Rudra’s lungs ached, remnants of two separate smoke clouds still inside. His nostrils burned, partly from said smoke and partly from whatever acrid substance the cloth over his nose and mouth had been soaked in. His arm and side hurt as Tepin dug her sharp nails into his skin hard and deep enough to draw blood—not out of fear, he knew, but rather out of rage at him and his actions. Outside, alarm horns blew, their chorus growing more numerous and more deafening by the moment. And yet, despite it all, his mind remained perfectly clear.

“You foolish man!” Tepin hissed through her own cloth facial wrapped around her face as she futilely tried to wrest the key ring from his grasp. With her paltry strength, she had no shot at success, but she tried anyway. It was one of the things he loved about her. “What are you doing!? The woman is right! We must leave now or it will be too late!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told them both, his voice loud and unwavering. “Not while the others continue to suffer. Only when the Shells are free will it be time to leave.”

“Have you lost your mind?!” the woman outside—Gabriela, if he remembered her name correctly—sputtered.

A group of figures shrouded in smoke came into view. Gabriela spun around, her absurd sword already in hand. The blade flashed around in an arc from right to left so fast that it left a blur and a mighty clap of thunder, but Rudra noticed how tall that blur was. She’d swung her weapon like a cricket bat, striking the forms with the flat side. The Stragmans practically doubled over around the huge blade from the power of the blow as she flung all three of them out of sight, but at least they were alive—probably.

“I’ve had nothing but time recently to think about my failures. I know I’m a fool; I’ve wasted too many precious opportunities already. I will not waste this one,” he declared. “If you want me out of this cage and going with you, then help me free these people. Until then, I’m staying put.”

More came without pause. Before Gabriela could even finish her follow-through, another Stragman—cheeks puffed out from held breath—darted in and slid a dagger into her back. If the woman even felt the pain, Rudra couldn’t see it in the way she reached around, grabbed her assailant by their leather chest armor, and threw them away like a rag doll, only for them to be replaced by two more.

“You saphead! What in the howls do you expect her to do?!” Tepin growled as five loud thumps resounded from above.

“Yeah!” the woman outside yelled, jumping up atop the cage and out of view—though not out of earshot. “Stop being an idiot and get out of there now, before the entire city comes down on us!”

“She’s a mighty and unkillable warrior with the backing of an entire country and others like her and me, all probably just as strong,” Rudra explained his thinking. “If anybody can do it, it’s her. This is the only time I have leverage, and I’m not going to pass it up.”

“We do not have that kind of time, you stubborn ass!” Gabriela snarled as she hopped back down into Rudra’s sight again, her words barely audible over the clamor of thousands of Stragmans closing in. At least a dozen arrows stuck out of her, making her look like a human pincushion, but then she let out a grunt. A third, crimson smoke emerged from her body and the shafts fell off as if cut away.

Grabbing two adjacent bars, she strained mightily against them, trying to force them apart. The wood didn’t move a single millimeter, nor did it creak or moan—a total no-sell. “This is lunacy! We’re leaving!”

The woman swiveled her large pack to her front like an oversized fanny pack, then snaked an arm in between two of the bars. Suddenly, Rudra’s world rotated ninety degrees as she seemingly effortlessly lifted the cage into the air. He hugged Tepin close, twisting so that his back struck the bars and his body cushioned Tepin’s landing. Before he could even react and grab hold of a bar to steady them, Gabriela burst forward in a startling display of power and speed. Inertia threw them against the back wall, drawing a pained gasp from his delicate partner.

“Hey, stop!” he hollered. “Stop! You’re hurting her!”

Gabriela ignored him, her legs powering them forward at terrifying speeds. The cage tilted again as she found a balance with it, resting the slanted bars of the cell on the back of her shoulder like she was lugging a large sack. The way the cage’s open side leaned forward meant that Rudra could see the ground and some of what stood before them, but anything above a level gaze was cut off by the cell’s ceiling.

What he could see was enough to make him fear for his and his beloved’s lives. The ground beneath them sped by in a blur. He could see the lower two-thirds of confused Stragmans yelling and screaming as they shot past. Wind whipped through the openings, filling his ears with noise and constantly pressing him backward. Without warning, Gabriela jerked to the left, throwing the pair of them into the cell’s hard right side, only to snap right a moment later and send them crashing in the other direction. Rudra held Tepin tight against him, trying to shield her from the force of the impacts, but reacting to their kidnapper’s sudden heading changes was no easy task. It didn’t help how the cage rocked heavily with every step, or how it could randomly clip something on the way by and shake violently.

“Hold on!” the woman hollered over the wind. That was all the warning they received before they found themselves soaring through the air. The city opened up beneath them as Gabriela leapt high into the air, sailing over dozens of the modular structures that the Stragmans combined to build their homes and then disassembled when it was time to move again. Rudra cursed as he wrapped the fingers of his one hand around a nearby bar and threw the key ring up around his neck—thankfully it was wide enough that his head barely fit through it—so that his other hand was free to grasp his love as best as he could. Then, the city began to grow again, faster and faster. Tepin huddled against him, whispering desperate prayers against his chest. He turned so his back would take the blow.

They came down hard, crashing down atop an unlucky tent made of colorful animal skins sewn together. He never found out what was inside the tent, as Gabriela was an unstoppable freight train of destruction—and they were the cargo. She powered through the poor skins like a boulder through a piece of paper. Meanwhile, Rudra let out a loud grunt as his whole body slammed into the bars, with his head taking an especially painful hit. Tepin had the wind knocked from her. Trying to breathe, she let out a pained wheeze that brought a great anger to his heart.

“You’re going to kill her, you lunatic!” he hollered over the wind. Fed up, he tried to pry Gabriela’s fingers free of the bar, only to find, to his shock, that he could not. Perhaps he merely lacked the leverage due to their frequent changes of direction, but even his great strength seemed too weak to dislodge her grip. Just how strong was this woman?

