Greed was one of the best virtues — some guy named Mongrel
Anakin had been traveling north for three days since leaving the headless statue, and his body was screaming for mercy he couldn't afford to give it. His fragment count sat at a frustratingly slow climb—one hundred twelve now, after killing another half-dozen scavengers along the way—but the cost of each kill was getting higher. His makeshift bandages were soaked through with blood and ichor, the seaweed wrappings doing little to protect the wounds that kept reopening with every fight. His feet were cut to hell from the coral, his ribs ached from a pincer strike yesterday, and his head pounded with a dehydration headache that wouldn't quit.
But the worst part, the part that made his stomach turn every time, was the water situation.
Or rather, the lack of it.
Anakin crouched in the shadow of a bone structure, pulled out his makeshift flask—nothing more than a hollowed carapace shell sealed with dried membrane—and stared at the pale liquid inside. It wasn't water. It was ichor, the fluid that passed for blood in the nightmare creatures he'd been killing. Specifically, from a scavenger he'd cracked open this morning.
The smell alone made him gag. Metallic, like copper mixed with something that had been rotting in the sun. It was thick, almost viscous, and the pale color reminded him of infection. Every logical part of his brain screamed that drinking this was a terrible idea, that it would poison him, he should find another way.
But he'd tried finding another way. The condensation he could scrape from coral in the mornings gave him maybe half a cup of brackish water that tasted like salt. The dark sea was out of the question, he was almost damn sure it was a nightmare creature.
So. Ichor it was.
Anakin brought the shell to his lips and drank.
The taste hit him immediately, and it took everything he had not to vomit it back up. It was worse than the smell—sour and bitter at the same time, coating his tongue with a film that felt oily. The texture was all wrong too, sliding down his throat like liquid that was trying to be solid, carrying with it an aftertaste that made him think of metal and decay.
'Ugh, damn it'
His stomach cramped instantly, rejecting the foreign substance, and Anakin doubled over with one hand pressed against his ribs. He breathed through his nose, forcing himself to keep it down, counting seconds until the nausea passed. One. Two. Three. By ten, the worst of it faded to a dull queasiness that he could ignore if he focused on something else.
"Delicious," he muttered to the empty air, his voice rough. "Five stars. Would recommend it."
The crazy part was, it worked. Not well—he could feel his body protesting, his stomach churning as it tried to process the horror—but it kept him from dying of thirst. That was the bar now.
Three days of this. his wounds were not healing properly because his body was too busy trying to process the stress, honestly it was a miracle he survived this long.
He was starting to understand why the Forgotten Shore had that name. It wasn't just forgotten by the world. It was the kind of place that made you want to forget you'd ever been here.
Anakin capped his makeshift flask and stood, ignoring the way his vision swam slightly and his legs protested. The Ring of Burden helped—making his body feel lighter than it should, gave him strength his exhausted muscles didn't have—but even that had limits. He was pushing himself hard, maybe too hard, and some distant part of his mind whispered that he should slow down, rest, recover.
But that distant part didn't understand it.
The fragments. Every kill, every notification from the Spell, every increment of that counter climbing toward seven hundred—it was intoxicating in a way that scared him when he let himself think about it. Which he tried not to do. Because thinking about how much he wanted the next kill, the next fragment, the next step closer to whatever transformation waited at the end of this nightmare... that led to uncomfortable questions about what he was becoming.
So he didn't think about it. He just moved north, killed what got in his way, and sustained himself.
Simple.
The clicking sound started about an hour later.
Anakin heard it first as a distant noise, almost lost in the ambient sounds of the labrynth—wind through coral, cracks in the distance, his own labored breathing. But then it came again, closer, and his body went still.
Click-click-click.
Carapace Scavenger. Just one, probably. He could handle one. His hand went to summon the gauntlets, already planning the approach. Get above it, drop down, crack the shell before it could—
Click-click. Click-click-click. Click.
"Fuuuuck...."
Anakin's stomach dropped as he pressed himself against the coral wall and scanned the passages around him. The clicking was coming from at least three different directions now. Scavengers did roam in packs, till now he was just lucky enough not to find one. They were opportunistic feeders, scavengers by nature and name.
He caught movement in a passage to his left—pale chitin reflecting the gray light. Then behind him, another one. Then right. They were surrounding him,these walnut brained fuckers were planning an ambush.
Five. He counted five distinct clicking patterns, five shadows moving through the coral maze, and every one of them was converging on his position.
"Ok…. lets see" Anakin breathed.
His mind raced through options. Five was too many. Way too many. He'd barely survived fighting two at once yesterday, and that was when he was less exhausted and had the element of surprise. Getting trapped was not an option, just one strike from them would be enough to deal with him….
The fragment counter whispered temptation. Five scavengers. Fifteen fragments minimum. That would push him to one-twenty, one-thirty. Over a hundred fragments closer to his goal.
"Idiot," he told himself. "You can't spend fragments if you're dead."
But even as he thought it, part of him was calculating. The passages here were narrow—he could potentially bottleneck them, force them to come at him one at a time. The coral walls were sharp—could he use that? The bones overhead could be climbed, but then what? They'd wait him out.
The clicking grew louder.
Anakin made his decision. He couldn't win this fight, not head-on. But maybe he could kill one or two, thin the numbers, then make a run for it, he did not have many options anyways.
