A hoarse groan left me as I rolled my head back into a stream of water.
"Ahhh," I exhaled through gritted teeth as every aching muscle in my body protested the movement.
I rolled back and forth as my eyes blinked open.
"Wow…" I groaned as pale green light illuminated down at me.
Clusters of pale blue crystals clung to the rock overhead, casting a soft glow over the cavern. Tiny motes drifted lazily through the air like fireflies, their light reflecting in my eyes.
With a grunt, I reached towards the shimmering lights.
"It's so-
"Ahh Ahh…" I hissed as my arm collapsed onto my chest.
My other hand shot to my shoulder in an attempt to comfort the ailing limb, but it too suffered the same agonising fate.
"Right…" I groaned as both arms flopped uselessly beside me.
I lay there numb and unable to move, watching the little motes drift overhead.
At least I wasn't falling anymore.
"Life is about the small victories, that's what Dad always says!" I nodded.
"~Hmmm hmm, hnnn, laaaa, naa thaa, faa cemmaaa~"
"What the fuck is that…" I murmured.
I couldn't move. Even the smallest of movements still sent daggers up the back of my neck.
Is that singing? Does it even count as singing? It's pretty bad…
Is it a dying weasel?
It sounds more like one than an actual song or anything decent, or in tune, or in key, or anything I'd heard at the auction house, for that matter.
Does that mean that there's someone else down here with me?
Wait… Am I even down somewhere? What if I'm up and gravity was inverted…
I let out a shaky breath and stared up at the glowing ceiling.
…or floor.
"It doesn't really matter if I'm upside down, but even that depends on…" I let out a groan as I tried to move.
"I just need to shut up…"
The crystals overhead pulsed softly, their pale light rippling across the water around me.
Water?
I definitely didn't remember landing in water.
…or landing, for that matter
"Oh! That's why my back hurts so much, because I landed on it! How hadn't I realised that? I'm literally looking at the ceiling… or floor- okay enough of that," I laughed, "And why my back feels so cold… mhhhmmmm…"
With considerably more caution, I lifted my head.
A shallow stream brushed against and around me. The water barely covered my shoulders, winding around chunks of crystal and moss that glowed with a faint turquoise hue.
"It's beautiful…" I mouthed.
After a few more moments of appreciating the cave's wonder as well as growing sick of the constant flow of water between my crack, I bit the bullet and forced my body to move.
I rolled onto my side.
Immediately, pain flared through my ribs.
"Mmhm… terrible idea," I wheezed.
Despite the pain, I welcomed the new position. My backside had long since gone numb from however much time I'd spent floating in the stream.
Golden embers flickered across my skin, spreading warmth through my battered body. The familiar tingling of flesh knitting itself together followed soon after. It crawled beneath my skin, prickling at every cut and bruise.
There wasn't much else I could do but wait.
The stream babbled quietly around me as Avalon went about its work.
My fingers twitched, then my toes, as a fresh burst of life was breathed into them.
Feeling slowly returned to my left leg. The sharp ache in my shoulder dulled to something manageable. The burning in my chest faded into a steady throb.
I flexed my hand and counted my fingers like I had earlier…
How long had passed?
How long had it been since I fell down that hole? How long since I landed… here… wherever here was.
With a sharp exhale, I forced my hand back into the stream and let my entire body weight fall upon it.
"MMMMMMMhhhhmmmmm"
Agony shot up my arm as I climbed back up onto my feet.
"AHH…" I hissed through clenched teeth as my knees immediately threatened to give out beneath me.
I stood there for a long moment, hunched over like an old man, one hand pressed against my thigh while the other dangled uselessly at my side.
"I should've waited a bit-" My shoulder popped back into place. "Ahhha…" I groaned, stumbling forward from the sudden force.
"Less of that, please."
The stream flowed around my ankles, its icy water washing away flecks of dried blood.
"~Hmmm hmm… laaa… naa thaa…~"
"Can you please stop!"
The tune drifted through the cavern, soft and airy. It echoed strangely off the crystal walls, as though there were several singers instead of one.
"~Faa cemmaaa…~"
"How is it getting worse! They're so off key!" I grumbled as I held my hips with both hands.
"Okay, okay… 3, 2-" with a deep inhale, I stood tall and straightened my back with a satisfying click.