Suddenly, the surrounding encampment disappeared, replaced by even more plant life as they entered the forest. The cage bucked and juddered as the woman below practically dragged it forcefully through all manner of foliage, peppering her passengers with a near-constant spray of pulped vines, shrubs, ferns, and more. The violent swerves did not stop, either—in fact, they became worse as the forest’s more uneven terrain added vertical jukes to the woman’s formerly horizontal-only repertoire.

Once again, Rudra found himself effectively powerless to remedy the situation. Yes, it was largely a situation of his own making, but that was beside the point. This woman was hurting Tepin and did not seem to care, stoking his indignation and buttressing his already ironclad stubborn will. Now, his refusal to cooperate had a second motivation beyond saving the Shells; he just didn’t want to give Gabriela what she wanted.

At this moment, however, there was little he could do about it. His code prevented him from hurting the woman, not that he believed it would even do any good against her, and he was far too preoccupied just keeping his love alive and unhurt to do anything else, anyway. All he could do was wait it out.

And so, wait it out they did. Minute after minute, Rudra held on, his body gradually becoming covered in deep, painful bruises. Not for the first time, he wished he could use his power on himself. Finally, after what must have been more than half an hour, he felt them mercifully slowing, though not stopping entirely.

“Hey, have we traveled far enough that I don’t have to sprint to keep away from the pursuers?” Gabriela called out.

“Yes!” Rudra cried out. His body ached all over from dozens and dozens of impacts, and he was thoroughly fed up.

“Not you, you nitwit! The wolf woman. She, at least, has some sense!”

“The name is Tepin Silverfall, and yes,” Tepin replied. “You’ve given us more than enough of a lead that we should have no issue as long as we keep moving, though I must note that you’ve left a trail so bold that a blind man could follow it. We can’t stay in one place for too long.”

“Won’t be a problem. I’m Gabriela, by the way. Now...” Her tone harshened, almost like a mother scolding her child, and it became clear that she was no longer speaking to Tepin. “Have you come to your senses and decided to get out of this stupidly heavy block of wood yet?”

“No,” came Rudra’s petulant reply. “I told you my conditions.”

The pair rocked forward as Gabriela skidded to a halt. She swung the cell off her back and deposited it roughly on the ground in front of her.

“Listen here, musclehead!” she snapped, staring heatedly into the cell at him with each of her hands wrapped in a death grip around a bar. Her chest rose and fell as she huffed and puffed—how much from anger and how much from exertion, he couldn’t say. “I’m sorry about these people you care so much about or whatever, but I have bigger things to concern myself with than your problems! You know what would be horrible for the Shells or whoever? What about if they all die because the world ends, huh? Is that what you want? You want them to die because instead of helping to stop the world from ending, I’m stuck yelling at an idiot who locked himself in a cage and won’t come out EVEN THOUGH HE HAS THE KEY?!”

Rudra could see the pulsating vein on the woman’s forehead. It gave him a perverse, spiteful joy, almost as much as the way her fists tightening audibly around the bars did when he replied, “I don’t care about your problems. I’ve made my position clear, and nothing you say is going to change it until it’s done.”

The woman huffed silently for a moment, her wide, furious eyes sending him a death glare that Rudra found quite entertaining, though only because indestructible wood kept her from getting to him.

“Fine,” she growled, a determined expression setting on her face, “I’ll just take this whole thing onto the airship, then, if that’s what it takes! I’ll just load it onto the...” Her face fell as she took in the cell’s dimensions with a more critical eye. “...it’s not going to fit, and it’ll be too heavy...” The fire of determination returned as quickly as it left. “Then, I’ll just have to carry you both on my back all the way to Otharia and let Blake get you out! It should only take a few days!” She turned around, slipping her arm in between the bars like she had before. The cell lifted slightly before the woman froze mid-heave. Then, it fell back to the earth as she let go and slid down against the bars in defeat, her head in her hands. “But then Pari will be...”

After a moment of sullen silence, Gabriela let out a frustrated roar, slamming her fist against the ground. “Can’t I have just one job where things just go right and everything works out?!” she bellowed to the canopy above. “Is that too much to ask?! Huh?! Is it?!”

After a few moments of sullen muttering, she pushed herself off her rear, stood up, and gave them a weary glance. “Whatever. I’ll deal with this crap later. I’m getting us out of this godforsaken jungle first.”

Perhaps he just hadn’t been in the mood to see it before, but Rudra finally noticed just how tired the woman looked. He felt a twinge of sympathy for her, but only for a moment.

“Now... where are we?” Gabriela muttered to herself, pulling something out and consulting it—a compass, on closer inspection.

“Gabriela...” Tepin finally said, letting go of Rudra and walking up to the bars.

“Hmm?” the woman replied. Rudra couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t sound so aggravated when talking to his love.

“Which direction did you run when you fled the city? This area looks familiar to me.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, I just ran.” She turned around and stared back at the trail of devastation she’d surely left behind—Rudra couldn’t see it, but he could imagine it just fine; he had enough bits of leaves and twigs clumped together behind him to fill a mattress or two. Gabriela looked down at the compass, then back at the way they’d come, then back at the compass. “South, I think? I’ve been known to meander a bit, so maybe not...”

Rudra saw Tepin tense when she heard the word “south”. She leaned in close to the bars, trying to get a better look at their surroundings. Her ears pivoted back and forth as if searching for something.

“We must leave here at once!” she announced after a few moments. Her urgent and fearful tone birthed similar feelings within him.

“What? Why?” Gabriela asked.

“I’ll explain later; there’s no time!” she answered. “Head east or west as fast as you can—north, even, if you must! Just as long as you move swiftly and without delay!”

