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leahnardo-da-veggie · 2 days ago

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A Tragedy of Love, Death and Maggots, Collated

(TW: Maggots, gore, torture. 18k words, read it below the cut or in the Google doc. It's my first completed novella hehe <3 Enjoy!)

The corpse dangled limply, swinging in the wind. The chains attached to its wrists jangle like chimes, creating a melody more off-tune than haunting.

The corpse was beautiful, once, with long eyelashes and a gleaming smile, gorgeous enough to charm sirens. But no amount of smiling could hide the stick-thin limbs, encrusted with bodily fluids, or the gaping sockets where a pair of eyeballs once rested.

The corpse died of starvation, that much was obvious. It had struggled long and hard to be free, judging from the livid marks along its wrists. Every bone was prominent under its bruised and raw skin. Dried blood stained the rags it wore, barely enough to cover what little dignity it had.

Its ribs were opened up like a butterfly, baring shrivelled organs and guts. I could only hope that it had been post-mortem. Maggots had infested themselves in its cavities, worming and squirming with glee, a veritable mass of white amidst the red. The sight was enough to make any man heave.

“What's the verdict, Doc?” Athena was cheerful as ever, either not caring or pretending not to care about the gore before us. “Who dunnit to this poor man?”

I shook my head. My guts curdled at the way she prodded a chunk of squirming flesh fearlessly. “Someone starved him to death, then chopped him up like that. He must have been left in a cell until he died, or else he wouldn't be stained all over. This entire scene's at least a day old, too, or else maggots wouldn't have shown up like that,” I explained. “Damn, but I just can't think of a monster that would've done this.”

“It wasn't a monster,” Mrin replied, her voice harsh. “No monster would be that wasteful. A human had to have locked him up, guarded the cell so no monster would eat him, then maimed him afterwards.” Her one good eye narrowed.

Athena grimaced. “Cultists,” she concluded.

“Yep.” I folded my arms. “They're back at it. I could have sworn we'd driven them away the first four times.”

She shrugged. “They're worse than maggots. Let one live, and soon you'll have twenty swarming your home and setting you on fire for their rituals.” She broke into a grin. “Guess we've got to break out the weapons and go cultist-hunting again, eh?”

“No,” Mrin said suddenly. She had been examining the corpse's wrists. “This isn't a cultist issue. Come here and see.”

“How'd you figure?” I came closer and took a good long look at where she pointed. “I don't see anything.”

“Doc,” Athena said, suddenly bored. She stood behind me, crowding us in. “Who the hell cares? The cultists are probably back by now. Let's go kill them some more.”

“Hunting, killing, hunting. Is that all you ever think of doing?” I rounded on her. Call me immature, but that flippancy of hers was wearing on me. “There's a dead man there. Whether or not it is the cultists, we need to investigate and avenge him. And that means properly working out what's going on. Isn't that what you'd want someone to do for you?”

“If I'm dead, I wouldn't care what you did. Eat me, string me up by the innards, fuck my dead corpse, it's all the same to me.” She paused, and a shimmer of old anger passed over her features. “But cultist hunting is always a good idea.”

“You're like an animal, you know that? Oh, so the cultists hurt you. Boo-fucking-hoo. You can't spend the rest of your life mindlessly chasing vengeance. You're right. The cultists will always be there. So stop worrying about them, and start worrying about this new threat, because we can get rid of that. Or are you too desperate to meet your old friends again?”

Athena froze, and I saw rage flash across her features. It was dangerous to provoke her, to rip her mask off and reveal the ugly wounds that festered within. I did it anyway, because it was the only way to get her to listen. “Shut up, Doc,” she hissed, earlier cheer evaporated. “Don't you dare talk like that.”

“Stop that, both of you. The cultists remain a threat to us all. If we don't stop them, they'll eventually become a threat to us again,” Mrin snapped, forcing herself between us. “But we are perfectly capable of keeping an eye out for this new danger while finding their new hideout.”

Brett, who had been uncharacteristically silent, piped up. “Yeah, guys. Please don't fight.” He shifted himself to stand closer to Athena, pressing himself to her scrawny frame. “Things are bad enough without us turning on each other.”

Wrapped around his finger as she was, she acquiesced, settling against him. “I suppose it wouldn't hurt. Go on, Mrin: How did you work out it ain't the cultists?”

Mrin picked up the corpse's floppy wrist. “Look at this tattoo,” she said, gesturing to the familiar mark that stood out amongst bruises. “The sigil of The One That Lurks Beneath Rotting Flesh.”

“A signifier of high ranking amongst the cultists.” I thought through the implications of it. “This was either an inside job or someone who hates cultists, then.”

“If it's the latter, I say we let them get to it,” Athena told me brusquely. “Maybe even find ‘em and help out.”

“We'll see what happens,” I said. The thought of siding with anything cruel enough to torture a man, even a cultist man, made my stomach churn. “Come on. I don't think there's anything left to do.”

And so our little spat ended just like all the others, full of unresolvable threats and lingering anger. It simmered under the surface as we gathered rusting cans of food from a stash, when I jostled her arm as we ate dinner, while we lay in bed, silent and seething.

I stared at the cracked ceiling blankly, watching the flickering light overhead. When had I last seen natural light? This place was all concrete and grime, endless electricity fuelling my living hell of insomnia and nightmares.

Mrin was hardly faring any better. Her bedroll was empty, as it often was, for she often meandered her nights away, futilely seeking an escape. Were I younger, I would have followed her, and joined her in that pathetic hunt for freedom. But that was the folly of youth, a folly neither Brett nor Athena had inherited.

They slept curled up in a little ball, snuggled up beside each other. I would never admit it, but I envied their love for each other, the companionship I dared not seek. I watched them silently, arms propping me up, heart heavy.

"They're gonna die here, you know," Mrin said. "They'll die young and in love, without having ever seen the light of day again. They'll die here, and we'll die here, and the cultists will die here. Nobody's winning this game."

"I know," I whispered back. "Aren't you gonna go on your nightly walk?"

"It's pointless. It's always been pointless. It'll always be pointless."

I didn't know how to respond to that.

“I hate this place,” she continued. “I hate it so much.”

“You're repeating yourself,” I told her. “And stop standing behind me. It creeps me out.”

Mrin sat heavily beside me. From the narrow slant of her eye, I could tell I wasn't calming her down. Her fingers scratched at the tiled ground, as though she could dig herself out through sheer stubbornness.

“Why doesn't it get to you? The- the claustrophobia, the constant hunting, the cold canned food? Where do those damn cans come from? Where do the cultists come from? Are they even human? Are we?” Her voice had risen in pitch with each question, until she was more shrieking than speaking.

“You'll wake Athena and Brett.” And it did get to me. I sat up and looked away from her.

“Damn it, answer my question! Why. Don't. You. Care?!” She grabbed the lapels of my tattered old coat, and pulled me to face her.

I didn't want to answer that question. “You know how long I've been here?”

“I know you've been here longer than the rest of us. And you're still dodging me,” she demanded.

“I stopped counting at 15 years. I was a kid when I woke up in this hell, fresh out of med school. Now look at me,” I said, forcing the words out. We must've woken the kids up, but I didn't want to check. I didn't want to picture them like me, old and haggard and unable to remember anything more than these off-white walls. “Believe me, Mrin, when I say I do care. I just wish I didn't.”

She looked into my eyes, praying it was another lie, another tale told to get her off my back. Finally, she said, “I believe you.” And it made me regret ever opening my mouth.

All I could do was reach out and grip her shoulder, rubbing it gently. All she could do was fall into my arms, and weep silently. We held each other as her tears stained my clothes. After a moment, I felt another pair of arms wrap themselves around us. Brett had joined in, gripping us like a child would his teddy bear.

“Athena?” I looked up to see her staring at us from a distance. Reflected in her eyes was a coldness that surpassed mine, a coldness that burned like a thousand cultists on a pyre. “You gonna join us?” I held one arm out, reaching to her, begging her to come complete our huddle.

Those dark eyes hardened even further. She turned and walked away.

Should I have run after her? Would it have changed anything? Damned if I knew. Perhaps the rot in her heart had begun long ago, when the cultists chained her in that dark room and did things to her. Perhaps the very first maggot had wriggled in far earlier, when she first wandered into this place. Perhaps it had always been there, a foul seed biding its time, myiasis waiting for the most fertile soil to sprout into a choking weed.

All I knew was that by the time we had drifted to sleep in that little huddle, she was long gone, toting that makeshift spear of hers into the flickering light that passed for night.

“Doc?” Brett shook my shoulder with the dogged determination of a boy who had finally noticed his girl was missing. “Doc, get up. Doc?” He might as well have passed for a particularly large alarm clock.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘thena ran off,” I muttered, more to shut him up than out of any true caring. “She’ll be fine. That girl can smash her way through an army of man-sized cockroaches, she'll be fine. Besides, she runs off all the time. She took her spear, didn't she?”

“Sure she took her spear, but that's not enough! You have to get up. We have to go find her. I know something's wrong,” he insisted. “I just know it!”

That got me grudgingly getting up. Brett's instincts were never off, and it had saved us from trouble more than once. “Fine, fine. What's the trouble?”

“It's…” He frowned, trying to put it into words. His fingers, long and knobby, kneaded each other nervously. “It's dread, panic, terror. It's being in utter darkness, being left at the checkout counter while your mom goes off and grabs something she forgot, being stuck with your leg in a bear trap and the hunter approaching. It's bad.” The last word made my lips pucker with sourness.

Bad. God, how much that word could sum up. I rolled up my sheet and waved Mrin over. “We need to look for Athena,” I told her. “Brett had another premonition, and he says it's bad.”

“Yeah, well, I've got more bad news,” Mrin replied. “We’re out of food.”

“What? That's ridiculous, we had 10 cans last night,” Brett protested.

“I'll bet your girlfriend took it. Who else could it have been? That damned girl is all instinct and no intellect.” I shook my head in disgust.

He glared at me, but did not dispute my conclusion. “We should hurry up and find her, then.”

With that, we were up and at it again. Brett, our resident packmule, carried the waterskins and our four bedrolls. I had our pathetically small kit of iodine and gauze, and Mrin held on to the only other true weapon we owned: a honest-to-goodness cavalry sabre. It wasn't ideal, but anything was better than the vaguely sharp rock-knives Brett and I carried.

