I braced the Princess against my side, elbows tight, my sword angled to cover both of us. The courtyard smelled like singed rope and old iron; the kind of smell that stays with you even after it's gone. If I kept playing defense until dawn, we might survive—but surviving was boring and involved a lot of dying slowly.
"I'll do the talking," I muttered. "You stay pretty and don't faint."
Elira's fingers tightened around my sleeve, small and fierce. "Do not patronize me, Carl."
"Noted." I grinned because it was either grin or scream. And screaming would attract, uh, more face-eating things.
The thing that had spoken—if you could call that wet gutteral croak speech—skittered forward on too-many joints, its mouth opening wider than anatomically necessary. It moved like smoke with elbows. Its eyes were coals that pinched at the back of my skull. Every noise it made was a grating complaint.
"You little, insignificant pest—dare you challenge us?" it croaked again.
"You speak English? Fantastic." I kept my voice light. Light keeps panic from hearing itself. "...If you could just give me directions to your nest, it'd be awesome."
It should have hissed and lunged. Instead it cocked its head, as if appalled by my presumption. Maybe monsters have manners I don't know about. Maybe they have better table settings too. The thought tickled something like anger under my ribs.
"How arrogant! What makes you think we'll tell you that?" it spat, spittle flinging.
A wicked smile spread across my face. "I was trying to be reasonable, but I guess y'all are impatient for death... I can help with that."
There's a specific kind of silence that comes before a storm. When you know it's about to get loud, but there's a breath in the world that holds. The Wraithspawn circled, their mouths opening into impossible grins, each grin a promise of pain. Then they lunged.
The first one hit our line like a thrown ragdoll. It tore at my blade with teeth like glass; for a second the metal sang, and the thing slithered through like a smoke seam, half-gutted and crawling away. Elira's gasp was a tiny sound against the chorus of the rest.
We moved like a single unit—my blade, her footwork, the way our shoulders bumped when we pivoted. The System, being the goddamn screen it was, chimed as if we were playing some obscene co-op tutorial.
> [Shared Perception Active.]
[Synergy Bonus: Visual acuity increased for both parties. Duration: 00:05:00]
[Temporary Buff: Coordinated Strike Unlocked. Use: When facing a group, trigger a synchronized flank to stagger enemies.]
Of course it would call it "synergy." Of course it would make holding hands sound like an exploit. My jaw tightened. The System's reward language read like a dating app had learned lethal combat.
"You see that?" I hissed, nodding at the thing I'd only glimpsed clearly when Elira's palm pressed to my back. Her presence acted like a focused lens, everything that had been smeared into nightmare outline crisping like wet film drying in sun.
"Yes," she said. Her voice had steel now. "Aim for the joints. Their forms attempt to reconstitute if uncleanly severed."
I obliged. Iron met meat met smoke met metal; sparks kissed the night. One I staggered, Elira followed, and the synchronized strike staggered an entire cluster, sending several into a writhing heap. The System rewarded my clumsy choreography with a little chime and a glowing line somewhere behind my eyes.
> [+20 Affection Points: Princess Elira]
I almost rolled my eyes. Instead I swallowed the feeling that rose like copper on my tongue. Affection points? In the middle of a massacre? That's a talent, even for you, System.
The Wraithspawn adapted. They learned faster than they should have—like a hive with a tutor. Their keening smeared, turning into something that scraped at bone. Then one, larger than the rest, stepped forward. It wore a crown of tangles and sinew, its eyes a little brighter, its teeth a little longer. Everything about it screamed lead.
> [Rank C Wraithspawn detected.]
[Leader Entity: "Broodmother?" Estimate: High Cohesion, Rapid Regeneration.]
[Major Quest Update: Eliminate leader to collapse nest.]
Great. Leader beget nest. Leader get stab. Leader probably also has personality issues like absentee parenting. The kind of monster you'd expect to be carved into a king's crest.
The broodmother's claws scraped the stone and the sound vibrated in my teeth. It lunged with the speed of a tethered storm. I met it, blade biting into a shoulder that shouldn't have been solid. The wound screamed—alive, sticky, smelling like rain on iron.
"You've got to be kidding me," I panted. "You're a tapeworm with a vendetta."
