Ch 1.23: Chase

Elaina heard the System’s voice. “Intruder alert. All Users, report to subcore containment.”

“Get down!” Elaina saw Carline already on the ground as she shouted the warning, but it was too late for Elaina herself. It struck her just as she tried to jump away, sharp, unsweet pain slashing across her abdomen as she fell to the floor. From the ground, she patted the area with her palm, feeling a disturbingly large damp spot. Blood? Elaina looked to see her just-washed hand now covered in red.

She was woozy instantly. Dried blood earlier was fine, but this thick, wet liquid… She wasn't normally squeamish, but the sheer amount of it was enough to nearly make her vomit.

“Elaina, are you okay?”

“No.” She looked up to Carline, vision blurry. “Am I gonna die?”

“Absolutely not!” Carline said, hiking Elaina’s dress up. Elaina crossed her legs over her crotch in response, a stupid response. Carline was focused, placing her hands directly on the wound, causing Elaina to wince in pain, a slight moan escaping her lips.

The relief was instant, Elaina’s stomach soothing as the pain in her side faded. “Whoah, I feel better already.”

“Stay down. I’m dulling the pain, but you still need to actually be healed.”

Elaina looked back down at her side. Big mistake, she thought, stomach churning again as she looked away.

“Don’t look at it if it makes you queasy!”

“Right, sorry…” Elaina said, her stomach returning to normal once again. Was Carline doing that too? She closed her eyes, making sure she didn’t interfere with her healing anymore. “What was that? I didn’t even see it.”

“It looked like— like a person, but all white and red. It’s strong, Elaina. Whatever it is, it’s way stronger than us. I can tell just by sensing its [Health].”

The System’s voice rang out through the room again. “Intruder alert. All Users, report to subcore containment.”

“We have to go,” Elaina said, struggling to get up, pain coursing through her. “She’s in danger.”

“No!” Carline said, grabbing Elaina’s arm. “I’m still healing you.”

Elaina steeled herself, breathing in as she opened her eyes and looked down at her side. “It looks fine.”

“The skin? Yes, I did that first so you wouldn’t bleed to death instantly, but I’m not done! There’s still internal damage!” Elaina looked at Carline. There was an intensity in her eyes that was lacking before, a rage in her voice. She was serious about this. “Sit. I’ll heal you, and then we’ll go.”

“Okay,” Elaina said, feeling like a scolded child. “Do whatever you need to get me moving, then do the rest on the way.” Whatever figure had slashed Elaina, it was long gone now, deep, deep into the mountain, from the looks of it. The hallway they had opened was a straight shot for a while, and it was nowhere to be seen.

“Right,” Carline said.

“And stop managing the pain, and regulating my heat.”

“What?”

“You can only focus on so many things at a time, right? Don’t worry about my feelings, just get me moving.”

There was silence as Elaina felt the magic coursing through her, and then there was was suffering. She grit her teeth, growling through them even as she tried to not make a sound while the full amount of the pain returned, while her body began to freeze. I can’t let her know how much it hurts. If she knew, she might stop.

They didn’t talk for the next few minutes, not until Carline stood up. “You're not bleeding anymore, inside or out, but there’s still going to be pain, and I need to restore some of your blood. I’m low on mana anyway though, so we can go slow.”

“No, save your mana,” Elaina said as she pulled her dress down and jumped up. She doubled over as soon as she landed on her feet, clutching her side as she tried to make her first step.

“Elaina!” She turned back, not at the sound of her name, but the tone in Carline’s voice. Desperate, pleading. The girl was standing there, clutching her staff in white-knuckled hands, tears streaming down her face. “Slowly, please. I… I know we need to go, but I can’t watch you hurt yourself. I feel it, when you’re hurt. Not the pain itself, but— but I know when it’s too much to bear!”

Elaina looked down again, her blood-soaked dress, the giant gash in it, the not-quite-as-fresh blood beginning to dry that forced her to look away again.

“If you’re in too much pain, I will use my mana on it.”

“Got it.” Elaina marched forward, a quick step but not quite a jog, wheezing as the pain shot through her. She didn’t realize the burden Carline carried, knowing exactly when someone was in pain, exactly how much pain it was. For someone as kind as her…

So, Elaina didn’t push it, not overly so. But she marched on still, trudging through the pain, trying to ignore the sharp, sweet sensation as it coursed through her body, until they reached a three-way fork, the hall continuing on and also branching right and left. “It— it’s to the right,” Carline said, voice trembling.

She hadn’t needed to say it. Both branching paths had doors, but only one was ripped through, shorn apart and kicked in. “You can still feel it?”