We trekked through hallway after hallway, heading for the corner that the cultists called home. Down an elevator shaft we went, through the hallway that no sane human could have designed, up and over a random waist length wall that existed for no reason beyond making my life troublesome.

Even as time stretched on, nothing passed between us. On a normal day, I might have bantered with Mrin, or pitched in as she and Athena bickered. We might have passed around a protein bar, or took turns trying to snatch a flying ant out of the air. We might have done anything to ward off the oppressive misery, and whiled away another hopeless day.

But without a quarter of our crew, I didn't have it in me to get the festivities started.

Brett, however, did have it in him to crack the ice that had built up between us. “Hey, Doc?" His voice was light as the contents of our stomachs.

"Yeah, kiddo?" I didn't turn around, didn't look into those nervous, haunted eyes.

"Everything will be alright, right?" He sounded like Mrin, praying that good ol' Doc would reassure him that everything would be a-okay.

I thought of Athena's eyes boring into mine, the two of us knowing better. I thought of Mrin's hopeless weeping that night, when she finally accepted that we would die in this endless nightmare. I thought of that bright little spark in Brett's heart being put out, as all beautiful things eventually were. And curse me, but I didn't want to be the one to do it. I didn't want to be responsible for being the one to sully his light.

"Yeah," I lied. "We'll find 'thena, and we'll find some more cans of tuna or something, and then we'll all go cultist hunting."

There was a long pause, as though Brett didn't truly believe me. It stretched and slithered and snuck into my chest, where it rested like a stone beside despair.

My joints hurt. My head hurt. My heart hurt. I didn't want to do this. My own thoughts had joined Brett's in whispering horrors to me, warning me that whatever lay in the near future would not be pleasant.

We were at the border to the cultists' territory when Mrin stopped us. “Athena was here,” she told us. “Look at the markings on the wall.”

Indeed, there were nasty little marks on the off-white walls, in the shape of rather inappropriate and anatomical figures. The only person who would have the immaturity to do such a thing, as well as the guts to do it in the heart of the cultists' lair, would be that damned girl.

I sighed. “Of course it's her. Who else would draw dicks on the walls of hell?” I shook my head. “Fool child. Do you have any idea how long ago she passed through here?” For all that she had one eye, Mrin's sight served her better than the rest of ours combined. If anyone could figure it out, it would be her.

“What am I, your blood hound? I can't tell-” she stopped and took a closer look at the markings. “Oh. She was here not long ago. Look, the ink on the wall hasn't dried yet.”

“Oh, thank the heavens! We might be able to catch her if we hurry,” Brett exclaimed. “Come on, come on! We've gotta get to her before something else does.” His breath hitched, and that sunny smile of his cracked. “If- if ‘thena got hurt, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself!”

Ah, the follies and passions of youth. I shook my head and gave Mrin my signature grin, the one we used to exchange two years ago, back when it was the two of us and she had two eyes. She returned it, hesitantly, showing off yellowing, chipped teeth.

Before anything could pass between us, Brett put his hands on our shoulders and pushed, sending me careening down the hall. “Hurry up,” he demanded. There was a wildness in his eyes, like an animal being chased down. “There's not much time left.”

Mrin sighed. “There's never any time, Brett. I know you're worried about her, but we can't afford to rush in. The cultists are dangerous, and if we get caught unprepared, we'll be unable to save ourselves, let alone Athena.”

I nodded in agreement. “Besides, we don't even know where she's gone. Sure, she's here, but here can be in the congregation hall of the cultists or in some random corner, and we need time to work out which exactly it is.”

He held that look of cornered terror for a moment longer, begging us to change our minds. Then he gave up and nodded. “Alright. I take it we're scouting the lair first? Knowing her, that's where she'll be.”

“Yeah, sure.” I started forward again, keeping up with Brett as we made our way towards the home of the greatest monsters in our little hell.

Not that there weren't other monsters there too. Monsters with tentacles and spikes, like the one that gave me a long, barely healed gouge along my upper arm. Monsters like a man with too many limbs, sitting in the dark hiding their extra hands behind their backs and beckoning us to come in such that they might dine on our flesh. Monsters that were nothing more than a glitch, that ruined everything they touched.

Bad enough that they took our flesh, sucked the marrow out of our bones. Worse still, that they took our lives. But what made this place hell, instead of merely dangerous, was that it took our soul. This place had killed the love in my heart and stomped on its shattered bits, just like we had a dozen cultists.

Those cultists were human once, just like us. For all of their cruelties and insanities, that meant they were human when we killed them. Which made us, all four of us, murderers. I looked at Brett, urging us forward like an overeager puppy. He didn't look like a murderer.

If there was anyone I wished I could rescue from this hell, it was him. Athena had her rage and bloodlust. Mrin had her eagle-eye and sudden breakdowns. I had my age, my apathy. He was the only untainted one, the one who shone like the sun, with his dirty blonde hair and sky-blue eyes straight out of a movie.

I… I hated him so much at that moment. It wasn't fair that he could live in this neverending nightmare and still smile like that. His girlfriend was an axe-crazy psycho, his daily life involved scrounging for rusty cans of food and drinking water from leaky pipes, and yet! Yet despite it all he managed to love, to trust, to care with such a passion that it sparked my rage. I was jealous, so very jealous of him.

“The lair's up ahead,” Mrin said suddenly, jerking me out of my thoughts. “I see silhouettes of people.” She paused. “Cultists, I mean. Not people.”

I stepped closer, hiding behind a pillar. Things that could be charitably construed as human twirled in dizzying circles around an altar. “A ritual of some kind,” I whispered to the others. “But for what?”

My question was answered soon enough, and I wish it hadn't. Two masked cultists, heavily muscled and scarred, bore a struggling, furious girl up towards the altar. Despite the ropes holding her wrists and ankles together, she hissed and sputtered like a wildcat, struggling as hard as she could. They hadn't chosen her carriers carelessly, I noted. Anything less than the strongest of bonds and bearers, and that girl would have clawed her way free.

“Athena!” Brett made a move to dash into the rows of dancers, only to be stopped by my outstretched arm.

“Don't be a fool, kid. If you run into a circle of cultists, you'll just get killed along with your dearest Athena. Is that what you really want?”

The glare he gave me could have belonged to a petulant teenager, if not for the undercurrent of terror. “But-”

“Hush, both of you, or we'll all be found.” Mrin, always sensible.

Their high priestess, decked in layer after layer of tattered robes walked up before Athena, bearing a ceremonial dagger. “Feral child,” she began in a voice like the buzzing of a thousand flies. “You have cost us the life of a Precious One, of our Honoured Sacrifice, He Who Would Bring About The Birth Of Our God. For that, you will pay with a thousand years of agony.”

“Cost them the life of their sacrifice? What the hell are they talking about? Athena-” It clicked, and I closed my mouth. “The hanged man. That- that was her. That's why she didn't care. That's why she tried to distract me when we found the tattoo. She knew, this whole time.”

“But that would mean that she had starved, beaten and killed him in cold blood,” Brett protested. “Athena would never-”

“Athena would. You know that. You know that better than the rest of us, Brett,” Mrin replied. “That doesn't change anything. We've got to save her anyways. She's one of us.”

“Like hell this changes nothing,” I snapped. “She tortured a man! In cold blood! Do you not see why I don't want to rescue the bloody berserker who tortures people?!”

“Shut. Up.” Brett, of all people, had said that. He glared at me, knuckles white with rage. “Don't you act like such a hypocrite. You would have left that man in there no problem. Don't pretend that you weren't the one to convince us all to cull the cultists the first time. You wanted us to leave Athena behind, right from the beginning. What is your problem?”

It was a miracle that nobody had noticed us. Somewhere in the background, the cultists began chanting, a deep sound like a boar stirring from dirt, like drums beat to the rhythm of war. “I did what I had to to survive. If that meant leaving someone for dead? Yeah, sure. I'll admit to that. But this is just viciousness! She did this out of malice. She is evil, Brett. That's what evil looks like.”

“No, evil is acting like fear and anger make you a monster. Evil is knowing better, and doing worse. You're evil,” Brett said, shoving me away from him. Mrin caught me, her face turned away to watch the cultists. “And I'm saving her, no thanks to you.”

He stomped off angrily. “Now look what you've done,” she murmured. “Oh, I can see this ending badly.”

I glared at her. “Don't jinx us,” I replied. “Who knows? Maybe the kid will pull her out of it. He's done greater miracles, after all.”

Her silence told me she saw through the lie.

“And so-” The priestess' voice drew my attention back, ringing with ugly power. We had missed… something. It felt important. If only I knew what it was. “Do you have any last words?”

We all turned to Athena, us and the cultists and whatever gods there might be. A thousand eyes stared up at the tiny girl bound up, on her knees atop the altar, her gag released so she could say one last thing.

And true to her nature, she hawked a great gob of saliva and spat at the priestess' face. “Go fuck yourself,” Athena proclaimed, chin raised defiantly.

“So be it,” the priestess replied, and gestured to a servant. We'd wasted too much time bickering, I realised. Too much time. Perhaps Brett had been right, after all. Not that my admitting it couldn't do anything.

Perhaps- Perhaps Brett could save her. He was strong, and fast, and- Oh, if only I'd gone with him. If only I had looked past my petty grievances earlier. I really was always too late to save anyone, was I? Right from the very first time someone had died on me, I should have known. I was no Doc. I was a failure.

But I had to hope. I had to hope that Brett could right my wrong. I had to hope, even as the priestess took her ceremonial dagger from an awed worshipper, even as she raised it with a black-toothed smile, even as-

Commotion on the other side of the cultists told me Brett had been intercepted, that he didn't make it, that our one chance to save her had failed. The priestess raised her dagger. Its light glinted like a sudden glimpse of the sun across the horizon. Athena screamed bloody murder, curses and obscenities and the murderous rage that lay in her heart. I screamed too, and reached out. Mrin let out a gasp.

And that was it.

It was a sudden limpness, a voice cut short, a flicker of false sun dashed by blood. The priestess raised a triumphant, gorey hand and grinned right at me. “So it is done,” she announced. “The sacrifice has been made. She has been summoned. Welcome, our Lady That Lurks Beneath Rotting Flesh!”

