"You can't die!" Ellen begged, her eyes already damp. "I need you! I need everyone! You have to live!"
Sycamore stirred awake. His brown eyes were dim and empty. "I guess I have you pinned down, don't I?" he asked weakly. "Sorry about that. I'll just-"
He slid his arms out from beneath Ellen then groaned with pain.
"I don't know if anyone has ever told you this," he said, "but these weapons hurt like hell."
His voice was comical but his face was twisted with pain. Ellen wanted to do something, anything, to help him, but she didn't know the first thing about first-aid. It was usually her friends who-
Where were the rest of her friends? Had they abandoned her and Sycamore, or were they injured and dying as well?
Sycamore rolled off of Ellen and onto his side, letting out a pained groan when he hit the ground. "Have I ever told you how much I hate monsters?" he asked, his voice not much more than a whisper. "Now I really hate them."
There had to be something she could do to help him. Ellen shot upright then glanced at Sycamore's wound. It was so ragged and bloody her stomach started to churn. A large section of skin around his lower back was completely gone, leaving several stringy pieces of muscle and a few bits of bone exposed.
She had to look away. She didn't want to see anyone in such a horrible state, especially not one of her friends.
For a second she considered forcing her knife into his hand then cutting herself on the blade, like she'd done for Brendon a long time ago, but that wouldn't help. It might kill his pain but it wouldn't fix his injury.
"Where are the others?" Ellen asked. "Are they... are they alive?"
"Yeah, last I checked," Sycamore said. "They're fighting something really nasty. You need to help them."
"I need to help you!"
Sycamore smiled and shook his head. "I did my part. A bunch of those goons with axes tried to butcher you while you were asleep, but I exploded them so thoroughly you'll be lucky if you can find a toenail." He chuckled softly, which ended with blood spurting out of his mouth. "There was too many of them for me to handle alone. One got up close to you. It was about to split your head open. I couldn't hit it with an explosive without hitting you as well, so I, well... I'm sure I don't need to explain."
"Why were you alone?" Ellen demanded. She felt furious. Why would the rest of her friends leave Sycamore by himself?
"I told you already," Sycamore said. "Something big and nasty rose up out of that chasm back there. It separated us and pinned us down, then more axe goons showed up. They went straight for you. I had to run as fast as I could to reach you in time. Tear came too, but she couldn't keep up. She actually killed the thing that did this to me. You should thank her later."
He coughed, and more speckles of blood shot out of his mouth. Then he looked up at Ellen and smiled. "Don't worry about me. I didn't do this because of some dumb debt or anything like that. I followed you here because I wanted to help you, and I protected you because I want you to keep living." He closing his eyes. "I don't have any regrets."
Tears poured down Ellen's face. This was all too much to bear. Sycamore had saved her life, and what had she ever done for him except get him into trouble? She didn't deserve a friend like him.
"I'm going to save you," she said.
"You can't." Sycamore opened his eyes. "If you really want to do me a favor, go save the others. They need you. A lot."
Ellen wiped her face with her sleeve, which did little to stem the flow of her tears, then scooped her knife and buckler up off the ground. She didn't have any idea what sort of monster had her friends pinned down right now, but she was going to make it suffer.
"You have to stay alive a little bit longer," she told Sycamore. "I learned something important while I was asleep, and you need to hear it."
"I'll do my best," Sycamore said, smiling weakly.
Ellen darted around the side of the yellow mysterious stone. A bolt of fear struck her so hard she froze in her place.
Like Sycamore said, a monster had rose out of the chasm in the back of the chamber. It didn't look like any monster she'd seen before. Its mushroom shaped head was covered with hundreds of little mouths. All of them were filled with sharp yellow teeth, and all of them quickly opened and shut as if they were chewing on something. The monster had four arms, none of which really resembled an arm. They were more like fingers. Each one was long enough to reach halfway across the underground chamber.
Ellen swallowed her fear. "You ugly piece of shit!" she yelled out. "It's your fault Sycamore is dying. You're going to pay!"