To her credit, the woman listened without argument. “Hold tight, then.”

Rudra scooped Tepin up and held her close. “Go slower this time,” he complained. “I’m already more bruise than man, and Tepin is delicate.”

“No!” Tepin immediately countermanded. “Get us out of here as fast as you can! We don’t have much time!”

The cage tilted and Rudra pulled Tepin close once more, this time holding her with one arm while grabbing a bar with the other to anchor them. Thankfully, Gabriela listened to him at least a little, accelerating slower than before as they started, though she did not hold back when it came to top speed. Within thirty seconds they were whipping through the jungle like before.

It was then that disaster struck. With the cage’s downward tilt, Rudra got a close, firsthand view as Gabriela planted a foot on an emerged root as thick as his torso was wide, ready to launch off of it and leap over a ravine that blocked their path. It was only when she tried to push off of it did any of them realize the root was rotting. Instead of providing the proper support they needed for proper lift, it disintegrated under the force of her step. Her footing suddenly compromised, she spun out of control—and the cell spun with her.

Rudra was man enough to admit that he screamed as they plummeted uncontrollably down the ravine, the cell ricocheting off various obstacles on its way down. The sudden shifts in direction made it hard to hold on to Tepin with only a single arm. When he realized she was about to slip out of his grasp, Rudra let go of the bar and grabbed her with both arms, resigning himself to a fate of ricocheting from one hard surface to another. His body cried out as he slammed into wall after wall at odd angles and dangerous velocities. Luckily enough, he managed to protect Tepin from the worst of it as they careened around the space a pinball bouncing off bumper after bumper. Then, without warning, the heavy block of wood they were trapped inside came to an abrupt halt. Rudra, however, did not. The back of his head crashed into something smooth and hard behind him, and the world disappeared.

“...wake up! Come on, you big oaf, open your eyes!”

Rudra let out a weak groan. He had a splitting headache and the world seemed to spin inside his head, but he opened his eyes anyway to find a blurry but worried sick Tepin staring down at him. Slowly pushing himself up into a seated position, he shook his head. His senses felt off from the blow—fuzzy, almost, and hard to focus on. His hearing had been affected the most; no amount of head shaking would remove the static sound, like a million pins bouncing on a pane of glass, from his ears.

“How long was I out?”

“Too long! We need to get her out, quickly!”

“Who? What?”

Still trying to find his bearings, he looked around and found himself struggling to see much of anything. Why was the light so dim in here all of a sudden? It took him a few moments to notice the dim light of the forest at night leaking in from across the chamber. The shape was all wrong. Instead of a full square wall of light with some vertical bars to fill the space, the light only shone in from a long, thin triangle. Why? And why did it feel like the cell was smaller than before?

The answer presented itself as soon as he tried stepping forward. With a squish, his foot planted itself into something thick and sticky. Mud. Looking closer now, he could see how the scant illumination just barely lit what looked like a mini-mudslide inside their cell. The mire sloped upwards, climbing higher and higher as he pushed forward, until it reached the ceiling just around where the bar-covered wall should have been. On that end, every part of the cell save the triangle of light had been claimed by the thick muck.

The mud stuck to him as he pressed forward, almost like it were tar, and he could feel it sucking him down like quicksand. Still, with his strength, such things were a mere inconvenience. He reached the other side and pulled his way up to the gap.

The opening stood tallest on the left corner where the walls and the ceiling met, perhaps a third of a meter high. From there though, as one proceeded right, mud filled more than more of the space until, at perhaps a meter and a half away from the left wall, the gap came to an end. Those oh-so-familiar wooden bars were still there, filling the opening partly and obstructing his view outside, except now they were horizontal. Just how much had this cage spun?

Peeking through to the outside, Rudra found... more mud. They seemed to be at the bottom of the ravine Gabriela had tried to leap over, embedded deep into the side from the force of their collision. As for Gabriela herself, he couldn’t see her anywhere.

Tepin crawled up the mud bank to join him. To his annoyance, she seemed light enough that she could slide atop the muck without sinking into it much at all.

Pointing out through the bars, she insisted, “Hurry! Pull her out!”

Only then did he spy what looked like part of Gabriela’s wrist sticking out of the side of the ravine. The rest of her appeared to be fully immersed in the sticky grime.

Luckily for all of them, that wrist was just within his reach. He wriggled his arm between the bars, grabbed it and tugged. The mud resisted, and he pulled harder, then harder still. Almost all at once, Gabriela’s limp form popped out from its muddy entombment with a hefty “splat!”, giving Rudra a splash of muck in his face for his efforts.

Gabriela didn’t look too good. Her body appeared battered and broken. Her right arm, the arm she’d used to lift the cage by wrapping it around the bars, had been terribly broken and dislocated. It appeared to Rudra like it was only attached to the rest of her by the skin of her shoulder and little more. Her left leg had fared no better. Knees were not supposed to bend a hundred and twenty degrees sideways like that. Somehow, though, her left hand, the one he’d yanked on, still held her sword in a death grip.

That was the only item she’d managed to hang on to, however. Her pack, which Rudra had last spotted hanging from her front, now laid open and empty a good seven meters away, its straps snapped and its contents strewn about the ravine’s muddy side.

Still, she appeared to be breathing now, so that was good. Come to think of it, why was she unconscious at all? Should she have healed herself by now?

“Wake her up! We still have a little time!” Tepin hissed, her voice hard to hear over that annoying sound that still wouldn’t go away. It was like the sound of a million pieces of paper being crumpled all at once.

Rudra tried his best. Tapping didn’t seem to be doing much to bring her back to consciousness—shaking, neither. With a grunt, he worked his other arm between the bars. With one hand, he covered Gabriela’s mouth, with his other he blocked her nostrils. Her body spasmed, reflex taking over, and she came to with a shuddering gasp.

