An amber eye and a black one, with a strange red moon floating in the middle, glinted in the darkness of the well.
I was shaking, cold or fear? Maybe both.
I'd used every scrap of warmth to heat her up, to pull her from that freezing water. And this was her gratitude?
Lirka's hair stood on end, puffing up. Her tail swelled to enormous size, two or three times its normal thickness, the fur bristling like spines. Her pupils were dilated, one perfect circle of gold and ink staring at me without seeing me. The other a crescent red moon in the night sky, almost full.
"Hey, you! That's enough..."
I tried to get back on my feet, but the ground jumped straight into my face. My nose slammed against the dry rock and I immediately tasted the metallic tang of blood on my lip. Hot and slick.
Dammit, I've got nothing left.
I pressed one palm to the ground, but only managed to turn my head to the side. A bestial howl tore through the cavern air. It wasn't a human sound and didn't seem entirely animal either. It was the cry of something that had broken inside.
Lirka, is that really you doing this?
When I managed to focus on her, she was already a red lightning bolt flying toward me. Her fist was already halfway through its arc, teeth bared in a snarl. I pushed against the ground with everything I had left. My face pulled away by a hair, just in time.
I saw my blood stain on the floor an instant before it was splattered under Lirka's fist. Rock shards flew everywhere, hitting me straight in the eyes. A blinding burn flooded my skull. I closed my eyelids, but it was too late.
Blind. Wounded. Without a shred of energy left.
There's only one thing I can do.
I spread my arms and pushed forward, using the tips of my toes to give myself some momentum.
I was almost blind, submerged in a void where only pain and the sound of my broken breathing existed. I didn't even know if I'd find her, if my hands would grasp empty air or death.
Then, an impact. My chest slammed into something soft. Bristled fur, sudden warmth.
I closed my arms in a desperate vise. I felt soft hair slip between my fingers. Yes! I've got you now.
An intense smell of musk flooded my nostrils, almost stunning me. Then, the reaction. Lirka started thrashing with such violence that I felt something crack in my left arm. Her hands clawed at my arms, fingers gripping with inhuman strength, driven by panic.
It hurt. Her nails pressed and dug into my skin. They didn't quite tear the flesh, but they burned like white-hot iron points.
Don't let go. If you release her now, you lose her forever.
I tightened my grip even more. She responded with a sharp, feral hiss. And then, the bite. Her canines sank into my shoulder, but I didn't let her go.
"I'm not..." A sob cut the words in my throat. "I'm not what you think."
Her knees pressed against my chest, a constant pressure trying to create space. A rib cracked under the force, yet I forced my arms to stay closed. They didn't open a millimeter.
"You're..." My breath was failing, each inhale a vicious stab. "You're safe with me."
Her convulsions started becoming less violent. The grip of her teeth loosened, just a bit, but it was enough to let me speak again.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. Something wet and hot slid down my arm. "Sorry about before. When I saw you... I didn't mean to call you a monster."
Her movements stopped abruptly. The pain of the bite dissolved slowly and her teeth detached from my flesh with a wet, viscous sound. Something else warm started dripping onto my arm, mixing with my blood. They were tears.
"You're safe with me, Lirka," I repeated in a thread of voice, almost a secret between the two of us. "And I'm safe with you."
Only our broken breathing filled the void.
Then, suddenly, my chest exploded.
It wasn't physical pain, but an explosion of light from the inside.
I threw my eyelids open and, despite the blinding burn, I saw the glow filtering from beneath my clothes. My chest... it warmed. The Mark. It warmed, then burned, then—
The Mark was responding to something, a beat that became a pulse, then light.
It was a brightness so dense it appeared to be solid, a force that made my tunic ripple as if I were being hit by an invisible wind. On the cavern walls, the shadows started dancing frantically, stretching and contracting under that unnatural pressure.
The air became electric, suddenly too heavy to breathe.
In that tumult, my eyes met Lirka's. Her hair, struck by the light pouring from my chest, looked like molten gold. Her amber eye was wide open, darting frantically between me and that glow consuming me.
Then, the black eye.
