Sera had been clawing desperately against an invisible wall.
She had been straining against the Priest's crushing palms, her back and thigh muscles trembling in agony. And the beast had been pushing from inside, roaring at her that it wanted out. That she couldn't handle it.
Sera had held on as long as she could, but the pressure – both outside and inside – was too much. Her focus snapped for a brief second and that was all it needed to escape.
The entity had won, it burrowed out in a flash – stepped out of her vessel and then threw her violently inside – something that she hadn't fully realized, until now with a sort of terrifying horror, could be done.
Shoved and locked inside her own vessel – she had screamed and thumped and beat against the invisible wall of it to no avail. The beast had left and was keeping her trapped within. She watched without being able to act.
She didn't know what it was going to do.
She had watched it look at Hibiscus and knew it was eyeing the pink-haired guide like she was a meal – could feel its thoughts and its predatory scan that meant it was considering if it was more useful to eat her now or later. She could feel their eyes narrow into slits, their fangs lengthen, could sense its deliberate assessment – and she had screamed and screamed from the inside and it had ignored her. She had watched it note the compression of the palms, the failing mana, the broken arm, and then the remaining trembling forearm and knees. She had watched it wait for whatever decision Hibiscus was calculating with patient detachment because it had options. Mostly, that it could eat the guide in front of it and escape with the power from the nourishment.
And then Hibiscus pressed her palm against Sera's cheek.
Sera felt that.
Through the beast's occupancy, through the cage, through the invisible wall – the hand on her cheek arrived in a way that was too gentle for what she thought she could ever receive. The beast wavered in that moment and Sera broke an arm through her vessel, grabbed the metaphorical scruff of the beast's neck and clung on. She was still mostly inside, but she had something out – a faint thread of consciousness on the back of the ancient, hungry thing. She clung on as hard as she could. She felt Hibiscus's soft mouth. Felt the beast respond, felt herself respond, as they burned a channel into Hibiscus, searching for mana, searching for her vessel.
Sera knew then what the beast was going to do.
It was going to eat Hibiscus, their mana pillaging a straight path towards the guide's vessel – eager to consume her whole. She thought quickly, she had to do something, anything, or it would be the same thing. She would wake up once more – having killed someone. Sera didn't like Hibiscus, not really, to be honest, it wasn't that significant if she died, was it? But something, something was burning at the back of her throat.
She didn't want to. Not like this.
It was a split second decision – millisecond in attempt. Sera parted their traveling mana sideways when it entered Hibiscus's core, rifled through her memories like lightning, anything, please, give me anything that can change what's going to happen.
And she had found it, something small in the corner, something that looked like a lock. Something that had a mysterious blue chain around it. She had found it by accident. Something deep inside her told her this was it.
She could use this. She could eat this.
She grabbed that lock, tore it apart with the teeth of her mana, obliterated the mechanism in an instant, and then felt Hibiscus's capacity skyrocket.
The channel opened and thickened into a sturdy cable – felt Hibiscus's mana thread toward her own. Her pink mana flooded through like a tidal wave.
A blue interface flashed through Sera's vision:
< System Alert >
Evolutionary lock dismantled without System authorization.
Escalating to authori–
Sera tore it down immediately.
The beast drank the flowing mana greedily like it had been parched.
She felt their vessel fill – the capacity returning – and she felt the beast ease a moment – satiated. Sera plunged a second arm through her vessel wall and grabbed the beast with both arms – clung tightly to its neck in their shared consciousness. Felt her irises shift back – fractionally tighter control.
And then they began to work in cooperation. It was a strange sensation. She could distinctly feel her awareness and the beast's awareness, separate. And also, a third uncomfortable thing – a third consciousness, the same thoughts, erupted simultaneously from both of them. Those three consciousness began to muddy together – until Sera wasn't sure what was distinct anymore.
They made a decision. It was time to end this struggle.
Their fractured forearm lifted. Their fingers stiffened into a point. They plunged the direction of it – upward, through the Priest's palm, and pushed their newfound mana toward the heart of the ancient alien thing.
They felt it – the current finding its path, the burrowing, the finding. The Priest's soul at the end of it. And she felt the beast's joy, and her own elation, when it arrived. The low satisfied resonance of something doing exactly what it was made to do. Not separate. Not the beast's joy observed from inside the cage. Hers. Theirs. The relishing was mutual and the Priest's soul settled into their vessel like a pleasing weight and a laugh was coming out of their mouth and she could feel it coming and couldn't stop it and didn't entirely want to–
And then she was shoved back out.
No warning. No transition. The beast simply decided. Clambered back inside the way it had clambered out, aggressive and sudden. Pushing past her, pushing her forward into the front seat she hadn't asked to be taken from.
The pain hit first.
Her arm – the fractured one, the bone through flesh, the arm she had borne through the compression and then driven through ancient desiccated flesh – the pain arrived all at once. Wrong and angular. The sensation had been dampened when the beast was in the driver's seat, but now it arrived back – sharp and raging. Just hers. Pain of a broken thing that had been doing impossible things and was now reporting the cost.
She shuddered in agony, as the waves of panicked, straining nerves screamed across her nervous system.
The enclosed palms were shaking. The Priest was laughing, she realized. Her fatigue hit in that second and Sera felt her knees buckle.
She heard the Priest's voice in the distance.
For life is holy, it mused. And living is whorish. And death comes for us all.
The Priest's palm was still pressed against her back.
All living things end – as they should – I am delighted by mine, it continued.
But ancient thing, oh ancient thing – you are not where you should be.
How can you end?
Sera blinked.
The fist was dissolving.
The fingers going first, dissolving into a light ash that disappeared and fragmented into a shimmer. Their enclosure brightened with the increased light. And then, she watched, in slow motion, as the palms disappeared too. The Priest's hands released them slowly. The platform beneath her knees shifted and began to give way.
