Some time ago…

"Where's Hopi?" Frey asked as soon as he woke up after the fight with Ashtehar.

Wade stepped forward and put a hand on Frey's shoulder: "He..didn't make it."

Oliver pulled his knees to his chest. "I'm sorry. I could only save one."

'Oh,' Frey thought. He wandered out of sight of the others, further away from the section of the forest that had been lit on fire, where Hopi's corpse was. 'They had to save one,' he thought. 'That means if I hadn't charged out of the formation, Oliver could have saved Hopi. If I had just restrained myself a little more or if I had been stronger, this wouldn't have happened.'

Back to the present…

'Please Goddess, don't be too late,' Frey thought as he and Doevm hurried through the narrow passageway. 'I can't be too late.' Doevm's mouth moved but Frey couldn't hear anything over his thunderous heartbeat or his heavy, clanking footsteps. 'I can't do this again,' he thought. 'No one else should end up like Hopi, dying because I was too weak. Why wasn't I taken instead? Why couldn't I have been more aware of my surroundings?'

They clambered over a section of caved-in-ceiling. Frey's stomach churned when his hand touched spats of blood. The trail of broken pickaxes and damaged tracks led the way. 'Thomas would have run away like usual and tried to lose Gregen in the passageways. He's not a soldier who would fight to the death - unless he got cornered.'

A scream echoed, Thomas's. Frey's voice came out softer than a whisper. "No." The dim light crystals down the tunnel illuminated two figures, one standing over the other. 'Keep calm,' Frey told himself, feeling that strange energy surging up at his chest like a boiling pot of water threatening to spill over.

Two severed limbs lay on the ground, swarms of bugs around them. They were so thin, pale, and lifeless that for a second Frey deluded himself into thinking that they might be fake. He hoped that they were fake.

Gregen raised his great sword for the final blow and reality assaulted Frey like a hand grasping his heart, holding it still.

"Frey," Doevm's voice sunk into his head. The final nail in the coffin. The hand pushing that boiling vat over. "Kill him."

Frey wasn't possessed but vision went red. Life essence and white aura surged. He lept forth and drove his fist into Gregen's nose. Blood poured like a faucet as Gregen flipped over a minecart and crashed into the rusty minecart rails.

Doevm knelt next to Thomas's rapidly paling figure, drenching his knee in the pool of blood. Frey couldn't bring himself to look at Thomas, or he might have wavered. He instead kept his eyes on Gregen. Over half of his body had turned into an exoskeletal state.

Gregen snarled as he sprung to his feet, a mix of red and blue energies wafting off of him. "Didn't you hear your friend, traitor?" He wiped the blood from his swelling nose. "A punch won't kill me."

Frey got into a stance in front of Doevm and Thomas. "I know of many methods for quickly killing a man. You are not getting that kind of mercy-"

Gregen sprang forward, his great sword cutting through the air and piercing through Frey's shield. Frey sidestepped and stabbed at Gregen's exoskeletal side, scraping the bone but not deep enough to touch the flesh underneath.

Gregen winced at the sound, and Frey noticed.

The spear sung an unhappy tune while fighting at Frey's grip, allowing Gregen to yank it right out of his hands and jump back.

With a combination of bright white aura and blue life essence, Frey moved faster than ever. His every step cracked the ground as he charged forth, ducked under the great sword's wide swipe, and shield bashed Gregen with enough force to bounce him off the jagged ceiling and into the minecart below.

Frey knew the battle wasn't over, but he glanced back at Doevm anyway. After all, the man hadn't moved this entire fight. He had remained knelt next to Thomas's pale form.

Doevm put a hand on Thomas's cold neck. Nothing. No pulse. Not even a faint glimmer of life. 'All things must die eventually,' he thought. 'This is the second time that it's hurt.'

"Doevm, what are you doing?" Frey said in between deep breaths, occasionally glancing back at Gregen, slowly emerging from the minecart. "Bandage Thomas's wounds or something. He's going to bleed out at this rate."

'I can just pretend he's alive,' Doevm thought as he reached into his spatial ring. 'I can wait until this is all over to tell Frey. I'll just resurrect Thomas and Frey will be fine. He'll just let it out like he did when Hopi died. This the most logical answer, the best answer.' But as he reached into his spatial ring, he saw his cracked skull mask. The shattered bits of light crystal that Frey had smashed into its cold metallic surface sent a pang through Doevm's heart.

He thought back to Elero's words when she had found out he was possessed: "So were you planning to tell me after initiation, when it would be less important to lose my trust?"

