The Grateful One all but melted and boiled, enveloping my tongue with the heavy scent-taste of seared flesh. Her skin almost seemed to ripple before my eyes, undulating like a great snake, twisting and writhing. Every so often, it would start to reform, rejuvenated by the healing that the [Little Guardian’s Focus] provided.

It wasn’t enough. She screamed; I heard the sound change when her throat tore - and then healed, only to tear again. She gagged and coughed, spitting up a glob of crimson that nearly glowed with overflowing mana. I had struggled with the effects of swallowing a flame-gaze bad-thing’s mana core, forced to release the mana before it burned me up inside; it wasn’t surprising that, with no way to push the mana back out, The Grateful One could only burn.

The-female-who-was-not-Needle rushed to The Grateful One’s side, kneeling down and pushing the injured Coreless onto her side. Not-Needle’s hands hovered over the other Coreless before she reached towards The Grateful One’s still-open mouth, shoving her fingers inside. I caught the flash of [pain] from the-female-who-was-not-Needle as the excess heat given off by The Grateful One’s mouth-flesh caused them to sizzle and pop.

The scream muffled; the Coreless gagged and spit, trying to push not-Needle away. She thrashed again as another section of her skin-flesh drooped and melted in fits and spurts, beginning to heal for only a moment before it melted again. Finally, the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s invading fingers were pushed out, a trickle of vomit coming along with it.

The Grateful One’s mouth clamped shut, hiding the volume of her [AGONY] behind a thin wall of flesh. The-female-who-was-not-Needle pressed against it again. It held firm.

Not-Needle’s breath came out in a rasping hiss. “Elara, listen to me. You need to let me help you. Open your mouth, you have to vomit it back out. You’re killing yourself!”

She shoved her fingers against The Grateful One’s lips, the tips forming shifting hues of red and white as not-Needle’s skin began to overheat and heal again and again. The Grateful One, for her part, shook her head vigorously.

“No,” she rasped after evading the determined disciple. “Not gi-” she jerked, her body shuddering and shaking, “giving up. Not gonna be a pu-puppet.”

I let myself slide across the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s skin of ore-flesh, the cool surface tamping down on the heat that The Grateful One was giving off. It reminded me of when I had swallowed a flame-gaze bad-thing’s mana core; that terrible, searing burn as mana in amounts far more than I could handle entered my body and set it alight. Yet, unlike the Coreless, I had been able to use that mana. I had turned it towards [Mana Fire] and [Mana Venom], letting the dangerous overflow of mana injure my enemies instead.

The Coreless couldn’t; she wasn’t created for it, even if the Great Core claimed her for itself. Not like I was.

“Elara!” the-female-who-was-not-Needle cried out, grabbing the mana-flooded Coreless by the jaw. “You’re safe now. You’re safe. You don’t have to go back there. They can’t hurt you anymore. Please, just stop this! Just vomit it back up before it’s too late!”

She pushed her fingers against The Grateful One’s lips again. There was a crunch; she yelped, pulling them back again. “Skies above, Elara!”

I sensed [worry] and [frustration] from her [Little Guardian’s Totem] as her bleeding fingertips healed, all but hidden underneath The Grateful One’s screaming [AGONY] and sheer [RESOLVE]. Not-Needle looked towards me, and what I could sense quickly shifted to [pleading].

“Please, help her. She’s hanging on, but I don’t think that she’ll make it. Her body wasn’t ready for something this extreme and I can’t get her to vomit the mana core back up,” she said, beginning to mutter under her breath at a volume low enough that I could barely hear it. “Skies, I would’ve hesitated to swallow the whole damn thing…you stupid, brave, idiot fucking girl. You better live through this.”

I looked at the mana-flooded Coreless again, and then back at not-Needle’s pleading eyes. Before I knew it, I was slithering across the surface of her ore-flesh and using her arm to cross the remaining distance between myself and the dying Coreless.

With each new slither, the heat grew. I pulled at it sharply, letting it fill the empty reservoirs of my scale-flesh before sending it out and away again. Even so, I could feel the cloying heat; it reminded me of the false-lives of the Flame Dungeon again, all heat and fire and smoke and death. I could almost taste it.

