Chương 60: Repaid debts

The pressure released from her throat, and she coughed deep from the chest. She was beside Alyn, shattered bits of concrete rock digging into her skin. Her eyes were blurry, and she couldn't see well. Something had happened, but she wasn't sure what it was. She tried to move but found she couldn't, or at least not well. She flexed every part of herself, and while she wasn't broken or paralyzed, she couldn't do much more than that. There was a flash of brown hair as someone stood over her.

A glob of blood splashed her face, caressing her with its warmth. She spat it out, the sheer disgust of that forcing some clarity back into her addled brain. She was about to… she stopped herself, she didn't want to think about that. Her eyes were still blurry, but she knew Alyn was close. It was probably a mercy she couldn't see very well, as even through the haze of her damaged eyesight it was bad. There was a lot of red, and she didn't think she could attribute the new bends to Alyn's body to blurriness.

Her boot was the first thing she could reach as she pulled herself closer. She squeezed, and the boot folded in on itself, the bones inside too mashed to stay firm. Her hand crawled up the boot strings, around her pant leg and underneath to her bare flesh. She pulled away on instinct when she felt her aura drain away from her, only to feel a grin leap across her face.

"Saints lady, how the hell are you still alive?" Grim said. A voice tried to speak with her, the one that was above her. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, not daring to trust her fouled eyes. Still in her heart, she hadn't given up hope. She knew she'd come back.

"One second, Hazel. I just need to fix her up," Grim said to a reply she couldn't quite understand. Her fingers were already wrapped around Alyn's exposed ankle. The pull from her aura was weak but steady, and instead of pulling away, she let it trickle toward her. Along with that, she activated the last dregs of [HEALING GLOOM] and poured it into Alyn, willing it to fix if not stabilize her. With Alyn's power, she'd be able to handle the rest on her own.

Hazel continued to yell at her, but Grim didn't have the energy left to listen. She wasn't quite sure how she'd been manifested, but it's not like she couldn't pull Aura from whoever put the memory curse on her. It wouldn't be the first time. A face appeared inches from her face, "Grim! Get up. We need to go." Wait. That didn't sound like Hazel? But she could have sworn.

"Hazel?" The face shouted at her again and wiped the blood from her eyes. She still couldn't see well, but she could see better than before.

"No! It's Natalie and I'm scared and I think you're dying and everyone else is dying and there's more coming," she yelled into her ears as she straddled her.

"Get up, please." A shot of ice would have shot through her if she wasn't already numb.

"I can't." She was bleeding from too many places, too exhausted and out of tricks. There was nothing more she could do than she already had. Honestly, the nerve of some people. She was far from being the most powerful person here, and she felt like she'd done more than her fair share.

"Please, Grim. I'm running out of birds."

"What?" Grim asked as she looked around, only to see swarms of birds circling around them like a dome. They were dying in droves as Petals hacked into the swarm, trying to force their way in.

"Oh."

"I killed the one that was on you, but it cut me pretty good. Solomon tried to tell me to stay put, but I got scared and went to find you," Hazel, no, Natalie said.

"So we're even now, because you saved me and now I saved you." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. A petal pushed its way through, bleeding from numerous small cuts. It charged at them with a cleaver held high. Grim coughed as she tried to laugh, "You think that makes us even?"

"No, I think this does," Natalie said as Cactus spines poked out of the skin on her hands, and she smeared them in the Petals face. The spines weren't big enough to do serious damage, but the fact she was trying to gouge the creature's eyes out seemed to do enough to blind it. It swung its cleaver back, quicker than she expected and while she was able to twist to avoid being hit in the head, it still dug into her collarbone.

She screamed and pushed it backwards, back into the swarm of birds where they killed themselves as they smashed into the creature. It disappeared from view as Natalie backpedaled, falling to the ground beside Grim. Her breathing was heavy as she tried to hold in how much pain she was in. One of her hands was placed on the side of her neck, doing its best to staunch the bleeding.

"Was that… enough?" Natalie asked. Grim felt the blood pooling out of the wound on her side, still freely bleeding.

"Does it matter?" There was a pause, "Yeah. It does."

"Then we're even—" — Natalie slumped to the ground, briefly thudding against the concrete. The birds ceased circling them and dispersed into the sky. Somewhere else, someone activated their authority, and the couple of petals remaining around them ran off to deal with a higher priority threat. How lucky. She tilted her head to the side and looked at Alyn. She was face down in the concrete and shattered, but her chest moved ever so slightly. Up and down as she held onto life.

If she was healing, it wasn't going to be fast enough to help them— her. If she thought about it, she might have just cursed her to become a Petal or something. Not that she knew how that process worked. Still, if she didn't, Solomon would have killed her, and she couldn't be having that. What would Phil think? Her dying in a place like this? It was a funny thought. She laughed once before something broke, and she lay still for a minute, trying to catch her breath.

In the middle of that, she felt something slide off her chest, and only once she felt like she wasn't going to die any faster did she tilt her head to look at it. She didn't. There was no way. Both of her knives were there, both the Chain Blade and her boot knife, although the latter was now stained with blood. Somehow she'd gotten both of them back. It would have been a lot nicer having them before she was bleeding out on some concrete, but hey, she wouldn't complain.

She inched her hand forward and grabbed her boot knife, it felt right in her hand, filling a gap that had been missing before. It had been a present from Louis. From her… dad. He'd gotten it for her after the S-ranked incursion, the same one that had killed Petra, Chloe's sister. He didn't want her to be scared anymore. Of course, it had been Jin who had talked him out of getting the bright pink one.

She'd always been more practical than him, and she'd been right, the black one they'd gotten her was a lot more functional. Functional. What was functional about this? What was practical here? Something clicked in her brain as memories of her past played through her head, yet she kept coming back to the conversation she had with Chloe. The incursion that happened then was centred on one thing, the Endless Hunger.

It was the only incursion Humanity had ever straight up lost, it was never beaten, it only ate until it was full, then returned to its portal. They'd made up bullshit about how they'd devised methods on containing it, but what if they hadn't? What if they'd just been doing the only thing that had gotten it to stop… Feeding it. That was why they were all so secretive about it. Why shame tinted their eyes whenever they said they couldn't explain.

Every one of them was in on it, complicit in sending people off to their death, and the worst part of it all was that she understood why. It had been toying with them all this time, unafraid of what even their best could offer. Saints, Soryn would have died barely ten minutes in if it wasn't for her. She wanted to feel angry about it, but she couldn't, no amount of anger was going to put the blood back into her body or the life back into Natalie.

At the very least, maybe her life would stop this thing from breaking out anytime soon. The truth of it all was at this moment, none of that mattered. The only thing she wanted right now was her dad, or Hazel. Even Jin would do, as much as they didn't get along, she still had been there. They still hadn't talked or made things better, they still thought she hated them.

"Hazel!" Emily screamed with every ounce of strength she still had, but yet barely more than a whisper came out.

"Where are you? Why'd you leave me?" She waited as her lungs rasped for air, begging for a response. None came.

"Dad! Help me! Jin! Anyone!" The sound of fighting roared around her as her pulse slowed, every heartbeat hurt as it struggled to push less and less blood throughout her body. [FR…] Her soul throbbed as she tried to squeeze any amount of aura into her Boon, yet she was completely empty. She tried to speak again but found she couldn't, all her energy was spent trying to force oxygen into her body to keep herself alive, but it wasn't enough, and she felt the edges of her vision darken.

"I'm…" The knife slipped from Emily's fingers as she drew in her last breath, with her last moments of consciousness, she thought of Hazel.