The Great Core's Paradox

Run. Just do it. It’s better than dying; it’s better than becoming undying,the thrall of some Skies-damned monster, Eli told himself. Someone has to get away. Someone has to warn everyone about what’s happening here. It might as well be you. You can sprint until your body eats itself whole. You’re the best choice for getting a message out. You can live. Just go. Go. Go. Go. Go, go, go, go -

His right leg twitched, as if moving to flee of its own volition, but Eli stayed rooted in place despite his terror. Trembling, but still rooted. At the end of the day, he found that he couldn’t do it. While small, there was a slim chance that his small squad could pull through. Sergeant Horik was closer to a monster than a man, and some of the other squad members weren’t so bad themselves.

What if Eli chose to run and his cowardice was the reason that everyone else was killed? Or worse, turned into the same things that they were being forced to fight? He wasn’t sure he could handle that - and the worst part of it was, if he left, Eli would never know if his presence would’ve been what made the difference. If, with him there, they could have lived.

Though the reality was, Eli probably didn’t matter. He was weaker than the others, with muscles atrophied by his own enhanced healing and endurance. Near-useless in a fight, when it came down to it. Something that he was proving with his struggle to defeat the already-impaled enemy in front of him.

Sergeant Horrik was going to beat him into the ground for this showing, if he found out and they all lived through this. Especially because the Sergeant had been right. Eli had wasted some of his armor’s charge before the fight, and his Wind Barrier had already started to weaken because of it, the strong whistle of wind broken up by the occasional pathetic sputter.

In the face of the horror that might otherwise be, Eli found himself somewhat hoping for that eventual beating. It would mean that he was still wholly alive. Still himself.

…And now the desire to run was coming back again with a vengeance.

Eli didn’t listen to that desire, that overwhelming need, choosing instead to send another thrust of his spear towards the approaching enemy. The xenlite embedded in its shaft activated, sending a pulse of light down the metal-lined rod, and then a spear of wind from its tip. In a feat of pure luck - the wind enchantments were harder to aim than it looked - the spear of wind took the former guard in the eye.

A smile crossed Eli’s face, more relief than anything else. He could’ve sworn he saw bits of its brain in the hole that was left.

Surely, that was…

A cloud of pitch-black smoke surged from the wound, and Eli’s heart fell. It wasn’t enough. Maybe, just maybe, the wispy smoke was getting a little thinner.

But only maybe. He could have been imagining it. And before he could figure out whether he was or not, the smoke-bleeding former guard rushed forward with a sudden burst of speed, easily pushing past Eli’s flickering, failing Wind Barrier.

Eli held up his spear in shock, bracing it against the floor and his boot, just like he had been trained - and to his shock, it worked. The charging enemy impaled itself deeply on his spear, the force of its charge managing to push the spear that was already caught in its guts all the way out when its butt smashed harshly into Eli’s metal-covered chest. The thing didn’t seem to care, willingly pushing itself further along Eli’s spear, bits of smoke sliding out of its gurgling mouth as its horribly-battered body tried to knit itself back together again.

It breathed that smoke directly into Eli’s shocked, gaping mouth - and then Eli learned that it wasn’t smoke at all. Wasn’t even close. It tasted like death, and the ever-widening pit in Eli’s stomach proved that too much of it could probably lead to his death, too, if his body’s healing hadn’t so quickly fought off the effects.

Despite that, his opponent’s self-impalement was a good thing. It meant that Eli had actually done some damage. That maybe he could -

Two pinpricks of pain made themselves known on Eli’s lower leg, and his surging hopes fell like the tide.

Shit, the snake!

By the time the true agony of it all hit, Eli’s decision had been made. There was hardly any thought towards what might happen to everyone else with Eli gone. There was hardly any thought about whether Eli’s presence could make a difference if he stayed. There was hardly any thought at all.

Eli ran, leaving his twice-impaled enemy behind, leaving his struggling comrades behind, and hopefully, leaving his death behind.

It didn’t work.

Eli ran, but death followed. He could feel it on his skin, in the tiny pricks left behind by a set of fangs that felt like a frozen fire on his flesh, a bitter cold so harsh that it somehow burned more than any inferno. He could feel it in his veins, a thick and poisonous sludge that scoured his insides, traveling from the snakebite’s tiny wounds and towards the rest of his body. He could feel it in his entire body as his body tried to heal itself from the damage, in the pit that was growing ever-wider within his stomach and in his ever-weakening muscles, the very thing that was keeping Eli alive threatening to devour him bit by bit.

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The only thing he left behind was the snake itself, its tiny form already moving on to someone else. As if it knew that Eli wouldn’t outrun death. That it didn’t need to bother with him again.

Even the things that had once been his fellow guardsmen let him be - like they, too, thought there was no point.

The world blurred. Not because Eli began to run with unimaginable speed, no. He wasn’t Sergeant Horik, with muscles strong enough to throw him across the mine’s tunnels in great leaps and bounds, nor was he some sort of mana-enhanced sprinter capable of moving faster than other people even thought possible.

