Panic was a foreign country Anya had refused to visit for fifteen years. Now, she was standing at its border, the scent of venom and Cinder-puff thick in the air. Elias was a dead weight, his breath shallow, the dark veins of the poison already crawling up his neck. The clicking of the remaining, disoriented skitters echoed around them.
Run. The voice was ancient, primal, the core of every survival instinct she possessed. He's gone. Save yourself.
But as she looked down at his pale, still face, another, newer instinct warred with it. The voice of the hunter, the pragmatist. This is your asset. This is your key. All the venom sacs in the Verse aren't worth half as much as his Resonance. Her debt to him for her own life was a distant, sentimental thought; the loss of his future value was an immediate, catastrophic failure.
"No," she snarled to herself, the word a declaration of war against her own fear.
She wasn't saving a man. She was salvaging her investment.
That cold, brutal clarity focused her. She shoved Elias's body into a more defensible position behind a rock outcropping, then turned to face the remaining threats. The air was still hazy with the irritant smoke, giving her an advantage.
A skitter lunged out of the haze. Anya didn't aim for the body. She shot the ground in front of it. Her bolt, supercharged with a whisper of her kinetic Resonance, struck the stone floor and kicked up a shower of sharp, stinging rock fragments that peppered the creature's soft underbelly. It shrieked and recoiled, and her second bolt found its eye socket.
She became a whirlwind of efficient violence. She used the environment, her knowledge of the creatures' blindness, and the last of the smoke to dispatch the remaining stragglers. The fight was over in less than a minute, her movements economical, her expression a mask of cold fury.
The tunnel fell silent, save for Elias's ragged breathing.
She scrambled back to his side, pulling the vial of antidote from his satchel. His jaw was locked tight, his body rigid with the advancing paralysis. He couldn't swallow.
"Useless," she spat, tossing the vial aside in frustration. Her mind raced, sifting through a decade and a half of survival lore. There was no field remedy for a direct venom injection this advanced. It was a death sentence.
Her hand brushed against the vial Elara had given her. The Stalker musk. A last resort. A distraction. It will make anything that isn't a Stalker run. The thought was a spark.
Why? Because the Stalker was an apex predator. Its scent was a declaration of absolute dominion, a force that repelled lesser creatures of the Verse.
Another thought followed. The blessed water of the chapel. It, too, repelled creatures of the Verse. It cleansed, it purified.
The venom was a product of the Verse. The musk and the water were… anti-Verse.
It was a mad leap of logic, a desperate prayer offered to the god of insane gambles. But it was the only path she had.
She grabbed the vial of antidote she'd discarded. With trembling fingers, she uncorked the vial of Stalker musk. The scent that wafted out was overpowering—acrid, primal, and dripping with ancient menace. She poured a tiny, controlled drop of the thick, oily liquid into the antidote vial. The two substances swirled together, creating a volatile, unholy concoction.
Now, to administer it. He couldn't drink. It had to be direct.
"Forgive me, Healer," she muttered, though she wasn't sure if she was talking to him or to some principle she didn't believe in.
She drew her sharp skinning knife. Taking his paralyzed arm, she found the two small puncture marks from the venomous barb. With a grimace, she sliced the wound open, the blade cutting cleanly through his skin. Blood, dark and sluggish, welled up.
Before she could lose her nerve, she poured the entire mixture of antidote and musk directly into the open wound.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific.
Elias's body arched off the ground, a silent scream locked in his throat. He convulsed violently, his limbs thrashing. A faint, golden light—his Resonance—flared around him, flickering and sputtering like a dying candle caught in a hurricane. It battled against the black veins of the poison, which pulsed angrily. For a moment, the two forces, one of wholeness, one of decay, seemed to tear him apart from the inside.
Then the musk, the third, alien element, entered the fray. The golden light of his Resonance seemed to latch onto it, using its potent, anti-Verse nature as a weapon. The black veins began to recede from his neck and face, retreating from the raw power of the musk as if from a fire. The convulsions subsided, replaced by a violent, feverish shivering.
His eyes shot open. They were unfocused, wild with pain, but they were conscious. He took a deep, shuddering gasp, the first real breath he'd taken since the venom had set in.
Anya collapsed back on her heels, panting, the adrenaline finally abandoning her. The acrid scent of the Stalker musk clung to both of them, a potent, terrifying perfume. They had survived. They had won.
And now, they were marked.
Elias looked at her, his expression a mixture of agony and confusion. He tried to speak, but only a hoarse croak came out.
Anya leaned over him, her face inches from his, her expression fierce. "Don't you ever do that again," she growled, her voice rough with exhaustion and relief. "You're too valuable to be used as a shield."
The silence of the tunnel returned, but it was a new kind of silence now. It was the silence of a ticking clock. The scent of their salvation was a beacon, and somewhere in the deep, dark places of the Verse, its true owner might already be stirring.