In a desert where water was scarce, using drinking water to wash your face was a ridiculous luxury.
But the two of them could stay alive without drinking at all, so waste was just waste. They had already squandered plenty of fruit earlier, so a little more did not matter.
As Kai'Sa scrubbed, the thick layer of dust on her face mixed with the water and slowly turned into mud.
She stopped and felt her face, as though she had just put on a clay mask.
"Well?"
"Eugh—" Kai'Sa immediately started scrubbing again.
The water in the mud was quickly drawn away by the dry heat in the air, and it was already starting to harden. If she kept going, she was going to end up with clay on her face, so Zihark poured her a little more water.
No wonder every kiss had felt like kissing the earth itself. There had been that much dirt on her face.
After her face came her neck, and then they rinsed everything together. Zihark noticed that Kai'Sa had scrubbed her skin red, but it still was not as pale as he had expected.
She had spent two years underground without ever seeing sunlight. There should have been no chance for her to tan, so why was she not fair-skinned?
He figured it out quickly enough. Kai'Sa was a desert girl by birth. Her complexion had never been especially pale to begin with, though that did nothing to affect how much he liked her.
A light wheat-colored skin tone suited her just fine. It looked healthy.
More importantly, her face was beautiful. If the face was good enough, people would accept anything—deathly pale skin, glossy dark skin, even purple skin.
Her hair had gotten soaked during the face washing too. Zihark shook the waterskin and found that it was still more than half full, so they decided to wash her hair as well.
Kai'Sa washed her hair the same way she washed her face: by brute force. She pressed her palms together with her hair trapped in between and scrubbed back and forth.
The clear water ran down from her head and turned yellow almost instantly. That alone told Zihark how much dust had been hiding in it, and he gave her a proper scolding over it.
Once she finished, Kai'Sa stood there with wet hair draped over her shoulders, shining softly under the sunlight. There was a faint mistiness in her eyes, and a bright droplet of water clung to the tip of her fine nose.
From the neck up, she really did have the look of a beautiful girl now.
But Kai'Sa was not some display bust that could be admired separately from the rest of her. He could not just appreciate the head and ignore everything below it.
He had to keep fighting for the day he could finally separate the voidskin.
Then it was Zihark's turn to wash his face. Kai'Sa immediately came over to help, though in truth she was just getting back at him for all the nagging he had done earlier. She used the same strength one would use scrubbing someone's back to scrub his face, and by the end she had rubbed tears out of him.
Then, after seeing the huge difference in his appearance before and after washing, Kai'Sa froze for a moment.
Comparing him to herself, she suddenly thought... if she had cleaned her face and hair earlier, maybe that bird seller would not have run away in terror.
But what was done was done. Kai'Sa lifted her head and stared at the sun, which was slowly sinking beyond the edge of the shaft, her expression full of quiet loss.
Zihark noticed and asked, "Do you want to go up there and have a look?"
By now the bottom of the shaft had already fallen into shadow. Only the slanting light on the walls remained, revealing the many roots in a ghastly pale white under the setting sun.
This was the closest they had ever been to the surface.
She wanted to go up and see it.
But reason kept warning her not to touch those things.
Otherwise, the wagon was the answer waiting for her.
"Yes," Kai'Sa admitted. "But we can't climb up there, can we?"
"Then we try something else, as long as you want to." Zihark looked at her.
Kai'Sa nodded. She had a rough idea of what he meant now.
Ever since devouring that sand falcon, the voidskin had unlocked a new biological structure. So if Zihark made it grow feathered wings, maybe he could fly up to the surface.
The first thing to grow was the wing skeleton from behind his shoulder blades. The frame was not large, with a wingspan of less than three meters. Zihark felt it would need to be at least twice that size to lift his heavy body.
But he also felt this was already his limit. If the wings got any larger, they would simply become too heavy and throw his whole body off balance.
Then pale matter surged out from the voidskin and spread along the wing bones, stretching into muscles and feathers.
The black wings took shape.
And turned out to be far heavier than expected. Zihark could barely stay standing.
There was no need to test it. He already knew flying was impossible. Still, he tried flapping the wings anyway.
A whole chain of problems immediately became obvious.
First, human bones were denser than a bird's, and once the weight of the voidskin was added on top, his body mass became a problem he could not escape.
If he wanted enough lift, he needed a greater wingspan. But that would inevitably throw off his balance front to back. And to preserve that balance, the wings could not be too large.
On top of that, he had not produced nearly enough muscle, so the wingbeats were weak and useless. He could not get airborne at all.
And finally, feathered wings were better suited for gliding. With an updraft and a launch from somewhere high, they might have worked more easily. But he was standing at the bottom of a vertical shaft. There was no such condition here.
The flight test failed, and Zihark did not keep trying.
He could see the problem clearly now. Feathered wings simply did not suit a human body. Elytra might work better instead. He had no idea how Kayle managed to fly with wings like that... magic, presumably. Or maybe it ought to be called celestial power.
Zihark let the voidskin slowly devour the wings again, and the sight was disturbingly gruesome.
Growing that useless pair of wings had cost him almost as much energy as forming a full suit of hardened armor. He could not bear to simply shed them and waste it all, so he had to "eat" them back instead.
Even so, he still lost some energy in the process.
The Void's devouring was efficient in the sense that it could digest things completely without producing useless waste, but that did not mean shaping and transforming matter happened with zero energy loss.
If it did, then why would Void creatures bother having fixed forms at all? They would just turn into whatever was most convenient whenever they wanted. Every one of them would be a shapeshifter.
"Maybe we should just forget it." After waiting for Zihark to finish reabsorbing the wings, Kai'Sa walked over and took his hand. "If we found one exit, then we can find a second one. I'm sure we'll come across another way out soon."
"There's actually one more method we haven't tried." Zihark looked straight into her eyes, his expression serious.
"You want to control a void scar? That's too dangerous!" Kai'Sa saw through him instantly, and her voice rose. The idea was completely insane.
It was like two insects charging straight into a carnivorous sundew. What good outcome could there possibly be?
"The composition of a void scar isn't all that different from a Void creature. As long as it has consciousness, I should be able to control it." To be honest, Zihark was very curious what it would feel like to manipulate one.
The only thing holding him back was the fear that, if he acted rashly, he might awaken all of them at once and trap the two of them inside the shaft.
"All right, then we test it from the mouth of the tunnel. If anything goes wrong, I can carry you away immediately."
"Deal."
The two of them returned to the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the shaft, and Zihark had Kai'Sa blast off one exposed section of root.
Her light missile struck a protruding root cleanly. It dropped to the ground with a wet, heavy thud, like a slab of meat hitting stone, and twitched for a while as if from pure nerve reflex.
The main body of the void scar only shrank back slightly. It did not fully awaken and start flailing about.
"Good!" Zihark praised softly.
Then he cast out his awareness web, caught hold of the severed root, and tried to make it move according to his will.
At once, the detached root began to writhe.
One moment it slithered forward like a snake. The next it hunched and crawled like a worm.
Under Zihark's control, it came rushing toward the two of them in a violently unnatural frenzy.
[End of chapter]