"That's the stuff…" I mumbled as I rolled my shoulders and tested how much, or little, I had managed to recover.
The stream babbled around my feet as I turned in a slow circle.
The cavern stretched in every direction, glowing crystal illuminating the darkness in shades of blue and green. Moss clung to the walls in thick patches, and roots hung from the ceiling like ropes as they swayed around the dark stalactites that dripped from the high cave roof above me.
The cave stretched on for nearly 100 meters before thinning into a smaller tunnel that seemed to curve deeper, and where I could only assume was the origin of the singing.
I would have described it as beautiful if it didn't have this strange creepiness… as well as that torturous singing....
"Uhhh," I shook off the thought. "So how do I get out of here then…"
I subconsciously turned towards the only visible entrance or exit to the cave that didn't involve me climbing a nearly insurmountable height.
"I suppose I could go tell them to stop…" I stumbled back a step away from the looming 'doorway'. "But they might also have food and-"
As if waiting for me to speak it into existence, my stomach grumbled.
I held my core. "mhhhmm… fine,"
With a sigh, I slowly lowered myself and scooped up a fistful of water before then splashing it over my face.
The stream curved towards the narrow passage, its water glowing beneath the crystals overhead. Every few steps, my legs threatened to buckle. Avalon had stitched enough of me together to stand, though clearly not enough to make the journey pleasant.
"~Laaa... naa thaa...~"
"Please stop…" I winced to myself as I rested my form at the passage's entrance.
"Okay, Lias, it's just a tunnel, you can do this…" I took in a sharp breath as I crossed the threshold into the space.
The passage narrowed enough that I could brush both walls if I stretched my arms out. Roots snaked through cracks in the stone. Pale moss carpeted the floor, muffling my footsteps.
The singing grew louder.
There was definitely something strange about it, aside from the fact that it was bad.
The voice sounded weaker.
Not weak as in untalented, though there was certainly an argument to be made there. No, it sounded thin, almost breathless, as if the person or monster-
"Oh, damn it, it could be a monster!" I stood hesitantly. "There's a lot of water here, so it could maybe be a siren… no… I don't think it can be, they're supposed to sound good to well 'entice' sailors…"
With a tired grunt, I marched onwards.
"I've made it this far, I may as well see it out, and hey, if it's a monster, I suppose I could always eat it, a siren probably tastes somewhat like fish, right?"
I rounded another bend and stopped as the rotting taste of iron assaulted my nostrils. I gagged and immediately clamped a hand over my nose.
"What the hell is that…"
I took another hesitant step forward.
Then another.
The tunnel widened, the pale glow of the crystals spilling into a cavern slightly smaller than the one I had woken up in.
I meandered through and stood atop a ledge that overlooked the space roughly midway up the wall.
Hesitantly, I edged towards the edge of the overlaying stone as rot and blood and… I gagged as it only grew more intense, more potent.
I froze at the edge of the platform as I finally caught sight of the slaughter that had taken place on the cave floor below me.
Bodies piled broken, stacked atop each other like... I looked away from the horror. I didn't even want to think about it, about why so many armoured men and women were...
I forced myself to look at them, to acknowledge them.
They all wore the same white-silver armour provided to those who served directly under a lance. Every body in this room, bar myself and the god-awful siren, had no longer had a soul.
I jumped down from my platform, landing in a red-iron stream.
"Uhh," I grimaced.
I walked alongside the piled corpses that stacked high around me. I pitied them and their fate; they didn't even die a good death. Every single one of them had had their armour torn open by claws or had been caved in, steel shattered by some tremendous force.
Their weapons lay shattered and broken like their wielders, poking out of the mossy stone like spikes of a porcupine.
"These were elites…" I muttered, reaching for a dwarven man who only looked to be in his mid-20s. "Some of the best mages in Dicathen. What even-"
The singing stopped abruptly.
"~Hello?~" a voice rasped, "~Is somebody there?~"
My head swivelled, trying to find it. "Y-Yes!" I shouted, "Are you a Siren? If you are, I'm not going to try to find you!"
"~No, I'm not.~" The voice laughed weakly. "~I'm up here.~"
I followed her voice towards a woman hanging against the cavern wall. A jagged spike of black stone protruded from her stomach and pinned her several feet above the ground. Blood had dried down the front of her white armour, staining the red sash at her waist a deeper crimson.