He moved fast, picking the narrowest passage and sprinting toward it. The gauntlets materialized on his hands in a shimmer of light, stone ridges gleaming. Behind him, the clicking intensified as the scavengers realized their prey was moving.
The passage opened into a small clearing surrounded by coral walls on three sides. Perfect. Anakin spun, putting his back to the wall, and waited.
The first scavenger burst through the passage , pincers spread wide, and Anakin met it with both fists. The impact was brutal—his gauntlets cracked into the creature's forward carapace with enough force to dent it, the scavenger's momentum worked against it. The sudden stop sent it stumbling,Anakin pressed the advantage.
His strength will be enough, it has to be enough, he will not die here nor will he be made dinner. His bones ached from the force, his memory gaining cracks/
He grabbed its front legs and pulled, putting his enhanced strength and the Ring of Burden's power into it. The joint held for a heartbeat, two, then tore free with a spray of pale blood. The scavenger shrieked and twisted, he drove his fist into the crack he'd made in its shell.
Once. Twice. Its pincer finally came down in a terrible crack, Anakin's mind scrambled and his thoughts shattered. The third strike punched through, and the creature went limp.
[You have slain an awakened beast, Carapace Scavenger.]
[Your fate is mending.]
[You have received a Fragment of Fate.]
Anakin could barely think, his vision was blurry and there was blood dripping down from his opened skull. The second and third came together, squeezing through the passage side by side barely. He dove left, and a pincer smashed into the coral where he'd been standing hard enough to crack it. His shoulder hit the ground and pain exploded through his wounds, but he rolled and came up swinging. His fist caught one scavenger in the leg joint, cracking the chitin, and it stumbled. But the other one was already lunging, both pincers coming at him from different angles.
Anakin got his guard up and caught one pincer between his gauntlets. The force drove him back two steps and rattled his brain, his feet sliding in sand. The second pincer came for his exposed side, and he twisted desperately. It caught him anyway, punching through his makeshift bandages and tearing a line across his ribs that burned like fire. crack.
Blood was spat out of his mouth as his eyes widened, yet he grabbed the pincer that had hit him, and pulled. The scavenger came with it, off balance, and he drove his knee up into what he hoped was something vital. The creature's shell was too thick, but the impact was enough to make it release him.
From the passage behind them, he could hear more clicking. The other two were coming.
Four on one in seconds. With his injuries and exhaustion, that was death. Simple as that.
Time to run.
Anakin faked left, then broke right, sprinting for a side passage he'd spotted earlier. The scavengers shrieked and gave chase, their legs clattering against coral and sand like drums. He ran through the maze, his exhausted legs burning, his wounds bleeding, his breath coming in ragged gasps that tasted like copper
Behind him, the clicking multiplied. All four now in pursuit, cutting off side passages, herding him. He took a turn, then another, trying to lose them in the maze, but they were faster and they knew this terrain better.
The passage ahead opened into a wide space, and Anakin's heart sank as he burst out into it. A dead end. Three coral walls too smooth to climb, too high to jump, surrounding a circular space maybe twenty feet across.
He was trapped.
He spun to face the passage, breathing hard, the first scavenger emerged. Then the second. Third, Fourth. They spread out, blocking the only exit, pincers clicking with what almost sounded like satisfaction.
Anakin backed up until his shoulders hit coral. His memory was on the verge of breaking, his body screaming/
"Alright," he said to the scavengers, his voice steady despite everything. "Let's make this interesting."
The lead scavenger charged, and Anakin raised his fists, ready to go down fighting.
Then the scavenger's head just... came off.
One second it was rushing him, the next its head was tumbling through the air in two neat pieces, ichor spraying in an arc, its body collapsing mid-charge from the momentum. Anakin blinked, not understanding, his mind trying to process what he'd just seen.
The second scavenger died before he finished blinking. Something—a blade, had to be a blade—carved through its shell like the chitin was paper. The cut was clean, surgical, nothing like his strikes.
The third tried to run. Died anyway, its legs severed in a blur of motion before the same blade punched through its shell from above.
The fourth lasted longest, managing to turn and face its attacker before dying in three precise strikes that left it in pieces on the sand.
Five seconds. Maybe less. Four awakened nightmare creatures died, and Anakin hadn't even seen who killed them.
Then she stepped into the clearing.
A girl, roughly his age, with beautiful, smooth and long blonde hair pulled back from a face that was too clean for the Forgotten Shore. In her hand was a sword, the blade gleaming with the telltale shimmer of a Memory, already dissolving back into sparks as she dismissed it.
Anakin stared, his mind trying to catch up with the sudden shift from imminent death to... whatever this was. She'd killed four scavengers in seconds. Moved so fast he'd barely tracked her.
Who the hell was she?
The girl's eyes swept over him, taking in his battered and bloody state, his exhausted eyes, the blood and ichor covering him from head to foot. Her expression shifted through several emotions too fast to read—surprise, recognition, something that might've been satisfaction—before settling on neutral.
Then she turned slightly, not quite looking at him but not quite looking away either, and spoke two words that made his skin crawl.
"I found one."
Anakin's legs finally gave out, and he slid down the coral wall to sit in the sand, his gauntlets dissolving as exhaustion crashed over him. I found one. Found one what? And who was she talking to?
The girl turned back to him fully now, and a small smile played at the corner of her mouth.
"Hey there," she said, her voice surprisingly ethereal, it may have been due to his exhaustion but she sounded almost surreal "You look like you could use some help."