Something bubbled out of Athena's chest, something grey-white and squirming. Her body jerked upright, cracking its neck with a sickening twist, shoulders jerking like a prop from a bad zombie movie. Her eyelids fluttered open to reveal two eyeballs quickly overwhelmed with crawling things.

Mrin let out a gasp beside me. “Maggots,” she whispered. “We have to get Brett and run.”

This time, I didn't protest. My foolishness had cost us enough. Between the pillars and our running, I caught only glimpses of the thing wearing Athena's body. It stretched lasciviously, throwing uneven arms back and grinning ear to ear, quite literally. The foul worms that made up her flesh multiplied, spreading and growing like a miasma, until she was the height of two men.

The Lurker, or whatever I was to call this abomination, was beautiful like a statue, all elegant and evocative and ethereal, if statues writhed and crawled upon itself and wore a smile that split its face ear to ear. It looked nothing like the girl I knew. And it was gazing down at where I knew Brett to be.

“Shit,” Mrin snarled, forcing us both to a halt behind a crumbling wall. “They're blocking us.”

Indeed, there were hundreds of cultists standing around her, watching their goddess in blind ecstasy. A few had their hooks in Brett, baring him before her like her very first sacrifice.

I wanted to scream, to beg him to cut loose and run, but Brett stood there steadily, light ringing his golden hair like an angel's halo.

Athena, or the thing wearing her face, grabbed his wrists, claws the size of knives digging into the open wounds. “Brett,” she cooed, swaying with delight. “You came looking for me.” The maggots churned and coursed, making her facade of a woman ripple.

He nodded unsteadily. “'thena, I know this isn't you, alright? Snap out of it,” he said, not a trace of fear in his voice. “We're here for you, me and Doc and Mrin. I'm here for you. We believe in you.”

He took in a deep breath. “I love you, Athena. So come back to us, okay?”

For a moment, she froze. I thought- I hoped, against all hope, that it had worked, that the power of love would triumph.

Then that horrible mass of writhing rot grinned. “How cute. How darling. Why, I could just eat you up, dearie,” she exclaimed.

And she did, her swarm bending down towards his face. Brett's scream was cut off abruptly as she pressed her lips to his, kissing him deeper than the real Athena ever had. He squirmed in her grip as wave after wave of larvae poured down his throat, gnawing and gulping down his innards. I caught flashes of red as he was engulfed, each quickly overwhelmed by the swarm.

It was too much, just too much, and I bent over, heaving sour bile onto the floor. It tasted like Brett's screams, wet and sour and horrified.

I would have sat there retching my wretched lunchless guts out until she found me, had Mrin not dragged me back. She might have been smaller than me by a half, but she made up for it with her sheer persistence.

“Doc, don't do this. We need to get out of here, and we need to do it now.” Her voice, normally so calm, was tinged with panic. “Come on, be a dear. Get up. Keep moving.”

I lurched along with her, leaning on her shoulder, leaving behind the two people who had been a staple of our lives.

“They're gone,” I whispered, when we were just beyond that vile cathedral. “Both of them. And it's all my fault. I let them die. Oh god, Brett was right. I am a monster.” My legs felt weak.

“No, you're not. You're a fool man, like most men, and I'm a fool woman, like most too, and we need to get out of here before we become dead fools. Now, don't stop. Keep moving. One leg after another. That's right, Doc. We'll work out what to do afterwards,” she coaxed, not a hint of the frightened woman I'd seen just a day before lurking beneath the surface.

“How can you be so calm? They're dead! I might as well have killed them myself. Oh god, I'm a monster. It should have been me, not them. They're just kids, and I was so harsh. This is all my fault.” The words kept on spilling out of my mouth, circling like vultures above a battlefield.

Mrin slapped me. Hard.

“Move, for fuck's sake. Or else we'll be dead too, and you'll have to answer to whatever cruel deity is up there. You're too old and I'm too mean and we’re too stubborn for it all to end here, so let's fucking go!” Tears rimmed her eyes, glistening like reflections of a half-forgotten summer day. I reached out to wipe them away, and she swatted my hand. “I don't want to die, Doc. Come on, get up. Get up. Get up!”

I did, stumbling to my feet, the taste of hunger and phantom flesh spurring me on like a whip to my hide. Her fingers were locked with mine as we ran. It didn't matter where we went. We just had to go away. Get away from it all, go back to the fields of green and a lover's arms, dishes in the sink waiting to be washed, a memory faded like the details on your grandmother's photo.

I missed reality. Oh, how I missed it. This was a bad dream, a bad dream so long and visceral that it had eclipsed awakening like Not-Athena looming over the flickering lamps. I stumbled forwards through the haygrass, my knees aching from running all day. The sun, just beginning its golden descent, laughed at my pathetic fleeing. The wind, thick with pollen, whipped at my over-long hair.

Where was I running from? I remembered concrete, grey, endless running and hiding. Dark eyes, distrustful and hurt, boring into mine. A golden smile, brighter than the sun that shone in my eyes. A scarred woman with a sharp eye and businesslike mannerisms, breaking down before my eyes.

And something worse. Something so bad I had forgotten. I caught myself against a scarecrow, rough sackcloth and woodgrains bringing a tear to my eyes. I wanted to stop, to rest, but that something pushed me forward. Come on, get up, it urged. Get up. Get up!

The words echoed in my brain, bouncing about like the sting of a slap and the ache of my bones. Why did my cheek sting? Better yet, why did my bones ache? I was still spritely, young-

Old. I was old. Yes, that was it. How could I have forgotten? Mrin was just ahead of me, torn between fleeing and keeping me with her. Athena was possessed, probably dead. And Brett- Oh, gods, Brett!

I shook my head roughly. Why was I crying? I had to move. Keep moving, stop thinking about- whatever it was I remembered.

I didn't want to dwell on the past. I never did, as an ambitious young man. Better to look to the bright future. It was time to retire, wasn't it? Yes, I could leave the big city, move back out to the old cottage Granny Bella left me, make a home with my love-

My love. Something about that struck me. I didn't have a love. I'd dedicated my life to work, hadn't I?

But I did. And she was right in front of me. In a blaze of fire and scarecrows and memories that weren't, I burst forth from my dream and back into my nightmare.

With a gasp, I sped up and grabbed Mrin's arm. It was warm, familiar, and utterly paled in comparison compared to that feverish moment. When I took a moment to regather my senses, I realised I knew this corridor. Even better, I remembered hiding in this corner, an eternity ago, when I rescued a two-eyed Mrin from monstrous things. “To the left!”

Without responding, Mrin turned with me and we crawled into the little tunnel where my safe room lay. It was hardly more than a crack in the walls, and my body protested as I shoved myself in. For a moment I was afraid we would not both fit, for even I alone was a snug fit. But Mrin pulled herself in behind me, squeezing herself until we hardly had room to breathe.

The two of us hardly dared to watch as the ground's rumbling grew louder, beating like war drums with the feet of a hundred cultists. They were out to get us, I thought, and prayed that they would not find us.

The cultists drew closer, and I realised their movements were disorganised, frantic, terrified. They weren't hunting us. They weren't chasing. They were fleeing.

Fleeing what? I knew the answer as soon as I thought of the question.

Athena. Or to be specific, Not-Athena. She- It had turned on its summoners. I wiggled closer to the corners of our hidey-hole and clung to Mrin closer. “That thing's going to notice us,” I whispered in her ear.

She nodded. “Not if we stop breathing. That thing hunts through the sound of its prey. Hold on to me. Hold on tight, and hold your breath. I'll get us out of here.” There was something cold in her voice, like she was recalling a thousand-year-old memory and found it distasteful. “Just remember: Don't give in to it.”

She hushed my protests and began murmuring under her breath, a slow, steady chant whose cadence reminded me of the cultist priestess's ritual. It stole my breath away, quieted me like a pillow pressed against a sleeping man's face. For a moment, I felt my soul scrabble for breath, drowning in her words. But it was only a moment, and like all moments, it passed.

I breathed through my nose, curled up as far from the Something that swarmed above my head, something ancient and cruel, something that wanted me and Mrin dead. It glided past me, leaving a trail of slime and straggler maggots. One of the larvae crawled towards me. Would it alert the others if it found me? Could it?

It reared up, looking me right in the eye. Did maggots have eyes? Could they see? Was the game already over, before I had even realised it began?

We stayed like that for an eternal moment, that tiny scrap of Not-Athena and I. I wondered if each maggot had its own mind, its own opinion. I wondered if it had a tiny scrap of our Athena in it, having become what it ate. I wondered if, when it turned away, it was out of pity or ignorance.

Either way, we were safe. For now.

My fingers found Mrin's hair as her murmurs slowly died off. “It's over,” I told her. “We're safe. Come on, let's get out of here.”

She nodded unsteadily. “Right. Get out. Get away. Move.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, a thought leaking out of her tongue. With a heave, she hauled herself out of our hidey-hole. Out in the open, I could see blood dribbling out of her lips. Whatever she had done had cost her something, that much I could tell.

I followed her out and pressed her into a seated position. Her eye was blank, glossed over like she was high. “Come on, Mrin,” I coaxed. How quickly the tables had turned. Me reassuring her, her protecting me, me healing her- it was an endless cycle, like a satellite's orbit of Earth, always falling and never hitting the ground. I needed to get her back on her feet, just like she had me. Well, not her physical feet. Her metaphorical ones. Damn, my head hurt. It was getting hard to think.

I peered into her mouth. Her gums were what bled, raw-red and potentially infected. No, not potentially. Definitely infected. When had it happened? She hadn't complained of such issues previously.

Curse it all. “Mrin, can you hear me? You alright?” She obviously wasn't, but I was running out of things to say. Everything was falling apart. I wanted to get back to falling apart too, but I couldn't. Not when she was like this.

She didn't respond. “Mrin? Please respond. I need you, Mrin.” Her pulse was soft, chest moving ever so slightly.

“Mrin?” Gods, I was repeating myself like a broken record. My own pet peeve, and I'd stooped to it. “Mrin, please. You got me out of there, and now I need you to get out of whatever dreamland you're in.”

Still nothing. If anything she was fading away. But this couldn’t be it. That was unacceptable. I'd spent a good fifth of my life with her. She’d had my back. She was my friend, my companion, my partner. I couldn't lose her. “Mrin?” I clasped her face, looking into those unfocused eyes of hers.