Shoulder-length white hair framed a pale face. One blue eye watched me with faint amusement. The other remained shut beneath a crust of blood.
"...You're Lance Alea."
"So my beauty is still recognisable?" she smiled weakly, "that's good…"
She looked dead, or at least she stood at his doorstep. Her eyes held a hollowness that betrayed her smile.
"You're looking at me like I've gone insane," she chuckled.
"No..." I swallowed as I climbed towards her, "You're just… hmm…"
"That bad, huh… so much for first impressions," she snickered, her body sliding along the spike.
"We have technically met before, and I'm quite familiar with your human counterparts."
"Oh?" she sounded.
"My name is Elias, I'm a friend of Tessia as well as the royal human children. I don't know if you can remember, but last summer I fought in and made my way to the Final of the exhibition Director Goodsky hosted."
"You must be Leywin then… Bairon told me about you… In the afterparty after drinking… too much," she smiled.
With a final heave, I reached the lip of the platform where she hung from. Blood trickled down the spike and pooled at her feet.
"You don't need to look at me like that, Leywin, I know what's coming for me, and I'm glad I get to see the face of another before…" she hitched.
"Before you die?" I finished.
Her smile faltered for only a moment before she nodded.
I closed the distance between us and set a hand on the spike. It was faintly warm, thanks to Alea's own rapidly falling body temperature.
"No."
"No?" She echoed.
"You're not allowed to die yet."
A weak laugh escaped her. "That isn't quite how dying works, child."
"Then humour me."
She smiled faintly, "I'm dead anyway, Leywin, as a Lance I vowed to protect the innocent and defend the smiles of Children. So at least I can do it for one child..."
"Are you always this dramatic?" I grumbled as I positioned myself behind her. I rested one hand between her shoulder blades and the other at the base of her spine, both on either side of the onyx spike.
"What are you doing, Leywin?"
"Elias," I interjected.
"What are you doing, Elias?"
"I'm going to push you off this-" I nod towards the spike, "-and stitch you back together again with Avalon."
"What?" she mouthed, looking at me over her shoulder, "Are you insane? How would you-"
"I've regenerated limbs before, how hard could a spine and some organs be…"
"Wait-"
"Ready?"
"No, Elias-"
"3-"
"2-"
I planted my feet, and with all the strength I could manage, I pushed.
"YOU BASTARD!" she cried out as blood, mucus, tears and stomach acid rolled from her and onto the spike.
Guttural cries and yells filled with new words I wouldn't soon forget, tore from her as she slid down the length of black.
She slipped free from the spike.
I caught her, or rather, I tried to.
The moment her weight hit me, we both crashed to the stone.
"Ahh-" I landed hard on my back.
Alea lay sprawled at my side. A giant hole gaped through her stomach, like a window to the ground below.
"Oh…"
Blood poured from the wound in thick streams, soaking the ground and pooling beneath us.
"Oh no."
Alea's breath hitched. She looked down at herself. Then at me.
"You…" she wheezed as she finally lost consciousness.
"Okay, Lias," I exhaled as I rolled up my metaphorical sleeves. "How hard could this be?"
I dropped to my knees beside her and pressed both hands over the hole. Warm blood immediately seeped between my fingers.
"Okay…" I breathed a tense breath.
I don't know how much blood she has left, but at the rate it's been draining…
"Damn it…"
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
"Okay, okay," I reassured myself as warmth bloomed in my palms.
I thought back to what it'd been like for me back then, when I had a hole in my chest at Kat's birthday so many years ago, as well as to the numerous times I'd regrown bone, muscle and skin.
It had become almost second nature to me now so…
With one final inhale, my eyes flickered back open.
It was horrifying.
Disgusting even.
Gold blazed around the edges of her wound.
Her spine grew from both ends as it met in the middle of her back. Thin strands of muscle slowly stretched across the wound like threads being woven together by invisible fingers.
I slowly raised my hands, stopping them from being trapped within her form as it slowly began to close up around them.
With a final burst of mana, as though encouraging Avalon onward, the wound sealed itself tight.
"I…" I blinked. "I did it?"
Alea's chest rose as she drew in a ragged breath.
My head shot to my head. A crimson handprint marked my face.
"Owww, my head…" I grumbled at the sudden lightness.
My world went dark as, I too, lost consciousness.