Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast

Drip... Drip...

'Where am I?' Ash thought as he stirred to consciousness. 'How far did we fall? How long was I out?'

He woke to the sound of water trying to become a heartbeat. 'Count it. Make the cave small. Make the pain smaller.'

Not a river—just a drip fattening on the lip of a stalactite, letting go, and breaking itself on stone. Between each fall there was grit shifting, the slow settling of a wound. 'We fell. The web sang, then the ceiling answered.'

'Water... Agh!'

Every breath tugged along his ribs like a splinter.

Ash held his tongue flat to swallow the cough that wanted out.

'In for three. Hold one. Out for five.'

The count steadied the noise in his head.

He tested movement, sending the signal down each forepaw, pads flexing; then rolled each shoulder. 'I can still move, at least.'

Confirming he could still move, Ash blinked grit from his eyes as he opened them slowly and let the blur resolve.

Phosphor lichen smeared a thin, sourceless glow over broken stone; the cavern lay in jagged silhouettes. He cocked an ear and found the drip—a slow bead fattening, falling, splashing to his right.

'So that's where the water sound came from...'

He turned toward the slope of shattered rubble, felt the ache answer from his ribs, and knew, with a small, stubborn relief: alive.

Memory snapped back—the rune‑web singing, the ceiling giving, the world dropping out beneath them, taking him and… Veyra.

'Veyra!'

He turned his head left and the blur resolved into a pale hand sticking out of the rubble—Veyra's.

Panic struck clean through thought; he surged to it, forepaws skidding, muzzle pressing to her fingers as if scent alone could anchor her here.

"Veyra?" he murmured.

'Answer me. Answer—'

The name emerged soft, so it wouldn't disturb the dark. She didn't answer, but the skin twitched beneath his pads.

"Don't move," he said. "You're pinned. I've got you." 'Slow. No heroics. The stone remembers hurry.'

A broken root speared from the scree like a calcified tendon, resin-dark and grained with dust.

He worried it beneath the slab biting into Veyra's hip, forepaws braced and shoulder grinding slowly against grit. No scrape, no clack—only the whisper of powder. He inched it by breaths, a claw‑width at a time; the weight sent pebble-shivers through the pile, then relented.

When the stone finally loosened, he trapped it to his flank and bedded it into a hollow of sifted dust instead of letting it chatter free.

"Stay with me. Breathe with me—slow."

"Count again. In for three. Hold one. Out for five."

A murmur from an old verse brushed his mind—of a book that he had read back during his childhood about medicine. He let it pass; Veyra first.

Her eyelashes stirred weakly.

"Hurts to… breathe," she whispered, the words shredded.

"I know," he said. "Small breaths. Count with me."

He pressed a forepaw lightly over her wrist. She squeezed once against his pads, a small pulse. He felt the tremor run up her arm and back into the stone.

When the pressure eased she tried to turn and a bright stab cut across her side.

"No," he said, steady, "Stay still. I'm going to pull you out—all the way—now. Keep breathing for me..."

He slid his forelegs beneath her shoulders and ribs, hooked his chest under hers, and began to work her free a span at a time, dragging against the scree. Stone rasped, grit hissed; Veyra's breath broke into short, bitten sounds as pain flared with each shift.

"In two… hold… out four," he coached, muscles bunching as he levered her hips loose. She gasped when a buried shard snagged along her side; he paused, smoothed the angle, then drew her the last span clear until she lay on the ledge instead of the rock.

"Thank you," Veyra whispered, eyes still closed, the words thin and weak.

He went over her with his nose, ears, and pads, turning panic into tasks.

Ankles first—he nosed the left, found heat and swelling along the outside; a cautious press of a padded claw made her flinch; the right held steady.

Ribs—he watched the shallow, guarded rise; set an ear to her sternum and listened; no ugly grind. He spread his forepaw wide and applied slow, even pressure along the ribs; pain rippled her breath but the cage moved as one.

Scalp—metal tang at the hairline; he parted strands with his muzzle and found a sticky, superficial bleed, not pooling. He caught a strip of cloth in his teeth, pinned it with a paw, and bound her chest snug enough to remind the ribs what not to do. "In two," he said. "Hold. Out four." She followed, and by the third cycle the tightness at her brow loosened.

"Listen," he murmured. "Left ankle swollen; ribs bruised; small cut at your hairline—nothing deep. Don't move unless I say. We need to get you some strength back. I'm going to move you a bit." He nosed beneath her chin, gripped the torn collar of her shirt in his teeth, and inched her by spans to the stalactite drip, stopping her where the bead would fall straight into her mouth.

"Open your mouth. Drink."

The bead struck and burst; he held her there, bracing her with a forepaw, until three clean drips had passed.

She swallowed, coughed once, then breathed.

"You should drink it," she whispered. Her awareness seemed to return slowly.

"Saving you is top priority," he said, letting the truth steady his breath.

"Thank you," Veyra whispered, eyes still closed.

"Do you have the strength to move?"

"Give me a few minutes," she breathed, "Maybe just my hands."

"That will be enough," he murmured. "Keep drinking."

