Me and the Devil, Verse II

[Euripides]

12 FROST 120

She had never seen an octopus, or anything of that ilk, in person.

Perhaps, not alive at least. Or whole. The delicacies of the elite were not something that she was privy to, but she had heard stories. The long, thin limbs stretched out over the wall, headed by a bright red jewel. She hiccuped, breath caught in her throat as she stared. The others of her unit did the same, the threat forgotten, but for the moment. Water flowed from spouts at either side of the animal depicted in the top corners of the wall. The sound of it all nearly drowning out the cries of the Hungered.

Nearly, but not enough.

“We should go inside.” The boy’s voice trembled as he suggested it, and thus, she found no reason to listen to him. They would only be going further into something they could not understand. The horrors that had been read to them should remain what they were at all costs: words voiced off a page. She swallowed thickly as her clouded mind turned to its usual source of comfort. Jieun remained enticed by the large red apsect of the statute that decorated the wall. Her petal pink lips had parted in awe. The woman wished she could be as carefree. But her awe was a luxury of the deceased, not the living. No matter how close to dead they might have been.

Already the trek was getting to her. The exertion of running was weighing down on the woman, and she wasn’t sure how far they’d actually gone. Much of the terrain was the same, save the marble-looking floors they walked upon. Rock formations still stretched out to them from the walls and ceilings, but — marble. Smooth and reflective. When she looked down, she could see herself and it was ugly. The pallor of a corpse. Black eyes, though she’d never been touched since the second month of her conscription. Collarbones that jutted out like knives.

“If we stay out here, we die.” The woman with the scars. She seemed hardy; her tone was steady and her voice was rough. She was already moving, anyways. Being left behind meant you were alone and vulnerable. Safety in numbers compelled her to push her ragged body forward to head inside. Her stomach knotted with hunger, thirst, and apprehension.

Her fingers reached out, like she’d forgotten. Maybe she had. Jieun didn’t look at her dirtied fingers grazed the blue silk of her outer robes. The woman blinked. That felt real.

“Come on!” The scarred one again.

She stepped away from the ghost.

[Euripides]

The thing about safety in numbers is that it only worked if you trusted at least one other person in the group with you.

The woman had been faced with situations in which she was the only conscripted legionnaire in a group before. She had faced situations where her unit would be composed of conscripted legionnaires cut from hardier cloths. Being the odd one out — it was nothing new to her. But it was new to be responsible for the death of a sky guard. It might not have been her intention, but it had labelled her for what she had already been: a liability. Them reminding her to come inside only seemed to cement that idea.

She swallowed as she wandered in, a faint wheeze at the back of the group. A labored breathing that had them looking back several times to be sure she wasn’t one of the Hungered herself. But she hadn’t contorted and become some fleshy construct of hunger and a hunter’s depravity. Was that even possible — for a Hungered to change shape like that? It was true they mostly resembled humans, but that thought was left off as they wandered further in.

There was space. So much space. But in that space were upside down triangles that floated around greater constructs that looked like a big metal mess. She didn’t want to go any further.

I don’t like this. Jieun’s voice was soft, tiny. She tugged at the woman’s sleeve, tried to pull her back from the group.

The floors didn’t float away from them as they walked, even though she suspected they might.

“Hey, you.” It wasn’t the scarred one this time, but he did bear a scar of his own. Jagged, over his throat. But not deep; he wouldn’t be here if it was. “Quit lagging behind.”

She blinked, because what else could she do? How else could she respond? He stared her down, flat lips pressed flatter before he spit at the ground before her feet and turned his back on her. The thing about safety in numbers is that it only worked if there was some level of trust.

This was every man for himself.

The Temple of the High Ones was different from on paper. They had been told, in the briefings they were sometimes graced with, only what lay on the outside. Better to warn them from actually going inside. It was hard to miss the gigantic octopus creature on the front of it. But yet — here they were.

“You lot are all very calm about this.”

They turned to her and she startled. The four that remained stared at her as if she had grown several heads in the span of a second. Her fingers twitched and her shoulders hunched as she looked away. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“What you mean by that?”

She didn’t see who’d said it, but they were likely bigger than her. She shrugged. “They told us to stay clear of this place. That...inside was worse than out.”

The other blinked, exchanged glances. They couldn’t fault her in that. They had walked in but there was no guarantee that they would walk out. Or even worse — if the Hungered would stop at the front door. There was every chance that the creatures would come inside and slaughter them all with no exit in sight. She drew in a breath, found it to not be enough, sucked in another. A repeated cycle of aborted breaths as her eyes widened. Her comrades looked on, confused for a moment.

A young one, maybe even younger than her, pushed through the trio that gaped as she sucked in breaths that wouldn’t reach her lungs.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s an attack.” The boy smoothed a hand down her back. His fingers ran down the bony knobs of her spine and he winced. He might not have thought she’d heard, but she had and it made her want to curl up and disappear. “I got her.”

“Why — wh-what—”

“Don’t try to speak. Just breathe. In, out. You’re okay.” His words were measured, even. His tone soothing. He must have done this before, or had it done to him. She wondered which it was.

This has never happened before.

But it had. In her cell, before the trial had begun. The first time she’d stepped into the Warrens. Before then — it hadn’t. Jieun hadn’t been alive for any of that so it made sense that she wouldn’t know. She licked her lips, shut her eyes. Tried to do as he said.

“We need to think of a plan.” They were still close; she could still hear them.

“Someone has to be a distraction.”

