With crossed legs and closed eyes, Havoc sat close to the roaring campfire. Embers sparked from the blaze, drifting through the air before fading to ash and chalking his clothes. Though heat pressed against his skin, deep within meditation, its sting was lost within a maelstrom of more exotic sensations.
Within his mind's eye, he saw two streams encircle him. They passed through the flames as though they were not there, and brushed across a diaphanous boundary encasing him, bursting into radiant hues that shimmered and spread from each point of contact.
Feeling his core swell with power, he exhaled deeply, releasing his hold on the dualistic currents of Harmony. As his core filled to the brim, he surrendered control entirely. His eyes opened, and the vivid world of meditation faded—but its energy lingered, pulsing quietly within.
'Take this,' Naereah said, her voice soft and warm, like sunlight filtering through a thin veil.
Without waiting for Havoc to reply, she placed a pail filled with water by his feet and extended a cloth held loosely in her hand.
A faint staggered gasp whistled through Naereah's quivering lips as Havoc accepted the cloth, his fingers brushing across hers as he took it. He reached across and gripped the pail's handle, keeping his gaze low, deliberately avoiding Naereah's wide, lightless eyes as he stood.
'Thank you,' he said plainly, before moving behind a fold of layered sheets suspended on poles—a makeshift washing area Aaron had insisted upon, despite the heated protests of Annalise and Lucia.
Now that I think about it, Naereah wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the partition either, he recalled, remorseful for having eschewed his sister's lectures on the strange, inscrutable species known as women.
Havoc was no stranger to desire. Its volatile flames surged through him, as fiercely as a pack of wolves upon a wounded stag. He knew its heart-quickening jolt—muscles tensed, nerves aflame. A maddening provocation to the senses. Recognising the signs in himself, he did not fail to see them reflected in Naereah's expression. But with her, it was different. Her gaze went beyond any bodily longings. In her pitch-black eyes, he saw expectation—a depth of yearning so vast it could not be prospected in a hundred lifetimes. Whatever she wanted, no one could satisfy it—least of all him.
If necessary, he would use her—he was a reprehensible bastard, after all. But he was not needlessly cruel—he had nothing to gain through misleading her intentions.
Havoc wrung his sweat drenched cloth into the water, and dried himself as best he could. As he bent down to collect the ragged remains of his clothes, a gentle rustle and flop perked his ears. Turning toward the sound, he found fresh cloths draped neatly over the suspended sheets.
'The seer asks that you hurry. She means to have words before we leave' Naereah said, her silken voice slightly muffled behind the fabric partition.
I have a few words for her, too, Havoc silently griped, feeling more than a twinge of annoyance.
Three days had passed since Havoc defeated the Abominable Spirit. During that time, her majesty—Annalise—had spent most of it asleep.
Truthfully, Havoc could not fault her for that. Given the Hell she had endured—even with healing potions—the speed of her recovery had been astonishing. The first few hours were precarious. Spoonful by spoonful, she had been fed four healing potions, but they could neither break her molten fever nor still her clattering teeth.
With no potions left to administer, it fell on Naereah to attend to the seer. For a full day, she remained by Annalise's side. Meditating for hours at a time, she expended every drop of accumulated Harmony in service to the seer, then gathered more to repeat the process.
By the time Annalise had begun to stir on the second day—drenched in sweat and trembling—Naereah appeared the more miserable of the two, her exhaustion etched into every swaying motion. Annalise awoke twelve hours later, while Naereah slept on until the early hours of the next morning.
Havoc's Harmonic reserves dwarfed Naereah's, and with the power to mimic her abilities, he could have aided in the seer's care. He was not unmoved by Naereah's struggle—he stepped toward her multiple times, only to shake his head and return to where he had been. Were Naereah his only consideration, he would have helped. But the advantages reaped from the Abomination's Spirit were not ones he intended to reveal. Besides, supporting Naereah would have eased Annalise's ordeal—but she deserved to suffer.
Instead, he had trained with the Flesh-Weave Needle. As its name implied, when thrust deep into flesh, it could remould his anatomy as if it were clay. He began cautiously, webbing his fingers and toes. From there, he progressed to shifting the placement of his digits, before taking more ambitious steps—growing eyes in his palms and a second pair of arms beneath his first.
The Needle's powers were a profound—if not a spine-chilling—experience. But it was not without its flaws. The pain of insertion was exquisite. Even as one who had sampled his share of agony, it had caught him off guard. Having preprepared himself for a stabbing jolt, he had not envisaged feeling his skin rip apart from within, as if slowly birthing scissors.
Moreover, while he could reshape and even reconstitute his physical form, his transformations were limited by mass. Webbing his fingers had noticeably shrunken them, and growing dense scales left him with a famished physique. Most drastic were the changes caused when he had grown new limbs. His legs had wasted away—dessicated and withered—as if belonging to a corpse a thousand years preserved.
The Flesh-Weave Needles lacked the brute forcefulness of Remnants like the Stone Guardsman or the Buried Strike, but where it lacked in raw power, it more than compensated with utility. With enough imagination, Havoc was certain it would become a potent resource.
Something to think about later, he decided. He tucked his cream shirt into his light-brown trousers then pulled the straps of his buckled suspenders over both shoulders, releasing them to slap the soft of his skin. Satisfied he was decent—if not downright presentable—he pulled back the layered sheets to exit the washing area.
