Chapter 31: Sacrifices

We ran, and the ground broke apart behind us.

I glanced back once, and I regretted it instantly. Near the base of the Black Spire, the earth had split open, and out of that fresh wound rose a hand, easily ten feet across, slamming down against the mud with enough force to send a shockwave rolling through the ranks of us. Something enormous was climbing out from beneath the world.

"By the—"

I did not finish the thought. I did not need to. Mary had seen it too, and unlike the rest of us, who kept our eyes fixed forward and our legs moving, she froze completely, rooted to the spot as though her body had simply stopped taking instructions from her mind.

’Do not stop. Please, do not stop.’

I reached into her thoughts before I had fully decided to, my spiritual power sliding past her unguarded mind and taking hold of the memory before it could root any deeper. She was not watching for it, and so she never felt me take it. A moment later she blinked, shook her head as though clearing water from her ears, and started running again, no longer knowing what she had almost seen.

The creature behind us made a noise that was less a roar than a declaration, and still we ran.

I looked back one final time, and that was a mistake I will never be able to undo.

Blood came from my nose, my eyes, my ears, all at once, as though my body had decided that simply looking at the thing behind me was already too great an injury to survive.

[You Are Looking At A Great Horror: The Calamity Of Seven Sins]

[This Creature Was Previously An Ancient Horror But Lost Her Powers For Some Reason]

[Quest: Escape Alive]

[Reward: 100 Plot Points]

[There Is Probably No Need To Explain What Failure Would Cost You :) ]

’So the Spire was feeding her,’ I thought, my mind moving faster than my legs, faster than my fear. ’It was restoring what she had lost. And now that it has failed her, she has come to take it out on whoever happens to be standing nearby. Which is us. This is genuinely not the moment for theories, idiot. Keep running.’

She stood at least forty meters tall, and seven horns crowned her forehead like something a queen might wear if queens were also nightmares. She was entirely naked, and even that detail felt secondary, dwarfed by everything else about her that screamed for attention.

’No. Absolutely not the time. Do not look at her again.’

"Do not look back!" I shouted, loud enough that my throat ached with it. Eliza, Mary, Theodore, and Arthur all had their heads half turned already, and at my warning they snapped their eyes forward again and kept running, trusting me without a single question asked.

Behind us, the Great Horror’s footsteps came down like the striking of some enormous, patient bell.

"Run! Run! Run!"

Just as my hope had begun to run thinner than my legs could manage, I saw it: the waist-high slab, our landmark, standing exactly where we had left it hours ago.

I looked back one last time and saw a darkness pouring toward us that moved like liquid shadow, reaching, hungry, close enough that I could feel it wanting to close around all five of us at once.

Mary had already placed the two Beast Characteristics onto the slab, and the moment they touched the stone, a low, pleasant hum rose from it, and a golden portal bloomed into being above it.

Mary went through first. Then Theodore. Then Arthur.

Eliza did not move.

For a moment I could not understand what I was looking at. The portal shimmered behind her, casting gold light across the trembling ground and across her face, and the others had already vanished into it, leaving the two of us standing there together. Salvation was a few steps away. It was right there.

And she was not moving toward it.

"What are you doing?" I shouted at her.

She turned to look at me, and there was no fear on her face. No panic. Not even hesitation. Only a small, peaceful smile, the kind of smile a person wears when they have already made peace with something I had not even begun to understand yet.

"I am sorry, Edmund," she said. "The slab also told us that the portal can only carry four people at once."

My heart dropped somewhere I could not name.

"What?" I said, refusing to let the meaning of her words settle anywhere in my mind.

"I hid that part from all of you," she said, with a small, embarrassed laugh, as though her own deception amused her even now. "I cast an illusion so none of you would know. It seems my useless affinity was good for something after all."

For a few seconds I could only stare at her, unable to make my mouth work.

"No," I finally managed, my voice barely above a whisper.

She said my name gently. "Edmund—"

"No." I shook my head, hard enough that the world blurred at the edges. "There has to be another way."

I looked around wildly, searching for anything: another portal, another landmark, another slab, another path, anything at all that could prove her wrong. The ground would not stop shaking beneath us, and somewhere behind me the footsteps of the Great Horror shook the very air we were breathing.

There was no time left to search. I searched anyway.

"The landmark activated the portal, did it not?" I said, the words spilling out faster than I could organize them. "Then there must be something else we can use. Another Characteristic, perhaps, or—"

"Edmund."

"Just give me one more second!"

I do not even know what I thought I was going to find.

Her expression did not change, but something flickered behind her eyes, something that looked almost like grief held very carefully in place.

"Edmund." She said my name the way a person says a name they do not expect to say again. "When you go through, tell Arthur I said goodbye."

"Eliza, do not—"

"Tell him," she said, cutting through my protest with a steadiness that frightened me more than the ground shaking beneath us, "that he does not owe me anything. Not guilt, not grief he carries for the rest of his life, none of it. Tell my brother to stop asking what I would have wanted for him, and to spend his life becoming the man he actually wants to be, not the man he thinks would make a dead sister proud."

Her voice caught, just slightly, on the word dead, as though even she had not fully believed it until she said it aloud.

"You tell him yourself," I said, my voice breaking. "You can tell him when this is over, when we find a way to bring you back, when—"

"Edmund."

Her fingers tightened around my arm, and despite my struggling against her, she used whatever strength she had left and threw me toward the golden portal with all of it.

"Goodbye, Edmund."

[End of Volume One: Sacrifices]