The slick, black ichor of the final Darroch mixed with my own dripping red blood, ran together as it flowed freely across the stones of the grotto. I leaned my head back, panting at the ceiling of the grotto and its beam of moonlight. The beast inside had retreated and the adrenaline drained away, leaving me hollow and aching even though many of my wounds had already healed.

  Unfortunately, when the beast that took me over disappeared, so did the boost to the self healing, leaving my body to handle the remaining damage at a crawl. I didn’t feel like I was in danger of dying, but the remaining bites burned terribly as my body tried to push out the Darroch’s venom.

  I tried to flex my fingers, but there was a terrifying sensory disconnect. My hands felt heavy, like lead weights attached to my wrists, and I could still feel the phantom sensation of claws retracting into my skin, a violation of my own personhood. My body didn't feel like mine anymore; it felt like a meat suit I’d been shoved into

  I looked over to the spring and was horrified to see that the crystal waters were now tainted by the corruption of the second Darroch when its body melted. The waters were no longer crystalline and glowing with the yellow light of the moonbeam. Instead, they were oily and dark. A strange aura that I couldn’t describe pulsed off the water like a heat haze. The light of the moonbeam stopped when the light reached the haze, unable to reach the water below.

  “Uh. I don’t think that’s how light is supposed to work,” I said, slurring from exhaustion. It definitely didn’t seem like a good thing, but I couldn’t focus on anything without great difficulty. My brain was clearly not in its best state for figuring that mess out. I tried to stand and fell back to my knees painfully.

  I just knelt there staring into space a second, when a low groan snapped me from my daze.

  “Lyren!”

  I scrambled across the stone floor toward her crumpled form. She lay face down in a widening pool of crimson, her body glowing with the same green magic I’d seen after our fight with the boar abomination. But the light was changing. The vibrant viridian was dimming, overtaken by an oily sheen that mirrored the tainted spring.

  With trembling hands, I gently rolled her onto her back. My stomach lurched.

  The bite on Lyren’s neck wasn't just any wound. Like the bite from some kind of messed up vampire, a transformation had begun surrounding the wound. Her skin, once pale and soft, was hardening into patches of slick, semi-translucent gray membrane that felt cold and wet to the touch. Beneath the surface, her delicate blue veins were filling with sickly orange light, pulsing a chaotic rhythm that branched out from the bite wound on her neck.

  The corners of her soft red lips were cracking and tearing, bleeding black ichor as her jaw muscles spasmed in an attempt to unhinge. Her eyes stared blankly, the whites filling with pinpricks of burning amber light. Along her collarbone and forehead, small, sharp protrusions of blackened bone pressed against her skin, desperate to tear their way out.

  I didn't know what to do. I looked around the grotto frantically.

  I don’t know anything about magic. What the hell am I supposed to do to help her?

  Her jaw clenched so hard I could hear her teeth cracking in her mouth, and a pained scream tore through them as a tremor shook her body.

  Lifted her into my lap, I clutched her to my chest. "No, please, don't do this." My voice cracked. My tears splashed onto her cheeks, mingling with cave dirt and blood. "I should have been faster. Stronger…" I carefully used my clawed fingers to brush strands of sweat slicked hair from her face, feeling the unnatural heat radiating from her.

  Death was one thing but becoming one of those fucking monsters, Lyren deserved so much better than this. I’d read isekai stories back home, tropes where the hero gets a cheat code and saves everyone. But as I looked at my own blood-stained, clawed hands, I knew I wasn't a hero. I was a loser and now I’d become a freak. A monster.

  “None of it mattered,” I whispered to myself bitterly. “Not one damn thing. All of the pain and suffering back home, just to get by after mom and dad died. Every terrible thing that happened to me but I just kept moving because I thought that if I just believed in myself I would eventually claw my way through and find some meaning to it all. I can let it end like this.”

