1


    Vincenzo explained the curse too. “That’s how I know that other woman’s alive; the rock one, I mean. I still feel it…” he said. “If I change, you need to kill me.”


    She smiled, but for the first time since they met there was humor in it. “I was planning on that anyways,” she replied, getting up. “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”


    The fire was the dimmest it had ever been. He stared at it, watching every dance of the flame and wondered when it’d eventually die out. “Yeah, you’ve heard them too, right?” he questioned, loading two shells into Heavy Metal. “I don’t like the sound of it.”


    “If you''re talking about the sound of legs skittering in the darkness, then yes,” Frey answered. “They’re getting louder; more confident… They’re probably going to make their move soon.”


    “I don''t know if insects can really plan,” Vincenzo said, pulling off the tattered cloth of his sleeve. He couldn’t even feel the cold anymore, the adrenaline already beginning to pump.


    “You’d be surprised. A lot of monsters can catch you off guard if you’re not careful. It''s best to assume that they''re intelligent,” she advised.


    “Catch,” he said, tossing something to her.


    She caught it and held it out in front of her—it was the knife from earlier. The same knife that clipped her wings, silver and shining in the glow of a dying flame.


    He could tell she was confused on what exactly to do with it. “I get that''s probably not the weapon you want, but it''s all I have,” Vincenzo said. “If they attack, just hang back. I’ll take care of it.”


    “What if I stabbed you in the back?” she asked, the hint of humor in her voice from before gone. “It’d be easy.”


    “Then I guess you stab me in the back,” he replied. “The closer you are to the fire is the safer you''ll be.”


    “Yeah, yeah,” she said.


    The skittering noise lessened. Something about it made him ready his weapon, but after a minute of silence he calmed down. We might die here, he thought, feeling strangely relaxed. And if we die, we’ll get eaten. He realized the moment she asked him about his past that all he did was confess, and they were selfish confessions. That wasn’t fair to her. If they were going to die there, she might as well have a nice thought to take to the grave. “He almost won by the way,” Vincenzo said.


    “Who?” she asked.


    “Gult,” he clarified. “I blew past that part when I was talking with you for obvious reasons. I was off… fighting… the other guys and came back to find Cammo on the ropes. He was vomiting. He was dazed. And he would’ve lost, too, if I hadn’t shown up.”


    “Why are you telling me this?” she asked, gripping the leather tight. “Now’s not the time.”


    “Why?” he repeated. He shrugged. “Thought you might wanna hear something good. Thought you might wanna hear that it wasn’t like he was messed up. He just got unlucky.”


    Frey grew quiet and pointed in front of him. “Get ready.”


    He turned to see something crawl out of the wall of black, dark legs tapping the soft leaves in the light as if testing whether or not they’d burst into flames. There was about six feet between him and it, and about twelve feet from the center of their camp. It was going to be tight, he knew. And he also knew that his arachnophobia was about to get ten times worse… Well, he thought, aiming from the hip. No use dragging this out.


    He fired at the first one to investigate, and knew he hit it by the scream. But, for just the briefest of seconds, the flash of his barrel painted a picture: spiders of Plum’s height, furry and black, with eight red eyes and huge black fangs, and the white shape of a skull on their thorax. Vincenzo couldn’t count them all.


    He condensed his feelings about the situation in one simple word:


    “Merde.”


    All at once, they pounced! He fired again, breaking three into a shower a green blood and guts before the rest piled on top, their fangs piercing his skin and muscle like they were made of jello. He managed to put in two more shells while frantically shaking, firing twice, killing a couple more, before ten others weighed him down. I’m going to die, he thought. His knees started to buckle from the weight, the pain, and… the fear. Their legs squeezed his limbs, grinding his skin and sucking the blood that came with something slimy that he couldn’t see. I’m going to die! A fang cut into his black eye, causing him to cry out in agony as he fell to the floor. He was stuck in the dark again… Stuck in that shack with him. The memories flooded from cracks forming the dam in his mind, and a pain worse than tiny knives stabbing him accompanied it.