Rudra pulled his arms back in panic as the woman immediately began to scream, her eyes rolling up into her head as tremors wracked her body. Crimson smoke shrouded her like an aura, but it seemed to writhe as much as the rest of her. With a sinking feeling forming in his gut, Rudra realized that even with the haze around, she did not seem to be healing even a little. Something was wrong with her.

Soon, but not soon enough for his liking, she collapsed again, eyes unfocused. Her chest heaved as she whimpered plaintively to nobody in particular. “Why now?” he thought he heard her whisper, but he wasn’t sure.

“What are you waiting for?!” Tepin cried. “Heal! Heal!”

“I can’t...” Gabriela grunted out through clenched teeth. Her lungs heaved furiously as she tried to gasp for breath. Tears poured from her eyes, letting bits of mud and leaves stick to and dirty her face. “It... hah... burns so much...”

The woman in front of him was nothing like the one he thought he knew. Gone was the rough and tough exterior; the all-business, no-nonsense facade; the unfeeling, unstoppable, unkillable butcher. All Rudra saw now was a person—a person in distress, a person hobbled by extreme pain, and perhaps most significantly, a person who was afraid. The vindictive streak against her that he held within shriveled from the sight. Maybe Tepin was right... maybe he was too soft.

“Why not?!” Tepin hissed.

“The fire... I can’t control...” she panted.

“You must! We need to leave this place!”

“Give... give me time...” Gabriela panted. “It went away before...”

“We don’t have time!” Tepin spat. “Can’t you hear that? It’s almost on us!”

Rudra paused, his mind replaying her last statement again. “Wait, that sound isn’t because I hit my head?”

“No, you idiot! It’s the Black Tide!”

Rudra blinked, her words clicking into place, her mood and actions suddenly making sense. “Oh... oh boy...”

“...wha?” Gabriela managed to gasp out.

“Did you think we move our whole home four times a year because we just feel like it?!” Tepin snapped. “We have to because there are real dangers here—things so dangerous that it’s better to just move out of the way. Of all of them, the Black Tide is the worst.”

“Centipedes. Centipedes as far as the eye can see,” Rudra said. He’d never seen them, but he’d heard the tales.

Rudra hadn’t thought it was possible Gabriela could blanch any further, but she somehow managed it.

“Yes,” Tepin continued. “Black ravagers as thick as an arm and longer than a man—an endless wave of them sweeping north over the forest for league after league! We call it the Black Tide because there are so many that they cover everything you can see like a wriggling wave of darkness, eating all they encounter and leaving nothing but barren death behind! Do you understand, now?! You can hear them closing in, can’t you?! They’re almost upon us! So, for the love of Ruresni, FIX YOURSELF AND GET US OUT OF HERE BEFORE THEY EAT US TOO!”

“Hhnnrrgg...” Gabriela grunted as she tried to push herself to her feet—or foot, to be more precise—with her one good arm. “I’ll... I’ll try... AAAHHH!”

She toppled over, spasming once more, her mouth foaming as gravity took her and sent her rolling down the ravine to rest against the bars. Her trembling body completely blocked the larger left half of the open gap, dampening the light inside the cell even more.

“It’s not working! What if I open the door and we run?” Rudra proposed, pulling the key ring from around his neck.

“No, you’re too slow! We’d be overrun in under an hour! Fix her! Change her to be the way she was before! That’s the only way!”

“But...” Rudra hesitated. Gabriela was not dead but was in no condition to give consent. If he were to push her back, wiping away these last moments, would he not be cutting away part of what made her who she was? Was it not a form of violence? It was a quandary he’d wrestled with before, and he had concluded that it did count as violence unless it was what the person in question expressly desired.

As per usual, Tepin knew what he was thinking just by looking at him. Her “Do you really think she wants this memory?! Don’t be absurd! Do it! Do it now!”

Crawling back up onto and into the mud, he reached out and grabbed Gabriela by the back of her shirt, holding her in place.

Immediately, he realized there was a problem.

Not long ago, Rudra had been taken from his cell to revive a dead Stragman child—in Gabriela’s presence, if he recalled correctly. The catgirl had appeared to be perfectly normal on the outside, but what awaited him inside had been something else entirely. Rewinding others had always been easy. Once he’d gotten it down, it had taken nearly no effort at all. For example, rewinding Tepin’s essence felt like pushing away a ping pong ball. Rewinding that child had been like trying to move a mountain with his bare hands. For a few days, he’d worried his power had degraded somehow and that he’d no longer be able to return people to life with relative ease, but he’d never struggled like that again.

Until now. Rudra reached out with his spirit and touched Gabriela’s, impelling it back down its personal time stream, and Gabriela’s soul refused to budge.

If the catgirl’s spirit had been Everest, this one was Kilimanjaro, or Aconcagua, or Fuji. Huge and heavy beyond measure, it convulsed chaotically like a hundred snakes trapped in an oversized burlap sack. What’s more, it “hurt” when he touched it—it would be a great misnomer to call what he experienced “pain”, but sadly his vocabulary lacked a better term for the sensation.

Letting out a strained grunt, Rudra put all he had into it. She slid backwards a marginal amount, barely enough for him to tell the difference. His concentration dropped and he found himself gasping for air, his heart beating like mad. All that effort, and all he’d managed was to push her back a handful of seconds—seconds that were being undone as he tried to recollect himself.

“I can’t. She’s too heavy,” he told his cell partner. “I’ll need hours. I can keep her in place, maybe, sort of like treading water, but that’s all.”

“We don’t have hours!” Tepin pressed. “If you can’t fix her, then all she’s good for right now is something for them to eat first before...”

Her words slowed to a halt, but from the way her eyes darted wildly about, Rudra knew that her thoughts were now careening towards some wild and wonderful idea. He stayed silent and let her ponder, all the while listening to the ever-growing din outside. After a few moments, she set her face to a somber, serious expression and cleared her throat.

