[Ding!
Analysis Complete: 100%.]
[Divine Bloodline Data Retained.]
The window flared bright behind his eyes the same half second that the dagger bit into the air above his head, and Kaelen didn’t hesitate long enough to even think about the relief
Out
Now…
Before that damn blade comes home.
He didn’t try to save Corin’s body.
There was nothing left of it to save–a shattered spine, an arm torn away, nerve endings scraped raw in places that should have been untouched.
His body was fleeing, a thread of himself slipping out through the smear of blood that had already cooled beneath his dwindling palm, abandoning this shell the way water would the cup when someone else came along with a better offer.
The dagger bit into his back.
He felt it as something not quite his, a dull and distant sensation that belonged to someone else, someone who had worn his skin for the past two weeks but now, finally, was leaving it behind in favor of wherever the hell he was really headed.
[Ding!
Host Vessel — Corin: Deceased.]
[Warning: Original Consciousness Signature Fully Erased.]
Gone.
Kaelen let himself feel it for just a second, a hollow sort of shock at the loss of a man he’d never met, whose skin he’d worn for almost twice as long as his own, whose lying face had talked and bargained and laughed its way through half of Oakhaven so a parasite could live another day.
You never knew any of it, he told himself.
Small comfort, I reckon.
Somewhere behind him, muffled and far away, Talia screamed.
She was grieving him, Kaelen realized with a pang of guilt, grieving the boy she’d thought was her friend who wasn’t anymore, not really, not since he tried to kill her and she stabbed him and watched him die and laughed and cried all at once.
I’m sorry , she was screaming, and Kaelen was sorry too, for the life he was leaving behind and the one he was going to replace it with.
There wasn’t time to feel properly sorry.
There wasn’t time at all.
Just the floor beneath his fingertips, the blood drying beneath his palms, the length of his body stretched out in front of him like an ocean now that he was no bigger than a speck of dust.
The floor wasn’t smooth.
Not at this size.
The cracks in the tiles were canyons, and the pockets of wind that swirled up from the depths of the dungeon as Valen passed by were hurricanes trying to swallow him whole.
[Vessel Status: Sub-Cellular Core Organism.
HP: 1/1.
No Secondary Vessel Active.]
Back to this again.
One hit point, no armor.
Kaelen forced his fingers under the current of the blood and grit and pulled himself forward nonetheless, struggling against the invisible current of the floor, the ceiling.
At least I know how to live like this , he told himself.
I’ve done it before.
He crawled and crawled…
Neither with limbs, nor with anything his body could show anyone at all, but with the blind desperation of a man who had to reach somewhere across the floor in front of him in any way he could, just like he’d done when he’d pulled himself through the veins of a dying wolf two weeks ago, just like he’d done crawling across the battlefield of that first mountain from the size of a man right here.
Torchlight fell past him in shafts of fire, voices sounded in the distance, and Valen’s was among them, already moving away from the chamber, from Kaelen, faster than he’d ever thought possible.
He’s getting away.
And if I don’t catch up now, I’ll never get another chance.
[Ding!
Target Movement Detected.
Distance Increasing.]
Move.
Move faster–
The boot of Valen’s came into range of his vision at the last possible second.
It was impossibly large from this angle, and even with the torches of the dungeon torn and broken, he could see the shine of polished metal reflected on the surface.
Valen’s boot was right there, and Kaelen could already feel the heat of it in the air, the lingering warmth of a day’s march in his palm.
Valen shifted his weight, and his heel came off the ground.
The last possible second, Kaelen reached out and latched on.
[Ding!
Contact Established.]
[Warning: Current Position — External Boot Surface.
Holy Aura Perimeter: Adjacent.]
I did it .
For just a second, Kaelen allowed himself to bask in the triumph of it, clinging to the leather of the very man who’d nearly killed him two weeks ago, close enough that he could hear the sound of his own borrowed heartbeat in the rhythm of Valen’s footsteps.
I really did it .
It didn’t last.
[WARNING: Structural Analysis – Boot Composition.]
[Outer Layer: Treated Leather, Non-Reactive.]
[Inner Layer: Runic-Warded Fabric.
Holy Aura Saturation: High.]
High.
Kaelen stilled against the surface of the boot, feeling out the lie of it, the way the outer layer was safe, the way the second he reached in for the skin it would burn him away completely.
The outside’s alright .
I’ve got nothing to worry about right now except the damn thing walking away while I try to figure out another way in.
“Confirmed,” Nix said.
“Direct penetration through the inner lining carries an estimated 85% probability of immediate incineration.
You require an alternate entry vector — a seam, a gap, a moment of reduced saturation.”
“Then I find one,” Kaelen said.
“Because if I don’t, I’m here clinging to leather while he walks back into the sunlight and I don’t do anything about it.”
He scanned the edges of the boot, of the boot’s surface as far as his current understanding extended, looking for a weak point, a place where the leather came loose enough that he could get a handhold, a foothold, anywhere that wasn’t reinforced with the same invisible strength pressing against his thin translucent body.
There has to be a way in.
There always is, as every piece of armor has a seam, somewhere.
He didn’t have long to find it.
[WARNING: Sub-Cellular Core Organism – Extended External Exposure Detected.]
[Current Position: Open Air, Unprotected.]
[Biological Decay Timer Initiated: 180 seconds.]
What–
“You were never designed to exist outside a vessel for this long,” Nix said, and for once, there was something in his tone like true concern.
“You have three minutes before cellular decay becomes irreversible.
Find an entry point, or find any vessel at all.
The choice is no longer yours to make.”
Kaelen pressed his translucent body to the surface of a Holy Knight’s boot, one hit point separating him from death and decay and the slow, wasting consumption of his body until he was little enough to crawl inside the ribs of someone who could carry him, and the Holy Knight’s footsteps carried him away with nothing but a glance backward.
One hundred and eighty seconds.
Kaelen forced himself to move, to find his way along the edge of a seam in the leather that might lead him to salvation or certain death, but it was all the time he had to find out.