    “No!” he protested, anger and sheer will pushing him off the ground. “I refuse! I’m not going to die! YOU HEAR ME?!”


    The spiders hissed, cutting into his ears like another set of fangs.


    But what could he do? He still gripped onto Heavy Metal, but he couldn’t load it. He had no knife—Frey had the knife. So what could he do? It was the next ten seconds of torture that filled him with inspiration… and any idea, no matter how insane, needed to be considered. If they’re eating me, he thought, gripping something furry. Then I just have to repay the favor.


    He bit down.


    2


    Frey caught a glimpse of the moon-man beneath the pile, just a sliver of white in the black. She watched, frozen, until a passing spider ran past her and jumped to join the slaughter, hissing at her as it went. They gave her the fire a wide berth as they ran, doing the same for her, but to a lesser extent. Her Glow was protecting her—thin as it was. But how much longer would that go on? She gripped the knife tight and started creeping towards the fire, her every step light as she made it so, the clock ticking above her head. She could kill two birds with one stone. All she had to do was grab some embers, light the blanket, and set the pile ablaze. That was her best bet. She knelt down slowly and grabbed the blanket, before holding it over the dying flame for just a moment, setting it alight as well as showering the dimming arena in a new glow. And she tossed it on the pile.


    The crawling horde went up just as quickly as the blanket did, flames spreading between bugs like a virus, until the few that weren’t burned skittered off into the dark again, hissing as they retreated!


    “Wow,” was all Frey could say to the bonfire. “No wonder they hate it.”


    She was alive, if only for the moment… And she’d done it. Under that pile made of the moon-man’s worst fear, he was burning.


    A pale hand broke through the leaves in front of the light! The moon-man came up, stained with the gunk of decaying leaves and whatever else was underneath the layers upon layers of foliage. He spit out some green glob and complained: “Nasty. That was nasty as hell.”


    I knew it was too good to be true, she thought. He pulled his gun from beneath and his entire body soon after. “Grounds soft… I mean, it’s made of leaves. Real easy to get through” he mumbled with a frown. “Fuck spiders, and… thank you.”


    She sneered at him. “If I didn''t set them on fire then they''d eventually turn on me…” But before she could continue, the sound of something else approaching caught her attention. It sounded big—much, much, much bigger than the others that came. “Besides, I wouldn’t thank me just yet.”


    “One thing after another, huh?” he said, loading two more thingies into his cannon. A large and slim creature approached the edge of the camp, careful not to approach the fleshy bonfire while its two large eyes studied them closely. Its arrow-like head and pitch-black keratin reflected the fire''s glow. Short black spikes jutted out along its four legs and body while its two arms were practically armed with sawblades… It dwarfed them both in height, taller than even the moon-man by two times. Frey might’ve felt braver if she still had her club, but how she might’ve felt didn’t matter. She felt like the knife in her hands wouldn’t be enough.


    He pulled her behind him and fired two shots right after another, the Boom! of his cannon forcing her hands to her ears. Did he get it? she asked. She looked to see. The mantis had leaned back a bit, its mandibles chittering together, its footing off by a negligible amount. The answer was a no. She turned to see how the moon-man would respond.


    “Just stand back,” he said. “I don’t think I need to tell you to run if it goes bad, either.”


    It launched towards them just as fast as its miniature counterpart would’ve. The moon-man—almost as if he had precognition with how quick he reacted—threw his arm backwards and knocked Frey away. It wrapped its arms around his waist, crushing him—which brought on a long, tortured scream—to the point Frey could hear the bones crack, while it dragged his head closer to its chittering mandibles. She saw the man load his cannon again and ram the barrel inside its maw, his teeth grit and his face a picture of fury. An explosive blast broke the bottom of its jaw in a mess of keratin and black goo—but that didn’t save him. Its arms squeezed even tighter. “CAZZO!” he screamed, bleeding from the mouth.