Hibiscus.
She grabbed her before the thought finished forming. Sera wrapped her usable arm carefully around Hibiscus who was beneath her. Her breathing was faint, she had a heavily bleeding, unusable shoulder, an empty core, and the faint scent of cherry blossoms lingered on her neck.
Sera wrapped her arm around Hibiscus's waist. Fingers and palm gripped the guide's hip gently, she pressed her body against hers, and hugged her tight.
One good arm and one bad one. Sera's fractured forearm hung at the wrong angle, white bone visible, the pain of it still sharp, but now pushed aside – secondary fact behind the more immediate one that the ground was going to meet them and Hibiscus would die from the impact.
Sera adjusted – placed her body between Hibiscus and the ground. If they fell, Sera would hit the ground first. Hopefully. She reinforced mana throughout her body. It would be like when the tentacle hit. Just hold it together, endure, and pray she made it out alive.
This is not ideal, she thought.
Her consciousness flickered in and out from the pain. The fight had cost her, immensely – the revelation and mental anguish of the man she had killed, the spent mana that she had burned keeping them from being crushed between the Priest's palms, the tug-of-war with the beast, and then everything after. Her core was full and fueled by the Priest's vessel, but the day's events were catching up.
She was tired. So, so tired.
Sera closed her eyes, felt the fleshy ground, the palm beneath her, finally give way into dust. She let her consciousness fade, just like Hibiscus, and the darkness consumed her.
And they began falling.
✦ ♡ ✦
Rian was watching and waiting.
All of the formation was, really, small figures beneath the Priest's raised arms that rose like a mountain. Looking up. Waiting.
Rena had stayed their attacks for a moment – Rian could see her brown eyes darting back and forth, as she scoured her memory and experience for the next tractable action.
He had come up to the enclosed palms before, against Rena's shouting. Hands flat against the desiccated flesh. The fist was closed tight – he felt his strength leave him the moment he touched the dried flesh. The impenetrability of it sitting in his chest – the cold settling of a fact that couldn't be changed by applying more force to it.
He had tried anyway.
The dark matter at the scythe's edge had dispersed at the wrist. He had tried again. The same result. He had tried a third time before he finally heeded Rena's bark and Arlen's plea to return.
He had kept his eyes on the fist after that. Back on the ground. The formation moved around him. Rena's voice carrying commands. He culled the robed mummies as they neared him, but kept his eyes on the fist. The congregation was going down one by one. The cavern was getting quieter. He had tracked it peripherally – S-rank awareness keeping the room mapped without pulling his focus from the fist – and waited.
The fist was smaller than it had been when it closed.
He ground his jaw.
Then – red.
The flash first – sudden, total, the cavern pulsed for one heartbeat with a foreign mana that flared from the Priest's palms.
Then the lightning.
Red, dark, and directed, moving fast along the exterior of the fist and up the forearms and burrowing into the Priest's chest with surgical precision. There and back in less than a second. Snapping back into the fist.
The Priest started laughing.
He didn't wait to find out what that meant.
His body was already moving.
He didn't decide to move. He didn't assess the situation and determine that movement was the optimal response. His feet found the floor and covered the distance and that was the whole of it. He was moving, because. Because, Sera was there. He didn't question why.
The fist was dissolving.
Fingers first – dispersing into particles in the wrong-light, the architecture concluding – and Rian was already below it, already positioned. Dark matter extending from the scythe in broad sweeping arcs that weren't attacking anything, just – present, just in case.
And then he saw their bodies – the shadow of them – in the half-dissolving palms above and his wings came out.
Dark matter unfurled from his back with a cascading intensity that caused the nearby espers to shudder and choke from the pressure.
He was in the air before the palms fully dissolved.
And Sera was falling, and her arm was wrapped around Hibiscus – they were falling together.
He flapped his wings, wind thundering beneath them, and spiraled up into the air to catch them. Reached out his arms and caught her body swiftly, pulling her close to his chest. Sera's head fell sideways with slack, black hair covering her face. Hibiscus also limp, face pressed unconscious against Sera's collarbone.
He saw her broken arm first. The white bone through flesh and the wrongness of it landed in his gut like a lurch – cold and dreadful.
He held them and descended, gently. Leaned down to one knee and rolled Hibiscus carefully onto the ground beside him. Kept his arms around Sera. And waited for the raid's healers to reach them.
His eyes moved to Sera's face.
The sweat that seemed to drench her forehead, her black hair matted and damp. The dried blood smeared across her chin and cheek. Her mouth – bloody and–
Rian stopped. Two long fangs were peeking out from Sera's upper lip.
Rian had seen something like that before, it actually wasn't that uncommon. Humanoid monsters, vampires, the like – he had fought them in previous lives and in previous gates.
He stood there, noting Ophelia's and Eaton's and Rena's footsteps hurrying towards them in the distance.
Sera's eyes fluttered and then opened. She looked at him, eyes half-lidded, mind hazy.
Rian looked back, eyes traveling from her own weakly held gaze, back down to her mouth – to the fangs – and then up again.
He didn't know what was in his face. He had stopped managing his face somewhere between the fist closing and the dark wings coming out and he hadn't gotten it back yet. Whatever was there was there – unmanaged, unperformed. He wasn't sure he cared.
She looked at him briefly with those ruby eyes of hers – only, now, they seemed really tired, he noted. She closed them again, darkness took her once more. Her head fell back and he adjusted his forearm in response, supporting it.
"How are they?" Ophelia gasped, crossing the final few yards with the thud of her boots. Eaton and Rena arrived shortly on her heels.
Rian pressed a palm against Sera's mouth.
He opened his own in response.
"Unconscious, but alive."