//ERROR.

//ERROR.

//CONNECTION TO [SEBASTIAN CORMIER] TEMPORARILY DISABLED BY THE INFLUENCE OF [SLYK CREATOR].

//SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE TO NEXT CLOSEST LIVING BEING, [JUNIPER PERSEPHONIA].

//INITIATING…

Jun grit flourished her sword against a nagging pain in her wrist as the slyk creator bore down on her, smashing its rocky limbs down in a deadly rain that she’d been dodging for the past half-dozen minutes. Her blade bit through the falling stone just enough to slow it down a fraction of a second, which gave her just enough time to dodge its splashdown. The time dilation of her strangling sprout was beyond useful, especially when she found out it worked on parts of a whole.

The creator couldn’t do much of anything when it was so constantly disoriented by the discontinuities in its attacks. But the inverse was also so frustratingly true; she couldn’t get a single good hit in, and even if she could, she didn’t know if it would have any effect. This thing was the creator of all slyk, for gods’ sake. It couldn’t just be the half-mile of freakish insect sticking out of a sinkhole. It had to go deeper. Down to wherever Seb was.

“I swear, if you got yourself killed right after I finally got you to myself….” Jun worriedly muttered to herself, shifting her sword to her other hand to try and give her wrist a break. She activated the strangling sprout on her sword as another leg tried to impale her, then the compressed moon right as it was about to impact the rock. Her sword grew five times as heavy for a split second, smashing through the rock with barely any resistance, then returned to its normal weight.

This was how she’d dealt with the prohibitively expensive battery costs of her etchings. They had no activation costs, save for the twice-eye, so if she only had them active for a fraction of a second, they cost her next to nothing. But fighting that way was a different kind of exhausting. Like trying to complete an all-white puzzle, Jun’s mind was focused on everything all at once. Finding the exact moment to activate her etchings to preserve her limited battery was hard enough, but doing it while dodging a rain of oil on uneven ground was mind-bendingly difficult.

When the alternative was death, though? Jun’s mind could bend a little more. She danced through the creator’s attacks with seeming ease, her mind and body screaming at her all the while, until an unexpected message slashed her rhythm in two.

It was from Seb. {Hey, Jun, just telling you that I’m fine and that I’m going to send Mortician their last pieces and the last vial of oil. I’m stuck here in what The End said was the hazard’s core, and I’ll be here until Okeria teleports us to him. You don’t have to keep fighting, so stay safe until time’s up. Love you. Stay safe.}

A sigh of relief quickly changed into a wide smile as her mind stretched even thinner to read as she dodged. Up until she’d heard Seb say it, she hadn’t realized how much she’d needed someone to say ‘love you’. And for that person to truly mean it. Keratily had said it a few times, and they’d felt nice at the beginning, but even then they’d felt hollow. Like how someone loved a favorite toy, or a season of the year. Yet when Seb said it…

Well, she’d needed it. Needed someone like Seb, and he needed her back. That one little distinction mattered a whole lot. So much so that she’d risked her life and existence on a grafting, only to come out of it better than she’d gone into it. Even in the absolute best cases, that never happened. The graftee always lost something.

But she’d come out of it with Seb. All to herself. If she could only tell the Jun of a year ago that the best thing in her life would happen in the middle of an oil-infested abyss while she was dodging for her life. She chuckled to herself and swiped at another crushing leg, then for the first time since Seb had disappeared, she turned and ran.

He was fine. She didn’t need to fight any more. All she had to do was survive until Mortician… appeared? Sent her a message that they were real now? Whatever signaled that they were alive now, and that Okeria could teleport them out. She flared the strangling sprout for a second to gain ground, risking a look back when she let off the battery drain.

The creator was still hot on her heels. “Skies above, that’s fast for a huge monster.” Jun hissed. She dismissed her sword and focused completely on getting away, pebbles and oil spraying with each and every heavy footstep that carried her closer to safety. The ground was terrible to walk on, nevermind run, but something in Jun kept her balanced. It felt like her core was helping her every step somehow, but that couldn’t be right. It only affected numbers, and as far as she knew, the ground didn’t have a number to change.

“Maybe it’s because I’m with Seb now?” Jun wondered aloud as the world erupted in stone and oil behind her. “His core’s corrupted, so maybe that’s wearing off on me?”

“You’re with Sebastian!? What did we miss!?”

Jun swiveled her head to the right at the absolute joy that radiated off of Mortician’s voice. They waved hello from behind low-level armor that looked like the same stuff Sebastian had come to the all-world in. It looked like stone with veins of oily black that had a gleaming golden core. Jun couldn’t find any words to say for a moment as Mortician continued to wave, completely confused and overwhelmed with the simple fact that they existed.

This was also the first time she’d actually seen them. “Mortician? How’d you… are you actually… shouldn’t there be more fanfare?”