  “No. There has to be something, someway to fix this,” I shook my head, looking up at the moonbeam still pouring through the opening in the grotto ceiling. For just one time in my pathetic life let me do something worthwhile!” I yelled letting all the anger and frustration of the last few years flood out of me like a damn had broken.

  Not that I really expected it to but nothing happened. No hero came to save us nor did I gain some inexplicable macguffin to solve the problem. I’d given up part of my humanity to try and save our lives but for what? This wasn’t some movie where the hero gets the girl and walks off into the sunset.

  I just held Lyren in the dark. Her body slowly transforming. Part of me knew it would be a mercy to end her suffering before her transformation progressed any further but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  Fate could have given me the chance for a happier life by taking me to another world. But instead it brought me to a world filled with nothing but nightmare fuel and suffering.

  The rage turned into a cold, jagged resolve. I slumped forward, holding her through another convulsion. “Fine. If this world wants to take her, it can have me too. Hell, being some mindless creature might be an improvement.”

  I stared down at what had become of Lyren’s beautiful face, the orange veins pulsing beneath her greying skin. I barely knew her, not her family, or where she was from, nothing but a first name and pointed ears that suggested she might be an elf. Yet here I was, ready to follow her into oblivion. Maybe it wasn' t even about her. Maybe I was just a coward who couldn't stomach the idea of being the one to end her life, even if it was to spare her from becoming something terrible.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I don’t know if there is a god or fate or some other force in the universe that decides what happens to us all but I’m not playing by these rules anymore. You want me to fight through this life on hardcore mode? Well, fuck you. I think I’ll just let my friend here turn me into a monster also and make it everyone else’sproblem.”

  Her body convulsed again. The moonstone orb on the ground a few feet away flickered and died. Darkness settled over us, save for the diminished moonbeam and the eerie blue-green glow of the moss.

  Out of the corner of my eye, a purple light rippled across the tainted spring, shimmering on the oily surface. The light intensified as something approached. No, someone. Her.

  The violet eyed woman who'd plucked me from Omaha and dumped me in this nightmare. She walked out of the darkness like she was made from it.

  She approached in silence, her presence swallowing the grotto. The moonbeam retreated before her as if terrified of the violet energy coiling around her form. The silver light shrank upward through the ceiling hole until it vanished completely, abandoning the grotto to her purple radiance. With a casual gesture, she raised one elegant hand and clenched it into a fist. Above us, stone liquefied and flowed together, sealing our underground prison with a terrible finality.

  Despite the casual display of magic that should have scared the shit out of me, her approach caused my muscles to tense with rage, my sharp teeth grinding together until my deformed jaw ached. This was all her fault. This woman was the reason I looked like this. She was the reason Lyren lay dying in my arms.

  My bitter resolve transformed into a blinding hatred that threatened to push me to the back of my own mind as it had before.

  “Why are you here!” I growled at her as she reached the shore. “Haven’t you done enough already!”

  Her eyes narrowed at me like I was a toddler throwing a tantrum in a grocery store. Without pausing, she glided forward to where I cradled Lyren's trembling form against my chest. Lyren's small body convulsed violently, her skin radiating heat like burning coals. The silver-haired woman sank to her knees beside us, her midnight gown pooling across the stone floor like spilled ink. She extended one pale hand over Lyren's chest, and a pulse of purple magic flowed from her fingertips and disappeared into Lyren's body.

  I tried to lash out, but my muscles locked. I was a statue, frozen by her will. I couldn’t move a single muscle. After a moment the pulse of magic returned from Lyren’s body and flowed back into the woman’s hand. She stood and leaned over, placing her perfect face inches from my own. That infuriating, knowing smile plastered on her face. I wanted to rip it off with my claws, rip out her jugular with my fangs. Further and further I sank back into my mind as the beast inside smothered me with its growing fury.