“I love you.”

If this had been a romance or a fairytale, she would have opened her eyes. If this had been a dream, a good dream, she would have whispered it back. If there had been any justice in this world, something should have happened.

But it wasn't. I was no pure of heart hero, and my knight in shining armour was none more than a tired, scared woman who'd pushed herself too far. Perhaps… Perhaps it was all I could do to sit beside her and hope.

I settled down next to her, running my fingers through her hair. It was matted to hell and back, but I had all the time in the world to detangle it. Not-Athena wouldn't come back here, not so soon, not when it had plenty of prey to pursue.

How were we gonna get out of this one? Was this how all the monsters in the labyrinth were born? From rude, self-obsessed little girls? From the corpses of their soft-hearted boyfriends? From the tears of an old man who had never wanted to care so much?

My tears were silent, landing on the knees I had pressed against my chest. My stomach ached. My mouth was dry from screaming and heaving and all the other vile things my day had been occupied with.

I wanted to go off and find some food, some water, some relief. I had chosen this hidey-hole well, even if I rarely visited it. I knew of a leaky pipe with semi-clean water, and a little stash of only slightly rusted cans of beans. But I couldn't leave Mrin. Not when she was like this.

The part of me that had truly hardened itself to the world told me to get up and walk away. It was sensible. I didn't know how to help her. I was no magician or wizard, to cure wounds caused by magic (or what I presumed to be magic, at least). I was only a useless little boy, who hadn't saved anyone, though he'd dedicated his life to it.

Some Doc I was.

Still- It was foolish to choose to let myself rot in here beside a woman who would probably die. It was foolish to waste time that could be better spent rebuilding my life from the corpses of my lost companions. It was foolish to hope.

But a fool I was, and a fool I had always been. There was a third choice beyond staying at my post and walking away. There has always been a third choice, even if I had neglected it so often. There was a third choice, and it was to not give up, to get back up on my feet, to try and try and try, no matter how many times I failed.

My bones creaked, my muscles screamed, and oh, oh, did my body cry. But I bit my tongue and swallowed my pain, because for once, I wasn't going to leave another person behind.

I wrapped my arms beneath Mrin's armpits and hauled, lugging her against the ground. A long time ago, I went for a first aid course. They taught us how to carry people there, with fancy names like fireman and piggyback. I couldn't remember any of it, and I wouldn't have had the strength to do it anyway.

But I hauled all the same, feeling my muscles clench and bones pop as I did so. My head throbbed like the worst hangover in a dozen lifetimes, and my fingers cramped such that I thought I'd never be able to move them again.

But still I hauled. My knees ground against each other, heels digging into the ground. I could taste blood from where I bit my tongue. Something tore in my back, and my vision flashed red and white like Not-Athena gulping down Brett.

And I continued hauling.

I pulled and dragged and heaved all the way to the very end, to where a single leaky pipe stood. A veritable oasis. I dropped Mrin down, collapsing beside her as I did so. What possessed me to give all our water skins to Brett? Damn it all.

With one dusty, aching hand, I caught a few droplets of water and washed Mrin's face. Her bare hands were skinned and covered in cuts from the concrete I had dragged her across, but she seemed stable. I dribbled some more water into her mouth and dripped my iodine onto some gauze.

Slowly, gently, I daubed it against her wounds. First the arms and the legs, cleaning them of the dust that permeated everything. Then it was her gums, taking care to clean it out with tissue afterwards. Then, last of all, I wiped the empty rim of her eye. Even after so many years, it pained me to see her socket. There was something so ugly about it, so visceral and harsh. It didn't belong on her face.

I cradled her in my arms after that, alternating between hydrating her and myself. With the water and the knowledge that the stash of cans was in a hole in the wall somewhere nearby, I found myself drifting off to sleep once more, leaning in a corner uncomfortably.

I dreamt of running through a golden field at dusk.

***

I was awoken by a gentle tugging on my arm. “Fuck off, Athena,” I mumbled. She always did this, raring to go at too-fucking-early o'clock. “We've got nothing important to do, there's no rush.”

“Yes, there is,” came the response. Too deep to be Athena and too feminine to be Brett, I consigned myself to the grim day at the hands of Mrin. Goodness knew what she wanted with-

Ah, fuck. The memory of the previous day rushed into my brain with a mental ‘pop’, and I winced. “Bloody, fucking hell. We gotta stop that thing, don't we?”

Mrin, somehow looking more alert than me, nodded. “Yep. According to my prediction, she's gonna overrun this entire place if we let her. Already, she's begun expanding. Give her two more days, and who knows what we might be facing?”

With a sigh, I rested my head against the wall. “Great. Just fucking great. Can't we run? Brett and Athena aren't gonna be rescued either way, and I don't think they'll want us to die fruitlessly.” A second thought adjoined itself to my grumbling, and I found myself adding, “Besides, you shouldn't be in action right now. You had some god-awful kind of infection just now, and you were half-dead. What even was that thing?”

Suddenly discomfited, Mrin shrugged. “Look,” she said, “It's complicated. What happened to me… Let's just say it was a occupational hazard. Thanks for cleaning me up, though. I'm better now.”

That statement did not make me feel better. On top of this hostile shithole, on top of Brett and Athena's deaths, on top of that monstrosity roaming the halls, Mrin was hiding something from me? Had been hiding something from me? Would continue to hide something from me? Did our years of travelling together mean nothing? Damnit.

I trusted her, yes. I'd always trust her. That was just how a partnership worked. But it was the first time I'd ever considered that this didn't go both ways, that she was lying to me. Probably for my safety, or perhaps for her own, but it still stung. It was another straw upon the back of a struggling camel.

She saw it in my eyes. “Look, Doc, it's complicated. After this is all over, I swear I'll tell you everything. No more secrets between us, okay?” There was a pause, as though that promise cost her something. “And, speaking of which… Did you mean it? What you said while you were trying to wake me up, I mean.”

Oh. That. For a moment, the old Doc, the one who got himself blackout drunk on the day of his med school exams and flirted with every woman in the bar came rushing back. Refutations landed on the tip of my tongue, as familiar as the lies I'd always told myself. I forced them back down. Had I not made a promise to myself? To not take the easy way out, as I'd always done?

“Yes. I meant it. I love you, Mrin. And I'm no poet. I don't have a way with words, or a thing for grand gestures, or even the ability to make this… place romantic. All I can offer you is what I've already given: a steady pair of hands and a partner to watch your back. You don't need to love me back. I know I'm a difficult man to love.” I found myself gripping her hands and looking into her eye. “But I hope you do. I really do. I hope you love me like a rock against the stormy sea, like the sun rising in the East every day, like a couple growing old together.”

“There's a word for that,” she whispered back, leaning in close. “I can't recall it, but I know the Greeks gave it a name. I know it means sensible love. And I know- I know I love you.” She pulled me into a hug, resting her chin on my shoulder. “Never figured I'd find love, you know. Always thought that was for women prettier and smarter than me. Of all things, to find it here and now…”

A tiny sigh escaped her lips, like the swish of a guillotine. I didn't like that sound, not one little bit. “Doc, there's something I need to do.” Her fingers dug into my clothes. “I- Stay here, will you? Wait for me.”

We disentangled from each other, and I said, “I'll wait for you forever if need be. After all, we did wait for each other all this time.”

Mrin pursed her lips, the sides of her eyes crinkling up. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Path G:

As she turned to go, I stopped her. “Wait. I want to help you. Didn’t I just say I was your partner? Let’s do this together, Mrin.”

It made her break into a proper smile. This time I could see the cracks in it, where something that horrible and despairing lurked. “Are you alright? You look… troubled, my love.” The last word lingered on my tongue. It tasted like the fields in summer.

“It's nothing, Doc. Nothing at all.” Mrin turned away, but I caught the flash of grief. Stronger, it was. Starker against the warmth in my chest.

“No, it's not nothing. Don't brush me off, Mrin. Not after everything we've done,” I said, grabbing her arm and pressing it to my chest. “I swear, Mrin, I'm done trying to accept my fate. I'm done trying to make my own heart freeze over. I'm done refusing to admit that I don't care about you, or Athena, or Brett.”

I don't know when I decided that. To be honest, I hadn't quite realised it until the words flew out of my mouth. I suppose it must have been when Mrin burst into tears that night. It always did come back to her, after all. Her and that piercing gaze of hers. It revealed things I didn't know about myself.

But it was true. I was done, once and for all, of letting harm coming to the ones I loved. It was time for me to step up and be a man for once. I pressed her calloused hand to my chest. “Come on, Mrin. Tell me what's wrong. Let's face it together, no matter how horrible. Isn't that what partners are for?”

She looked down, avoiding my gaze. “I've come to a conclusion of my own, Doc. I think- I think it's time I stopped trying to make the impossible happen. I've been stuck here for what, a decade? And no matter how hard I've tried, I can't find a way to escape this place. I…”

“I don't think there is one.”

The admission made her voice crack, and she yanked her hand from my chest as though I'd stabbed her. “Fuck, that hurts to say aloud. But it's the truth, isn't it? There's just no way out. We're stuck here. Doomed.”

It was the opposite of my decision. “Mrin…”

“No! It's pointless, don't you get it?! It's so… so accursedly unfair of you to say something like ‘I love you', right when I've made my choice! I admired you, Doc. I admired how stoic you were. I tried so, so fucking hard to stay calm in the face of everything. I tried so hard not to care. I tried to be like you, and just as I succeed, you do this?!”

She shook, though with rage or grief, I could not tell. “You stupid bastard. You and Athena and Brett, you've all left me no choice.”

“I've got to save you all. Even if it means killing myself.”

“Mrin, what the hell are you talking about?” I tried to reach out again, and she gave me an infuriated look.

“Run the numbers, Doc. I'm never going to be happy here. I don't want to spend my life chasing something that will never come to pass. It's all so pointless. Pointless, I tell you.”

“You're repeating yourself again, Mrin.” Even as I said it, I knew it was useless. We really were doomed to repeat our mistakes. This conversation had been the lead-up to Athena's death, and it was gonna be the lead-up to Mrin's too. I felt that mantle of despair settle about my shoulders, unavoidable as ever.