    It ripped him in two, holding each half in each arm.


    She ran.


    3


    Frey’s Glow was the only source of light and she knew that she couldn’t have been too far from escape, and her brother’s killer was going to die—truly, this time. But, on the cusp of what was victory, something nagged her.


    That''s a painful way to die, isn''t it?


    “Of course, he deserves it after all,” she said as she ran.


    Does he? Would Gult have deserved that?


    “No!”


    Well, he was going to do the same thing, wasn''t he?


    “Shut up!” she said. “Just shut up! That’s not the same at all…”


    Would Gult have wanted this?


    She stopped, panting hard, and rested with her hands on her knees. Gult was a lot of things… but he was never a hypocrite. He knew what might happen when he left to get the girl, and he even told Frey that he wouldn’t be surprised—or even mad—if he ended up dying. Would he have wanted this? For some reason, she never thought to ask that question…


    Do I really want this?


    Her brain was wracked with bitter confusion, cursing herself and the moon-man for making her so indecisive. It was his stupid story that made it so difficult, after all. She finally asked the question whose answer would solve everything: “What do I want?”


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    4


    Vincenzo fired two more shells into one of its legs, blowing it off its balance for the smallest of moments—but the insect was too efficient to let the inconvenience be anything more. It slammed the dull side of its arm into his stomach, carrying him for the first half of its swing, and sent him soaring away from the light of the fire and into the wide trunk of a tree. He felt almost every bone break the moment he flattened against the bark, falling to the ground from almost ten feet up. He gripped Heavy Metal tight in his right hand, knowing that it was his only shot at survival. It stared at him in the dark, its segmented eyes devoid of all emotion. He knew that to it, he was one thing: prey. This was its domain: a land where the sun never pierced; where the darkness was a void; where muck and decay were king and queen. He shuddered and rose, the cold air of the forest floor cutting into his bare and bloody skin.


    Whether it was firepower, his physical strength, his mental ability—none of it was enough. Then, just as he blinked, the mantis darted towards him, its silhouette growing to the point he could barely see the light behind it. He fired at it again, flattening his back against rough wood, painting the insect in a flash of orange like the white of a camera—in that flash, he saw its saw-arm stretched high over its head…


    Crunch!


    A warm trickle of blood seeped out of the gap in his skull as it pulled its arm out. It split my head in half, he thought, the strangeness of it all combined with the wound making him feel detached. Right in half—


    Crunch!


    As his face was painted, he pulled his weapon close to his chest with his right arm, using his left to—


    Crunch!


    —to make some shells out of the tree his back was against. But what he did with those shots—


    Crunch!


    —was something he needed to figure out quick. He was already running low on mana, and there was no telling—


    Crunch!


    —how much more he could take. He couldn’t even tell how much time went by between the swings. His—


    Crunch!


    —mind went blank the moment his skull split—


    Crunch!


    He still had so much to do. He couldn’t—


    Crunch!


    —die there. He loaded his shotgun—


    Crunch!


    —and took aim—


    Crunch!


    —and fired once at the spot he thought its exposed mandibles would be! It made no noise as it staggered back, but just from the crunch of leaves under its legs, Vincenzo was able to fire at its head again. He sprinted past it and back to the fire—back to life. Eat that, you cunt, his mind thought giddily. Eat that and choke on it! His victory was short lived, however, as he could hear the rapid crunch of leaves sound in pursuit. He turned, fired at where he thought its head would be, and used the recoil to roll backwards, get back to his feet, and keep running without losing speed. He didn’t even have time to register what he saw in the flash—it was just random shapes to him at that point. Still, the crunch of leaves only grew louder behind him. “Merde!” he said, breathless. Even though it was slower than before—no longer did it have the almost supernatural speed that made it so dangerous—it was still gaining on him. “Merde! Merde! Merde!” He saved a shell for the light ahead, knowing he could land another good hit against its face if it wasn’t pitch black. It was only a couple feet behind him, he could hear, but so was the fire in front. “MERDE! MERDE! MERDE! MERDE! MERDE!”


