Well, I had lived a good life, hadn’t I?

There was no way for me to escape from this trajectory. I had been so fixated on the beast that I failed to properly account for its attacks, going to fall to the same carnage as that fallen guard, body torn beyond recognition. There was no getting out of this, not with my inability to maneuver in the air. I had been consigned to a terrible fate, destined to die here after doing my best to protect others from their untimely end, and yet all my efforts amounted to was my hurtling through the air, unceremoniously careening towards the maw of the beast.

Its dedicated suction trunk pulled incredibly hard, my body not the only thing flying toward its three faces. Water, other people, parasites, debris: whatever the trunks had alighted on were inexorably drawn to it.

I looked off to the side, wishing fervently that Mia would able to capitalize on her chance to escape, given her beast soul’s capacity to take to the skies. She had the ability to create some lateral movement and perhaps break free of the suction if she tried enough. The same couldn’t be said for me, but that didn’t mean that both of us were meant to die here. I only wished her the best in her attempts to escape so that the foul beast would fall before us.

I blinked away my tears, trying to remain resolute in this moment, needing to stay calm so that I didn’t distract Mia from her attempts to escape. She had already alighted on a potential means of action, staring at some of the debris floating by our side in the sky. If she could get to one of those, it would be an implement to push off of, and just maybe that would be enough.

Mia enabled her Two Heartbeats, body shaking from the accelerated time and beat her wings furiously, accelerating towards the chunk of rooftop whirling through the air in front of us. Her small body pierced forward, wings angled to cut the current by her side, diving into the flow of the suction as to close the gap with the remnants of the city. In a few seconds she had landed upon the other side of the floating roof and pushed off, continuing her trek parallel to the current that brought us closer and closer to the beast. Each jump was a little more precarious as her path accelerated her further and further along, the speed necessary to try and break free from the oppressive channel. I held my breath, muttering silent prayers, body tensing with each jump as though I was traveling with her, until she broke free of the current, hovering in the air solely by her own strength.

She turned around, seeing me trailing behind her. “You idiot, slow yourself,” she shouted. “Swell your fur so you travel slower.”

I silently acquiesced, feeling my larger body area decelerate my movement, but that wasn’t going to be enough per my estimations. The beast hadn’t been inhaling for that long. I wasn’t going nearly slow enough to persist until it stopped and try to survive the fall to the ground.

“There’s no way out of this,” I said, wondering if Mia would be able to hear the words ripped out of my mouth. “Go away and help the others. I’m stuck, Mia. This is the end.”

She screamed words I couldn’t make out, my tears starting to flow freely, no longer needing to restrain myself. I didn’t have to hold back any longer. I could come to terms with impending end.

It was a good life, relatively. I had done what I could. I tried to help, to make a difference in the world. I would never have been here if I still lived in the village. I would be alive, but at the cost of hating my existence, hating the people around me who conspired to keep me tethered to a role that would cause more harm than letting me participate to protect everyone.

I never loved anyone, but love was still foreign to me, and if it had never happened, I would be at peace with that. Our friendships were enough. They had to be enough. I couldn’t help but think of Levin, my first friend. I hoped he was still alive. He had to survive, if I wasn’t going to. He had to live and hold onto my memory. I had saved his life, after all. It would be the least he could do.

I just hoped— I just hoped my parents were proud of me, watching me from wherever they were. Did I live up to your expectations? Was this what you had in mind for me? Was this how you had envisioned your child would die? I could never know how you would feel about my situation in life, but that doesn’t change my life. I was proud of what I did. I did what needed to be done, no matter the cost. Even if I couldn’t save everyone, I saved some people, case in point, Levin. I hoped he lived a good life after this.

As for Mia and the others, they needed to escape. To successfully avoid getting caught like how I was. They needed to live on in my stead. I knew Mia could do it. She was a fighter. Only she could have broken free of the spike feeder’s trap like that. We were all so unique, the prey soul program truly a success. If this wasn’t proof enough for Amalarys, nothing would ever be, and whatever it was that had happened in Malagost city was justified.

All there was now was just waiting. My will would cover everything else. No regrets to be left behind, just the knowledge of what I did. It was worth it. I knew it to be so.

I blinked away my tears, trying to look away from the awaiting maw of the beast filled its needle teeth, ready to shred me into mere strips, when I saw something strange on the side of the beast.

That wasn’t to say most things on the beast weren’t strange, but strange wasn’t a factor you tried to categorize a spike feeder by. Their biology was odd and inscrutable. Ergo, one wouldn’t compare them by their irregularities, only their commonalities. But what that shape was stood out because it wasn’t part of the spike feeder. It was not a something, but more likely, a someone.

They climbed up the side of the beast with ease, unimpeded by its tough skin, easily scaling in great bounds until they were near the beast’s midsection, large enough for my eyes to discern what was likely the person’s form, to the sinking feeling in my stomach.

No. It couldn’t be them. I must be seeing things in my death-prescient induced shock. They wouldn’t be so foolhardy to try and interfere, right?

Evidently my ignorance was clear today, as a lilac tongue shot out from the person, closing the distance to my swollen form.

