[Aster]
A piercing, thunderous sound rang out as ice cracked under the weight of countless nightmarish worms, echoing through the small of the cave, yet Aster's sharp "ck" managed to cut through it nevertheless, his golden eyes wide with fear. He didn't have much mana left after hours of melting work, not even close to enough to face that swarm that was about to break in. Not even close.
Still, he raised his hands anyway and began igniting what little mana he had, his desperate, instinctive attempt to protect his mother and sister, even though it was hopeless. Just when a rather pathetic-looking flame came to life in his hands, Silvia rushed past him and slapped her small palms against the ice, her youthful face scrunched up in concentration and effort. "Hnnngh!" she grunted as a cold, white mist flowed from her fingers and rushed into the cracks, making them disappear in the blink of an eye. With another grunt, the ice began to grow both into the tunnel and out, slowly but surely, pushing most of the writhing bodies away and freezing quite a few in place.
Worms, it seemed, didn't like to be pushed away from the only way outside, because a wild, frenzied assault on the ice immediately followed. Each and every one of them began to use their sharp teeth to chew through the ice, the air filling with a noise that could only be described as nails on a chalkboard, multiplied by a thousand and amplified to deafening volumes.
The very ground beneath their feet began to shake; the icy barrier trembled and vibrated under the force of their attack as teeth scraped, chewed, and tore at it with terrifying intensity. "I-I can't... hold it for long!" Silvia cried out, her small, girly voice barely audible above the chaos of the horde.
"Into the tunnel! NOW!" Nivalis shouted, grabbing the children's hands and pulling them along towards the narrow opening in the wall, her rusty knife trembling in her hand. Cracks and fractures spread like spider webs across the ice barrier as the three of them ran towards the dark tunnel, their old leather boots shuffling against the uneven stone floor beneath.
Aster managed to steal one last glance at the hot spring, the glowing crystals on the ceiling, and the depressing drawings on the walls—their home, as miserable and shitty as it was—before he was shoved into the dark, winding tunnel by his mother's strong hands. "Aghw!" he cried out, his knees and elbows scraping against the rough, jagged rocks, his hair, still wet from the bath, sticking to his face. Yet he ignored the pain, turned around, and started helping the girls in. "Mom, you're in the middle! Silvia, behind her, and watch the back!" he shouted, his voice full of authority and command despite being the youngest of the three, his face scrunched up in a painful grimace.
Nivalis opened her mouth to protest, but Aster simply grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her into the tunnel with surprising strength for his skinny frame, making her squeal like a young girl; he was not having any of that motherly selflessness today. With a resigned sigh, Nivalis squeezed herself between the rocky walls and began to crawl on all fours, her tunic and pants getting a few new holes in them.
Right before climbing after her family, Silvia had a chance to witness the swarm of worms break through the barrier, sending heavy chunks of ice flying in all directions like they weighed nothing at all. Every single silver hair on her petite, prepubescent body rose on end at the sight of the dark-red swarm pouring into their little home, splitting in two—one half going towards the hot spring for whatever reason, and the other rushing right at her, squirming and hissing with the speed of a galloping horse.
The girl squealed in a high-pitched voice and quickly crawled into the tunnel, her cloak snagging on the sharp rocks and getting torn in half, leaving her butt completely exposed to her chasers, soft and smooth, perfect to bite into. Before that could happen, however, she raised her hands and slapped her small palms against the walls on either side of her, releasing the mana within her in a wild, panicked burst of magic.
In under a second, the entire opening of the tunnel was covered by a thick, opaque sheet of ice, just in time to stop the worms from pouring into it. "Crawl, crawl, crawl! Faster, faster!" she cried out, pushing her mother's soft butt forward to make her move faster, her golden eyes never leaving that ice wall behind her. It rattled and shook just like the barrier at the entrance, and that one was much thicker than this one.
Leading the train at the front, Aster pulled his mother along by her hand, helping her get through the narrower parts of the tunnel while his heart hammered against his ribs and adrenaline rushed through his veins. "Fill everything with ice! As much as you can! The opening outside is not quite ready, we need more time!" he shouted back at his sister, panting into his mother's wincing face.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN OPENING'S NOT READY?!" came a panicked, high-pitched shriek of Silvia's voice from behind their mother's butcheeks, echoing through the tunnel and ringing in their ears. "I THOUGHT YOU SAID IT'S DONE?!" she added in an ultrasound.
"IT'S NOT, WE NEED MORE TIME! I HAVE, LIKE, ZERO MANA TO DO IT!" Aster shouted back, his own voice just as panicked and high-pitched as the girl's.
