Liv whips her head around, trying her hardest to locate the orb. She could’ve sworn she at least cracked the damn thing with how hard she kicked it. She didn’t feel any pain from her foot, so she couldn’t have broken that. She’d know if she broke it. It wouldn’t be the first time…

  Focusing her senses, she manages to that trickle of Synth down the crater that was once its body. The small orb is locked in the center, a crack running across its dark surface. She could see something bright running through it like water through a creek, undulating in disgustingly unnatural patterns. Mud dries up around it, giving way to dried out soil and stone.

  Liv rolls her heavy eyes, slowly dragging herself into the pit. It managed to survive her initial attack. Now what? Nothing. She was going to destroy it and pull her team out before passing out for the next few days. She earned that.

  Halfway down, a sudden chill crawls its way up her spine, completely unrelated to the cold surrounding her. A buzzing rings through her ear. A hell of a lot of Synth was coming her way. The fog thickens, rushing past her and into the orbs now gaping crack. Liv’s eyes widen as hundreds of the amoeba-esque demons throw themselves into the pit, their cores evaporating into the water as they fuse with the now luminous core of their leader.

  Liv rushes forward, priming an explosion deep within her gauntlets. She pushes past the initial barrier of water, slamming her hand into its hard surface. An explosion rings out at once, though it was hardly enough to send her flying back. If it affected the orb in any way, it didn’t show. The spike of Synth is the only warning as spikes erupt off its surface, poised to run her through. She scrambles back, quickly tearing her way out of the lakes basin with as much speed as she could muster. More of the demons continue to throw themselves in. Liv takes another step back, though she finds the ground far drier than before. Her eyes shoot back, her horror only growing as she watches the trees wither to nothing. Everything around her was dry. There was no more fog, no more trees either. Only a desolate waste of now dried soil.

  The demon was larger than before, looming above Liv, above almost anything she’d ever seen. It was gargantuan in scale. Liv could feel her heart hammering against her bruised ribs in staccato beats, her ragged breaths coming out in exhausted huffs. She could hardly keep herself up right, and she only one against the last one because Donovan was there to support her. That wouldn’t work. They were all asleep now…

  Liv barely drags herself back as a beam of water thick as a car guns toward her. Dust and dirt flies up like confetti, Liv not faring much better. The pure force of it is enough to take her feet from under her, even if it didn’t directly strike her person. Thrashing tendrils follow, seeking to drag her deep into the depths of its body. She lets out as deafening a scream as she can muster, rallying all the force left in her body to weave through them. Many of them manage to lash at her body, unable to gain purchase enough to grab her. In its place, they take blood, more crimson rivets oozing down the expanse of her.

  “Liv.” Bruno says worriedly. She could tell they were panicking, horrified with the thought of her death. Whether that be because of their blossoming friendship or the fear of being stranded in this place was unimportant. “I believe it is wise to disengage and get your rest. Perhaps we could do battle with it later.”

  “How do ya reckon I do that? Ain’t nowhere to hide now.” She mutters in response, her eyes darting about the desolate field.

  “We could dig one. If I suppress you as much as I can manage, it should grant us enough time to regain your charges. With that, there is no doubt in my mind that we could at least concoct a plan with a modicum of a chance to succeed.”

  “I dunno if I’m gonna be able to lose ‘em.” Liv responds, stumbling away from the path of another beam. She’s launched back, a new scrape forming across her upper shoulder. It burned, a trail of scraped off flesh following the trail she was displaced on. She grits her teeth, glaring up at the demon with pure venom. It didn’t seem to register the emotion.

  “Well,” Bruno says slowly. “If you escape now, it has three more targets to target-.”

  “Ain’t happenin’.” Liv growls, a spark of rage lighting in her heart. She wasn’t abandoning them, not now. She would succeed or die trying.

  “It’s your best route to survival. It’s simply logical.”

  “Logic ain’t everythin’. They coulda abandoned me, but they didn’t. ” Liv slams her hands into her chest three times, detonating as more lashing tendrils snake toward her. They evaporate with the heat, though the loss of them doesn’t seem to affect the large demon. Her heart thrums faster, near doubling in its beat. She was painfully aware of every injury on her body, only half lucid in her thoughts. “I ain’t lettin’ ‘em die ‘cause I was bein’ dumb. Ain’t nobody dyin’ like that ‘fore me again.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Bruno doesn’t say much after that. Even if they want to convince her, they know it's futile. Her mind was set. It would be more productive to count every grain of sand on earth than to buffet her point with facts and logic. She wasn’t the same person they once knew. Granted, they weren’t without modification either.

  Liv weaves between more lashing tendrils, fishing for a plan that's half coherent. She flirted with the idea of recycling her previous one, though it's scrapped as soon as she gives it more than a moment's thought. The damn thing was way bigger now, and she didn’t have the distraction to stop it any more. Blowing it up was more the same. She just didn’t think she’d have the pure firepower to completely obliterate it in one go. Throwing her bag might work, but that would require her to generate enough force to destroy the damned orb at its center. That didn’t account for aiming the thing. She wasn’t sure she could hit it with a full eight hours of sleep, let alone now.