Elira didn't answer with words. She answered with movement. She slipped behind the Broodmother and drove a dagger into a flank that, thanks to our shared perception, I could see would have been its stabilizer. The creature staggered, reared, then lunged at me in a blind, seething rage.
We fought in three-minute bouts: strike, fall back, reassess, strike again. The courtyard became a chessboard smeared with oil and the flash of steel. Every time we synchronized, the monsters faltered. Every time they faltered, the System wrote a notification like an eager referee.
> [Coordinated Strike: Success.]
[Reward: Skill Fragment — "Pulse Laceration" (usable x1).]
Reward screens should feel like consolation prizes for surviving a death sentence, and yet each ding warmed something cold in me. Pulse Laceration flashed in my head with a simple description: slash, pulse, stagger. Practical. Ugly. Beautiful.
I didn't think about the cost. You don't, in the middle of an attack. You act. You breathe. You keep her standing.
At one point, I glanced down and caught Elira's face—sweat and grit, her chest heaving, but eyes bright like flint. For a breath, the hunger that had been tickling uselessly at my ribs settled into something quieter: the urge to be something she could rely on. Not for points. Not for power. For her.
Idiot emotion, I told myself. Dangerous. Useful if you die because of it.
The monsters started to thin, their ranks breaking oddly like waves pulling back. The broodmother screamed, a terrible thin sound, and I saw what the spawn were trying to protect: a slick slit in the stone—an old drainage tunnel, or bone-cold hive entrance. Tiny, transient lights curled down its throat like eyes.
"Find and destroy the nest," Elira said flatly.
"Yeah, imagine that," I answered, already moving. It would have been smarter to wait, to circle, to bait. It would have been smarter to have reinforcements. It would have been smarter if I were not me—always improvising, always leaning too far into whatever could hurt hardest.
The opening smelled wrong, like old cellar and new blood. As I moved toward it, the System pinged again.
> [Warning: Host Stamina Low — 24%]
[Recommendation: Use skill or rest.]
[Reminder: Failure consequences are severe.]
Low stamina. Use skill. Fail = bad. The System really knew which keys to press.
I clenched my teeth and remembered Pulse Laceration. It was a one-shot, not because the System was merciful, but because it liked dramatics. I gathered the little thread of calm I'd learned to steal in the void and flexed my wrists. The next Wraithspawn leapt like a shadow-loosed blade; my footwork planted me, and the Pulse Laceration pulsed through the beast with a little kinetic bloom. It buckled, vapor trailing, and the slit shuddered as if the nest itself had tasted pain.
A second later, the broodmother screamed and swiveled, and for a fraction of a breath—God, the thing moved so fast—I saw something deeper: hands, a rolling nest of pale shapes, and then—inside—the glimmer of a small, round creature, blinking up with a pale, stupid want.
A pulse of revulsion and panic slammed me. That little thing—call it egg, larva, whatever—looked almost harmless. Too harmless to be left alone.
"Elira—" I started. The System cut in between like a mocking parson.
> [Quest Decision Window]
[Option A: Destroy Nest Immediately — Immediate Completion. Reward: +Skill Fragment, +Reputation (Palace). Risk: High Damage.]
[Option B: Capture Larval Specimen — Potential Research Rewards. Risk: Nest Collapse (unknown).]
[Timer: 00:00:45]
Forty-five seconds to choose whether we murder brood or gamble on research. Forty-five seconds to decide what kind of monster we wanted to be. Forty-five seconds to decide if the System's rewards were worth the lives involved.
Elira's hand found mine—easy, reflex, her fingers pressing hard. "Decide," she said.
My mouth filled with the metallic promise of blood and the smaller, heavier promise of responsibility. The System had made this cruel, not just by forcing the choice, but by making the choice ours.
I looked down at the pale, blinking thing—too small to be pure evil, too likely to be the start of more horrors—then back at Elira, who had placed all her faith in me without asking for it.
"I'll—" I began, and in those shut seconds, decisions wind like knives. "We destroy it. Now."
I felt the swallow of the System, the cold click of its gears approving or noting or sanctioning. The choice had a taste, like iron on my tongue and ash in my lungs.
I raised my blade.
The courtyard held its breath.
Then the broodmother moved, like a shadow obeying pain, and the world tilted.