Yet I had to try anyways, didn't I? Wasn't that what I'd told her just now? Damn, this trying thing was hard. It was hard to get arms to move when they'd stayed still for so long, hard to get the ball rolling when it'd been gathering moss for forever, hard to try when it was so much easier to just not. But I had to. For Athena, who I hadn't reached out to in time. For Brett, who I could have saved if I'd been less of a fool.

For Mrin, who I still had. Who I might lose. Who I couldn't lose, not when we'd admitted the truth to each other.

“It's not pointless, Mrin. You're a fool if you believe that.”

“Are you looking at this place? You said it yourself: we're in Hell. The one with the capital H. We're fucking doomed, Doc.” She gesticulated to the walls around us. “Do you really want to scrape out a life eating out of rusty old cans and drinking stale water?”

“If I get to be with you? Yes. I'd endure all the torment in the world to be by your side,” I said. And somehow, I meant it.

It took her aback. We stared at each other, silent save for the steady drip of the leaky pipe. Finally, in a soft, wavery voice, she said, “oh.”

“I mean it, alright? You bring the light back into this world. I love you, Mrin. You've made an old heart come back to li-”

She hushed me. There was a glimmer of light over her eye, the sheen of tears she refused to let fall. “Don’t start on that. You’d really suffer through torment for me? Endure that much?”

I nodded. “Like I've said, I'm no romantic. But what better reason is there to live than for love?”

“I- I suppose so.” The light was coming back into her, something firm, strong and unyielding as steel. Something like the Mrin I knew. “Okay, then. I guess there's a change of plans.”

“Here's the thing, Doc. I know how to stop that thing.” She paused, as though for dramatic effect.

“And?”

“It's gonna kill me.”

God-fucking-damnit. “Of course it is. Because this entire place just wants us dead, doesn't it?! Well, screw that, if that was your original plan. If we have to, we continue running from it until the end of time.” Or until we died, but I didn't want to think of that then.

“Yes, yes.” Mrin swatted away the thought. “We just agreed on that. I promise you, Doc, as long as I love you and you love me, I won't abandon you.”

The pronouncement made my heart warm. “But then… What are we gonna do?”

She scrunched her face up. “I don't know. Not for sure, anyway. You don't drive away such a powerful possession without great sacrifice. But- And bear with me here, this is absolutely ridiculous, but we have the power of love on our side.”

It was ridiculous to hear the words out of her mouth. What were we, children? This wasn't some silly little fairy tale. We weren't a bunch of sanitised little heroes to go against the big baddie. We were doomed, in hell, fools all of us.

Weren't we?

I swallowed my refutations and said, “Okay? And what does that mean?”

“Love, in and of itself, is a sacrifice, Doc. It's giving a piece of your heart away, letting yourself risk getting hurt, allowing hope to sink its insidious claws into you. To love truly and without reservation is a sacrifice that might just drive away a beast of pure desire like The One That Lurks.”

“This is stupid,” I said, before I could catch my tongue. “What are we doing, Mrin? We've both considered giving up. How the hell is the power of our love and hope going to make anything work? We can barely keep ourselves together! Bloody hell, in the past day we've lost just about everything and everyone.”

“I want to believe, Mrin, I really do. I want this all to work out perfectly. I want to wake up and discover I'm back in the fields near my childhood home. I want to wake up every day and feel the sun on my face. I want Athena and Brett to suddenly come back to life and live happily ever after.”

“When I said that I was gonna try my best, that I was gonna stop surrendering to my fate, that I was done being a coward, I didn't mean that somehow everything was gonna turn out alright. That just… doesn't happen. Not to people like us.”

Her expression remained eerily faithful. “But what if it could, Doc? What if it could?”

“If it could, then you'd have done it by now, no?” Shit, I could feel the worm of hope gnawing its way through the applecore of my soul again. It was a foul feeling, but I resisted crushing it.

“I alone could never have done it. Love isn't something a person can do on their own. But I love you, and you love me, and together, maybe, just maybe, we have the power to stop this. To revert Athena to her old self and put the scraps of Brett back together.” She took my hands in hers. “After all, don't we have to try?”

Oh, god, this was stupid. But I'd promised, hadn't I? “Yeah,” I said. “We have to try.”

***

And that was how we ended up standing back in the altar-hall of the cultists, Mrin and I, our hearts pounding with fear. Mrin's sabre was unsheathed, and she held it in a low guard.

Sure, the hall was empty. Sure, the cultists were gone. Sure, we were in no danger. But that was about to change, and fast. “How much longer have we got?”

She shrugged. “Five minutes, max? We'll hear the first of her soon, if at all.”

Our plan, insofar as it went without reaching the ‘pray the power of love saves us' stage, was simple. Leave a trail of blood from our hidey hole to here and hope Not-Athena would follow.

The blood we'd gotten from a wide, shallow cut on my wrist. Only one person's blood could be used, lest Not-Athena catch wind of our plan. For all of Mrin's knowledge, she didn't know just how smart that thing was, and I didn't want to find out.

It wasn't five minutes when she found us. It wasn't even one. Just as I opened my mouth to respond, a vast shadow coalesced from the ceiling.

“My, my. Two measly mortals. Beckoning me, are you?” Her voice came from all around us, layered repetitions of our Athena's voice circling like vultures. “Something you need, dearies? Perhaps you'd like to join your little friend in feeding me?” The sugary glee in her voice made my bile rise.

“I- No,” I said, feeling my voice crack. “We're here to make you give us back our kids. Whether you like it or not.”

God, what was I doing? How dumb was I? This was a suicide mission. In a moment, I was going to be ripped to shreds and sliding down the gullet of a thousand worms.

Speaking of them, the worms of Not-Athena began sculpting themselves into her form. Save for the size and composition of her body, she might well have been the girl I knew. “And how do you think you'll do that, little man?”

Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “I know what you are, mortal. You're a coward. A worthless, snivelling little coward. And your girlfriend is no better. She is made of bloodthirst and ambition. Unworthy, all of you. Foul. Tainted.” The mass chittered with laughter. “How fortunate you are that I like taint.”

Mrin raised her blade and pointed it right at Not-Athena. “We don't care for your pretty words. Give us back the kids. Now.”

“Or else?” Not-Athena tilted her head to a side. “Will you raise your hand against me in futility? Will you sacrifice yourself in a grand gesture of hopelessness? Will you die for those two snot-nosed brats?”

She shook her head. “I'll do you one better than that. I'll live for them. I'll live and worry and fret and accept that I'm never going home for them. I'll stay for them, for the ones I love.”

“Is love something you'd understand? I don't think so. For all your power and all your greatness, you'll never truly know love. It is what makes leaf litter into a sapling, what spins death back into life, what makes your precious rot into something beautiful. Love will turn the worst of hell into home, love will turn these lights into a blazing sun, and love will turn you back into our Athena.”

The monster hissed, rearing back as though she'd struck it. “And you, little coward? Would you truly wish to suffer for all eternity in the name of an ungrateful whelp, a naive fool and a lying, thieving witch? Would you make that sacrifice? Would you, truly?”

There was an edge to her voice now, as though she were afraid. As though we had wounded her somehow. I stepped forward, ready to back Mrin up, ready to fight for what I believed. I took a deep breath. By some trick of the weather or the presence of the woman I loved by my side, I found the strength to do something, for once.

“Begone, foul beast. You're not welcome here. Athena might be an ingrate, but goodness knows I've been one too. Brett's naive, sure, but look who's standing here trying to save two dead people? And yes, Mrin lied, but we've all done that. Any sin they've committed I've done tenfold. Any flaw they hold in their hearts, I hold in mine too. Any thing I would condemn them for would make me a hypocrite.”

“Nonsense, child. You had a reason to do what you did. You're different from them. See, boy?” Her voice was wheedling, weaker and weaker. We were… winning, somehow.

“And? So what? They had their reasons too. And even if they didn't, would it truly change anything? They're family. That word doesn't mean anything to you, does it? I love them. I love them all enough to plunge myself through hell and back again. I love them enough to face the greatest of monsters for them. I love them, and that love is damn well greater than anything you could possibly summon!”

“So give us back our kids, damn you, and crawl back to whatever dimension you came from. Go away and hope you never come across love again, because it can and will burn you to ash.”

Not-Athena laughed, a vicious, deep-bellied noise, and I felt my hope wither. What did we think we were doing? She wasn't hurt at all. We couldn't make rot bleed, the same way you couldn't kill death. And now we were going to pay for our hubris.

But still I did not flinch, did not run, did not let that fear into my heart. I couldn't, not with Mrin by my side.

“Mortals, mortals, mortals. Always so confident in love. I am the One That Lurks Beneath Rotting Flesh, and nothing so pathetic as true love can stop me. I know what love is. I've felt in my bones. When I gulped down my worshippers, their love filled my stomach and made me warm. What makes you think yours could be any different?”

I spat at the ground before her. The gesture reminded me of Athena. It reminded me of her ferocity, her defiance, that sheer doggedness that would shift mountains. I needed some of that right there and then. “First off, I don't love you. If you gulped me down, I'd burn your innards all the way and give each and every one of your disgusting little maggots a stomach ache.”

I shifted my stance, lowering my centre of gravity the way Brett did. I could use some of his bravery then, some of the faith he held in his heart, that unshakable kindness that should have protected us all. “Second of all, Love doesn't destroy. It creates. It protects. It nurtures. It is the antithesis of love. What you felt was mere worship.”

I grabbed Mrin's hand and clenched it. Oh, how I prayed her wisdome and insight would strike home one last time. Oh, how I prayed whatever black magic she had dabbled in would ring true. Oh, how I prayed our love would be enough. “Thirdly, by the power invested in us, the strength of love, faith and hope, we bind you away, One That Lurks Beneath Rotting Flesh! Begone!”

Not-Athena let out a great roar, her larvae rippling as though struck. It was working. It was working itwasworkingitwas-

She absorbed the invisible blow, rearranging herself and fixing a look of pure fury upon her features.

“Fine! Infuriating creatures. Keep your lives, you are hardly worth it. I will leave. Be grateful for the mercy I have shown you,” Not-Athena announced.