“I have an idea... but you’re not going to like it.”

Rudra smiled. “Anything that gets us through this can’t be a bad idea.”

“We need to plug the hole so the tide can’t eat you. As long as you survive, we survive. So, plug the rest of the hole with my body. Then, you can revive us over and over until the tide has passed.”

“You’re right, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” Rudra stated. “I hate it.”

“If we can’t run, this is the only way,” Tepin insisted.

“But what about you? You’ll be eaten alive! You’ll suffer for what, hours on end?”

“It can’t be helped. Besides, I won’t remember it at the end, right?”

“But...”

The low rumble of billions of hungry insects had grown to a low roar.

“You’re strong, Rudra. You’ve stubbornly withstood so much, like a particularly annoying and unmovable boulder,” she said with a cheeky smile. “You can withstand this, as well. Enough equivocation. Our time runs short.”

She crawled closer to the gap. “Push me in tightly, then push the mud up on me to make a seal. We can’t have any spot uncovered.”

With a heavy heart, Rudra did as instructed. He pressed her firmly against the opening, then pushed handfuls of the thick mud in around the edges until he could not see any light coming from around her body. Her position felt precarious, however, so he decided to keep a palm pressed up against her to hold her still.

With his other hand, he reached through the bars and grabbed the back of Gabriela’s shirt again, pulling it in. The woman’s body was much better positioned, with gravity doing most of the work for him. Just like that, the cell went completely dark. Now, all he had to do was make sure she didn’t move, which might or might not be a simple task. He hoped she didn’t start thrashing again.

The Black Tide did not give him much time to worry. Within moments, the cacophony of mandibles chewing on the world outside reached a crescendo. The cell became a box of noise as thousands upon thousands of chitinous legs hammered against every wall. A heavy weight pressed down upon his arm, but he was used to such things.

Listening to the woman he loved die, however, was something he would never be used to, whether he heard it once or a million times. Her groans of agony quickly transformed into rattling gasps that almost sounded like she was choking as the insects chewed apart her lungs. Unable to bear to listen any longer and knowing that the bugs would eat fully through her if he delayed too long, he shut out his ears and reached out with his heart instead.

Rewinding Tepin was as easy as it had been the last time. He easily pushed her backward and her essence provided no impediment. Her body reformed, the centipedes within being banished from existence or something along those lines—he had no idea what happened to foreign objects stuck in the corpses he revived, but it seemed to destroy them one way or another.

Gabriela, as he already knew, was another story. He strained against her seizing soul, pushing it back just enough to reverse the damage of the last few seconds.

Already, Rudra felt drained. His body was drenched in sweat and he panted uncontrollably. Still, he refused to give up. Tepin was counting on him, and he would not let her down again. Quickly pushing his lover back to full health, he took a peek at Gabriela while he did. A distant part of him wondered why she had not been fully eaten through already, as his rewinding was nowhere near enough to counteract the swarm on the other side. Only then did he notice the smoky aura surrounding her. He could tell that it wasn’t healing her like before, but it seemed it was slowing the infestation down enough to give him a chance.

Once more, Rudra found himself reevaluating his opinion of the woman. If her abilities returned during this onslaught, then there was no doubt that she was the one person not actually under any threat from the Tide—she would be able to reform later, regardless. And yet, here she was, torturing herself to help provide him and Tepin a way to survive. She was giving her all for him. Could he allow himself to do any less?

No.

Rudra put everything he had into his task, pushing Gabriela backward in time bit by bit by bit. Each time, he exhausted himself, and each time, he found the resolve to pull strength from somewhere and give one more push. It wasn’t enough to restore her fully, but between her efforts and his, it was enough to keep a fleshy shield between him and a swarm of ravenous centipedes.

Again.

He struggled and strained, constantly switching between his maximum exertions to bringing a feather’s touch to Tepin’s spirit; it wouldn’t do to push her too hard and erase the last month of her life.

Again.

He was groaning, gasping, flailing against his limits.

Again.

Rudra lost count of just how many times he rewound Tepin. Five hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? He couldn’t say. The ordeal seemed to stretch on forever, beyond measurable continuity, and everything blurred together—

—until something went horribly wrong.

Rudra gave Gabriela the latest of countless pushes when he felt his spirit buckle. Agony greater than anything he’d ever known engulfed him, and he fell back, screaming.

Rudra understood, now, what Gabriela had meant by “the fire”. It was like somebody was dragging his very being through a raging forest fire, or dropping him into a pool of lava, or even dipping him directly into the sun—all three combined was a closer description than any on their own. Almost all thought became impossible—any actions beyond screams, as well. But, there was enough of him left, for just long enough, for him to realize one critical thing: the fire was not coming from without; it was coming from within.

For the second time that day, Rudra fell into blackness.

Rudra was quite surprised when he opened his eyes and found his vision greeted by the familiar sight of flat, brown wood. He hadn’t really expected to open his eyes at all, to be honest. When he’d collapsed, he’d thought that would be the end. Yet, here he was, somehow still alive. How?

Quickly sitting up, he found himself staring at a grisly scene. Tepin was nearly unrecognizable. Not only had her body been eaten through, but it also looked like it had been sliced into several pieces, with some of them rolling or sliding down through the mud. Mixed in with her body parts were dozens of dead centipedes, all chopped in half with bug guts and fluids dripping all over the floor. Their bodies varied in size, but even the smallest one he saw had to be nearly a meter long.

Outside the cell, a lone figure reclined with her side against the wood, still blocking some of the gap.

“What happened?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“We made it,” came Gabriela’s response. Her voice was steady, and he heard no pain in it, only weariness. “You gave out right at the end. I took care of the last of the bastards, but I had to cut up your girl to get a few that got through before they could start eating you. Sorry about that.”