    He heard a whoosh! just behind his head of what he guessed was a swing, and dove out of the void, turning his body in midair, and aiming the gun up to its face as it stepped out of the abyss. His mind, working faster than it ever had before, drank in every detail of its mangled face: one of its compound eyes was dangling from a black thread, its lower maw was a gaping wound, and its antennae were crooked and snapped.


    He pointed the barrel into its thin neck and pulled the trigger as it tried to pounce, splattering him in a thick layer of mucky goo, and sending its head off far behind him! Its body stood upright, staggered back and forth as it walked around the arena as if it were drunk and alive, and fell down, rigid. It didn’t move again.


    “I won,” he first said, almost in disbelief. He got up, wiped the gunk off his face, and looked down at its head on the ground. “I won,” he said, that time sure. He kicked the head into the fire. “Cunt.”


    “Hello?” someone said.


    He whirled around with Heavy Metal in hand, his adrenaline still pumping. But then he recognized her. The bird-girl had come back. “What are you doing here?” he asked, resting the barrels on his shoulder. He smiled. “I thought you hated me.”


    “I do,” she said, averting her eyes from his nudity. “But I figured out what I want…”


    “And that is?”


    She looked him in the eyes. “To defeat you. I want to defeat you. For Gult. For Buta. For Slogine. And for everyone relying on that girl. When we go back up, I’ll wait for you to be at full capacity. You’ll do the same. And we’ll settle this. Whoever wins gets to continue.” She looked a little sad. “I can sympathize with your story, but I can’t forgive you for what you’ve done. And you’re in my way.”


    “That’s fine,” Vincenzo said, grinning even wider. “I don’t need your forgiveness.” He leveled the shotgun at her right knee and fired!


    The force of the pellets ripped the bottom of her leg off her body as she fell onto her stomach, a mix of shock and unexplainable pain on her face as her breath caught in her lungs. Her eyes were as wide as her mouth, both open to almost comical proportions. She started to gasp for air, tears streaming, getting ready to cry out while burying her face in the leaves. Vincenzo sauntered close, his gun resting on his shoulder. She looked up at him and seemed to realize who she was speaking to. It wasn’t “Vincenzo” anymore. It was someone else.


    She took in a breath, trying her best not to sob—but she did both badly. “Mercy…”


    Vincenzo chuckled, letting the end of both barrels naturally fall in front of her face. “I don’t think so. But I’ll make it quick.”


    5


    Plum woke up to see Buta kicking the camp apart. She was properly dressed for the cold outside and the blizzard seemed to have calmed a fair bit, and from the way she was moving, her wounds had healed. The fire had died down to small embers, and those embers were currently smothered by snow. The light of the morning—a dull grey—bled into the cave. Plum pulled her boots back on and stood. Buta glanced over at her, away, and back again.


    “All right, let''s go,” Buta said.


    Plum looked at her for a moment, a strange resolve growing within her chest. She had no idea where it came from, but its message was clear. The emp looked up at the rock-skinned woman and said, “No.”


    “Excuse me?” Buta said. Her four eyes came alive with fury where there used to be apathy; the transformation was so fast, Plum guessed that it was what the Hiddunson really thought of her. “Do you have any idea of what that means?” She approached Plum with the threatening stomp of something much larger, and the emp pressed against the wall. The hiddunson crouched to her level, just half a foot from her face. “People will die. You understand that?”


    “I agree, and I’d go with you in a heartbeat… But… I can’t. Not willingly…” Plum explained, careful not to stutter. A stutter meant she wasn’t sure, but Plum was feeling anything but indecisive. She wouldn’t let Buta terrify her. “If you beat us, then I won''t complain.” Vincenzo and my papa will save me, she told herself. They won’t lose… But, if they did, I’d be okay with going. They’d fight for her because she couldn’t fight herself. “I won’t go.”