Seemingly having waited for Havoc to emerge, Naereah stood by the washing partition. She lightly bowed in his direction, her azure cheeks tinting a deep shade of blue, before scuttling into the washing area to retrieve the water pail.
'My good man, we thought you might have gotten lost in there,' Aaron called from the campfire. Lucia lay beside him, her head resting on his unnaturally stiff lap as she absently twirled threads of brown hair around her finger.
Opposite the unhappy couple, the seer knelt by the fire. Its warm glow flickered a perfidious shadow behind her while amplifying her blood-red lips and charming her cheeks with a heat-flushed pink.
'Won't you come join us, Havoc?' Annalise asked, her tone inviting and sweet, like the honeyed secretions of a carnivorous plant, laced with an allure Havoc knew not to trust.
As Havoc approached the fire, Lucia pecked Aaron's lap with her lips before rising to a seated position. She exaggerated a palm-muffled yawn as she snaked her arm around his, pressing her slender body into his shoulder.
'Punctuality is a curtsey the graceful pay to their own—so is it any wonder he finds himself delayed?' Lucia said, offering Havoc no more than a sideways glance as she chuckled softly.
'Now, now,' Annalise said, lifting her palms as though a judicious mediator among friends. 'We all owe Havoc a great deal of gratitude—I'd say he's more than earned a bit of time to himself.' She lifted her gaze to meet his, devilment dancing behind a layer of beguilement in her ocean-blue eyes. 'You performed splendidly.'
Havoc wrestled with biting replies, his top lip quivering from each abandoned retort. His venom-laced tongue made every word a bitter swallow, but he forced it down, exhaling deeply before joining the others by the fire.
'You said you wanted to talk, so talk,' he said, careful to keep his annoyance in check. His voice was a monotone drum.
'So demanding,' Annalise said with a sly smile. 'Well, I suppose some ladies like that.' She glanced suggestively toward Naereah, who squirmed, her gaze dropping as her shoulders tucked inward, retreating into herself.
'Maybe we should get back to business,' Aaron interjected hastily, casting an uneasy glance at Annalise, seemingly unaware of his fiancée's pointed glare.
'I suppose,' Annalise conceded with a sigh, raising her palms in mock surrender. In an instant, all joviality drained from her expression; her eyes gleamed with sudden, dire intent. Straightening her posture, she locked eyes with each person around the fire, her gaze lingering a moment longer on Naereah, as though exchanging silent words.
'We know where we are, and what that means,' Annalise said, her tone faint yet as solemn as the grave. She paused as everyone shifted and leaned in; no one dared to mishear her softly spoken words against the crackle and snap of kindling and glowing logs. 'Out there, where we're going, within the forest below, there are still twenty survivors of this expedition. They're hidden in a mountain passage, about a day's trek from this cave's exit. We're going to need them to escape this Cell—but they can never learn what this place is,' she said, her eyes fixed sharply on Havoc.
The others around the fire had entered the Cell intentionally—eyes wide open to its appalling cost. Only Havoc had entered unwittingly. They had brought sixty lives with them: mercenaries, and desperate souls, promised the chance at a better existence—but they were damned. Only four could ever leave the Forest of Desire.
Though knowing the Forest's nature, he had remained innocent of his "noble" companion's machinations. Annalise sought to change that. By her command, he would become a co-conspirator, having an equal share in their fatal deceptions.
But what's the alternative? he asked himself, biting down on his bottom lip. She was right, after all. He could admit that much. If they survivors knew, there would be no hope for cooperation—a tree would not surrender a branch to make the axe that would see it fall.
'The forest below is home to monsters we have no business crossing paths with,' Annalise said, her words cutting through the fog of Havoc's conflicting thoughts. 'There are creatures within that would crush us without even knowing we were there.'
Her stern expression held as uncertain glances flickered around the fire, the weight of her warning sinking in. Then, abruptly, a broad grin spread across her face, the tension breaking into a swirl of tentative relief.
'Luckily, you have me to guide us,' she said, tilting her head with a self-satisfied nod.
'It is not that I doubt your foresight,' Aaron began, unhooking his arm from Lucia's with a mask of unease. 'However, it must be said—you guided us when we had sixty, and we barely escaped with our lives.'
'But you did, didn't you?' Annalise cut in.
'What do you—'
'You did escape with your lives,' Annalise snapped, her voice cutting. 'Everything that's happened is exactly as planned. You're still alive. Trust the plan. Or what?' Her tone deepened, her glare fixed on Aaron with stern disappointment etched into her expression, as if she were an expectant mother learning of her child's grievous misconduct. 'Did you think the Dungeon would just hand out a treasure like the Tears of Desire without sacrifice?'
Annalise stood and walked around the fire, her shadow stretching long across Aaron as she loomed over him.
'No one here has suffered as much as I have. And we're going to suffer more before this is over. But this is not the moment for doubt.' Pausing, she turned to face each of them in turn, the firelight flickering across her face. As she spoke, the others began to rise, as if compelled by her presence.
'Now is not the time to question my leadership. We all know what's brought us here, and what we stand to gain. Follow me—unquestioningly, absolutely—with all your strength, and every one of us will get exactly what we deserve.'
No one spoke as they stood around the sputtering fire, the silence broken only by the crackle of embers. Yet a question hung unasked, lingering in the smoky air.
What exactly does she think we deserve?