POV Mia

  'That's a lot of blood.' Mittens stares at the slowly growing pile of Crawler corpses while the jelly-like flood of translucent liquid sweeps through what was left of the crushed nature reserve, filling Sunny's beak with its pungent stench.

  Out of sync tapping echoes through Twitch's ears, signalling the arrival of another centipede-like monster. I send a warning thump of my… Twich's hind legs to alert the others, but they ignore the signal and carry on talking or training until I use my human voice to tell them of the coming danger, causing Noah to stand at the ready with his hammer.

  Mitten's soft paws glide across the stone floor out of Sam's way as he stands up to try to assist Noah. I…Mittens glances up to see Sam's face set in a determined scowl, his jaw clenched, and his eyes staring unblinking into the dark. He was scared that much was obvious, but he stood side by side with Noah and Ava as they culled the oncoming stream of monsters. They did not pose a threat to our more combative members. A single well-timed sledgehammer strike slammed into the Cave Crawler's head, producing a resounding crack with enough force to shatter the chitinous armour's upper layers, making it stagger and unable to provide any real defence to the second blow to its head. Or third until the hammer crashed through its head for the final time, making it explode in a shower of gore.

  Sam could only get a single jab in with his spear before it was dead, causing a look of frustration to flash across his face, no doubt still angry at himself. Having a friend take a theoretical bullet for you after spending a week calling them overdramatic and paranoid would do that to someone. Even if Jacob acted shifty as hell, his sacrifice had cut deep. Weighing especially heavily on Sam, he'd shuffle nervously, pace around our tunnel in anger and try to help against the monsters that trickled into our waiting area. He mostly got in the way, but Ava and Noah took it in stride, giving words of encouragement and stepping in when needed.

  This did, however, leave Ella with the unpleasant job of harvesting the kills for the promised gems in the heads of the giant arthropods. She looked disgusted at the arrangement but made no move to deal with the monsters, scared to face them again after her arrows failed to penetrate their thick chitin armour. We could smell fear on her like a cloak, even through the blanket odours of gore and sweat. Fear of falling behind, the dark, monsters or losing a friend we…I could not say, but her hands trembled, and a scowl of anger and disgust masked her face as we waited for the inevitable.

  As much as we tried to deny it, we were all on stand-by mode, and I didn't have the heart to call it quits and move on. They were all waiting for my signals to tell them our friend was dead, so we could decide what to do next. Until then, we waited, hoping for a miracle. While the Sky Lucker fell half an hour ago, crushing half the forest as it bounced across the horizon, there was still no sign of Jacob.

  Sunny saw a group of twelve survivors cut their way out of the deflating corpse with tools that looked to be those of our wayward friend, although far too high in number, but most quickly left after finding out the Sky Lurkers now ignored their gore-covered bodies. Only a few stayed behind for a few minutes before they too, stored the weaponised tools and trudged through the thick glass like gore out of the nature reserve. One lady even looked back a few times with what appeared to be hope in her eyes, but none of that helped find our manic friend. He might have slipped past Sunny, but we have kept an eye on the area since the great beast started trembling and followed it down its slow descent. Only had to back away momentarily when the last of the purple-blueish gas left the corpse two-thirds of the way down, causing it to plummet the last couple of hundred metres.

  But there weren't many places that one could hide from a bird's eye view in the flattened clearing that surrounded the dead monster; all that was left were the walking corpses who were attracted to the loud noise and smell of death. They scuttle in from what was left of the surrounding area like moths drawn to a flame and begin eating away at the alien corpse. 'We'll let them know in five minutes. He deserves that much.' I decide as the seconds slip by like grains of sand, turning into minutes, and when I was just about to let the others know there was no sign of him, I see the faint outline of a young man bound through the gory muck back towards the sky lurker's corpse.

  Sunny swoops down towards the man, the winds straining against my…her delicate wings as she catches the air to slow her descent, allowing her to perch on a branch to watch the skinny woman with shoulder-length curly hair cautiously approach the corpse and touch its jelly-like surface.