“Uh... that’s alright. Thanks. How long was I out?”

“It’s already morning. Can’t you tell?”

Now that he thought to look for it, Rudra could indeed see a good deal more light streaming through the unblocked half of the gap. He’d just been too distracted by other, messier things to notice until now.

Speaking of which, Rudra reached out and picked up Tepin’s head, ignoring the wide-eyed look on her face, and took a deep breath. He fell within himself, entering with trepidation that state he’d become so used to. Could he still work his magic? Would the fire return if he tried?

To his relief, he found that everything felt good and normal like it had always felt.

“—can’t have any spot... Wha?” Laid out in his arms, Tepin stared at his dirt-smeared face and rubbed her eyes. The sudden transition in her existence confused her momentarily, as it did nearly everybody he returned. He lifted her into a sitting position, letting her scan the area more easily and reacquire her bearing. The first thing she noticed was the insectoid gore covering not just her surroundings but her clothes—or what remained of her outfit, at least. “Urgh!”

She gagged. Rudra didn’t blame her. Centipede innards carried a rancid, acrid to them that he also found quite offensive. Still, Tepin being Tepin, she quickly composed herself.

“We survived, then,” she hummed.

Rudra pulled her into a hug. “Your plan worked. Somehow.”

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “It must have been hard for you. I almost feel guilty that I don’t remember any of it.”

“Don’t. Just never ask me to do something like that ever again.”

“You’ve made a fool out of me often enough that I know better than to ever make such an open promise. It’s only asking to be broken,” she remarked. Slipping out of his embrace and into Serious Business Mode, Tepin slid up to the opening. “How’s your condition?”

“Been better,” came the reply. Gabriela leaned over, letting her arm slide into view. It still appeared heavily dislocated. Though Rudra could not see her injured left leg at the moment, he assumed it was also in the same state as he’d seen before.

“Aren’t you in pain?” Tepin asked in disbelief.

“Eh, this much barely registers anymore,” she answered.

“You still can’t heal?” Rudra inquired.

“I’m close, I think. I don’t want to chance it until I know it won’t backfire on me again.”

“My powers seem fine now, even though I experienced the same fire you were talking about at the end,” he offered.

“You too, huh?” She suddenly sounded more interested. “Have you ever had that happen before?”

“No.”

She sighed. “Ah... well, this isn’t my first time, unfortunately. It happened once before. The more you fight it when it happens, or try to use your powers again too early, the more it pushes back when you can use your powers again without problems—or, that’s the sort of impression I get after dealing with it several times, at least. I’d rather not risk setting us back even more by trying too early. The last thing we need is for me to be screaming and spasming all over the place for another hour.”

“Oh, no, please do,” a chillingly familiar voice cut in from nearby. “It would be the most entertainment I’ve had in days.”

“She found us!” Tepin gasped.

“Tch! And she brought an army...” Gabriela added.

Rudra couldn’t see much other than a cliff of mud, rocks, and assorted plant life from his limited viewpoint and angle, but he recognized the voice of Akhustal Palebane as easily as Tepin.

“You know, I don’t quite get it,” the Chos continued, her voice growing closer. “Between that elf bastard and this, it’s like your boss wants to be on my shit list. And to think that, just a few days ago, I was defending him from those who said his ‘ambassador’ poisoned our Manys.”

A shroud of crimson haze wafted from Gabriela’s body, thicker and more coherent than the last time but still not close to the fullness he’d seen multiple times before. She gasped and thrashed about as the fire coursed through her, quickly falling to the side so that her chest and head blocked more of the gap, making it even harder to see out. What he could manage to see was the arrival of two large boots attached to a pair of even larger, heavily muscled legs. One of those boots into slammed Gabriela’s torso; that probably didn’t help much with her healing, either.

“I don’t care if you’re ‘unkillable’ or what, you’re going to regret trying to take what’s mine,” the massive woman snarled.

Once again, Rudra found himself wondering if he just wasn’t cut out for this. As always, he’d been wrong and Tepin had been right. He should have listened. Why did he never listen?

But, it was too late for such thoughts now. He needed to find a way out of this.

“Tepin, what do we do?” he half-whispered, trying not to be overheard by the Stragman leader. Given that she was preoccupied with kicking her anger out into Gabriela, that wasn’t actually too hard.

Tepin shook her head. “I don’t know. It may be too late for us now.”

Well, his first method to find a way out was a dud.

Was there something else he could use, perhaps? Looking around, he spotted the key ring lying on the floor across the cell. His brain kicked into overdrive, trying to come up with a way to use that to his advantage.

The Chos wouldn’t want Tepin in here with him indefinitely. But to get her out, they would need the key... unless they could make a new one. If so, that would still take time, he figured. If not, then they’d probably try to use thirst and starvation to force him to give it up. Perhaps he could bargain returning the key ring and cooperating for a short time in return for some concessions on their and Gabriela’s behalf. He didn’t want anything terrible to happen to her—the last few hours had obliterated his animus.

Still, he knew the Chos well enough to know that she was not in a bargaining mood right now. Perhaps he could reason with somebody else? He looked back outside, but he couldn’t see any of the others from his vantage point.

Then, as if heeding his bidding, a series of thumps from above signaled that some Stragmans had descended and jumped atop the cage. One person, however, came to a stop just to Palebane’s side—her husband, Caprakan Bloodflower. No longer confined to the movement-assisting getup he’d been wearing the last time Rudra had seen him, the man squatted down lightly and studied Gabriela dispassionately for a moment before turning his gaze into the cage.

The man met Rudra’s gaze with a cool expression, his eyebrows rising momentarily before falling back to neutral—a sign of recognition, perhaps? The man had barely ever spoken to him, however. The only time had been their one long conversation a while ago, back when they’d talked about strength, Ruresni’s wood, how his wife had become the Chos, and...