  “Yes, you are coming along nicely,” she purred, running her incredibly soft fingers across my cheek. I stared at her with pure, unadulterated hatred.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’d already be dead if it weren’t for my gift. Now you are alive and this one… Well, she still has a small chance of surviving. However, she is only minutes away from becoming one of hers.”

  “So she is going to turn into a Darroch?” I demanded, surprised I could suddenly speak again.

  Her laughter was musical and cruel. The muscles of my jaw locked up again. Her violet eyes gleamed with amusement while Lyren convulsed in my lap. She was toying with me, releasing my voice just long enough to ask questions that fed her performance, like a cat batting around a mouse before the kill.

  “The Darroch aren’t feared because they kill, my pet. A great many things can kill. The Darroch are feared because of what they do instead of killing. They deform the body, taint the spirit, and corrupt the soul.” She motioned flippantly towards Lyren. “She will be corrupted and become one of them. And judging by the less than flattering tone of her skin and those lovely bone spurs forming on her forehead, soon.”

  “No,” I growled, feeling that she had released my body again. I set Lyren on the ground, getting up in the face of the violet-eyed woman. "SAVE HER! Or I swear I'll rip you apart!" It was the animal inside lashing out. My claws extended, and bones creaked as I felt myself shifting as I had when I saw Lyren being attacked.

  The woman wasn’t intimidated in the least. Her beautiful lips curled into a mocking smile and she scoffed. Even going as far as to wipe a fake tear from her eye. “Do not worry, my pet. You’ll get those primal urges under control in time. Though without the others to guide you, I’m afraid you will have to learn how to do that on your own.”

  She circled me, sizing me up like a piece of meat that was on the menu. “Mmmm, yes. I am most pleased with how everything has turned out so far.”

  She must have grown bored with her little puppet show because I was able to move unrestricted now. I spun to face her, towering over her petite form. "Stop playing games!" I growled, my voice a low rumble that barely sounded human. "Fix her now, or I swear I'll tear your fucking head off." A spray of saliva punctuated my threat as I advanced on her.

  In an instant, her beautiful form split along invisible seams. Beneath the facade of perfect skin and curvy figure, unfurled an unending mass of living darkness, oily tendrils coiling and uncoiling like the tentacles of some cosmic horror.

  A visceral fear spread through me stopping me in my tracks. I stared up at the enormous mass of inky squirming tentacles covered in hundreds of bulging eyes and snapping mouths that filled half of the cavern. Only her two glowing violet eyes remained at the center, twin points of freezing flame.

  "YOU DARE THREATEN ME WHELP?" Her voice thundered but behind the roar I could hear the whispers of dozens or even hundreds of voices. "I AM QUEEN NYXORA!" The voices echoed her claim with other titles. I, who am known as the Devourer of Dreams. Behold the Mother of Despair. I am feared as the Harbinger of Woe. You stand before the Bringer of Eternal Night. Along with dozens more.

  Suddenly the violet storm around the tentacled monstrosity exploded outward, vaporizing a dozen giant mushrooms and pulverizing the nearby rocks formations. "PETULANT CHILD. I FEASTED ON THE BLOOD OF GODS WHILE YOUR ANCESTORS STILL CRAWLED BLIND THROUGH MUD."

  My organs quivered. The primal rage inside me shrieked and tried to retreat, but I locked my knees and forced myself to meet her gaze, even as blood vessels burst in my eyes, healed themselves only to burst again. If I was going to die to this woman or whatever the fuck she was, I wasn’t going to do it cowering in fear.

  Suddenly, the mass of shadows collapsed in on itself, reforming into the deceptive form of a beautiful silver haired woman. The ominous power dissipating as quickly as it had appeared. I swayed but somehow managed to stay on my feet.

  To my surprise, Nyxora looked pleased with my reaction, making me wonder if her outburst might have been some kind of test. Her gaze held mine, those burning violet orbs bearing down on me like they could see into my very soul.

  "I will do nothing for this elf," she snapped coldly.

  A seductive smile spread across her face again. "But perhaps... you can."