  I sighed and watched the flesh hiss and bubble before disintegrating into a fine dust that blew away in the wind. But it didn't last long, she got maybe a metre before she fell away panting, crouching over with her hands on her knees, she glared at the corpse with hate written across her face. She tried a few more times and was gearing up for the fourth attempt when I tweeted to get her attention, allowing her to narrowly miss the dead man's lunge only to slip on the congealed blood and fall further into the hollow she was creating with a panicked screech.

  I couldn't see what followed; I only heard the curses and screeches that made the wandering dead gather and enter the depths of the freshly formed hole. I tried to distract the dead, but they wouldn't be dissuaded from their prey. I watched in dismay as more and more walking corpses swarmed the screaming woman trapped in the hole when out comes Jacob, stumbling out of the corpse like a freshly born baby.

  Letting out a chirp of surprise, I stared at my friend. Gone was the unruly hair and clean armour. What was birthed from the fallen monster looked like a walking corpse, and for a moment, I feared that to be the case. Half of his armour and hair were gone, replaced by scars of carved lighting. He walked with a twitching limp and gazed upon the scene with manic red eyes. 'What the hell had happened to him? Had he been crying?'

  Instead of running from the unwinnable situation to return to safety, he launches himself into the fight with a tired sigh. Blackened, elongated nails cut through the air inches from his face, dodging the wild swing, he catches the undead's wrist and trips it slightly to get it off balance. With his spare hand, he stabs a crimson knife into the old woman's temple, ending the undead's second lease on life with brutal efficiency. He mutters something Sunny couldn't hear. Ducking under another undead's mindless swing, before slamming his palm into a young man's chin, tilting its head back, before driving the knife down into his eye and puncturing its now useless brain.

  The corpse goes limp, but he holds it up by the neck as a middle-aged man lunges towards my friend with hate-filled eyes and jagged teeth that oozes the thick black liquid of the parasitic worms. The undead thrusts its open maw next to the corpse's head that Jacob was holding up in an effort to rip into his flesh.

  But he grins and pushes the semi-solid slush made of bones and grey matter onto the undead before it solidifies on the undead's face. Effectively welding its jaw and eyes shut with solidified bone before it, too, is stabbed through the temple and drops to the bloodied floor along with the now headless corpse.

  I hear him muttering to himself and take the lull in the fight to swoop closer and land on a branch just a few metres away from my friend as two more undead shuffle towards him, bringing a cacophony of horrendous growls and grunts with them. "It's not like laws or much else really matter anyway." I hear him finish before he gets into the basic self-defence stance Noah has been teaching us.

  He performs a basic sweep kick with his bare foot in front of the first undead, missing it entirely, only for it to sink and become trapped in the very floor it was walking on. The same bloodied blade punches into the left eye, causing clear optic fluid, blood and grey matter to drip down the weapon and onto his ruined sleeve. He grimaces and makes a face at the disgusting display, no doubt screaming inside about the sticky sensation he was known for hating. But it didn't stop him or even slow him down as he kicked the standing corpse backwards and onto its former pack member.

  It stumbles momentarily before having its brain punctured through the eye socket. "Such an obvious weak point for humans to have. We should have evolved something better, like echolocation, although there are gods, maybe we were just made to fail?" he mutters while walking into the fleshy outcove and out of sight. One by one, the growling stops until the clearing is only filled with the sounds of angry cursing from the woman.

  Now that I know I won't be in the way, I fly over to the small cove, struggling in such a narrow place with my weak clipped wings. I land on the pile of mutilated corpses before Jacob notices me and helps me onto his shoulder. "Hello, Birb," he whispers quietly, hinting at the very real possibility that he had forgotten Sunny's name.

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  I was tempted to squawk in indignation, but his attention was on the dying woman in the corner. Her curly hair was now matted in blood as chunks of meat were missing from her body, no doubt lodged in the gullets of the dead lying around us. She didn't make for a pretty sight, exposed bone and an unnaturally pale face scrunched in anger as blood leaked out of her open wounds.

  "Why didn't you come earlier, you fucking prick?" She hissed out through the pain, glaring daggers at Jacob as he slowly lowered himself to her eye level, crouching in the muck and blood.

  "I don't have anything to help you; all I can offer is mercy," Jacob said in a surprisingly soft voice, ignoring the question altogether.

