I slowly reopened my eyes, returning from Violet's oneiric world. I felt an enormous sadness grow in my heart as I noticed the cave. It was more illuminated than last time. It was also hot, very hot. My lips were dry and my stomach growled. 'Fuck, how much time did I sleep?'
Before I could keep thinking, my Instinct sent shockwaves through my feet and my hands. A few seconds later, I noticed a tremor around the cave. Some parts of the ceiling fell down a few meters away from me. I stood up immediately.
Milaine was walking toward me. She was shining and her hair was fully platinum. "You are up, good. We are moving," she said as she handed me the tablecloth. I noticed how she wiped a bit of sweat from her forehead too.
'At least I'm not the only one dying of heat here.' I started to save the books inside the tablecloth as I asked, "Where? If we move outside, the sulfur will kill us, and this place is starting to collapse too. The heat is also becoming a problem; we'll soon be dehydrated."
"I know." She grabbed the hatchet and the hammer as she responded with a monotonous tone, not a hint of worry in her voice. "We are not going out," she said before handing me the hatchet.
"Then?" Livia quickly approached us. She looked distracted.
Milaine pointed with the hammer toward the opposite direction of the entrance. "We are going deeper," she said.
"Of course," I cursed as I made a knot with the tablecloth, holding it at my hips and gripping the hatchet tightly in my hand.
"D-Deeper?" Livia asked hurriedly as another tremor shook the cave. I moved closer to her in order to be able to push her if another part of the ceiling collapsed.
"Let me guess. We are going toward the thing that's making the tremors," I said.
"EH????!" Livia said with a worried expression. "Don't joke with that, Leo!"
'It's not a joke, Livia, it's The Adversity,' I wanted to say but I kept my words to myself, knowing that saying that wouldn't help at all.
Milaine looked at me with her eyes slightly more open and her eyebrows raised. "How did you know?" she asked as she returned to her regular expression.
"I don't know, just my guts, I guess," I told a half-truth. "And the reason is?"
She closed her eyes for a few moments before she spoke again. "We need food. The Moderator said that the only thing we may be able to eat are the Sandworms that make these tunnels."
'Sandworm... that may be the creatures made of flesh that the old man told me about. If they made these cave-like tunnels...' I thought as I looked at the size of the cave. "Fuck. They must be huge," I mumbled.
"What about the water?" I asked, suspecting the worst.
"We drink its blood." She stopped for a moment, before another tremor made her speak: "It's toxic, almost acid-like, but it's the only thing we can drink."
"So another creative way to die, correct? I don't see how that is the only thing we can drink," I asked as Milaine started to walk deeper into the cave, illuminating her way like a torch. "I can heal you when you drink it, but you will have to endure the pain," she said.
I was not even surprised anymore. I started to accept the fact that things will get worse from here. At least that made me calm my nerves.
"I think there's one coming toward here. A small one... probably... we may have a chance with it," she said, implying we should follow her.
"Small one?" I asked but stopped when I noticed Livia was trembling. "Livia, stay behind us," I said as I placed my hand on her shoulder and cast Legemens. Then I walked, following Milaine.
Okay, okay, okay, you got this, Livia, you got this. You can do it, you can do it. Just stay close to Leo, close to Leo, yes close to—AHG!! What does she want now? How do I turn off this thing? LATER. I'LL READ IT LATER! YES, TURN OFF THE NOTIFICATIONS! YES,THANKS.
I turned my head and looked at Livia. She was waving her hands toward the air. 'What the hell is she doing?'
[The spell Legemens has ended]
'Just that? Well, there goes 5 Essentia. I need to get more later.' I returned my attention toward Milaine as we kept walking deeper into the cave. "Let me take the hits, you focus on healing me, okay?" I said.
"No. I'll take the first hit. You focus on cutting the rest of its mouth," she said without looking at me.
"The rest? Listen, I don't care how tough you think you are, we are not risking our healer. If you are trying to act co—" Another tremor. My Instinct kicked in. I grabbed Milaine by the shoulder and pushed with all my strength toward my back where Livia was. Then I jumped to dodge a piece of ceiling falling right where we had been.
Just as I landed close to a wall, my Instinct kicked again. Breaking through the wall, a colossal ring of teeth a bit smaller than the cave rushed toward me like a bullet. Miraculously, I dodged in time, and the sandworm passed in a straight line to the other end of the wall, disappearing just as it had arrived.
"THAT'S NOT FUCKING SMALL!" I spat on the ground as Milaine yelled.
"Eleonora, stay inside the path! It never follows the paths that it makes! Livia, run with her NOW!" Livia started to run and placed herself right at my side.
Right after she arrived, another tremor. This time the sandworm appeared in the wall close to Milaine. The girl started to shine more intensely, making the hammer in her hand glow like fire.
I didn't think and just started to run toward the sandworm. Milaine smashed the glowing hammer into the lower part of the ring of teeth. As the hammer impacted, it was followed by a huge shockwave that threw her flying to the other side of the cave. A lot of blood splattered on the worm as it retracted its body while half of its teeth flew in every direction. A few got stuck in her own mouth too.
My Instinct made me dodge two teeth that were a few inches my size. But the knot at my hips broke, and the tablecloth fell with the books.
'DAMMIT!' I stopped for a moment but quickly kept running. 'Stupid worm, if something happened to Violet, I'll extinguish your whole species,' I cursed in my mind, trying to push away my worry and focusing all my strength in my legs.
When I arrived, the worm was convulsing with a thunderous roar that made my ears bleed, moving its entire body violently, making the whole cave tremble. I waited until its mouth came in my direction. I jumped inside to where a missing tooth was and swung the hatchet inside its mouth.
As the worm kept moving violently, clashing against the ground, breaking it and revealing hints of magma behind the craters, I held the hatchet encrusted in its mouth with all my strength in order not to be thrown away.
The creature arched its body toward the ceiling. I took advantage of the deceleration and stood up on one of its teeth to replace the support of the hatchet. Then I took out the hatchet and started to cut with all my strength. The blue blood that splashed on my body was acidic, burning my arms and part of my neck.
Before I landed the eighth swing, the creature landed its body toward the ground and started convulsing with me still inside. As it stopped moving, I felt my strength leaving my arms. The pain in my hands, arms, and body crushed me all at the same time.
I clenched my teeth and started to crawl outside. Before I noticed, part of my bones were visible. The muscles of my hand and forearms started to break as I crawled. My neck was burning. 'I-I can't breathe.'
Livia appeared at the entrance of the mouth. She looked at me with panic and horror, her eyes wide, and put a hand over her mouth for just a moment before she quickly shook her head and helped me get outside.
I noticed how a bit of the blue blood splashed on her arms when she tried to help me. She cried from the pain but didn't leave. She put her arms around my stomach and back and helped me get out.
As we got out, I tried, really tried to breathe. It was difficult. My body was burning, the muscles of my forearms fell on the ground like a globby mass. Livia was holding me, clenching her teeth, her tears covering her eyes. "W-where is she? L-Livia, I need—" I fell to my knees. Livia held me, her face contorted with pain as she pointed to the far end of the cave.
Then I looked at her. Following a path of blood, there was Milaine, lying down against a crater in the wall. Her right arm was not there, not even her shoulder. Half of her face was bone, the other half was covered in red blood. Her platinum hair was now blonde mixed with red blood. Only a few strands of platinum hair were visible.
'Shit,' I mumbled to myself before I lost consciousness.