"I'M GONNA FREEZE YOUR BALLS OFF FOR THIS, I SWEAR TO THE GODS!" Silvia screamed back, her voice cracking at the end of the sentence as she poured more mana out of her palms, filling the narrow tunnel with thick, foggy ice, making her already limited space even smaller. Worms kept gnawing, scratching, and biting at the ice she was desperately creating behind them, their slimy bodies writhing so disgustingly that she almost vomited right then and there. But when the worms finally blocked out the pale light from their home, plunging all three of them into complete darkness, and not seeing them yet knowing they were still there somehow felt even worse.
Nivalis, crawling as fast as her curvy, soft, grown-up elven body allowed her—which wasn't fast at all—was just as terrified as the kids were, but she didn't let it show. She was a mom, and moms don't panic in front of their babies. "STAY CALM, DAMMIT! BOTH OF YOU, OR I'LL SPANK YOUR LIL BUTTS INTO OBLIVION!" she said calmly, squeezing through a particularly narrow part of the tunnel, the sharp rocks biting into her sides, cutting and scraping at her delicate skin.
That shut the children up. Gulping down a lump in his throat, Aster kept crawling forward without saying a word, with the sweat trickling down his face and neck in cold droplets. He had no mana to spare to create a flame to light the way, and his eyes had stopped glowing a while back, so the three of them crawled blindly through the dark, their labored breathing, the scraping of their knees and palms against the rocks, and the ravenous noises of the worm swarm behind them filling the tunnel. Luckily, the last one was growing more distant the farther they got, giving them a bit of hope they so desperately needed.
"Are you okay, sweetie? Silvia?" Nivalis asked her daughter as they all made their way through a sharp twist in the tunnel, her voice a bit strained but not without love and worry in it.
The girl whispered a tiny, "Yeah, just... a bit dizzy," and nodded against her mother's soft butt. When they made a few more steps further into the tunnel, Silvia turned around and poured a bit more mana from her palms, adding even more ice behind them. "We'll be fine, right, Asty?" the girl called out, her voice trembling ever so slightly.
Giving her a nod that she couldn't see, the boy replied, "We'll be fine." His voice didn't tremble even once, despite his heart pounding in his chest like crazy.
After what felt like an eternity of crawling on their hands and knees, the three of them arrived at the end of the tunnel. "Honey, my love... where the hell is the opening?" Nivalis asked very patiently, looking around at the pitch blackness surrounding them. "Please, don't tell me—" she tried to say, but was immediately cut off when Aster poked his finger into the ceiling and removed a bit of snow that formed there while he was away, letting the orange light illuminate the cramped space around them, as well as their sweaty, dirty, and terrified faces. The ray hit Nivalis straight in her blue eyes, making her wince and hiss in pain. "Aghh!"
Aster winced just as much at the blinding light, even with his hand shielding his eyes. "Should've warned you, sorry," he muttered, watching tears streak down his mother's dirt-smudged cheeks as she rubbed at her stinging eyes. "Alright, I'm starting..." He shook his wrists and drew a deep breath, preparing himself for another battle against the stone, his last, no matter the outcome. He felt that there was not enough mana in him for that, but there are moments in a man's life where he just has to suck it up and do the thing. This was one of those moments.
Nodding, Nivalis managed a pained, "It's fine... just... faster," as she watched Aster's eyelids fall shut, his face calm even though tears ran down his cheeks just as strongly as hers. Gritting her teeth, she forced her gaze upward to the tiny crack in the ceiling, clawing at it with her fingers to see if the stone was loose enough to come apart. When the jagged edges refused to give, she tried her rusty knife and began to scrape desperately at the opening. It didn't work either, but she kept going anyway. "Silvia? Don't be silent, are you okay?" the woman asked as she worked, the noises of scratching worms coming from behind her daughter.
"Yeah... I'm okay. I'm okay," the girl replied in a shaky voice, panting, her golden eyes never leaving the dark tunnel, where countless worms squirmed in their eagerness to reach them, now visible in the dim light coming from behind her mother's bum. "Mom, please hurry. They're not very far..." she whimpered as she leaned back against her mother, knees drawn tight to her chest, her hands pressed into the ice in front of her. She poured every last drop of mana she had in her to fight off the worms, slow them down by growing the ice against their onslaught, but it wasn't enough. The swarm pushed forward, relentlessly, and she could feel them winning—slowly, inevitably.