She planned to hurt that monster, but a few small cuts would have to suffice. Its arms could launch her across the chamber with one simple flick if they wanted to. Or they could wrap around her and crush her into a bloody pulp. Or maybe they'd grab her and shove her into one of its mouths.
She gave herself a hard knock on the head with her buckler. She had to stop having thoughts like those. She wasn't going to die here. If none of the giant awful monsters she'd encountered in the past could kill her then this one couldn't either.
At least the rest of her friends were still alive. Brendon and L.L. were hiding out inside a tunnel to the left of the chasm, and Tear, Alice and Amadeo a tunnel to the right. Both groups looked unharmed, but both were pinned down. A monstrous arm lingered outside each of their hideouts, stabbing at the air with their sharp tips over and over again.
As Ellen moved in closer, the arms froze in place. It was not a temporary thing. For several moments they sat perfectly still. It was as if the monster had either given up or become distracted.
Ellen looked to her friends. This seemed like a good time for them to come out of hiding, but instead they ducked even further into their hideouts. Fearing what might happen next, she summoned her shield, which ended up imbued into her buckler again, and waited.
Hundreds of white needles sprouted out of the monster's arms. They caused the monster to bleed purple-gray blood everywhere, but it didn't seem to care.
The monster let out a low, guttural roar that echoed all over the underground chamber, then its needles shot out in every direction. They ripped up the ceiling, floor and walls. Some even took out chunks of the yellow mysterious stone. Broken bits of dark stone rained down all over the chamber. The needles hit Ellen's shield as well, but nothing could pierce it.
By the time the needles had settled, the back one-third of the chamber was covered with a thick sheet of gravel. The monster's arms continued striking at the air and thrashing around in search of targets, unfazed by the wounds their needles had created.
Ellen continued forward, much more carefully than before. One wrong step and she'd slip in the gravel then fall onto a pile of needles. Attacking the monster felt futile, its own needles had hurt it more than she ever could, but she still needed to help her friends escape.
The monster still didn't seem to realize she existed, probably because it didn't have any eyes. Or maybe they were still deep under the world along with the rest of its body.
She reached the edge of the chasm. The monster's head, which loomed uncomfortably close now, gave off a dead, sour stench. All of its mouths were still gnawing at something invisible and filling the air with clicking sounds.
Her curiosity got the better of her. Ellen peered down into the chasm.
She immediately wished she hadn't. The monster's head was not a head at all, she discovered, but another long appendage just like its arms. It stretched so far underground she couldn't see where it ended. The four lesser arms were the same.
She leaned away. She couldn't imagine what the monster's body looked like. She didn't want to imagine it. Was this the same sort of monster that would appear if she entered Ain Sof Absolute? The thought made her shudder.
At least the monster still hadn't noticed her. Even better, one of its arms was nearby. She moved in close and jammed her knife into it.
The monster's pale gray skin was no match for her knife. She forced it in as dee
p as it could go then slid it sideways through the monster's spongy innards. In just a few seconds she managed to cut open a wound wider than she was tall. Then she kept going, cutting and slicing her way across the monster's arm. Shredded monster guts piled up on the ground behind her, filling the air with a rotten stench.
A few drops of gray-purple blood spurt out onto her hand. They stung horribly. It felt as if they were eating into her skin. She pulled her knife back then wiped the blood on her tunic.
The blood immediately burned several small holes into her tunic. The parts of her hand it had been in contact with were red now. Her knife however, despite being coated in a solid layer of monster blood, was still perfectly intact. She didn't feel surprised.
A high pitch shriek made her startle. "You need to run!" Tear shouted.
Ellen looked towards the center of the chamber. Tear, Alice, Brendon, L.L. and Amadeo had all moved out into the open, which was good, but now all four of the monster's arms were coming for her.
She took off running. She'd saved her friends and now she had to save herself.
One arm swiped at her. It was so close to the ground she had no trouble leaping over it. A second arm swiped at her soon after, higher up this time. She thought about ducking under it, until she stepped onto a thick patch of gravel, slipped and fell onto her face.