Oh, how my heart leapt! I would have seized the opportunity immediately if it had been me. To be happy ever after with Mrin, I'd bite the bullet and accept that Athena and Brett weren't coming back. Shit, it would be enough for me to just have her. I wanted to save Brett, sure, and it wasn't fair to leave Athena behind either, but even escaping with our lives was more than I'd hoped for.

I opened my mouth to tell Not-Athena so, to thank her for the mercy and hug Mrin and let the world be good. But my love silenced me, and took another step forward.

“Bullshit. Give us back the kids. Now. Don't make me ask again, Lurker.” The last word came out as a sneer, reeking of arrogance I hadn't thought Mrin had.

“Tch. You presume too much of yourself, little witch. Your love is not enough to spare more than two. Direct that blade at me all you want: You shall not get a better deal.” Not-Athena, the Lurker, stared her down.

Still, Mrin didn't budge. “You really wanna risk it? Really?” Her lips twitched. “So be it. If pointing my sabre does nothing, perhaps slashing it might help.”

Before Not-Athena could react, she lunged. Quick as a flash, she drove the sword into the thick of the maggots. As one, they screamed, a wholly terrifying noise, like a banshee and a ambulance siren had a demented love child. I cringed from it, stumbling back and clamping my hands over my fingers.

Mrin, somehow, remained unaffected. “I warned you,” she yelled over the din. “Now give us back Athena and Brett!”

The swarm pulled itself back. “Never,” Not-Athena snarled. “You will regret trying to fight one such as I.”

“Like fuck I will,” she said, pulling back her sword for another go.

That was when it all went wrong.

I'd known from the start that it would. Nothing went right in this hell. Nothing at all. That little nugget of terror, my old frenemy, was the only reason I was prepared when something flew at Mrin.

I dodged the swarm as it descended upon her. They were flies, thousands of them. It made a horrible kind of sense. Of course there would be flies when there were maggots. Nasty, disease spreading flies. They flung themselves at Mrin with reckless abandon, not caring if she shook them off. Their little feet and mouths dug into the exposed flesh from the maggots' attack.

She should have been able to push through it. Mrin was strong, after all, far stronger than me. She should have brushed them off with a single stroke. She should have overcome them, and plunged her blade into Not-Athena's heart, slaying the beast.

But she didn't. Instead, she flung her sword down and curled up, screaming in sudden agony. It was worse than any banshee, that sound of hers, for it pierced me to the very core. Before I could think straight, I was on my feet and running to her.

As I grew close, I saw what plagued her so. Beneath her skin, under the thick cloud of flies, lumps shifted and gnawed. Myiasis sprung to my mind instantly, a remnant of the semester I spent as a volunteer medic in some poverty stricken, war torn land. The laying of eggs beneath flesh.

Not-Athena, The Lurker, that beast, intended to eat my love from the inside out. “Run,” Mrin mouthed at me, before more flies flew down her throat. I wanted to hurl, the sour bile coming up my throat, but I forced it back down. This wasn't the time to be weak. This wasn't the time to run. We'd come too far to do that.

I grabbed her fallen sword and hefted it. Rising to my feet, I turned to face Not-Athena. “You,” I snarled. “You don't get to hurt my love. You don't get to hurt my love, or my kids, or me. You let go of her this instant, you hear me? You're not gonna eat my girlfriend alive, you fucking bitch. I won't let you.”

I ran at her. Goodness knows my form was awful, and my arms were hardly more than noodles, but I don't think that mattered there and then. What was more important was that I made good on my promise, and didn't hesitate. As soon as I finished my words, I was slicing through her.

Slime, insect blood, and goodness knows what else splattered me. I felt things squirm across my flesh, seeking open wounds to bury themselves into. They made me itch all over, a nearly unbearable feeling in and of itself. But Mrin had endured this for me. Mrin had suffered, was suffering, for me. I couldn't just abandon her like that.

“Fine! Take the warrior-girl. I will leave,” Not-Athena snarled as I buried myself in the mass of her body. Somehow, they died by the swarm, everything Mrin's sabre touched dying like… well, flies. Which they were, in a way.

“No,” I yelled back, spitting out the worms that fell into my mouth. “Give me back both of them. I'm not abandoning anyone, you hear me? I'm done! You pushed me and pushed me, and this time I'm not backing down! Prepare to die.” I cleaved one more time, and a face appeared from underneath the writhing maggots.

“Athena!” Her eyes were closed, a shallow slice over her throat. It would not kill her, I realised, though she would carry the scar for the rest of her life. I lowered my blade immediately to haul her free.

“If you do that, I will kill the witch,” Not-Athena buzzed around me. “My children will erupt from her skin and eat her alive. Will you make that sacrifice, little coward?”

Between agonised sobs, Mrin said, “Do it, Doc. Trust me. You- You have to.”

I turned back, shaking off more maggots as I did so. “But-”

“Do it.”

I looked into her eyes desperately. Was this a trick? I couldn't sacrifice her. But that steel in her gaze told me not to disobey. “Do. It.”

So I did. “We'll make that sacrifice,” I told Not-Athena. “No, I'll make that sacrifice. Together. Let me take on her burden. For Brett and Athena and our safety, I'll do it.”

The maggots halted for a second. “You mean that, little mortal? You would endure unspeakable agonies just to lessen your love's? You would sacrifice that much?” She paused, as though wagering something. “Would you sacrifice your entire being, take on the witch's agony and carry twice the burden? Would you die for them?”

I nodded resolutely. “I would endure it a thousand times over. I would die and be reincarnated in the flames of hell for them. What greater cause is there than to die for the ones you love, after all? Take my life, Lurker. I will go willingly into the night for love.”

As a boy, I'd never understood those tales of men holding down the fort, sending themselves off to certain death in a faraway warzone for their wives and children. I'd always told myself that I would desert, flee like a sane person, live a life of comfort far away as hostiles ripped the land I loved to shreds.

Damn, but I was wrong then.

Not-Athena cackled. “What a fine choice, little boy. What a fine choice indeed. I will release those children, and my young will slither out of the witch, and then I shall have you. I shall take you until you scream and tell me that you can bear no more. Then your bargain shall expire, and I will feast upon you and your loves.”

Her maggots clung to my eyelashes, crawling into my ears and nostrils. I felt them in my innards. “Deal,” I managed to say, swallowing maggots as I did so. They tumbled down my gullet, squirming like butterflies all the way into my stomach.

Then everything went black.

No, that wasn't quite right. Everything went to pain.

Maggots slithered under my nails, like those bamboo sticks the Japanese used on POWs. They wiggled past my eyelids and into the sockets, gnawing through flesh where needed. They were everywhere, at my crotch, into my belly button, deep in my ear canal. I was swimming in maggots.

Hot damn, it hurt. There weren't words for the agony. I would have scrubbed my skin clean, ripped my ribs free from my chest, strangled myself with my own intestines just to be free of the itch. I screamed, but it only let more maggots in.

They chipped my teeth, ripping at the sensitive nerves beneath the enamel. Sobbing, I clawed at myself. I'd do anything to rid myself of the sensation. Anything to get rid of the pain, the itch, the squirming. Anything at all.

“So do you go back on our deal? I'm more than happy to release you,” came the reply. It reverberated inside my bones, where worms ate their way through my marrow.

No. Never that. Anything but that. I couldn't sacrifice them for me. I wouldn't. I-

A new wave of agony overtook me. I clung to sanity by the tips of my fingers, trying to think of anything except the pain of those little mouths biting into me.

The memory of a field came back to me. Golden wheat at sunset, wind ruffling my hair. I kept it longer back then, long enough to make girls swoon. I cut it all off less than a week into my life in hell. It was pointless to keep it, after all.

No, I didn't want to think of what happened to my hair. Not when something was squirming into the pores of my scalp, wriggling past layers of flaky dandruff.

I should've gone back home right after I graduated, shouldn't have stuck around, shouldn't have made all those crap choices. Maybe I would have still been at home. Maybe I would have had kids, raised them up in the city, started my own practice and made enough to live comfortably. Maybe I would have been happy.

But I didn't. And who was I kidding? I would never have done it. I was a fucking bastard back then, a bastard through and through. Perhaps this was karma, my payback for my past actions.

At least I'd saved Mrin from it. It hurt my very soul to think that Brett suffered the same agony. Even if I'd deserved it, he didn't.

Still ruminating on your mistakes, mortal? You've paid the price, you know. You've paid it a dozen times over. You could go back to that field of yours, if only you ask me to. You could go back in time and undo every bit of foolishness that led you here. Think about it.

All you'd need to do is go back on your bargain. It's a bit of selfishness you deserve.

Was that my voice? Or was it the monster's? Damn, but it was hard to think beneath all the wriggling. Perhaps the maggots had eaten past my thick skull and into my brain.

But one thing was for sure: I wasn't going to go back on it. Not this time.

Why? You know they don't deserve such loyalty. They wouldn't return it. They've all done something to deserve it, Doc. That's why they're here, after all. Remember that they lied to you, Doc. Remember that.

The wriggling ceased sharply as I moved to agree. Yeah, they didn't deserve it. Sure, they'd probably done something equally horrible.

But- and I felt a blast of agony as I thought it- I loved them. I cared. And that alone meant more than a thousand lies. That meant more than all the maggots feasting on me. That meant everything to me.

A pair of arms seized me then, grabbing my elbows roughly. In my shock, I coughed out a handful of larvae.

Through the grey haze, a girl was yelling. Her voice was high, familiar, and absolutely furious. “Let him go, you crazy insect bitch! He's ours, you hear me?! Keep your filthy worms off of him!”

Athena. My Athena. Our Athena. She was alive and kicking, the very same as she had been before. That, too, was everything.

So when a second and third pair of hands caught me, I began struggling towards them. Because they were my family, my everything, and I meant something to them in return.

I coughed up thick worm-ridden phlegm, kicking my legs in a twisted facsimile of that time I'd tried and failed to swim in the lake, and crawled. My progress made the movement of a snail seem lighting-fast; the maggots resisted me at every turn, contracting simultaneously like a sphincter.

But still I was stronger, and soon I found my nose free of the swarm. Miraculously, my insides were un-maggot-infested- had it all been a hallucination? A ploy by Not-Athena to make me break my own promise? It sounded like something she would do.

She released a furious cry as I gasped for air. “You are mine, mortal! You sacrificed yourself to me. Don't you dare deny me now,” she snarled.