“Yeah, with [Health]. It’s… Elaina, we shouldn’t be doing this, it’s way too strong.”

“Intruder alert. All Users, report to subcore containment.” The message had been repeating.

“The System needs us, Carline,” Elaina said, climbing through the hole in the door. “And she said we were strong enough for this mission.”

“Elaina, I think that was a mistake. This, whatever this thing is, it wasn’t here before! I don’t know how the System was determining the difficulty of this quest, but I don’t think she was accounting for this!”

Elaina paused as she stepped over the broken metal. Maybe she’s right. If Carline couldn’t sense it before, maybe the System couldn’t either. She thought about before, how the thing had nearly gutted her without her even seeing it. The only reason she’d been spared at all was because she’d reacted to Carline’s warning fast enough.

It didn’t matter. “I have to go,” Elaina said, moving forward again. “I don’t blame you if you turn back, try to get out.”

“We could both go back. If we are near the capital—”

“Hours, Carline, maybe minutes. She said she had maybe minutes. That was before we let whatever the hell that thing is in, and we’ve already been down here what, two hours?”

Carline’s footsteps resumed, following from behind.

“I know this is dangerous,” Elaina said, “but I have to do this. It’s… Something is wrong here. Those things, starhounds, they aren’t natural, and neither is this. I wish there was time to get help, to go to Tira, to Pris— to Headmaster Alonse, but there just isn’t.” She looked down at the crystal chain still wrapped around her arm. “We can do this. Once we do, we’ll get back however we got here, and tell Headmaster Alonse everything.”

She took Carline’s silence as agreement, but it obviously wasn’t enthusiastic agreement. Elaina couldn’t say she had much enthusiasm herself either. Still, they’d come this far, and didn’t really have much choice besides trying to climb out onto the face of a mountain. No, they were making the right choice; she was sure of it.

Mostly sure of it, at least.

After a few minutes, Elaina felt a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped. “It’s right there,” Carline whispered, “right around the corner.”

Elaina swallowed, stilling her breathing as she peered around the corner. The hallway led to another sliced-through wall, except this time it was an actual wall, not a door. Without the cut-out portion, it would have looked like a complete dead end. How did it even know where to go?

“I hear you, you know.” The voice was cold, dripping with feminine rasp. “Come on in. If I wanted you dead, you already would be.”

Elaina turned back to Carline, who was frantically shaking her head and mouthing, “No.” Elaina went in anyway.

Walking through the hole in the wall, she found a somewhat familiar looking space: a large circular room, with a pedestal in the center holding up a crystal orb. It was almost an exact replica of the cave’s layout that held the System back at school, except instead of rock it was made entirely of the strange blue metal.

In the very center, next to the crystal, stood a woman. She was nearly seven feet tall, skin an unnatural, alien white, whiter than snow even, with dark red hair, and naked save for outgrowths of shining, blood-red crystals. They littered her body, providing mere ornamentation in some spots, like the gem-shaped ones framing her pale gray nipples, but providing obvious utility in others, like the curved blades extending from each of her elbows and the claw-like ones acting as her fingernails. Those same crystal fingernails were clutching onto the crystal orb, which was in a state of turmoil, stormy red tendrils creeping into it from each contact point with the woman’s nails, fighting against the normal blue swirling mists that were inside.

“You two are the ones that killed my hounds, no?”

Elaina crept in, strafing the outside of the room. “They attacked us.”

The woman laughed. “Of course they did.” She looked back at the crystal, tsking at it. “To think that there was still a corrupted crystal on this backwater planet. And devotees of it as well, no less.”

“What are you doing to her?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Her? Oh, that’s funny. You think it’s people.” She grinned and squeezed harder onto the crystal, sending even more red storm into it.

A voice shot throughout the room, a cry of pain. The System’s voice. “Argh! Users, please flee. This is not an enemy suitable for a partial level 1 party.”

“Ha! Level one? My my, that’s even more pitiful than I thought.” The woman let go of the System and walked towards the entrance, towards Carline.

“Hey!” Elaina shouted, conjuring chains to wrap around the woman’s ankles, latching her to the pedestal. Carline raised her staff at the same time, pointing at the strange woman, who smiled.

“Ah, an environmental targeter and an external targeter: even more pathetic still. Though if I remember correctly, your race did always have trouble utilizing internal targeting aspects correctly. They can only go so far on an inferior body, after all.” She crouched down, slicing through Elaina’s chains with her elbow, a screeching sound ringing out as the blade ripped through the metal floor. She flicked her eyes at Elaina and then lunged, her forearm slamming Elaina’s throat into the wall, elbow-blade inches from her neck. “Now, can we not just be civilized for one moment?”