  "I don't need your pity; just help me stand up so I can get that blasted crystal," she snapped, but it had no bite as her voice started to weaken. She tries to stand up, but it comes out more like a shoulder shrug followed by a wince of pain. Panic storms across her face, and she tries again, but the effort causes her to cry out in anguish.

  "Wait, I…I don't want to die…Please..." She all but cries out in her gradually weakening voice.

  "I'm…I am sorry." He replies and glances down at his blood red dagger and then at the unanimated corpses surrounding them.

  "Why…Please…I um…" She trails off, staring at the dead before looking back to Jacob, her gaze slowly hardening. "I won't become a monster. End me before I turn. Please." She finishes, the panic draining away from her face and being replaced by an eerie calm as she looks into Jacob's bloodshot eyes in defiance.

  I had never seen my friend look so lost and helpless as he heard the woman's words, but he just nodded as if he expected the answer, readied his knife, and paused. "Do you have any last words?" he asked softly in an almost friendly tone.

  She pauses for a moment, thinking before her stare became a glare, "Fuck the rot of humanity that doomed us all, even before the Gods used it as an excuse to play their twisted games. They doomed us all for their greed, and I will spend my time in hell hunting them down for sport." She spits out each word with such venom that it almost seemed to give her a second lease on life before she slumps back down and nods up at Jacob with hate in her eyes at the world that brought about all this suffering.

  Her eyes begin to dim as the life bleeds out of her in every drop of blood. I feel Jacob's throat move in a deep swallow from beside me. His hesitation was almost palpable, his hand shaking, but with eyes of ice, he lifted the knife and drove it through her skull, ending the woman's life before she could turn into the very things that killed her.

  We stayed like that for a few moments, hunched over the dead woman's body, head lowered almost as if in prayer. I didn't know what to do or how to help; I should have done more. I practically wasn't even here; I was just a passenger on a ride, seeing more than I bargained for. 'How much would I have to see as my mind spreads? How much suffering would I be helpless to stop?'

  I start to feel numb and empty upon thinking about my place within the world, but before long, Jacob gently pats the lady's cold cheek, closes her eyes, and grabs the small glowing cube that I overlooked through my tangled thoughts. It glowed a beautiful iridescent blue but gave off no heat and was big enough to take up most of Jacob's palm.

  "Mia!" I hear deep within the caves, snapping my mind back to my human body. "Wha…What? What's happening?" I stammer out in confusion, looking around the underground tunnel in panic.

  "I've been calling you," states Ella, who was standing a few steps away from my sitting form, her face and blonde hair barely illuminated by the dim light of the wind-up torch. "No one else will ask, so I will. Are we moving on soon? What's happening out there?" she asks in a tone that demands answers. I looked around the small chamber of dead monsters and my friends, who all looked at me with varying degrees of surprise and an almost tangible sense of fear at the answer.

  "Right, yes, sorry. He's alive, hurt, and currently dealing with…Things. It's not great out there. I need, I think I should take one of the Crawlers…" I stop myself from rambling and try to refocus my multifaceted mind as Sam jumps at the chance to suggest going out to find and help our wayward friend, but Ella is quick to shut him down with the fear of the sky lurkers. Ultimately, we decided to stay put, setting aside an area with a bed, food and water where Ella could best heal Jacob.

  In the meantime, I convinced Ava to drown a Cave Crawler half to death so Sam and I could use it while I helped guide Jacob through the least amount of mutated animals and undead. The cave becomes a whirlwind of activity as Noah pins a monster under his shield so Ava can drown it from the inside out, and Sam reduces its senses of the world while trying his best to copy its tremor-sensing ability. With the help of the others, I'm able to enter the mind of the pinned creature and enter the battle of wills that will either see it become part of me or, well, I'm not sure yet, but the deep sense of foreboding around the topic made me fear it happening.

  With a dull thud, I enter the mind of the many-legged beast and look around the tunnels made from the memories of its short life and primal instinct to kill and eat to grow stronger. The abstract walls of thought were rough to the touch, much like the stone that made up their home, and echoed my movements into the depths of its mind. Not wanting to wander too deeply into the monster's mind, I send out the feelings and ideas of food and friendship I had used to lure out my other pets, only to almost have my head torn off by the beast's sense of self, its ego.