Like his sister, Aster was doing his best as well; every drop of mana his lungs brought was immediately ignited and added to that meager amount inside his chest, ready to be used. He heard his mother's grunts of effort, Silvia's terrified whimper, the crackle of ice beneath the weight of countless wriggling bodies. Yet, he didn't open his eyes, didn't stop focusing, didn't let his concentration waver even for a split moment.
The dizziness he had felt earlier now became so strong that the black of his eyelids began to spin, something he didn't know was even possible. Like an engine that ran out of fuel and began to cough, his heart struggled to beat in his chest, as his blood was now almost devoid of raw mana. And it hurt like hell, the lack of mana.
He had no other choice but to keep going, though, to push on no matter what, to finish the job. Dying so close to the surface after what they went through sounded like a cruel joke, one Aster didn't find amusing in the slightest. No, he would make it, his mother would make it, his sister would make it. They would all make it and see the sky once again, the clouds, and the sun. He wanted to see castles, ride a horse, and wear some weird medieval clothes... not die here, eaten alive by fucking worms. Gods, demons, worms, and anyone else would have to eat shit because he wouldn't let that happen.
So when he heard his mother's panicked, "Honey... do something! Please!" as she kept hitting her steel against the stone, and Silvia's sobbing, his golden eyes snapped open, so bloodshot that the gold of his pupils seemed almost brown in color. "I'm... starting," he croaked, his hands trembling as he placed them on the rocky ceiling above him. With the mana that he gathered, the mana that was only a tiny, insignificant drop compared to what he had used earlier today, Aster cast a tiny protection spell around just his fingers before the heat of his fire mana rushed through his veins and into the stone.
No longer than three seconds later, there was nothing left. Aster slumped back against the hard stone, panting and wheezing, his eyes barely open yet never leaving the ceiling where Nivalis was doing her best to chip away at the tough, black rock. It worked, if only a little bit; little stones and dust started falling onto their silver heads as her rusty knife scraped and chipped at the stone. But it wasn't enough, he could tell, and the fear creeping onto his mother's usually beautiful face only proved it.
Flopping onto the ground with his back on the stone, Aster raised his legs into the air and, with a grunt of effort, slammed them into the rock above him. It did little more than make more dust and stones fall onto his face, making him cough and splutter. But that didn't stop him, no. He did it again and again until his knees and ankles ached, and then some more. "Mom, line up the knife... let me hit the hilt," he managed to say between his coughing, looking up at his mother, into those blue, teary eyes.
Nivalis, her lips quivering slightly, looked at her little boy, nodded, and held the knife as steady as her trembling hands allowed, showing the sharp tip into the tiny crack she had made. Aster didn't waste any time and slammed his feet against the hilt, making the knife sink just a bit deeper into the stone. "Again," Nivalis urged, almost begging as the noise of the worm swarm grew louder and louder by the second.
The boy obliged, slamming his feet into the back of the knife, sinking it even deeper into the rock. The stone began to crack around it, sending even more dust and pebbles tumbling onto their faces. It was no ordinary kitchen knife, but a dagger, the one that Nivalis took from one of the humans who attacked them back near the lake. It was made for killing, for piercing through hardened leather armor, so the blade held, even when Aster kept kicking it with everything he had left in him.
Then, without warning, light flooded in—not just a thin beam, but a sudden, blinding rush of it. Both of them flung their arms up to shield their eyes, wincing against the burning brightness. And it was fortunate that they did, because rocks began to fall all around them a heartbeat later: big ones, small ones, hitting their soft flesh all over. However, the fall was too short for the debris to gain any momentum, so nothing struck hard enough to cause anything more than minor bruises.
When the last rock rolled off their heads, the two of them squinted their eyes open to find that the opening was much wider now, dust and snow floating all around them. Before he could even process what had just happened, Nivalis had already grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed his face through the hole, holding his skinny butt with her other hand. One firm push of her arm, and he popped right out of it like a baby from a womb, landing face-first on a bed of fluffy snow.
The feeling of being outside after so long in the cave was... indescribable. The way the wind could make his hair flutter around his face, how the snow could crunch beneath his weight, the faint warmth of the sun on his cheeks? He almost forgot what it felt like. He didn't want to move, not a single muscle, just lie there and enjoy every little sensation that the outside world had to offer.
But that only lasted a brief moment, a little longer than a heartbeat, until his lungs drew their first breath. The moment the freezing, icy air rushed down his throat, he started coughing like a fifty-year-old chain smoker, his lungs unable to handle the change of air. It was not that stale, death-flavored air of the cave they were so used to, but the real deal, the one that was actually meant for living beings to breathe with.
