"Hah... you handled yourself better than expected, you bastard," the witch wheezed.
I looked at her, my vision swimming in shades of grey and crimson. "You didn't do too bad either," I retorted, coughing up a bit of grit. "Considering you're a weak, ancient hag who's one foot in the grave."
Shit, I was losing a lot of blood. The metallic scent was overwhelming in the cramped space. My bones weren't just broken; they were starting to "grind"—that sickening sensation of jagged edges rubbing against nerves every time I breathed. If the blood loss didn't kill me, the infections from these filth-crusted Ork blades certainly would. Imagine fighting for your life against a horde, surviving a solar explosion, and then dying because a scratch got fuzzy. Absolutely brilliant.
The "Old Cow" looked at me with her one good eye, the silver hair now a matted mess of mud and gore. "Hey, you street-swine... do you have a plan? Any idea how we're supposed to move, let alone get out of this hole?"
I blinked at her. "Hah? I thought you were the high-ranking commander. I thought you'd have a strategy for crawling out of hell."
I'd used up every drop of my mana for that solar blast, and for what? To be stuck with a knight who was as clueless as I was. I dragged my gaze across the obsidian walls, looking for anything that wasn't a dead end.
"Hey, lapdog... can you still crawl?" I asked, my voice a dry rasp.
"I think so," she snapped back, though her face went pale as she shifted her weight. "But why do you want to know, you cockroach? Planning to leave me behind?"
"Because back there," I pointed a trembling finger toward a jagged fissure in the rock, "is a crevice. It's small, narrow. We can hide there, catch our breath, and let our mana pools refill. By the way, can't you use that White Flame magic of yours to cauterize your wounds or something? Shape some bone-splints so you can walk?"
She let out a bitter, exhausted laugh. "Not exactly. I can't 'shape' bones like you do with your shadows. But I can stimulate cellular repair—I can heal myself to a certain point. It's slow, and it's agonizing."
I wanted to scream. I'll eat a broom—she can literally heal herself, while I'm sitting here struggling to even create a shadow-patch for my shattered shins? Life really is a joke.
Jessica began the slow, agonizing crawl toward the crevice I'd spotted to the north. I followed, dragging my useless legs behind me, leaving a smeared trail of dark, corrosive blood on the stone. Every inch was a battle. When we finally reached the hollow space—a cramped, damp slit in the earth—the darkness claimed me. I didn't just fall asleep; I dropped into a void of unconsciousness that felt like death.
I have no idea how much time passed. I only woke up because of a sound—a wet, slithering thud that vibrated through the very floor of the crevice.
I opened my eyes, my breath hitching in my chest. Slithering through the main tunnel, just feet away from our hiding spot, was something that made the Orks look like cuddly pets. It was a worm. A massive, bloated, translucent nightmare of a creature, easily thirty feet long. It smelled like a mixture of stagnant swamp water and Ork excrement. Its skin was covered in pulsating sensors, and it moved with a blind, rhythmic hunger that made my skin crawl.
Shit. I knew the Orks weren't the apex predators down here, but I hadn't expected a literal titan of the deep to be patrolling the halls. We stayed absolutely silent, pressed against the cold stone, until the last of its undulating tail disappeared into the darkness.
Once the stench began to fade, I looked at Jessica. She was sitting up, her armor cracked and dull. "How long was I out?" I whispered.
"I don't know exactly," she replied, her voice sounding stronger than before. "I passed out myself. I woke up... maybe two days ago, you little toad. By my count, we've been down here at least three days because of your pathetic stamina. You arsehole."
"Oh, I'm so sorry that my body reached its literal breaking point after absorbing your god-tier magic and saving our lives," I hissed. My mind was racing. Three days. Three days that Ilea was still in that cage. Three days for Folia to either find us or leave us for dead. "We have to move. Now. Before that thing, or something worse, comes back for seconds."
Jessica sighed, leaning against the wall. "Jaja, I know. I've already healed myself enough to stand. My leg is stable, even if it hurts like hell. What about you, you useless cur?"
I looked down at my legs. They were still a mess of purple bruising and jagged angles. "No. When would I have healed? I just woke up! Give me a damn minute, you witch."
I closed my eyes and tried to pull from the shallow well of mana I'd managed to regenerate during my three-day coma. I had to be careful. If I used it all on a full shadow-graft, I'd be empty again in minutes. I focused on the internal structure, trying to knit the fractures back together—not 100%, but maybe 20%. Enough to provide a frame. I used my shadows to wrap the wounds like a tight, black bandage, sealing the bleeding and numbing the nerves.
The pain was a white-hot spike through my brain. I bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper. Why? Why is she already walking while I'm struggling to even limp? This is total bullshit.
"Ready?" Jessica asked, looking down at me with a complicated expression—somewhere between pity and disgust.
"Ready as I'll ever be," I grunted, pulling myself up using the jagged wall for support. My legs felt like they were made of glass and lead, but I was standing.
We stepped out of the crevice and back into the dark, silent throat of the abyss. The air was colder now, and the smell of the giant worm still lingered. We were two broken survivors in a place that wanted to swallow us whole.
Until next time.