His train of thought came to a sudden stop, then reversed back through their talk. He knew he was grasping, but he could feel something in the back of his mind—some half-formed idea that he felt he could connect if he could just remember. The general had mentioned something off the cuff when he’d been talking about how the Chos had become the Chos. What had it been?

Then, he had it. He scrambled away from the gap for a moment, waving for his lover to join him. “Tepin, what about the Challenge of Ruresni?”

Tepin looked at him like he’d grown an extra thumb. “Where did you even hear of—no, never mind, not important right now. There’s no way you could defeat her!”

“Not me,” he told her. He tilted his head towards a certain other woman. Though she had been kicked dozens of times, she had not once made a peep since ceasing her efforts to heal. Her left hand still gripped her enormous weapon, but she seemed content to let the Stragman leader pummel her without end.

“You would try to place an outsider atop—” Tepin furiously hissed, only to quickly fall silent.

Rudra watched as she fumed initially, her outrage quickly evaporating until only sullen resignation. “I suppose it’s all or nothing now, isn’t it,” she sighed.

She crawled through the mud, pulled her face up to the gap closest to Gabriela’s ears, and started urgently whispering something to her.

Gabriela grunted—not in pain, but rather in acknowledgment. A moment later, the Chos found her boot thudding against not flesh but the flat side of a massive blade.

Palebane hefted her equally massive club with a sadistic glint in her eye. “Finally ready to dance, are you?”

“Akhustal Palebane,” Gabriela declared loud enough for all to hear, her words slightly stilted as if she were reciting something she was not familiar with, “under the watch of the Great Mother, I challenge you for supremacy over her children. Heed my challenge, or forever be judged a weakling and a coward.”

Other than a few immediately stifled gasps, the whole world seemed to fall into silence.

“You did not just say that! You can’t do that!” Palebane snarled. “She can’t do that, right?”

“She can,” somebody atop the cage spoke up.

“Fernfeather-hono, you cannot be serious! She’s not even Stragman!”

“Neither was the challenger in the Second Challenge, long ago. The Challenge still must be honored, Palebane-chos,” General Fernfeather stated. “You both have a day to prepare. Then, we must leave for Ruresni.”

“You can’t be serious! We’re in the middle of a migration!”

“Palebane-chos, you know full well that I am the most knowledgeable Hono when it comes to ancient history and the like. The traditions are clear. We must leave tomorrow. Don’t worry, the people will be alright even without us.”

Rudra knew the Chos well enough by now that he could hear how close she was to blowing a gasket. Yet, against his expectations, she managed to keep her lid on for the moment.

“I know they’ll be alright. I didn’t lead Stragma to turn us into a nation of weaklings!” she huffed. “Fine, we leave tomorrow. They don’t get to stay in the city tonight, though.”

“Tradition would allow this,” the general decreed.

Palebane squatted down and looked into the cell. “Hear that, Tepin? You bought yourselves a few days, but that’s all. After this is over, I’m taking it out on your hides. Now, get up. You’re sleeping in the jungle tonight, but I want you close by so I can keep an eye on you.”

With that said, she stomped away.

“Uh, what just happened?” Gabriela asked.

“You issued a challenge to become the next Chos of the country,” Tepin told her.

“I did what?!” She groaned. “Why can’t I just have one easy mission?”

“Crud, where are they!? Did I lose them?”

Gabriela, fully healed, sat with her semi-repaired pack open and empty once again. She rummaged through the pack’s contents, now in pile form on the ground, with increasing franticness. They’d set up camp not far from the city. Though it was only midday, she’d already built and lit a large campfire, claiming it was to help keep beasts away.

Rudra doubted such strategies worked well in this particular forest, though he didn’t much mind. The crackling helped soothe his spirit.

“What’s wrong?” he asked from inside the cell, which had been largely de-mudded the hard way over the last few hours.

“I can’t find a few of my things. The airship caller, most of all.”

“Did you have them when you repacked?”

“I think so... but I was a little out of it, you know?”

“Yeah, I understand. What do they look like?”

“If you’re going to be like this, why don’t you just come out here and help me yourself?” she griped.

“You know I can’t do that. You’d take us and run.”

After the morning’s events, Rudra had renewed his demands and re-donned the key ring, much to both Gabriela’s and the Chos’s displeasure. Gabriela still wanted to take them and make a break for it, and Rudra had made it clear that no such shenanigans would be permitted for the time being.

Palebane, meanwhile, wanted their cell returned to the city. Doing that, however, would mean going through a very disgruntled superpowered woman holding a massive and sharp sword. Since fighting between the two of them was forbidden until the time of challenge, they’d settled on letting Gabriela set up camp just outside the city with Rudra and Tepin along for the ride and a small army of expert soldiers all around to keep an eye on them.

The only other person who seemed even marginally happy with the current situation was Tepin. Once furious at Rudra for his actions, she now supported his position wholeheartedly. After all, if Gabriela became the Chos, then she’d be able to do everything that Rudra and Tepin wanted. They’d all win, and everything would be wonderful. Not really, of course; life was never that simple. Still, such was the general thrust of it.

“Did you check the pack?” Tepin asked.

“I dumped everything out of the pack,” Gabriela pointed out.

“Check it anyway.”

“Why? There’s not going to be anything in here... Oh. How’d that get stuck in there?”

“Found it?” Rudra inquired.

“Found one of them, yes. The important one.”

She held up a box with a single huge button on it. Instead of pressing it, she twisted it clockwise three times. The device let out an audible click, and then she pressed it. Nothing happened, but she seemed satisfied, putting it away. Then, she peered back into the pack, shaking it several times, before sighing and dropping it beside her.

“What else is missing?” Rudra wondered.