  My surprise allows its oversized mandibles to sink an inch into my neck before I re-solidify my will, limiting the damage to my mental projection of my own ego. I didn't quite understand, but I knew my sense of self and mind played a role in befriending these creatures so that my consciousness could slip into their bodies and become connected to my greater whole.

  I tried again to project the sense of food and friendship to the Crawler, trying to pacify the manifestation of pure instinct and hunger, but it just dropped from its perch on the ceiling and began coiling around my body. It was trying to devour my being with manifestations of hate imbued into its pincers. Legs crawled across my skin, piercing my clothes and scratching at my skin, bleeding my sense of self and will into the monster's mind palace.

  I tried pushing it away, imbuing my projection with thoughts of strength, but they crumpled in the face of the manifested ego's raw instinctual desire to consume me and grow stronger. I try to bargain, showing images of food and a space for it to grow stronger, but the more I offered, the more it was able to crush me, cracking my bones and piercing my skin. I was losing ground and fast. I could feel my projection unravelling and part of myself coming undone along with it. But what could I do? My friends were beating these things with little effort or killing sky-bound behemoths, but I was stuck on the first monster I found. All I could do was look through the eyes of my pets.

  But this wasn't a pet. It was a monster, formed an hour ago out of nothingness with the single minded mission to terrorise humans, live, eat and grow stronger. I couldn't befriend it. There was nothing to befriend, and if I could fill that nothing…

  The new thought spins around my mind as my projection falls to its knees. 'I don't want to crush something's mind and soul. ' A jagged leg pierces my lung. 'I don't want to lose myself. ' The mandibles rip off a chunk of my neck. 'I don't want to become a monster. ' Intent fades, and my mind is pushed out of the beast, making me fall onto my back as a splitting headache slams into my mind.

  I let out a groan of defeat and try to blink away the superimposed images of the giant centipede from my eyes. It feels as if I lost a small chunk of myself in the beast, and it tried to worm its way into the recently created void. But the pain paled in comparison to the sting of failure. Ava asks if I'm ok and if I had tamed the creature, but I just shake my head and look through my many eyes. I find Sam trying to copy the senses of mittens who stood frozen as my mind wandered, and Jacob fighting tooth and nail through a pack of mutated feral dogs. But most of all, I saw Ava looking down at my prone form with concern and pity.

  I wanted to be more, I wanted to keep up with them all, and most of all, I wanted to protect her. She was always there, always helping me and yet every time push came to shove, I was the one on the floor, unable to offer a hand up. I grit my teeth, human and otherwise, jump to my feet, place my trembling hand against the willful monster's head, and rip my way into its mind. 'I would get better, I would get stronger, and I won't let anything happen to her.'

  I barge back into the mind and bring forth my existence in the limited mind palace. Its walls buckled from the strain of holding my emotional might. Foundations crumbled under years of memories. The mind palace crumbles around my projection as the ego shrieks in fear and pain, backing away from me as fast as its clawed chitinous legs could carry it. The memory of the sky lurker's tentacles reinforced through my will sprang from the walls, pinning the monster in place as I reshuffled its mind to bring me closer without taking a single step.

  The beast struggled and strained against its bonds, but more memories wrapped around it while emotions forced it to the new marble floor. More and more of my determination and passion land upon it with resounding cracks as it slowly stops struggling to break free and fades away, accepting me as its new owner. This time, when I fall onto the floor after leaving the mind, it's with a broad smile on my face. I look up and see a proud Ava staring back at me as she stops drowning my new pet, letting it recover as we wait for Jacob.

  By now, he was almost at the end of the nature reserve and was stomping on a particularly ambitious squirrel. He only had to make it through the suburban neighbourhood now, and I was more than happy and equipped to help with that.

  With Sunny's help, I guided him through the least infested areas and eventually back to his house, where Noah helped the bloodied and bleeding young man down into the tunnels to the prepared bed after a quick shower courtesy of Ava. He looked to be in a daze and could barely hold together a basic sentence, seemingly preferring to communicate with soft hums and deep grunts before promptly passing out in bed, where Ella waited to try her best in healing him, because when he woke up, the real challenge would finally begin.