Instead, the world blurred in the most mundane of ways. The way that it would for even a child.

Eli bit back a sob as he left everyone else behind, barely even noticing when he turned a bend in the tunnel and came face to face with a massive group of people. For a short while, his hopes surged yet again.

“Oh. Looks like one got away,” someone said, a pickaxe slung over his shoulder. The man looked at Eli curiously as the fleeing guardsman began to slow. “What should we do with him?

“He don’t look so good,” another remarked. “Got those black lines on him, see? Don’t think he actually got away. Won’t be long now. I seen more’n one of that snake’s bites at this point. Nobody’s lived through ‘em. Kid’s a dead man walking. He just don’t know it yet.”

They weren’t even talking to Eli. Just about him. As if he wasn’t really there, fire running through his flesh and tears in his eyes.

Please, I don’t…

“Good,” a third hissed, spitting on the ground as Eli shambled past, slowly beginning to pick up the pace again. “Fuck him. He knew what he was doing when he joined up here - and if he didn’t, I’m sure he’s had plenty of time to learn. I’m not shedding any tears for a damn guard.”

No. That's wrong.

Eli hadn't known what he was doing when he joined up. It had just been pure luck that his mana-enhancement turned out the way it did. Everything had just gone from there. Being a guardsmen for the mines paid a lot. An ability that quickly regenerated health and stamina was extremely valuable in a fight.

Too bad Eli wasn't. He had never been any good at it. Too much of a coward - too scared of risking his life.

Too scared to say anything about the abuses of his fellow guardsmen, or even the abuses that sentenced some prisoners to the mines in the first place. Because he saw them. Saw the way some of the others were so free with extorting prisoners with threats of extending their sentences, or the way some of them cuffed underworking prisoners just a little too hard. Heard the prisoners talk among themselves, bandying about claims of trumped-up charges and corruption being responsible for many of their imprisonments. The stories were consistent enough that they might've even been true.

But Eli was a coward. Afraid of confrontation. Afraid to get hurt. Afraid to fight. In a way, Eli's mana-enhancement turning out the way it did was almost poetic. It let him run from pain, turning it into a brief, passing thing. It let him run away from confrontation, giving his legs the ability to keep going when anyone else would have collapsed.

And then it punished him for it, devouring his body piece by piece until he paid for his cowardice in full.

As if called by his attention, the pit in Eli’s stomach widened. It grumbled, the sound deep as any roar. Eli reached into one of his pouches with trembling hands that were already turning skeletal, and dropped a handful of its contents down his throat.

He swallowed.

“...guard or not, he’s not much older than my kid, Ian,” someone else finished saying. Eli only caught the end of it. He was having a hard time focusing.

“...mean much. You’re old as dirt! I’m probably not much older than your kid. I don’t know how you haven’t kicked the bucket being stuck down here.”

Eli stumbled, missing a step as whatever poison was in that damn snake’s bite continued to wreak havoc on his insides. He fell flat on his face, landing hard enough to flatten his face.

Just another wound to dig the growing pit deeper. Eli shoved a hand inside a pouch, and then shoved that hand towards his open mouth.

The dried meats tasted like metal. Like dust and blood.

“...really, should we do something? This is kind of hard to look at.”

“...nothing to do. He’s a goner. Has been since this whole prison break started. Best we could do is finish him off ourselves, and I’m not willing to do that. Are you?”

Nobody answered by the time Eli finally pushed past the crowd and started running again - or at least Eli never heard the response.

Not that he was listening anymore. It was getting hard to even think, to do more than run forward and toss a growing pile of food down his throat, emptying the pouches at his side one by one.

Please, I don’t want…

The cold-fire in his veins still hadn’t stopped. The pit in his stomach was just getting wider. He shoveled more food down his open mouth, careening through the network of tunnels that was the mines for an indeterminable amount of time, what little part of Eli that was still conscious desperately holding to the hope that his mana-enhancement would save him.

Because if it didn’t, it might even kill him before the monster’s horrifying bite ever did, withering Eli away in its attempts to keep him alive.

Eli didn’t know which death was worse - and before he could decide, the blackness at the edges of his vision closed in a little more, and he tripped on something hidden in the darkness, barely registering the pain of the fall. Still on the floor, Eli reached for his pouches again.

When he brought them towards his face, there was nothing but crumbs slipping through the ever-widening gaps in his skeletal fingers.

Eli sobbed again, but no tears came out. There weren’t any left to give. Like everything else, they had been sacrificed to the pit. Devoured to delay death.

And even if it had been working, there was only so much of Eli left. Only so much healing he could handle. And, faint as it had become, the horrible chill of the snake’s bite was still there. Almost unnoticeable, like a spark compared to a raging inferno, but even that might still be enough.

Eli’s body didn’t have anything else to give.

Please, the hollowed husk thought, I don’t want to die.

He crawled forward and licked the crumbs off the floor. They tasted like dust and blood. They tasted wonderful. Like life. Like hope.

He licked the floor again. It tasted like dust and blood.

There weren’t any crumbs left.