The female-who-was-not-Needle listlessly cut the-root-that-attacks-from-below into pieces with distracted, stuttered motions, gently feeding the slices into my open mouth. Her hand went up and down, up and down as it continued with its methodical task, slicing at our once-ambusher and bringing the bits that came free up to where I rested on her shoulder. Every so often, she’d twitch slightly, with a wave of [guilt] and [remorse] flooding through the [Little Guardian’s Totem].

Despite that, she never looked at the-root-that-attacks-from-below, her eyes fixed onto tiny, unblinking eyes - either trusting in her own skill or simply unable to tear her eyes away, regardless of the danger to her fingers.

A little bit of both, most likely.

The other Coreless suffered as well, but none to the extent that the-female-who-was-not-Needle did. It was unsurprising, really. Unlike her, they had not been forced to kill the tiny-Coreless-that-once-was. Even so, I caught the scent-taste of [remorse] from them, as well. It filtered through each of their links, an inescapable wave of regret, powerful in its sheer simplicity. Coreless took the lives of the tiny Coreless more seriously than their elders, as if the innocent exuberance they held was something that made them more worthy of protection.

They weren’t wrong. There was something special there. Something almost sacred, I sometimes thought.

Despite that, my own emotions were different. Grief was there, maybe, to a small degree. A mourning for what might have been; the tiny Coreless should not have died. Mostly though, there was indignation. Hate. Rage.

She should have been mine. She should have been brought under the light of the Great Core. Instead, she was dead. That was wrong. Unacceptable.

I swallowed another slice of the-root-that-attacks-from-below, hardly even catching the bitter scent-taste as it scraped across my tongue-flesh. Part of me wished that it was still alive, that it could feel the pain as I devoured it in pieces, something akin to what its Core had forced upon the Great Core’s Coreless.

It wasn’t, but I enjoyed imagining it.

My Coreless spoke among themselves briefly, patting not-Needle’s shoulder in small spurts of [comfort], looking towards the corpse with longer bouts of [revulsion]. Not the body of the-root-that-attacks-from-below, of course, being mangled and sliced into pieces so that it could fit down my throat, but at the only corpse really worth mentioning.

Silently, I swallowed another bite - and then another, and another until the thought-light finally flickered.

Level 1 Tangleroot Consumed.

Transferred to Core.

Blooded Trait Acquisition Progress: 1/5.

With the-root-that-attacks-from-below - apparently called a Tangleroot, according to the thought-light - consumed in full, not-Needle’s fang lost their target. Instead, the hand that had held her fang simply flexed and unflexed, paling and darkening again in a series of ever-changing hues. The other hand found its way to the tiny Coreless, hovering slightly above it, shaking in place.

The hand came down, and a pair of small, unblinking eyes closed for the last time. It was a tiny change, hardly anything at all; yet, somehow, it almost made the little Coreless seem more at peace.

“I’m so sorry, little one,” not-Needle hissed; [regret] and [apology] intermingled, held firm by a steady foundation of [resolve] and [disgust]. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”

She bowed her head, muttering a few more words under her breath, before finally coming to her feet.

We moved on in silence, leaving the tiny corpse behind us.

The silence broke, shattered by the sounds of shifting roots and shattering stone somewhere out of sight. My Coreless twitched at the sudden noise, hands flexing around their ore-flesh before settling down again. A few shrieks followed the rearrangement of the roots, howls and cries and gibbering that even I could tell was just a mockery of the language of the Coreless.

It failed to mean anything, but certainly succeeded in setting my Coreless on edge - possibly as much as our failure to get any closer to our destination did.

“Skies above, this damn labyrinth is messing with me,” The Unrepentant One muttered harshly. With his [Little Guardian’s Totem] pressed against the outside of his ore-flesh, it was difficult to guess what he was trying to say. Still, the heavy downturn to his lips made me think that he was far from pleased. “Makes me want to stab something.”

The-female-who-was-not-Needle twitched again, the muscles of her neck twisting and contorting, and she reached one hand up to rub against it. Another flash of [sadness] echoed across our link, and I coiled a little tighter around her flesh. She turned towards me with a slight baring of her teeth, scratching lightly at my scale-flesh, murmuring something under her breath.

Needle noticed her distress, and a spike of [sympathy] and [annoyance] was followed with a few sharp words in The Unrepentant One’s direction. “Doran. Hush.”

He gave her a hard look, but it immediately softed when she motioned towards my still-distressed Coreless with a minute jerk of her chin. He moved a little closer, lightly placing one hand on the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s free shoulder. She leaned in a little, finding some degree of [comfort] in the touch, light as it was.

“Sorry, Valera,” he hissed softly. She didn’t answer, and he pressed ahead again after a searching gaze and a light squeeze of his hand.

We continued our travel in relative silence again, though I noticed that they would occasionally look back at not-Needle with furtive glances, flashes of [concern] rushing through our connections. Despite that, none of my Coreless were very willing to shatter the silence, leaving that task to the ruined many-nest and its inhabitants.

And break it they did, with their loud shrieks and not-words, with their grinding roots and rustling leaves, with their shattering stones and crumbling ruins. The sounds bounced across and around the wreckage of the many-nest, muffled and shaped by the twisted growths that the Lesser Core had created - by the ones that might have been nothing more intelligent than any plant-flesh, and by the ones that were surely more.

It was sometimes hard to tell which was which, a difficulty that my Coreless shared with me. There were a few things that were obviously dangerous, the floating spores that formed the green mist among them. Neither I nor my Coreless had any desire to walk into those hazy depths, not with the occasional Coreless-that-once-was shuffling about in the mist. There was a danger there, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Other dangers were more ambiguous. Were those leaves that hung out from between the cracks of a nearby wall rustling in the wind of our passage, or were they reaching out to touch us? Were those vines like the Tangleroot, just waiting to wrap themselves around anything that neared them, or were they nothing more than growths of green?

With no real way to know, we could only avoid them all for now. It made for slow progress, binding us to a plodding and ponderous pace, full of meandering and backtracking that held little direction. The shifting of the many-nest around us only made that worse.

A few places seemed obviously dangerous. Those, my Coreless avoided with no hesitation whatsoever. A broken nest that seemed to breathe the green mist in heavy gasps, the spores dense enough that I could see nothing past its shattered moving-wall. A small-tunnel between two others, covered in growths that spat out noxious fumes, giving off a scent-taste that was only made worse by my light application of [Mana Fire]. A massive tower filled with an obscene amount of plant-flesh, green mist, and ambling once-Coreless, forcing us to quietly slink away in order to avoid undue attention.

Each and every time that we were stifled, I felt my Coreless’ frustration grow alongside my own. Part of me just wanted to set fire to everything that I saw and sort everything else out from there, but the rest of me knew that would be a bad idea. I had nowhere near enough mana to do so effectively, not when I had no idea which of the surrounding growths were minions of the Lesser Core and which were normal plant-flesh - and especially not when I knew that the flames might do more harm than good, drawing the Lesser Core’s captured Coreless towards us in greater numbers.

The-female-who-was-not-Needle twitched again, her neck jerking to the side with a motion even sharper than before, eliciting a pained grimace.

She must have been even more frustrated than I thought.