    Buta’s four cat-like red eyes watched her with real anger, before she just stopped. The muscles of her face, once clenched, relaxed. She let out a long breath that she seemed to be holding in, the grey smoke hitting Plum in the face, and her tail, once straight and low, coiled around her waist like a belt.


    Does she understand? Plum asked, too afraid to put it into words. She hoped she did. Why did I have to leave papa behind? If she gets angry… Plum understood her situation for the first time since leaving. Why did she have to be so curious? She should’ve just demanded that Cammo tell her everything. But I didn’t, and now I’m here.


    Buta straightened. “I get it, you don''t want to roll over and die… Nobody does.” She giggled. “Not even animals. Why’d I think you’d make this easy?”


    Buta stood on one leg as she raised the other up, shooting the tip of her snow boot into Plum’s stomach with a speed the girl only thought possible through magic—at least, it felt that fast. She keeled over on her knees and puked up what little she’d eaten for dinner, the spot where she’d been hit on fire. Tears, snot, drool, and her own pink hair mixed into the bile just inches from her face. She gasped for air, her lungs empty. She couldn’t breathe.


    Buta watched her for a second, listening to her tortured gasps before walking back to the pack she’d set down, her face devoid of pity or rage. Plum knew, just from looking, that the women neither hated nor loved her—she just didn’t care. All she cared about was whether she came or not. Buta readied some scratchy rope before turning back around, only to stop when she noticed what was in the Plum’s hand.


    From her boot Plum had hidden a short butcher''s knife, and now she was holding it. She panted hard, trying to get as much oxygen in her lungs as possible, her stomach still burning, and her eyes clouded with tears. She did not, however, sob.


    “Put that down,” Buta said, “or what I do next will make what I just did look like a love-tap.”


    “Fuck off!” Plum shouted. She pointed the knife that was too big for her hand at the woman, using the free one to help push her small body up. “You made me think it was all my fault… and it wasn’t!” She took in a gulp of beautiful air and wiped the snot off her face. Her stomach hurt bad, but she would live. It was hard to breathe, but she’d be okay. “I’m the solution, not the problem…”


    “You’re complicit!” Buta argued, her rage back. She exhaled and calmed again.


    Plum didn’t like how quickly she switched emotions. Did all that happened make her crazy?


    “But I suppose there''s no need to try and argue with you…”


    She approached while Plum readied her pathetic weapon. The hiddunson’s Glow bathing the walls of the cave in hot pink—but a deep green overpowered it a second later. They both turned to see the source.


    Cammo had come. No one said a word as his eyes passed over the scene, taking in every minute detail before his mind called his body to action. He locked eyes with his daughter and showed no emotion, almost as if he didn’t believe what he was looking at. And then he locked eyes with Buta.


    Plum could barely follow the action with her eyes when he finally did rush her, only catching bits and pieces as well as the final result:


    He had chopped at her with both hands, but Buta held up the bundles of rope, coiling them together, and managed to block the dulling blade. Cammo let go with his left hand and punched her in the throat—Plum could only tell it was a punch by the way the Hiddunson grabbed at her neck with bulging eyes, in obvious pain. Cammo chopped at her again, this time embedding the blade deep in her shoulder, and pulled it out just as quickly as it went in.


    That wasn’t even a second, Plum thought, a mix of wonder and fear coloring the fact.


    Blood erupted from between Buta’s lips, and her Glow left her along with it. She dropped on her back. Cammo, his eyes on the woman still, pointed the end of the blade at her chest, and gripping the handle with both hands, raised it, ready to deliver the final blow…


    “W-wait!” Plum said, running to his side. She dropped the knife along the way and clung to his coat. “J-just wait, please!”


    He gave her a sideways glare, his opinion clear. The woman would die.