“Javier, no!” I shouted into the wind, knowing that my words wouldn’t reach him. I just hoped he would read my expression and retract before the current dragged him away. It must have taken his full strength to ensure he wasn’t immediately drawn into the winds, clinging to the body of the spike feeder with all his might. Perhaps he even had a technique dedicated to sticking to objects, not that I would know given his need to be mysterious and vague at all times.

I could feel the tongue trying to tug at me, but it was a fools endeavor. I was simply too far. There was no way he could get the proper angle to pull back with it. Too much of his strength was dedicated to his own survival— at this range, he couldn’t both guarantee his own life and try to save mine. The attempt warmed my heart, but I wished nothing else than for him to stop this game. I didn’t need false hope. I just needed to know that the others would be fine.

I tried lightly shocking his tongue with my Direct Current, a sort of warning for him to cease and desist with his wasteful actions, but I was never the one to get him to listen to reason.

To my abject horror his body grew closer and closer, reeled in by the force of his tongue until he was right by my side, noting my horrified look.

“Javier, how could you?” I shouted, confident that my words could reach him when he was in the current with me.

“Perry, don’t beat yourself up over this. This was my decision to make, and I won’t regret it.”

“Shut up,” I screamed. “Just get yourself out of here while you still can. Don’t be a fool.”

He gave his trademark cheeky grin, winking at me as he drew in even closer, arms wrapped around my matted fur. “Look, Perry. It’s my duty as the team leader to ensure all of my underlings are safe. There’s no way I could let you die when I had the chance to save you.”

“You have a chance to save yourself,” I cried, tears streaming down my face once more. I wanted to dismiss my fur and smack him, but that would accelerate my arrival within the pit of the beast and he still had a chance to escape.

“Look, Perry. You and your team are the future of Titan City. If one of us has to survive, I would rather it be you. You’ve got untold potential, kid. The mere surface of what you can do hasn’t even been met yet. Your actions in the dungeon? Strange but effective. You’ve utilized your prey soul to the utmost, and that’s exactly what Titan City needs.”

“But we need you leading it, Javier. We need you to help us get through it. We’re nothing without you. We would still be pathetic nobodies without your intervention. You’ve already saved me, Javier. You saved me in the woods and gave me a second chance, when nobody else would even believe in me. You’ve patiently listened and corrected my ignorance each time I dared to speak. How would I function without you, let alone the team?”

We were careening closer and closer to the trunk, my swollen fur unable to end our looming acceleration into its waiting form. We couldn’t afford to keep talking like this, or his attempted sacrifice, if I could call it that, would be for nothing.

“Perry, I believe in you and the rest of the team. I’ve tried so hard, and you know what? This might just be the end. And perhaps that will be a relief. I’ve had to shoulder such a heavy weight, doing more because I could. It felt like Titan City stood solely upon my shoulders. But now I see a better future. One where the four of you rescue us from our inertia and force us to change and adapt even further. You’ve already accomplished so much in such little time. You need to live on and prove my legacy in your success. Let me rest so that you might continue to shine.”

His lilac tongue popped out of his mouth once more, wrapping around my matted fur, my cries falling on deaf ears. “Do what you can, because you must, Perry. I believe in you. You just need to believe in yourself too.”

With his parting words said, he flung my body away, his body rotating to give that necessary force to escape the pull of the spike feeder’s trunk. My body flew out of the current, landing squarely on side on the face of the suction trunk, feeling all too uncomfortable in my proximity to the hateful eyes. I watched on with horror as Javier continued on down into the trunk shortly thereafter, the man I had grown to know as a kind of father disappearing into the beast, his own life sacrificed for my own.

I fell down to my knees, gripping the tight flesh to ensure that I wouldn’t fall off of the beast, trying to stay collected within my grief. The sound of flapping wings brought me out of my moment of mourning, Mia’s shocked face quickly disappearing as she flew to my side and embraced me in a deep hug.

“I… I don’t know what he said to you, Perry. I don’t know why he chose to do that. But we will cry when this is over. We’ll cry deep and heartily over our mentor, and wonder how much a life is worth. But until then, we continue on. Our job isn’t done.”

“I guess now I’m obligated to his make his sacrifice worth it,” I said, trying to crack a smile.

“That’s the spirit. That’s the energy we need. That’s the motivation we’ll have to carry onwards… any plans though for how we’ll capitalize on our positioning? I feel like parasites might come down for us any second now,” she said, noticeably channeling some of Javier’s demeanor.

“Perhaps we aim for what seemed to be out of reach for the others. They’ll continue their assault on the ground. We’ll focus on what we can grasp, the vulnerable bits that have gone untouched all this time.”

I stared at the hate-filled eyes, feeling my own well with the same emotion. I had to balance out the scale and pay back the beast for all it had done, no matter the cost. One life deserved another, and the beast had taken more than one life. It had taken far too many. We had to end it however we could.

Mia caught my gaze, her eyes widening as she caught the implication, but her steely resolve was no lesser than my own, her face tightening into a thin smile. “It’ll never see us coming.”