He kept her beneath the stalactite and held her steady with a forepaw while bead after bead struck and burst on her lips.

Time thinned—two breaths between drips, three in the bad intervals.

Ash turned his attention from Veyra to the tumble of rock itself.

The collapse had poured into a low wedge—boulders shouldered together, shale crushed to scree—its face sloping toward their alcove like a frozen wave. On the stone nearest her lay a smear of dust disturbed by claw marks—his—and a few pale hairs caught on a shard. The angle of the drifted grit told him how the ceiling had sheared; the grain slanted downhill from left to right.

They hadn't fallen a single drop—more like three shelves breaking in sequence, a stair that turned to gravel underfoot and carried them down. No vertical shaft mouth above. No open sky of stone. Just broken teeth and a buried throat.

He looked the other way, past the choke: the corridor narrowed to two shoulder‑widths before widening again, its floor terraced by fallen slabs into a crooked ramp. Stalactites hung like fangs, several snapped, their chalk bright where new rock showed.

To the right, the draft slipped along a darker runnel—a side throat that bent away, promising a larger chamber somewhere beyond. To the left, powder lay undisturbed, the air dead and still; that would be a pocket, not a path. Their alcove sat one body‑length off the corridor floor, a dry shelf with a single entry he could block in a heartbeat. Good sight lines. Bad echoes.

Just then, a faint scrape rasped down the corridor—antennal feelers on stone. A dust-scuffed Worker beetle, limping from the cave‑in, nosed along the choke toward their alcove.

"Give me a minute," Ash murmured to Veyra, "There's a stray."

He slid into the shadow of the choke, lichen‑glow at his back and the draft carrying his scent past the beetle's feelers. He waited—one breath, two—until its weight shifted and the inner knee opened.

Then he moved: a low hook at the joint to spill it sideways; jaws locking over the mandibles to smother the shriek; a clean bite sawn into the neck seam. Chitin parted with a wet‑glass crack. The legs drummed once, then went slack.

[Ding! Criteria Met! Grunt Beetles (50/50)]

A series of other notifications also chimed in but he ignored them temporarily.

He held for a heartbeat, listening for echo, then caught a hind limb in his teeth and ghosted the carcass behind a tumbled slab where the draft wouldn't carry scent to their door. He scrubbed the scuffs with a damp scrap, smeared dust into the marks, and pressed the floor smooth with his pads until the stone looked untouched.

Only then did he make his way back to Veyra. Ash counted for both of them until some color crept back into her mouth and her fingers twitched with tentative life.

"Hands work now?" he asked.

"Enough to scrape," she breathed.

"Good. We should move to a cleaner and safer area."

He sank to his belly, shoulders low, "See if you can crawl onto my back. Hook your arms—gently. Keep your ribs still."

Veyra inched up, palms scrabbling, until she could drape herself across his withers; her forearms slid around his neck, fingers knotting in his scruff. He took her weight through his spine and rose in a careful four‑beat sway.

Dust still clouded the choke, but Ash angled along the damp wall where the draft pinned the powder down, padding stone to stone, head low to keep her from scraping the stalactite teeth.

He followed the cooler thread of air toward the darker runnel he'd marked earlier and climbed a crooked ramp to a cleaner pocket—a higher shelf tucked behind a fallen rib of stone, away from the dust and drift.

He pawed loose grit aside, set his pack as a pillow, and knelt to let her slide from his back onto the dry ledge. The air here was easier to breathe, the lichen halos steadier. She hissed as the bandage tugged across her ribs, then let out a thin thread of air.

He lowered her, the last span with care and eased down beside her, shoulder to stone.

"Recover first," he murmured.

"Thank you… for not giving up on me," Veyra whispered, eyes still closed.

"Was I supposed to?" Ash asked, the question small in the cavern.

Veyra's brow creased.

"Here… beasts don't trust each other. Not for long. Hunger and fear make bad neighbors—unless you're family."

She paused to breathe.

"In Aegaryn, even when alliances form, betrayal often comes hand‑in‑hand. Summons get bought, bound, traded. A hurt ally is a liability."

Another thin breath.

"If you were any other beast, you'd leave me to fend for myself and call it practical. That's the lesson most of us learn."

She swallowed, eyes shimmering, and a small, grateful smile found her mouth.

In a thinner whisper she added, "You didn't. That's… not common. Not in the Nest. Not among summons."

Ash blinked, amazed—words pressing at the back of his tongue—but when he lifted his head to face her, her eyes were open and fixed on him, tears slipping from their corners.

Fear lived there—the same knife‑cold edge he'd known when they meant to sacrifice him; that moment when the world narrows and death leans down to choose your name. He knew it, because it had sat in his own chest like ice, and he would not let it make a home in hers.

He let a small, tired smile show, "I see you as a friend, Veyra. And a friend is someone you protect—especially when they can't protect themselves."

Veyra blinked, tears brightening.

"Then… you truly are the prophesied one," she whispered.

Ash let out a quiet huff that passed for a laugh, "Maybe. For now—rest. Sleep. I'll keep watch."

"Thank you," Veyra murmured, eyes heavy, her breath easing as she settled against him.