Something started separating from her pupil. Lirka began to tear up, but it wasn't water. It was a thick, oily liquid, black as the deepest pitch. The dark stain ran down her cheek, yet it didn't fall to the ground. It stayed there, suspended in midair, defying all logic.
Lirka let out a strangled gasp, a sound loaded with pure, visceral terror. That black substance started forming threads, like spiderwebs weaving backward toward the ceiling, thickening into a roiling mass.
Then, she screamed.
It wasn't the cry from before. It was a scream of agony that tore through my eardrums, bouncing off the stone walls until it seemed like a thousand voices were suffering with her. The threads of darkness stretched violently, as if someone were ripping out a rusty nail embedded too deep in flesh.
The shadow was sucked out of her eye with one last, obscene effort.
PLOP.
A wet sound, organic, absolutely disgusting. Like tearing a bloated leech from living skin.
The shadow emerged completely. It wasn't smoke and it wasn't mist. It was a solid mass, a moving void that distorted the surrounding air like heat shimmer on lava rock. Yet it gave off a cold so intense I could feel it on my skin without even touching it.
That patch of darkness pulsed in the space between me and Lirka, struggling to maintain a coherent form. For an instant I made out unnaturally long spider legs. A moment later, a human face with too many teeth and a mouth that kept opening into infinity. Then it became just void again, with edges dissolving into nothing. It was unstable, a creature that didn't know what to be.
The Mark on my chest pulsed with renewed violence. The light exploded, becoming blinding, and the shadow reacted with an atrocious hiss. It was the sound of metal screeching against metal, of glass shattering, and of asthmatic breathing. Click. Click. Click. An invisible mandible opening and closing at insane speed.
The shadow expanded until it occupied every corner of the well, then started moving. It crawled along the walls like a colossal insect, its extremities clawing at the stone with mechanical precision. It left behind a wet trail that steamed in the freezing air.
The rock, wherever it was touched, hissed and blackened, the surface cracking as if it had been soaked in acid.
The sound of its ascent was a torment of nails on a chalkboard, accompanied by that incessant rattle. Click, click, click.
Then, suddenly, it vanished. I saw it only for an instant: a deformed and unnatural silhouette with too many angles, outlined against the circle of sky above us. A second later there was nothing, dissolved into the air as if it had never existed.
The Mark on my chest went out abruptly. Darkness reclaimed the cavern, bringing with it a silence that weighed more than a tombstone.
What was that thing?
Then came the thud.
Lirka collapsed suddenly. Her body simply stopped functioning; her legs gave out, and she fell onto me like dead weight.
"Lirka!"
I shook her, but got no response. Panic bit at my stomach again. She's dead. I killed her.
No, she can't be dead. Not after all this.
I pressed my ear to her chest, holding my breath. There it is.
A weak beat, irregular, but present. Her breathing was there too, thin and labored, a thread of life still holding on. She was alive.
I looked at her face, searching for a sign of consciousness. The amber eye was closed, but the left one, the one that had been black, cursed, full of shadow, had stayed wide open.
The void was gone. The scarlet moon floating in the darkness was gone.
Now it was amber. Golden like the other, perfectly identical.
Did I free her? From…something? A curse? A possession? A parasite of some sort?
Her eyelids trembled slightly, then opened. Both eyes searched for mine, wandering confused in the darkness.
"W... what you called?"
Her voice was hoarse, broken, little more than a breath.
"Arek. My name is Arek."
I squeezed her hand with the last ounce of strength I had left, trying to transmit a warmth I no longer felt myself.
"Arek. Gold... boy."
She sighed and her eyes closed again, surrendering to exhaustion. I let myself slide onto the floor.
"Gold child, huh?"
I smiled, feeling the freezing stone against my back, not as cold as I was. I felt emptied, a hollow shell just looking for peace.
"Just a moment, then we'll go up," I murmured, more to myself than to her, knowing this was the lie I always told myself before falling asleep.
I half-closed my eyes, ready to slip into unconsciousness, but snapped them wide open when a shadow dropped like lightning from the shaft of the well. It slammed onto the rock with a dry, heavy sound, breaking the silence.