all killing him. Just taking their sweet fucking time about it.
A blade whispered past his ear, close enough to shave hairs he didn't have energy to grow anymore. Another carved a groove across his back, adding it to the collection. They were playing with him now. Savoring it. Months of pursuit deserved a proper ending.
The clearing opened before him like a mouth. Ancient trees watched with the patience of things that had outlived empires and would outlive whatever farce was about to play out.
The army spread, encircling him. Wolves around wounded prey, except wolves were honest about what they wanted.
Five Illuminatus, their auras bright enough to make his remaining eye water. Dozens of Excelsiors, competent and cold. Hundreds of Condensa, fresh-faced and hungry for glory.
All united in their hatred of one broken old bastard whose body was slowly eating itself from the inside out.
Simple mathematics, he noted as another Intention chewed through what was left of his spleen. I'm comprehensively fucked.
"Nalla!"
The voice cracked like thunder trying too hard to sound divine. Illuminatus Flameheart, still alive after months of cat and mouse, still tediously righteous, still possessed of a face that begged for punching.
"Surrender the knowledge! Tell us how to create the Upstream Drifter!"
The words hung in the air, thick with his blood and their desperation.
Weapons rose. Faces twisted.
"The method, demon!" Another Illuminatus stepped forward. Kael Ironvein, beard streaked with gray, eyes bright with faith. "Share the creation process and your suffering ends!"
There it is. Months of righteous speeches, and underneath just naked greed. They want to cheat death, just like me. Difference is, I'm honest about it.
The air thickened. Reality bent as five Illuminatus released their domains, crushing spiritual pressure that made breathing a battle. Flameheart's manifested as walls of fire encircling the clearing. No escape. Kael turned ground to iron beneath Nalla's feet, rooting him. The others layered atop, gravity pressing down, air thinning, time crawling.
His knees buckled. The stump of his left arm cracked open. Blood ran fresh.
Can't move. Can't breathe.
The Intentions eating him twisted, accelerating. His spleen ruptured, wet pop he felt more than heard.
"Speak!" Flameheart's voice came from everywhere at once, amplified by his domain. "Give us the knowledge and we grant you clean death!"
Nalla's laugh came out as a wheeze, wet and broken. Blood bubbled at his lips.
"Knowledge?" He gestured at the Upstream Drifter. "This exists. One only. That's the price."
Silence. Boot scraped stone. Kael's eyes widened. An Excelsior shifted weight.
"Months chasing secrets I already used."
Domains pressed harder. Ribs cracked like green wood. Blood painted his teeth.
"I see it now."
Flameheart's jaw tightened.
"Kill the demon. Take his Intention. Keep it safe, for the greater good."
An Arcanum looked away.
Nalla spat blood. Domains ground him into earth. Vision blurred. "Righteous. Convenient."
The Upstream Drifter ignited in his grasp.
And immediately began feeding.
His flesh dissolved first, muscle converting to temporal energy, sinew unraveling into the fuel needed to tear through time's fabric like paper. Bones cracked. Not breaking. Dissolving. Crumbling to ash that scattered in a wind that shouldn't exist.
This is the price. Understanding came with the same clarity as his ribs turned to powder. Everything I am becomes the power to escape everything I was.
Reality screamed. Or maybe that was him. Hard to tell when your lungs were turning to mist and your consciousness was fragmenting across seventeen different moments simultaneously.
It's working. God help me, it's actually fucking working.
The Drifter consumed everything, flesh, bone, the foreign Intentions eating him, the memories of pain, the weight of five centuries lived in defiance of every natural law. All of it fed into the violation of causality, burning his existence as fuel for the impossible.
Darkness claimed him.
Not the darkness of death, he knew that one intimately. This was different. The darkness of being pulled backward through months and years, consciousness unraveling and reforming, time running in reverse while his dissolving body powered the journey toward a past that might yet be carved into something more useful than this ending.
When awareness returned, it came slowly. Filtered through layers of confusion and the distinct, almost offensive absence of spiritual parasites eating him alive.
Softness.
The sensation was so alien it took him several moments to identify it. Sheets. Clean sheets that didn't reek of blood and decay and the slow rot of dying flesh. A mattress that supported rather than tortured his spine, a spine that, he realized with growing bewilderment, was intact.
What the hell?