"It's above you!" Tear shrieked. "Get up, Ellen!"
Ellen got onto her hands and knees and glanced upwards. The third arm was above her, rushing towards her. In a second it would crush her flat against the ground. She had to move.
But she couldn't. The gravel was so loose her feet kept slipping as she tried to stand. Only once did she make it halfway up, and then she immediately lost her footing and fell onto her chest again.
Something metallic exploded in the distance behind her. It was followed by another low, guttural roar, then a long section of the monster's arm crashed down beside her.
"I can't do that again," Alice said, panting hard. "You have to get over here!"
Ellen scrambled away from the bloody monster appendage, kicking up a storm of gravel behind her as she moved, then got back onto her feet and took off running.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure that none of the monster's arms were readying their needles, and spotted a collection of knives just like Alice's knife scattered across the ground. Alice must've summoned one of her living weapons to save her. The thought made her smile.
She lost her smile when she crashed into something hard and meaty. The collision knocked her onto her backside, then something powerful started forcing her back the way she'd come.
Two of the monster's arms had joined together, stacking one on top of the other. They pushed her as well as a ton of gravel towards the chasm. Ellen tried to stand, but she couldn't move, not with a mass of gravel entombing her feet. "I'm stuck!" she cried out.
The chasm was getting closer by the second. Any moment now she'd go tumbling off the side and disappear into the abyss, or maybe the monster planned to shovel her into one of its mouths. She didn't see any way out.
Until L.L. appeared. She laid down flat on top of the monster's arm and offered Ellen her hands. "Hurry up," she ordered. "We have work to do and we can't afford to waste time on things like this."
She didn't know how right she was.
Ellen reached up and took L.L.'s hands. L.L. pulled her free from the gravel, then Amadeo pulled L.L.'s ankles until both her and Ellen made it over the top of the monster's arm.
"I don't know where you disappeared to for an hour," Amadeo said. Despite the danger around him, he sounded thrilled. "But I hope it was worth it."
It was, Ellen wanted to say, but then she remembered how Sycamore was dying or likely dead now and her heart sank so low she had trouble standing up.
But L.L. was there to pull her to her feet. She also kicked her, it felt like. She faced forward and ran.
The monster's arms continued thrashing around behind her, but it seemed to have lost track of her.
She met with Tear, who threw open her arms and caught her in an embrace so tight she couldn't move or breathe.
"I was so worried about you," Tear said. "Where did you go? Why didn't you wake up?"
Where should she start? Ellen looked into Tear's eyes. They were wet with tears, and so was Tear's face. Tear had probably thought she was gone for good. She owed her an explanation. She owed everyone an explanation, especially Sycamore. "I'll explain everything later," she said. "Where's Sycamore? Is he... did he-"
"He's still conscious," Brendon said. "But..." He shook his head. "He's not going to last much longer."
The monster let out another guttural roar. It was much louder and longer this time. It echoed all over the underground chamber, shaking rocks and dust free from the ceiling.
Ellen covered her ears until it stopped, then glanced towards the chasm. The monster was gone now. All that remained was the bloody appendage Alice had severed.
"That's a new one," Brendon said, sounding amazed. "A monster retreating? It sounds a little too good to be true."
"It probably found an easier target in some other dimension," Amadeo said. "That beast is massive, after all. What we saw there was nothing more than its hand, or maybe its pinky finger."
"I don't trust it to stay gone for long," L.L. said. Her voice dropped down to a whisper. "What should we do about Sycamore?"
"We can carry him back to the Village of Majula," Brendon said, his voice a whisper as well. "He seemed to like it there. I think that's where he'd want to be-"
Ellen didn't want to hear the rest of his sentence. She hurried towards the mysterious stone and circled around the side to where Sycamore lie.
Her heart sped up as she approached him. Sycamore's eyes were shut, and his chest still. He looked dead.
She dropped to her knees beside him and cried: "Sycamore!"