“It can’t be her; they’ll be on her in a second. We'd have no time.”

She could feel their gaze on them even without looking up. Her breathing was evening out. She could stand upright, gulped down air like she would water — it finally went down. Her brows furrowed and she felt slightly lighter with her relief, but it meant that they were looking at her now. Looking at her to appraise her current state. They would find a stick-bony woman with trembling limbs as she just barely struggled to hold herself up.

“I’ll go.” Again, attention drifted to the boy beside her. His hand had not left her back. “I’m quick on my feet. Good runner.”

She wanted to tell him that that wouldn’t matter. Being quick on his feet would mean nothing, because eventually he would tire. Eventually, the creatures would catch up to him. Eventually, he would run out of space and find himself cornered. They’d probably make it so that the last option came faster. But she couldn’t say anything because even if there was safety in numbers, you were never truly safe in the Warrens until you made your way out.

“Okay.”

[Euripides]

He was so sure of himself, and that might have been why she watched him so closely.

He moved the way Jieun used to. Like nothing could stop him. She wondered where it came from. Before, he had been timid. She recognized his voice from being the first to suggest they go in. Maybe it had been her moment of weakness that allowed him to shine. Good for him; he’d used her as a stepping stone in a less than literal sense. The others would likely want to do that more literally.

“You’re going to die.”

She wanted him to know that. She needed him to know that. His smile never faltered as they prepped. How could he smile, when they were sending him to his doom?

“I’ll be fine.”

No, he wouldn’t. The woman wanted to shake him. Wanted to shove him somewhere hidden. But she didn’t. She probably didn’t even have the strength to do it, even if she could.

Let him play the hero. Jieun played with the ends of her hair where she sat on the floor. Her knees were pulled toward her chest, skirts settled around them. He’s supposed to be the “distraction,” after all.

She eyed him a moment, missed the way he eyed her. Probably wondering what she saw there. That’s what everyone did. She wouldn’t fault him for being the same. But she would fault him for senselessly endangering himself. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Scratched at her elbow like there was an itch that didn’t exist.

I can see you thinking it. Jieun was much too close now. Close enough that the woman could smell her perfume. Your mistlords know you think it, too.

“You won’t be fine. We’re leaving you to die.” Jieun’s breath was on her neck, fingers dancing at the collar of her ragged shirt. That was the point of this whole thing, wasn’t it? That they had been sent out here with the knowledge that every last one of them could die. How could he — how could he have volunteered?

He was soft with the milk of kindness, of potential. He looked like he ate well. He looked like he could sit at a table of these strange bedfellows and not bat an eye. Why — because he looked like everything she might have been before all of this. Before the ghost that hauntered her had taken on its ethereal form, had been robbed of her mortal coil.

Before Jieun had died.

She swallowed, and it hurt more than it should have. She shut her eyes, shook her head as she paced. A hand tugged her back and she opened her eyes only to realize that she had gone close to the edge of the path. One more step and she would have tumbled into the floating abyss. Her breath left her with a shudder and she turned to see the boy eying her. This time, she didn’t miss it.

“I know.” He pursed his lips, looked down. “I know you are. That’s why I offered.”

“Why?”

“Because that was what I was sent here for.” He shrugged, then. His expression returned to the smiling facade it had been before.
The others crossed over to them, and solemn nods were exchanged. They were ready and the boy would be left to die. Again. The woman frowned, but said nothing, because nothing more could be said. Just a solemn remembrance. They waited on either side of the open temple doors as the boy stepped out. A good runner, he’d called himself. He braced for the inevitable, and took off. They peered out — Jieun included — as he went.

She counted how many steps it took.

Thirty-five.

At a running pace, it took him thirty-five steps before they were on him. Fast, maybe. What was fast was the slap of fleshy tendrils against his neck. They latched onto him as if this was the last meal they would ever encounter. He’d tried swinging his sword, but that was caught mid-swing. His arms weren’t as fast as his legs. The tempo of her heart beat sped to match the pace of his dying. An empathetic response to a plight that might have been hers. His eyes bulged, burst like squeezed grapes. She could see the juices spill forth from his skull.

Her comrades had taken off running, and so she did the same, because what more could she do? She didn’t want to be left behind. Her previous apprehensions were gone as the Hungered turned their attentions to the remaining four. Two large, hulking masses of writhing flesh and blood and bone that worked in tandem. Only one stopped in its abuse of the boy. The other, however, continued. It wrapped a tendril around his neck, and pulled.

If the others had faltered, the woman had not seen. She was too busy taking in the sight of the boy being dismantled. They started first with his neck, pulling his spine out from the root. If his eyes had still been in his head, she wondered what sort of expression he would have made. It was like a wriggling worm as they held it out, as if they wanted them all to see. As if the creatures were taunting them, telling them that they were next.

Because they were.

[Mae Eloeth]

Lore:
Survival: Safety in numbers only works so well
Survival: You don't want to be seen as a liability to your group
Tactics: Sacrificing one to save the rest
Intimidation: Show prey what it will be if caught
Psychology: Your hallucinations may scare others
Sociology: The good of the many outweighs the one

Points: 5

Injuries/Ailments: I would imagine her time in this place, as well as this specific encounter, would leave her with a pretty severe lasting anxiety and pstd. Keep this in mind for when she 'gets out'.

Loot: N/A

Notes: Oh no, dead people! Ha, really though I loved experiencing the emotional rollercoaster, fuckery, that is this series. I'd be curious to know if she picked up any strange habits from her time here as well when she gets out. If.