    Plum knew that. And she knew why he didn’t trust her to understand. But Plum understood. She felt it in her stomach. She felt it in her heart. She can’t live if I try to. It’s me, she thought, or her. “I know what you need to do,” she said. “But wait.”


    Cammo stood over the dying woman and watched them both, and Plum hoped to all the gods that he’d listen. He sighed and turned to her with a face she couldn’t decipher, and it was one, she thought, she never might. She decided it was sad, but even that didn’t feel right. Finally, Cammo relented: “She’s dead, Plum. Maybe not this second, but soon…” He backed off. “Do what you need, my love.”


    Plum thanked him and sat on her ankles by Buta’s right side. The hiddunson’s wound was still gushing blood but she didn’t shy away from it. She used both hands to grip onto the hiddunson’s four-fingered one and squeezed it tenderly, stroking it with her thumbs. The girl leaned forward and spoke: “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.” She let a silence hang, knowing full well Buta had no way to respond, even if she heard. Buta’s half-open eyes drifted her way, but it was impossible to tell if she truly understood. Plum decided to continue. “I really am… I know you don''t think so, but your daughter’s still alive. I know it in my heart, I swear. I feel—very, very, very deeply, I might add—that she is. In fact, I know it for a fact.” She grinned at the joke, even if she could barely bring herself to smile. “My brother is going to keep her safe, I promise… When you die…” she tried to find the words, “he won’t be under your curse. It will all be him. He’ll keep his promise.”


    Plum could swear she felt the woman’s hand squeeze on her own, and could do more than swear about what she saw on Buta’s face. Her lips, red from blood, curled into a smile. And then her eyes went still, and her chest stopped rising.


    “She’s dead,” Cammo said. “My sword got past the collar bone. Hit her lungs. Probably more.” He cleaned the blade with a rag and threw it away. “There was nothing you could do.”


    Plum had no way to tell if Buta actually believed her or if she just enjoyed the thought. She closed Buta’s eyes while wiping her own.


    “Are you hurt?” he asked.


    “I’m fine,” she said.


    “I won''t scold you,” her father said. “But what you just tried to do was monumentally stupid.”


    “She told me everything,” she replied.


    Cammo fell silent.


    “I was going to go with her at first. Then, after sleeping on it, I decided that I couldn''t just roll over and die, and now…” she explained, glancing over at the fresh corpse. “If I give up on my own, then every sacrifice would be, well, pointless.”


    “In what way?” Cammo asked.


    Plum thought she heard curiosity in the tone. “I don''t know…” she answered honestly. “If I did, I’d at least have confidence in that.”


    “Are you still going to continue?” Cammo asked. “Or are you planning on sneaking off again?”


    Plum shook her head.


    “Good,” he said, picking up her bag. “We should go.”


    “What about Vincenzo?” she asked.


    “He’s dead,” Cammo said without ceremony.


    She glared at him. “Do you know for sure?” she asked, skeptical. “Don''t lie. You’ve done enough of that.”


    “It was obvious,” he answered. “You saw him fall.”


    “That isn''t good enough,” she argued. “And I won''t move until he comes back.”


    Cammo sucked air through his teeth in mild annoyance and looked all over the cave. “Can we at least move further up?”


    Her eyes slanted in suspicion. “Why would we do that?”


    “There are springs up ahead where we can bathe and rest,” he said. “There''s also a corpse not twenty feet from you.”


    She glanced over at Buta, a little ashamed of the fact it made her uncomfortable. She turned back to her father. “And we’ll wait there?”


    “Yes,” he said. “But now would be the best time to move. The blizzard’s calmed. Are you ready?”


    She gave him a reluctant nod as she wrapped a red scarf around her neck and blew past him, continuing on in the deep snow, before she suddenly stopped.


    “What’s wrong?” Cammo asked.


    She frowned at him. “Vincenzo’s alive. You should believe it too,” she said. And turned back around, walking into the snowy wastes. She needed him. “He’ll come back.”