The mana-flooded Coreless jerked and shuddered as I touched down on her boiling, melting flesh. Her mouth frothed at the corners, but it remained stubbornly closed against the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s efforts. The [AGONY] spiked again, forcing an even more extreme response than before; it sent her rolling, and my ore-flesh shrieked against the ground as I was pulled underneath.

“Fucking Erik, why did he leave an Infernal Cyclops’ mana core where anyone could see it? A child could have swallowed it, even if this hadn’t happened,” the-female-who-was-not-Needle grumbled under her breath, the sound muffled by the mountain of trembling flesh that had pinned me to the ground. “Elara, sweetie, it’s not worth it. You don’t need this to be safe. It’s only going to get worse the longer you hold out.”

She was [pleading] again, even as she tried to force her fingers down the other Coreless’ throat. I finally managed to pull myself out from under the agonized Coreless, already feeling pain blossom across my bruised scale-flesh.

“Please, just let me help you!”

Suddenly, The Grateful One started to quiver and convulse. If before she had been thrashing in response to the pain of the mana burning its way through her flesh, now it was as if she was thrashing because there wasn’t anything else she could do.

I bit down hastily, cycling the mana within my mana core, trying to shift it into life essence drop-by-drop. Slowly but surely, the swirling lake of blue became gold and rushed down the hollows of my fangs - and all the while, the mana-flooded Coreless shook furiously, coming closer to ripping my fangs out with every passing moment.

For once, I didn’t try to conserve my mana. I knew that saving The Grateful One would take all that I had. I let it flow. Fast.

Lesser Core Skill: [Life - Invigorating Bite X] Increased.

[Life - Invigorating Bite XI] Acquired.

It was more life essence than I had ever used at once, all shoved into a single dying body. Flesh knit and regrew, even as it burned and boiled - until finally, as abruptly as it began, the injuries stopped. Her body managed to absorb the last of the mana core’s power, briefly shining with a corona of light before it sunk back through her ravaged skin. The flesh mended rapidly, suddenly free from the dangers of the overflowing mana.

The Grateful One fell perfectly still, convulsions stopped at last.

“Oh Skies above, you pulled through!”

Not-Needle pulled me up into her arms, squeezing them tightly around me and giving my scale-flesh a nice scratch.

“Elara? Elara, wake up. Sweetie, you need to wake up.”

Two fingers pressed firmly against the hollow of the Coreless’ throat.

“Elara?”

Elara was dreaming - or maybe she was dead. She had sure felt like she was dying. Maybe she should have listened to Valera and just vomited the mana core back out. Maybe she would have been able to live that way. A failure of a former puppet, only one misplaced magical necklace away from regrowing her strings. Still...

Is this really what death is like?

If so, death was stranger than she’d thought.

She felt large, yet small at the same time. Like she was a mass of innumerable tiny things that all came together to form something greater. Some of the larger parts had been thumping and pumping, while others had tried to flow in complex circuits that were almost tickling in their persistence; she had put a stop to the thumping immediately.

It was distracting.

Strangely, that stopped the other major distraction at almost the same time, as if the two were inextricably tied to one another. Something about the dream/death - she still wasn’t sure which it was - was satisfying; it was like this time she was the one holding the strings. When she tugged, the puppets obeyed. She felt free. Powerful. One of the larger puppets tried to move on its own. She held its strings taut, reveling in the fact that she could. It stilled. There were other things that wanted to move too, releasing minuscule bits of fluid that set her tingling. She stopped those, too.

“Elara? Elara, wake up. Sweetie, you need to wake up.”

Oh. I guess I’m not dead. That’s nice.

Still, for whatever reason, Elara’s thoughts were beginning to slow by the time she felt something press against one of her edges - if she wasn’t dead...her throat, maybe? Other, smaller parts of her felt as if they were fraying; a soothing warmth that pressed against one of her broadest edges kept putting them back together again, but it was a losing battle.

“Elara?”

The Seeker sounded upset. Elara searched for a while, found her eyes, and pulled on the strings she needed to open them. Valera gasped, pressing her fingers more sharply against Elara’s throat.

“Elara, you’re not breathing. You don’t even have a pulse! How are you alive?”

Oh. That’s what that thumping was.

She flexed countless little muscles along with each of the tiny things that formed them, tugging on the strings that would let her look down towards her chest.

She pulled on her strings.

Her heart started beating. Her lungs drew breath. Her mouth smiled.