A small tremor shot through Sycamore's body. He opened his eyes and peered up at Ellen. "Oh, I'm still alive," he said weakly. "So how'd it go? Did you save the others?"
The tears were already running down her face, dripping onto the chamber floor. A few landed on Sycamore's red stained coat. "Everyone's alive," Ellen said.
"Do you think you can do me another favor?" Sycamore asked.
"Anything!"
"I met two women back in that village, and, well... I'm sure you know what happened." Sycamore smiled. "If you visit that village again a few months from now, there might be something of mine running around. Can you check in on them and make sure they turn out alright?"
Ellen nodded, then took Sycamore's hand. It was cold and growing colder by the second.
"Good. I knew I could count on you. You seem pretty durable, for the most part, so maybe you can teach them to fight when they're older. Anyway-" He closed his eyes. "I'm really tired. I think I might just..."
"Hold on!" Ellen blurted out. Sycamore didn't respond, so she slapped his cheek. She instantly regretted hitting a nearly dead man, but it did wake him back up. "When I hit the mysterious stone," she explained quickly, fearing that Sycamore might slip away before she could finish, "it sent me into another world. I learned where monsters come from, and I know how to stop them forever."
Sycamore's eyes opened wide. Despite his miserable condition, he seemed to be giving her his full attention. So was Tear, Alice, Brendon, L.L. and Amadeo, all of whom had gathered behind her. That was good, because they needed to hear this as well.
"Something happened a few centuries ago," Ellen explained. "It changed the shape of the world, and killed a massive amount of people. But they didn't completely die. Some part of them still exists in-" What exactly was that other world? She didn't have the faintest idea what to call it. "They're trapped inside some kind of, um... dream world. Whenever someone in our world creates a magic weapon, they're using those peoples' essences as a fuel source. Their essences also create monsters."
"That's... that's something alright," Sycamore said.
Ellen's heart s
ank. "You don't believe me?"
"If someone else had told me that story," Sycamore said, "I would've called them a liar. But since it's coming from you, the girl with the shield that can repel any weapon and the knife that drains the life out of anything it stabs, I believe it one hundred percent." He paused. "So what's the plan? Are you going to destroy that world?"
"Something like that," Ellen continued, feeling confident again. "When I hit the stone I was taken... somewhere. A man I met told me it was a small pocket world. He also said there's another entrance that'll take me straight to Ain Sof Absolute." Despite having experienced all of this herself, it was beginning to sound too fantastic to be real. "That's the heart of the dream world. If I go there, my presence will cause a massive upheaval and everyone will be set free from that world."
"And? Is that it? You just walk in the front door and everyone gets set free?"
"Y-yeah," Ellen stammered. A monster will appear too, one so massive it might wipe out the entire world if she couldn't kill it, but she didn't want to mention that now, not while Sycamore and the others still had faith in her plan.
"Won't everyone lose their magic if you do that?" Sycamore asked. "But if there are no more monsters, you won't really need-" He coughed. It was an awful, deathly sound. Blood shot out of his mouth. "Are you going to look for that entrance?"
Ellen nodded. "I'm sure it'll take a while to find, but I'm going to search for it."
Sycamore gave her hand a squeeze. "Good luck," he said, his voice quieter than a whisper. "I'm sure my children, if I have any out there, will love growing up in a world without monsters. I'm sure your children will too, if you ever..."
He didn't say anything else.
Ellen's eyes filled up with so many tears she couldn't see straight. Sycamore had always been nervous and cowardly, almost frustratingly so, and even a bit perverted at times, but he was one of her best friends and she already missed him dearly.
A dreadful thought crossed her mind: what if this was just a glimpse of what lay ahead? How many friends would her journey to the White Palace and Ain Sof Absolute claim? And the monster inside? Agreeing to the strange man's plan was the worst decision she'd ever made, yet she couldn't back down now, not after all the promises she'd made, not when there was so much at stake.
Scouring Majula (Ellen's Friends Book 3) Page 23