  As it trailed across the floor, she noticed the dirt reclaiming some of the moisture from its bulbous body. That's when it hits her. She could try to outlast it! Sure, she was tired, and it had a whole hell of a lot of moisture to go through. She could go pretty far pretty fast though. She just had to wait it out. It would be more than challenging, but it was well worth it. Not like she had a lot else to do.

  Another condensed pillar of water arcs toward her, one she narrowly mitigates with a dodge. It still manages to draw blood. The blood loss was concerning for sure. Did she need to deplete her weapon to heal herself? No, she needed to safe it for a true emergency. Once she was depleted, that was it. She could try wrapping some, but she didn’t really have anything to wrap it with. Her bag, maybe? Anthony’s perhaps. He was the healer, though she was beginning to suspect he was hiding more from her. Like that revive! He had refused to explain that. What the hell was up with him-.

  Liv’s rambling mind is cut off as a sudden tug sends her tumbling to the floor. She takes a tumble, her eyes darting to whatever tripped her. Around her ankle, just above the lip of her boot, is a small tendril bound tight to her flesh. More of its brethren quickly accompany it, dragging her closer to the towering demon. Panic surges through her body, though she finds her adrenal response unreceptive to her brain's pleas. She tries to thrash against them. No dice.

  It pulls her closer, the threat of drowning a genuine possibility. She couldn’t even get an explosion off, her arms now bound tight against her body. The damn thing had actually created the inklings of a plan, plotting against her while perfectly exploiting her weakness. This was it. She was done for. Even if she depleted her weapon, she’d be completely out of energy both mentally and physically.

  Perhaps it was the primal fear awash in the essence of her being, maybe it was her training, or perhaps it was just the final push in her natural evolution forward. No matter the reason, something strange happened as Liv was absorbed into the demon's membrane. At the final moment, she breathes in, her instinct screaming to keep her alive. At the same time, her training discipline kicked into overdrive, focusing on the Synth around her. It probes out, trying to replicate what she observed Faraji do during their training. He would be able to survive. She would survive too. This damn beast had done something similar with moisture. They would be able to survive.

  She would survive too.

  For a moment, the world freezes around her, a strange hum thrumming through her skull, vibrating all her bones at once. Then, it expands out, a living force enhanced by her will to survive. She can hear it, the ambient synth of her own aura billowing out in droves, a physical reminder that– in this moment– she was alive, still fighting for her life, to become more than she ever was.

  She draws on that power, dragging dregs of the ambient energy into her very body in greedy pulls. Each drag fills her body with more power, a strange sense of heat building in her body. That small heat grows to a raging inferno, her gauntlets… No, her body glowing a brilliant red. Streaks of burning heat run down the contours of her body, culminating and orbiting a large red dot just above her heart. The liquid around her boils in the span of a heart beat, a bubble of heat soaked oxygen ballooning out. Perhaps, if it was just that, the demon would’ve survived. While an attack perfectly suited to its destruction, its pure mass was enough to mitigate, weather, and outright ignore the rapidly forming bubble shaping in its body. Its core was powerful too, further enhanced by the willing deaths of its brethren.

  Unfortunately for it, the heat wasn’t all there was to the attack.

  For the span of a breath, there was nothing. It was at that moment Anthony stirred, his advanced sense slapped awake by the Synth erupting off Liv in droves. The first thing he saw was the glow. Then he saw the brilliant explosion detonate. The gargantuan demon is blown to smithereens in moments, the core at its heart dissipating to nothing. Even hundreds of feet away, he’s still blown back, temporarily blinded and deafened with the power. His ears ring, the world around him shaking with the total destruction of what was wrought upon the world. He slowly reaches up to feel them, a wet sensation crawling across her fingers. No doubt about it, then. His eardrums were ruptured.

  Where the demon once was could only be described as a crater nearly as large as the basin it once occupied, steam billowing into the air. Despite the sudden spike in heat, it suddenly got so cold. Anthony’s mind doesn’t ponder the strange phenomenon for very long, more focused on the source of the nuclear explosion.

  Liv lays in the heart of the crater, her chest rising and falling with near imperceptible breaths. She was alive, thank the Lord. Just beside her was a swirling portal, undulating the same as the entrance to this accursed place. Anthony lets out a shaking breath, dragging his depleted body down to her side. He wanted to say so much, but he couldn’t find the strength– not like she’d hear with her current condition. He didn’t even know if she was critical right now.

  His hand flickers down to his neck, feeling around the camera strapped to his neck. The best thing he could do for them right now is to document this moment before it passed. With the power she displayed, there was no doubt in his heart that they’d all rank up. Next would be to get them all out of here before the portal closed, though the depth of the crater Liv made was as tall as four of him. He sighs, running his hand through the expanse of his hair. He just had to get it done.

  Even if it might take a minute.