The lack of mana in the air, compared to the tunnels, was also something his body would need to get used to; he almost forgot how manaless the surface air was. "A-aaghhh... ghaaagh... eck..." he choked, half of his face in the snow as the icy cold wind blasted against his sweaty skin, making his entire body break out in goosebumps.
Still coughing like someone dying of lung cancer, Aster rolled to the side and looked down the hole he had just been pushed out of, his eyes burning from the orange light of the sunset. Seeing only blurry shapes, he saw his mother trying to squeeze herself out of the hole, and without much thought, he reached to help her, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling with all his remaining might. She too started choking and coughing the second she drew her first breath of the fresh air, her body convulsing with each fit, and her eyes squeezed shut.
Just when Aster began to fear that they would need to widen the hole even more for her curvy hips to squeeze through, Nivalis's soft butt finally plopped out of it, making both of them fall onto the snowy ground in a heap of tangled limbs and knocking the air out of his already pained lungs. "Tha-aank you, swee-eetie..." she managed to say between her coughs as she rolled off him and turned back towards the opening in the ground. "S-Silvia! C-come on, my baby...!" she called out in a hoarse voice, sticking her head into the tunnel and reaching down.
The boy let out the biggest cough of relief when his sister's panicked, tear-stained, and dirty face emerged from the darkness into the orange sunlight, held by his mother's strong hands. "Ghaghgh..." the girl choked, her golden eyes squeezing shut in the same adorable way Nivalis's had just moments ago.
Silvia immediately began coughing, her delicate hands clinging to her mother's shoulders in desperation, her entire body trembling from overuse of her mana and painful spasms of her lungs. The howling wind blew her long, messy hair all over her face, her torn cloak fluttering against her naked butt. "Tha-aank you, Mo-o-om," she sobbed, her voice barely audible above the icy cold wind.
The three of them sat there on the snow, crying, coughing, and laughing all at once, while the freezing air bit and nipped at their tired, half-naked bodies, so pale from the lack of sunlight that they looked whiter than the snow around them.
Silvia hit her doofus brother on the shoulder several times for his "it's done" thing before giving him the tightest hug she had ever given, muttering a quiet, "thank you" into his pointy ear. Aster, being his doofus self, didn't have the strength to hug her back, so instead he gave her just a weak nod and a quiet, "Mm-hmm... you too," in his croaked voice. Nivalis hugged her babies from behind and squeezed as hard as her shivering body allowed, peppering the top of their heads with kisses.
Then they noticed the sunset, and the sight made their eyes go wide despite the searing pain it caused. There, above the sea of green pines in white coats, was the most beautiful sight they had seen in a very long time, the colors of the dying day painting the sky in hues of red, orange, yellow, and purple. Most of it was covered in puffy clouds that looked as if they had been dipped into a bowl of grape jelly, and it was that brief, perfect moment in time when they allowed the sun to peek behind their fluffy forms.
All around them were trees and thick bushes whenever their eyes landed, with only a few rocky hills poking out of the green, like the one they were currently sitting on. The wind caused the wood to creak, the branches to sway, and the bushes to whisper. Everything looked like it was straight out of a winter painting, one that no master of the brush could ever replicate. The only thing ruining it was their coughing, but they chose to pretend they didn't hear it.
However, their joy and relief lasted only a moment, as the howl of the wind was quickly replaced by a loud, scratching, hissing noise coming from the hole they had just crawled out of. "Shit-shit-shit... RUN!" Nivalis swore in a croaked voice, her coughs getting mixed in with the words as she tried to scramble to her feet. Once standing, she took her children's hands without a moment's hesitation and dragged them across the snowy hilltop, heavy boulders blurring past them as they ran, snowflakes whipping their pale faces without mercy.
Aster struggled to keep up, his tired legs almost giving out from under him every few steps he took, and if it weren't for his mother's firm grip, he would've surely fallen to the ground. Tears with a faint red hue kept filling his eyes and running down his cheeks, freezing his eyelashes together, making everything around him nothing more than a blurry mess of colors and shapes. His ears were filled with his own coughing and panting, along with the pounding of his heart against his ribs. Yet he kept going, running through the snow and rocks as fast as his skinny, spent body allowed.
And just as their wobbly feet hit the tree line, the swarm of worms erupted from the ground where they had sat just a moment ago in a fountain of wriggling bodies, the wet, disgusting sounds of their mouths and bodies filling the forest. Aster dared to take a glance back over his shoulder, and the blurry dark-red shape of hunger that he saw made his steps a whole lot faster.