Mrin let go of my hands. “He's ours, Lurker, fair and square. He has paid his debt with a whole-hearted sacrifice, and refused to back down. He, my two friends, and I are all free to go. Or are you going to cause a fuss?” The deadly gleam in her eye gave even me pause. “You know who the forces of nature will side with here, Lurker. Scram.”

Not-Athena puffed herself up angrily, but spat me out. “Do not think I do this because I fear you, little witch. Keep your not-coward, he was hardly worth it. And those two children were practically all skin and bones anyways.” She paused for a moment to look at our Athena. The maggots whispered something that I could not catch, something that sounded like an offer. One last ploy to catch us, one last worm of a string to reel up her dinner.

For a fleeting moment, desire came over Athena's face, a yearning that I'd never seen before. This was it, I thought. After everything we did, we were gonna die because that damned girl never learnt the meaning of self control. I closed my eyes and flexed my wonderfully free fingers one last time.

“No,” she said suddenly. “I’m sorry, but I can't accept that. You should leave, worm bitch. Don't let me catch you hanging around here again.” She puffed up her chest in a vague facsimile of Mrin, staring down the monster coldly.

Not-Athena let out a final hiss, then evaporated. Hundreds of thousands of larvae burst into flies simultaneously, scattering faster than I could catch them. Within seconds, we stood in an empty hall, safe from cultists and monsters and all the other nasties. Just me and my family.

We stared at each other, me drenched in slime and them panting heavily, all mysteriously unharmed. Even the slice at Athena's neck was naught more than a scar.

I reached out to put my hand on her shoulder, and she backed away. “You saved me,” she stated. “Even though you knew what I did.”

I shook my head. “That was all Mrin. If it were up to me, I would have left both of you in there and ran for my life.”

A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “Sure you would. That's why you put yourself through… that. Because you just wanted to run away and abandon us.”

I couldn't argue with that.

Brett stepped up and pulled me into a bear hug. Damn, but that boy was too big for his own good. “Thank you,” he mumbled. “For saving me. And I'm sorry I argued with you. It was wrong of me to call you all those names, especially when you've been looking after us all and I know it must have been hard on-”

I shushed him. “Nonsense. You were in the right there. We're family, aren't we? And family lets the little things slide.”

“Little things like torturing a cultist? I do believe your exact words were ‘I just can't think of a monster that would've done this’.” Athena, of course. Who else would speak like that?

“We're having a moment here, girl. Stop trying to ruin it.” I patted Brett on the back again, and he released me. “Thanks for not crushing my lungs, Brett. I've had quite enough suffering for one day.”

He laughed at that and stepped away, turning to his girlfriend. “Athena,” he said, lighting up as they locked gazes.

“What?” She looked away guiltily. “Are you mad at me for… you know, killing that guy? Because it was inexcusable. And it was unforgivable. And if you hate me now, I completely understand.”

Brett shook his head. “I don't hate you, Athena. I would never hate you.” He took a deep breath and stepped closer. This time, she didn't move away, looking up at him with arms crossed. “I love you and I loved you and I will always love you.”

“That's a bit excessive, isn't it?”

He scoffed. “I ran into a horde of cultists for you. I looked a monster in the eye and confessed to her my undying love for you. I would give you my head on a plate, Athena.”

Then they kissed. Sometimes it upset me that they seemed to be living in a post-apocalyptic romance and I a horror movie.

That, of course, was when I realised I hadn't heard a peep from my love, the one who had saved us all, whether she was willing to admit it or not. I turned to face her, and found her staring, dead on, down a hallway, half-turned away from us. “Mrin?”

She didn't respond. “Hey, you good?”

A quiet sob escaped her lips. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

“Huh?”

She whipped around. “Did you even understand what I was trying to do? Did you know how badly that could have gone, when you ran off the script? Did you even think when you volunteered to get tortured like that? I knew how to get myself out, damnit! Why would you just sacrifice yourself like that?”

“Because I love you, Mrin. I love you and I would burn in a thousand hells just to keep you safe,” I replied, reaching out for her.

She all but threw herself in my arms. “Stupid old man,” she mumbled into my neck. “Doesn't know the first thing about magic and goes and makes a deal with a fucking Lurker. Stupid, stupid old man.”

I gave her a helpless smile. “You didn't know that already?”

“Do you know what you've done? You've singlehandedly made a sacrifice grand enough to dispel a goddess and resurrect the dead twice. You healed me. You damn well worked high magic.” She snorted, as though disbelieving her own words. “And high magic is exactly what we need to escape this hellhole.”

“Oh god, not this again.”

“No, no, hear me out here. All we need to do is repeat this entire ordeal. We can simulate it with the Twisteds down by the hospital rooms. Start by chaining, say, Athena, to a wall-” She cut herself off.

“Wait, you're right. This- This isn't going to work out. We're stuck here, and the price we'd need to pay to unstick ourselves is just too high. Out of everyone, I suffered the least throughout this. I have no right to suggest that all of us go through it again.”

With a quiet sigh, Mrin shook her head. “It's alright. I have you,” she said, looking into my eyes. “And I think that's more than enough for me. My love.”

The words sent a shiver down my spine and a smile up my lips. We held each other close, Mrin and I, and for once, I didn't shy away from making a choice.

I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers. It wasn't amazing, as kisses went. I'd lost most of my touch with age, and the memory of both of us in ugly agony still lingered. But it was a kiss, and my first one in decades at that.

Hell was never quite so hellish after that.

Path B:

I watched her get up, a tiny voice whispering to me as she left. You'll never see her again, it said. She's going to take her secrets with her and leave.

I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't be all alone again. I couldn't let her keep her lies to herself. So I scrambled to my feet and followed her, keeping to the walls and praying she would not notice the Doc-shaped shadow that stalked her.

Mrin moved resolutely, as though driven by a homing instinct. Not once did she turn around. Not once did she look back to where I should have been. Not once did she hesitate to abandon me.

I hadn't known she was that heartless. It hurt. But still I tracked her, growing more and more daring by the moment. It was clear she would not catch me, not with her so occupied as she was.

Round a corner we went, past where a trail of tattered clothes told me those fleeing cultists had fallen. Not even the bones were left of them. I stepped over them, wincing as I did so. Nobody, not Brett or the cultists, deserved the fate of being eaten alive.

As she walked, it slowly became apparent that Mrin was retracing her steps, heading back to that fateful hallway where Athena had been morphed in the first place. That was… Bad, to put it in the words of the late Brett. What were her intentions?

She stopped in the middle of the hallway, just beyond the grand room where the cultists had held their fateful ritual. The movement was sudden enough that I nearly revealed myself.

Mrin unsheathed her sabre. She took in a deep shuddering breath. The grief in that noise made my heart break, and I yearned to reach out to her. But she had lied to me, hadn't she? She had hidden parts of herself from me, and if I wanted to know the truth, I too had to remain hidden.

Falling to her knees, Mrin slammed her sword into the concrete before her. By some miracle, it didn't chip. Another deep, shuddering breath. Her shoulders slumped. Then she spoke.

“Our Lady That Lurks Beneath Rotting Flesh! I call you. I have lost kin to you, soul-kin, our bond thick as any blood. You have taken one of mine and turned her to your schemes, stolen another and drank his lifeblood. Now, I call you, and I demand redress.”

Her voice rang clear as a bell, an undercurrent of power within it. It was so at odds to the defeat within her mere moments ago, so at odds to her appearance, that for a moment I wondered if it had not been her who spoke. But no: Mrin and I were the only people around for miles.

She looked up, as though expecting to see something. “Lurker,” she called out warningly. “I'm not in the mood to play games. You know the rules well as I. You know what you're obliged to do. What you don't know is what I'm willing to sacrifice to protect my family. And let me tell you: You won't want to know. So let me tell you again: I call you, and I demand redress. Right here. Right now.”

I held my breath. For a moment, it seemed as though Not-Athena had ignored her entirely. Then the walls began to shake.

Out poured maggots, of course. That was what this whole thing had been about, after all. They dribbled down the cracks in the walls, worming between my feet. I suppressed a scream and stepped away from them, but they had no interest in me.

Worming their way to the hall, they skirted around Mrin, diving between her legs like seafoam and crawling upon each other on the other end to form a tower. Divots formed, mimicking eye sockets and a mouth. Within moments, a woman stood before us.

She looked… different. Better fed. More assured. Older. The ferality of Athena, the form she had taken last, was replaced with a majesty. This was a goddess in truth, I thought, and it made me quake where I stood.

Mrin, however, was unimpressed. She stood her ground, sabre in hand. The great beast of Not-Athena stood before her, filling up half the hallway.

A grotesque smile stretched across her lips. “My, my. Two measly mortals. Beckoning me, are you?” Her voice came from all around us, layered repetitions of our Athena's voice circling like vultures. There was a smirk in it, a tilting of the hat at my hidden presence. That frightened me more than anything else. “Something you need, dearies? Perhaps you'd like to join your little friend in feeding me?” The sugary glee in her voice made my bile rise.

“Give me back my kids,” Mrin snarled, pointing the tip of her blade at Not-Athena's torso. She seemed so small there. I wanted to reach out, to scream and tell her to run, but my legs were ground to a halt.

No, there would be no saving done by Doc today. It was all just too much, the weight of all the suffering I'd carried. How could I care when caring brought me nothing but suffering? Love was good and all, but it had only hurt me. Better that it had happened this way, a tiny voice whispered to me. She was a liar anyways, wasn't she? She would never have trusted you. Nevermind that we were partners.

“I'm sorry, Mrin,” I whispered. “You fool.” If she'd told me, if she'd reached out, if she had opened up, we might have found a way together. We might have run away and stayed safe, instead of this foolish sacrifice.

No, that voice whispered. It was always your fault. Fool boy. You thought you could defeat me a divine being? You're nothing. That's all you will ever be.

Coward.

Blaming the witch for your own apathy? It was your fault all along. You could have changed this with just a little effort. You could have reached out to the girl, stopped bickering with the boy, actually bothered opening up to the one you call your love. And now, you're going to pay the price.