“Just the buzzer. Can’t find it anywhere.”

“The what?”

“It’s this little disk thing, about this big,” she said, holding her finger and thumb apart just a bit. Not big, it seemed. “It’s supposed to buzz if some emergency happens at home and they need me to head back ASAP.”

“Think back,” Tepin instructed. “Did you see it this morning? Are you sure?”

“I said no, I can’t remember seeing it, but I was not fully there, you know?”

“Something that small was almost surely eaten by a centipede,” Tepin pronounced. “Your pack was open and most of it had fallen out, remember.”

Gabriela snorted. “So it’s in some bug’s guts? Figures. Eh, it’s probably fine.”

She lay down using the folded empty pack as a makeshift pillow.

“So, now we wait, I suppose—wait to go and become the Chos.” The last part came out like she had a bad taste in her mouth.

The group settled down and time passed as they each retreated into their thoughts. Finally, after what felt like an hour, Gabriela spoke up again.

“Are you sure I’m the right person for this?”

“I cannot think of a better person for the task,” Tepin told her. “We all saw what you can do when you fought her before.”

“Hm. I wasn’t even in top form before, you know. I should be even better... unless the fire returns, I suppose.”

“Even better. All we need to do now is journey to Ruresni, have you take care of business, and then we all get what we want.”

“I wouldn’t call ‘becoming the leader of a country against my will’ something I want. I have enough to deal with already, thank you very much.”

“Right, about that...” Rudra cut in. “You were saying before about how you didn’t have time and you had other things to worry about or something? I think you said something about everybody dying? Care to explain?”

Gabriela let out an amused snort. “Nope.”

“Why not? Don’t you think that if I knew what you were so concerned about, maybe I’d be more cooperative?”

“A normal person? Sure. You? Not a chance.”

Tepin cackled. “She barely met you and she’s already figured you out.”

“I’ll tell you soon enough, I suppose,” Gabriela continued. “You’ll need to learn about it soon. I’m not going say it while the guards could hear—or Tepin, for that matter. Also, you seem like you want to know, so now you have to wait until it’s all over. It’s a petty revenge, I know, but I’ll take what I can get.”

A low drone entered Rudra’s hearing, slowly growing louder. Judging from the reactions of the others, including the guards, he was not alone in hearing it.

Gabriela smiled. “She’s finally here.”

“Who?” he wondered.

“The last member of this merry little band,” she answered. “She’s even more of a headache than you, sometimes, but unlike you, at least she’s cute.”

Rudra had been to many places in Stragma, but this was something else. Not even Titan Grove could compare to Ruresni itself up close.

The journey had been much more arduous than Tepin had made it sound. Massive dangers lurked near the Mother Tree, especially the huge predators who made their home here. They’d had to fight off quite a few hungry or territorial beasts, and while his abilities had not ended up being needed, every kilometer had been a battle.

But now, here they were, situated just beside the impossible tree. Its trunk was so thick that he could not even see the curve; to him, it just looked like an endless wall of bark. The same could be said for the canopy kilometers above him. Try as he might, Rudra could not see the edge.

The others, both in his little group, and the entourage at large, were busy unpacking. That meant he had little to do other than watch everybody else do work. It always left him feeling a little guilty.

Right now, he was watching a precious little child pull from a bag of assorted monster parts harvested from the corpses of giants, her eyes glittering with excitement. Pari Clansnarl was her name, and he’d come to understand Gabriela’s comments about her quite quickly. The girl was in many ways a terror in that way only a child could be: too much energy, too little sense. It didn’t matter where they were; the beastgirl constantly ran this way and that like a child in a candy store. If she were just collecting harmless things, perhaps that wouldn’t have been a problem. The fact that what she was most interested in usually came from something dangerous made it a problem. The fact that she made those things even more dangerous made him glad it was somebody else’s problem.

She also refused to call him by his name even after introductions, instead always addressing him as “sad man”, which made Tepin nearly choke with laughter. Rudra didn’t know what to think about that.

“So, where’s the arena?” Gabriela asked, popping into view from the left.

“What arena?” Tepin asked back.

“I thought there was some ceremonial arena here or something, like we were supposed to fight under the watch of the Great Tree or whatever, but there’s nothing.”

“The Mother Tree can see all that goes on in the forest,” Tepin informed her. “Why would we need to travel all the way here for that?”

Gabriela blinked. “Then... what are we supposed to battle in?”

“Battle? When did I ever say anything about that?”

“Uh... didn’t you?”

“No. Sure, there may be fighting involved, but that is not the primary goal of the challenge.”

“What is, then?”

“It’s quite simple. You and the Chos must each lead a small team to retrieve the petals of a special flower. The first to make it back with the flower petals is named the new Chos.”

“Flower petals? That doesn’t sound so bad, I guess. But, that still doesn’t explain why we had to come all this...” Gabriela’s suddenly widened and she took a large gulp of air. “Is what makes them special...”

“Correct. They only grow at the very top of the Mother Tree herself,” Tepin explained matter-of-factly.

Rudra watched, his concern growing, as the blood drained from Gabriela’s face.

“A-A-And we have to...”

“Yes, of course you have to climb it yourself. What sort of challenge would this be otherwise?”

It was like the woman had seen a ghost, she was so pale. Her legs trembled as she slowly sank to her knees, one hand grasping a cell bar to barely keep her from completely toppling over. She began to take quicker and shallower breaths until her lungs were chugging like a speeding steam engine. Seeing this, Pari ran over, and Rudra got the rather unique experience of watching the world’s foremost murder machine hyperventilate while being consoled by a child maybe seven years old.

“What’s the matter?” he asked as she started to calm down a little.

“I, uh...” She took another large gulp. “I might not be the, uh...” Another gulp. “...the best with, uh, with heights...” she admitted.

Suddenly, Rudra began to feel very worried.