Mortician laughed happily with a vigorous nod of their head. “We thought so as well! But when we took in the pieces and blood-oil Sebastian gave us, we found ourselves running right next to you! Reality is so strange! Well, it barely looks different to where we were before, but we assume that will change when we leave this hazard!”

“Oh, definitely.” Jun smiled in reply. Mortician’s excitement was contagious. “But we’re not in the clear yet. We’ll have to find a way to sneak you past Keratily, which won’t be easy. And we still have to get away from that.”

Jun thumbed at the creator over her shoulder for emphasis. Mortician let out a little questioning noise and looked back, then yelped in surprise and jumped three feet in the air.

“Is that the creator?!? We’ve never seen it in person, but we didn’t think it would be so scary!” They cried. “What are we supposed to do, Juniper?! We’ve never fought anything in this body before!”

“In this body?” Jun wondered aloud, then shook her head. She could ask Mortician all the questions she wanted when they were good and safe. “We don’t have to do anything. Okeria’s going to teleport us to him in about half an hour, so we just have to survive until then.”

Mortician nodded vigorously. “Yes! That’s good! We don’t want to die after just a few moments of being alive!”

The creator blurbled loudly, almost as if it was responding to Mortician. Jun frowned and looked back, then frowned harder at what she saw. The creator had pulled itself free of the sinkhole, but the back part of it didn’t look like it had wanted to come free. Oil dripped from a ragged end in gratuitous amounts, as if the creator was a limb that had just been ripped free of its socket, soaking the ground even further as it sped up. The half-mile long slyk was definitely gaining on them.

“Nevermind, we might have to fight this!” Jun warned, turning on her heel and opening her inventory to grab her sword. “It’s not endlessly reinforced any more, so we might actually stand a chance!”

“Might?” Mortician squeaked, taking a good dozen steps more before they stopped. “Juniper, we don’t even know what our core does! And we are not armed in the slightest! We cannot help you!”

Jun clenched her teeth and dug her heels in. “Then run! I’ll keep this thing occupied as long as I can, so just stay alive!”

“But we… Sebastian won’t…” Mortician started to argue, then stood tall. “No. We will hide behind that building over there for just a few minutes while we determine what our core is capable of. Then we will return to aid you.”

“Alright! Go!” Jun ordered, swiveling her head back to lock onto the creator. She heard Mortician scramble against the uneven ground, but her focus was completely on the massive slyk barreling down on her. “All I have to do is survive.”

The creator didn’t waste time attacking, lancing down with two of its legs just a little faster than it had ever done before. Jun didn’t have enough time to throw off its assault with her dilation or weight inscriptions. She could only roll to the side in a spray of oil and broken rock, quickly tucking her legs in to dodge a follow up sweep from another leg that barely nicked her armor.

This onslaught continued for the longest five minutes of Jun’s life, leaving her absolutely no openings to retaliate as the creator grew increasingly violent. More legs joined in the assault until Jun felt like she was fighting a living, bladed monsoon. It was all she could do to keep alive, taking small hit after small hit until her armor flashed with so many warnings that it started obscuring her vision.

She needed to retake some ground. Make enough space to put the creator on the back foot for just a second, then she could disrupt its rhythm enough to get a few good hits in. And maybe that’d be enough to mount a real offensive. Jun didn’t expect that she’d be able to kill the creator, but the thought of all the experience and rewards she could earn spurred on those thoughts.

Her sword rose to try and meet the next limb that came too quickly, causing her to take a bad hit across the stomach for the opening. She grunted against the pain but didn’t relent, slamming her sword into the encroaching rock. Her inscriptions activated the moment her sword bit stone. It wasn’t enough. The landscape sailed by as the limb sent her flying, then approached all too rapidly before she skidded against the pebbly ground in a flurry of notifications.

“Abyss below, that hurts.” She muttered as she sprung to her feet, pushing through the pain and battery drain to ready herself for the next attack. Yet she wasn’t fast enough. The claw was already aimed squarely at her face, with the intent of running her through. She couldn’t move in time. But she could activate a function.

The strangling sprout blazed to life to give her another second to think. She knew she couldn’t dodge fast enough, even with its power. The compressed moon wouldn’t do anything. Maybe the floodforest’s gift could help, but she wasn’t wearing anything that could activate it. Which left only the twice-eye. She’d never used it on anything bigger than her sword, and even that had exhausted her. But it was, quite literally, her only remaining option.

Jun gulped as she activated the twice-eye on herself. She felt its power completely coat her in an instant, but even then, it seemed too late. The limb cracked her visor, spearing her through with a strangely bloodless violence. And, much to Jun’s absolute surprise, she wasn’t watching from a first-person point of view.

She watched an almost holographic copy of herself burst into yellow and black energy, falling back in death as she fell to her knees from a lack of battery. She was just five feet to the left of the creator’s limb. The twice-eye had worked, but in a way she’d never expected. Her visor was still cracked. She was definitely in her duplicate’s place just a moment ago. But somehow, she’d survived.

For now.