Not-Athena unhinged her jaw, releasing a cascade of grey-white larvae upon my partner. I watched, frozen by horror, as they fell upon her. I watched Mrin slash and hack her way through the horde, somehow parting the sea of vermin. I watched and I hoped and I prayed as she grew closer and closer to the heart of Not-Athena, the One that Lurks Beneath Rotting Flesh.

Oh, gods, how I hoped. How I prayed that Mrin’s faith would be enough, that the power invested in her would bring us all a happy ending. But hope and love and happy endings were for men better than I, and belonged to a world kinder than mine.

By some miracle of magic, neither of them noticed me. I wept and screamed silently as Not-Athena overwhelmed my final ally. It was not a swift process. First, the maggots piled up on her, ripping through clothes and exposing her skin. She did not slow then, not even as they bit into her, gnawing open little patches of exposed flesh that reminded me of Brett's demise. Perhaps that was what it was, a repeat of her death, an encore for a callous audience, a final lap of sacrifice to end the monster those cultists had brought about.

Up until the very end, she refused to slow, the sliver of her steel blade flashing and glinting in a relentless attack. Gods, she was a hero, brave and brilliant and bold. I wish I had told her that. I wish I had had more time to love her. I wish… I wish I wasn't such a failure.

But you are. And that's all you ever be.

As she plunged into the depths of Not-Athena, to her certain death, I did not weep for Mrin. I did not weep for her or Brett or Athena. I wept for my own cowardice, that uselessness that had cost everyone everything.

But Mrin wasn't half as useless as me. No, she was better than I deserved. With the last of her strength, as bone peeked out from the maggots' assault, she tossed out the small, frail body of a girl. The small, frail body of Athena.

How had she done it? I couldn't say. It had something to do with her magic, something about the essence over the material. Athena had been the maggots, and then the body of Not-Athena, and then herself. Or so I theorised, anyway.

It broke the spell that held our enemy together, and the maggots lost their form, collapsing onto Mrin.

Snapped out of my reverie, I reached out and grabbed Athena from Mrin's outstretched arms. She was light in my arms. Had she always been so?

I cradled her against me, watching the woman I'd only just admitted to loving be devoured. I didn't bother reaching out: There was no point, anyways.

As Mrin died, she watched me. There was no shock in her eyes. Had she known all along that I was there? Had she done all this with the faith that I would save her?

Her mouth was open, though I could not tell if she was screaming for me to save her or for me to run. No sound came out, for her windpipe was ripped to little shreds. Not-Athena left her face for last, perhaps out of sadism. Compelled by the strange twist in my chest, I stepped closer until our noses were practically touching.

“Mrin,” I whispered. “I'm sorry.” She didn't say anything, only kept that horrified expression. The maggots started on her eyes. There had to be something I could do, if only to put her out of her misery. I didn't, for I feared attracting the maggots’ attention if I touched them, even with the tip of my knife. I was too much of a coward to even save the life of my love. But there was one thing I could do, one thing I did, one simple, ugly thing.

I kissed her on her lips, the last thing to go.

Then I stepped back and let the worms finish their work. They turned on each other when they polished off her bones, lapping over one another like cannibalistic waves until there was only a single bulbous maggot remaining. Then it too ate itself, grabbing its own tail and slurping itself up in a way no science could explain.

I went back to Athena. She wasn't worth it, wasn't worth all the death we'd seen. But still, I took out my needle, unwound a single thread from my shirt, and set to saving her.

The cut on her neck was shallow, though it had bled like a lamb at slaughter. She was breathing, though her chest barely moved. Somehow, the maggots that had burst out of her skin had done nothing to damage her clothes. Magic, I supposed. If only that same magic had saved my love instead of that irritating child's clothes.

Once I was done, I laid her down and waited. A scream built in my chest, bubbling and toiling, gnawing at my insides. Mrin was dead. Brett was dead. And for what? To save that irritating, crude girl?

I wanted to dash her brains on the rocks. I wanted to kill her horribly, like how she'd killed them. I wanted her to suffer like they did.

My fingers found Mrin's sabre. I clenched it until my knuckles turned white. I could hear that call echoing against the off-white walls.

Kill her.

I didn't do it, of course. Why would I? It would be an exercise in futility. They'd sacrificed themselves in the name of saving her. I'd be betraying them if I killed her.

And if there was one thing I was good at, it was not doing things. I stood there and observed her coolly, vaguely reminded of that time we had to put an animal down. It had shivered like her, sick and wounded and yet unwilling to die. I had wept and turned away, unable to witness the necessity of the act.

Unlike that poor beast, Athena recovered, for a certain value of recovered. Her eyes opened and her body grew strong, letting her breaths grow stable and her arms push herself into a seating position.

“What the hell happened?” Her voice was raspy.

“You got caught by cultists,” I said, trying to keep my bedside manner. “Stupid girl.”

Well, there went that.

Her brows furrowed. “Yeah, I remember that bit. I mean-” she gestured around her. “Where are the others? Why the hell are we here? What the hell is going on?”

Was I supposed to tell her everyone was dead? Was that the foolishness we were going to undertake now? “Quite a bit happened,” I replied cautiously.

“What do you mean?” She froze. “Oh god. Did they get taken by the cultists? I'll kill those fuckers if they hurt Brett. I'll rend them to fucking shreds.” She reached out to grip a spear that wasn't there. “Dammit. Lend me Mrin's sword. Did she get taken along with him?”

“No,” I said, disliking her all the more for her brashness. All that bristling, that determination, and she didn't even know she'd killed them.

“Then she gave her sword to you?” The disdain in Athena's voice was palpable. “Idiot. Where even is she?”

I didn't know how to respond to that.

“Doc? You're giving me a weird look.” She froze, as though picturing something horrible. Then she shook it away. “Come on, we've got no time to waste. The cultists will notice us here eventually, and without backup or my spear I'd prefer not to be there when it happens. Where is it, anyways?”

Her fingers reached up touch the scar on her neck, and vague confusion passed over her features. “Say, did… Did Brett try to save me? For some strange reason I remember him. He was saying something about… Believing? Yeah, believing in me. Having faith that I would do the right thing.”

She clenched Mrin's sword tighter. “Let's go. I've got to save him.”

“Don’t bother. The cultists are all dead.” I barely closed my mouth on the remainder of that sentence. And your love, and mine, are dead too.

“What?” For a brief moment, her face lit up brighter than any memory of the real sun. It was one of the few times I'd seen her truly happy. Then it was gone under the clouds before a storm.

The storm, in this case, being telling her they were dead.

“But if the cultists aren't an issue… What happened?”

And the thunder was brewing. Still I couldn't bring myself to tell her in a way that did not involve tactlessly blurting it out. I was a Doc, for goodness sake! I needed some bedside manner.

“Let's take a walk, shall we?” I offered my arm to Athena. She glared at it like it was poisonous.

“Not happening, dude. I'm not going on a fucking stroll while Brett is in danger. Tell me where he is. If you're too coward to go save him, I will.”

I sighed. “You’re not going to be able to save him.”

“Doesn't matter. I'll try anyways. You've gotta try, no matter how impossible it seems,” she insisted.

It sounded like something a younger, less hopeless Doc would have said, and that upset me. “Listen here, kid. You can't save him. At all. You know why?”

She didn't, only staring at me with those dark eyes like a charred piece of wood, burnt to nothing by hopeless rage.

“He's dead. Both of them are.” I spat out the words with more vindictiveness than I should.

“No. You're lying.” She pressed her lips together and backed against the wall, chin raised. “You're a lying fucking bastard.” It was as though she could make it true simply by insisting.

She shook her head, tears brimming, the greatest show of grief that I would ever see from her. “They're here somewhere. They can't be dead. I mean, Brett and I-”

She didn't finish her sentence, instead sinking quietly to the ground. “They're alive. They have to be. They're safe and fine and this is just your stupid attempt to freak me out again.”

“They died and it was your fault, Athena. Do you remember that?” I tried to temper my voice, to deliver the news like she were the loved one of a terminal patient. But I couldn't. I was never that good of a doctor, and this was far too close to my aching, coward heart. “You ran up to the cultists without thinking, you got yourself captured, and they used you in their ritual.”

“Brett died trying to save you, and Mrin died successfully doing so,” I continued. “They loved you dearly, Athena. Enough to sacrifice themselves for you. And look how you repaid them.”

You could hear her little glass heart shatter. She stared at me from across the room, shaking her head in tiny jerking motions. Her breath came in shuddering gasps, like a woman about to have a heart attack. But those eyes of hers only hardened accusingly, as though I were the one to blame for this.

I supposed I was. The thought came with a wave of guilt. Athena was just a child, after all. A hateful, murderous, torturer child.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “That was cruel of me.” I reached out to give her a hug. “We're all we have anymore.”

“Don't come near me,” she hissed, when I tried to embrace her. So I sat just out of arm's reach, staring at her. If it weren't for the lack of Brett and Mrin, we could have been recreating that fateful night when she ran off, right down to the forced coldness on her face. In a way, I could understand. I had spent my whole life trying to do the same, after all.

We waited there for a very long time, her and I, facing each other in matching positions. I wondered if she would cry, if she would reach out to me, if that facade of hers would freeze over. For a moment, I thought she would do all three, those black-as-night eyes of hers welling up while she unfolded herself.

But it was only to get up, and look down at me with that precariously balanced expression. When she spoke again, her voice was even. “Goodnight, Doc.”

With that, she left, retreating into the dark walkways of the cultists' home, just like she had done the first time. I was too tired to curse her out and chase after her again. Brett and Mrin had done that, and I knew where it had gotten them. So I wrapped myself in my bedroll and went to sleep, feeling oddly vulnerable all alone.

***

The next morning, when I awoke, there was a corpse hanging from the rafters. It dangled limply, swinging in the wind. The chains attached to its wrists jangle like chimes, creating a melody more off-tune than haunting.

The corpse was beautiful, once, with long eyelashes and a gleaming smile, gorgeous enough to charm sirens. But no amount of smiling could-

Ah, who was I kidding. The corpse was too young to die, too vicious to die, and too stubborn to die. But she was dead nonetheless, rope digging into the stitches I had made across her neck, dark hair obscuring her face, the rock she had jumped from not far away. She was dead, and I was all alone. Just as I had been before.

I looked at Athena's dead body grimly, shaking my head. “Fool girl,” I whispered.

And it was a testament to my apathy that my voice only broke a bit.

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