Doevm cursed under his breath. 'Even if I have everything to lose and nothing to gain from this, I won't manipulate them anymore. It's illogical but I don't care.' He looked to Frey. "Thomas is-"

A hand shot up from the minecart, attracting Frey's attention. Gregen, now covered head-to-toe in a thick exoskeleton, stepped into the dim light. "Doevm," Frey said. "This chamber is too narrow for both of us to fight side by side, so for the love of the goddess, heal Thomas."

"Y-" Gregen's voice came out deep and slow. "You should have k….killed me when…hurts. It's so loud." His exoskeletal armor creaked with every movement. "Can't…can't touch me." Gregen didn't get into a stance as he walked towards Frey, his great sword dragged against the stone behind him.

Frey got into a stance and drew his Kopis but as he stepped in, his knee hit against a rusty lever that let out a metallic screech. Gregen's head cocked to the side at the sound. He crouched down and sprung not into Frey, but into the wall, then across to the next wall. He bounced off every surface in a display of speed that made Frey take a step back and his eyes grow tired from trying to track his opponent.

The bouncing got faster and louder, the violent, blurring mass sending a cold sweat down Frey's neck. Gregen let out a cackle and with one final spring of his legs, he launched at Frey, who raked his Kopis against his shield. Metallic screeching and Gregen's screeching formed a duet of suffering. A solo act followed, Frey's Kopis hacking into Gregen's chest and putting him on the ground.

Frey jumped on top of Gregen, still screeching, pulled on one of the exoskeletal arms, and severed it at the shoulder. Next, he swiveled his body around and grabbed Gregen's leg only for it to bend at an unnatural angle and kick him.

A pressure appeared at Frey's chest; the section of breastplate now bent inwards. He bounced off the wall, his head in a daze. Gregen lept up, chucked his own arm at Frey, and, the instant it smacked against his shield, it exploded into hundreds of insects. No matter how much he swatted at them, they came like a wave, biting into his skin and injecting all their venom.

Gregen slashed at his target, which was paralyzed with enough venom to put down a horse. The sword halted mid-air. Blood streaked down Frey from the tiny bit the great sword's blade, partially sunken into his hand. Frey squeezed. Cracks ran along the sword's blade, shattering it at the hilt.

"That's impossible." Gregen stepped back and pulled Frey's spear out of his spatial ring. "That was enough venom to put down a squadron. The fact that you're even standing right now is a miracle in itself."

"You know," Frey said as he cast both his shield and Kopis to the ground. "With bugs like you, I just need a proper sized swatter." He reached over, picked up the minecart, and crushed Gregen against the wall with it like the insignificant insect he was. Frey fell to a knee, taking deep breaths.

"You idiot!" Doevm yelled, crossing his hands over his head. The passageway trembled, and cracks formed along the ceiling.

"Sorry!" Frey grabbed his things and stood over Doevm with the shield overhead like an umbrella. As rocks clattered against his shield, the bugs skittered off of Frey and swarmed around Gregen's severed arm.

"I'm just happy it's over." Frey let out a sigh of relief. "But it's all fine now. I think he's dead." He glanced one more time at the minecart stuck in the wall, the figure trapped behind it nothing more than a red stain. "So how's Thomas?"

Everything slowed down to a grinding halt, even Doevm's heart, drumming so loud that it might as well have echoed off the passageway's floor, covered with gallons of Thomas's blood.

"Doevm?" Frey's deep breaths grew shallow, hurried.

Doevm slowly rose to his feet, looked Frey in the eyes, and shook his head.

Frey took a step back from Thomas's broken body and smiled that accursed smile of his, tearing up. "But you have magic. You can heal him, right? Do you have a plan?"

Slowly rising out of the swarm of bugs was a long, exoskeletal limb. Both Frey's and Doevm's attention, however, was on their comrade. Frey's sweat chilled as the mineshaft's cold breeze swept through him, almost as cold as Thomas's body when Frey bent down and shook him at the chest just in case it was a joke. It was a joke. It had to be. It was a fucked up, demented joke made by the world - one that Frey had heard one too many times before.

"We didn't make it in time." Doevm said. "He's gone but I can bring him-"

When Doevm's mouth moved, Frey didn't hear anything. He turned around to face the figure that had emerged from the swarm of insects. Its long, inhumane limbs looked easy to break. Its frail body looked like the perfect thing for his Kopis to hack apart.

Frey made sure to kick the lever as he ran over, sending the demon screeching on the ground. He caught the demon by the neck. White aura crackled around him like a lightning storm, his fury incarnate. "Frey don't!"

His white energy pulled at the red aura. He could crush this disgusting thing in the most painful way imaginable with his power, with a pain that even Frey couldn't understand. He could snap its neck but that wouldn't have been satisfying. Beating it to death wouldn't have felt good enough.

The demon smiled. "Foolish human." Everything went black.