The liquid sat heavy and cold against the side of Revvyn's cheek. The concentrated mint taste remained there, a numbing chill that made his gums tingle and his jaw feel heavy.
The lead Nymph leaned closer, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw before sliding down to the collar of his shirt. Her eyes were dark, swirling with a hunger that wasn't just for his blood.
"The others were old, dry things," she whispered, her breath smelling of honey and rot.
"But you... Pretty face ...your mana is fresh. It's vibrant. We will enjoy every bit of you before we tear the skin from your bones...We will make you forget the world above, traveler and let you die with a smile."
Her hand moved lower, reaching for his belt. Revvyn felt a surge of pure, cold revulsion. He didn't wait for her to touch him.
He lunged upward.
He spat the glowing mouthful of sedative directly into her amber eyes. She shrieked, a sound that started as a woman's cry and ended as a jagged, mechanical hiss.
Revvyn didn't stop to watch her claw at her face. He rolled off the bed, his feet hitting the cold, vine-woven floor. His hand clamped onto the earthen jug on the bedside table.
He smashed it against the bedpost, the clay shattering into jagged, razor-sharp shards.
Before the other four could react, Revvyn moved. He grabbed the nearest Nymph, the one who had been standing by the door, he grabbed her by her long pale hair. He yanked her back, pinning her against his chest and pressing a long, curved shard of clay against her throat.
"Don't move!" Revvyn roared. His voice was raw, his throat still burning from the salt and silt of the springs.
The other four stopped dead. The beauty in the room was flickering like a dying candle.
The soft silver light dimmed, revealing the truth beneath the glamour. The walls weren't made of sandalwood; they were rib-bones and hardened silt. The silk bed was a mass of damp, pulsating kelp.
The leader Nymph turned, her hands covering her eyes, her skin turning a sickly, translucent gray.
"Let her go, traveler," the leader hissed. Her voice was no longer melodic; it sounded like stones grinding together.
Long, black claws began to slide from her fingertips with a clicking sound. "You are underwater incase you don't know . You have no breath. You have no hope. We were kind to you. We were going to give you pleasure before the end..."
"I don't care about your god-damned pleasure, you uglies." Revvyn gritted out, his eyes darting around the room.
In the corner, he saw his bag and his rusted cutlass piled under a layer of green slime.
"Where is the way out? How do I get out of here?"
The leader didn't answer. Instead, her jaw unhinged, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth. A pair of leathery wings unfurled from her back, dripping with black ichor.
"Kill him," she commanded. "Don't hold back."
They lunged.
Revvyn didn't have time to be a hero. He needed the beast. "Syll! Assume Boar Form!"
The indigo mark on his hand flared with a desperate, violet light.
[Mana: 35 -> 20]
The mana cost felt heavy, like he was dragging a rusted chain out of his own chest. The sedative in his system was still fighting him, trying to keep his power suppressed. But the bond held. The purple slime exploded outward from his hand, the mass of it expanding with a wet, heavy thud. In an instant, the room was filled with the massive, bristling shape of the Boar.
The Nymphs shrieked as the Boar charged. Syll didn't just fight; he trampled. He slammed two of the Nymphs against the bone-walls, the sound of snapping ribs echoing in the small space.
The Nymph Revvyn was holding struggled, her claws raking across his forearms, drawing thin lines of blood. Revvyn felt no pity.
"Sorry," he muttered.
He jammed the glass shard into her glassy, black eyes, twisting it once before yanking it out and throwing her body toward the leader to create a distraction.
He scrambled across the floor, his fingers closing around the cold hilt of his cutlass and the straps of his bag.
He turned to the leader, who was pinned against a rib-bone pillar by Syll's massive head. "How do I get out of here?"
"You can't," she wheezed, black fluid leaking from her mouth. "We are hundreds of feet down. We were cursed to never touch the sun... so we take the life of those who fall. We were going to eat you, boy. Just like the rest."
"Disgusting," Revvyn said.
He looked at the other Nymphs, they were already starting to knit back together. A broken arm slid back into its socket with a sickening wet click. They were healing as fast as he could break them.
Syll let out a sharp, urgent chirp. The Boar form was flickering.
"Let's try this one more time," Revvyn whispered.
He climbed onto the Boar's broad, bristling back, gripping the coarse fur. Syll let out a final, thunderous roar, his feet churning the silt on the floor until the room was a blur of dust and bone-fragments.
"Go!"
The Boar lunged for the far wall. Revvyn tucked his head, shielding his face with his arms.
CRASH.
The bone-wall shattered. The transition was violent. One second they were in air; the next, a wall of freezing, heavy water slammed into Revvyn's chest, knocking the breath from his lungs.
The pressure was immense. Syll began to dissolve, the Boar form failing under the weight of the deep. But as the beast fell apart, it didn't just vanish. The purple mass surged toward Revvyn, wrapping around his limbs, fusing with his skin.
[Forced Fusion Active]
[Mana Draining: 15... 12... 10...]
He kicked, his Agility boosting his movements until he felt like a torpedo. He looked back through the dark, murky water.
Behind him, the small nymph-castle looked like a glowing ribcage. A dozen pale shapes were swarming out of the hole, their leathery wings acting like fins as they streaked through the water toward him.
Revvyn's lungs began to burn. His vision was tunneling. Ten feet. Twenty feet. He was moving fast, but the surface felt miles away.
He felt a sharp, stinging pain in his calf. One of the Nymphs had reached him, her claws raking across his skin. He kicked out, the fused slime on his leg acting like a flipper, sending a shockwave through the water that knocked her back.
[Mana: 8... 5... 3...]
He was losing speed. The mint from the drink was still in his system, making his muscles feel cold and sluggish. The light from the surface was a dim, flickering promise of silver.
Another Nymph swerved in front of him, her needle-teeth bared. Revvyn swung his cutlass, the blade moving slow through the water, but the edge caught her throat, sending a cloud of dark blood into his face. He pushed past her, his heart began to hammer in his chest, a dying rhythm.
Thirty feet.
The pressure in his head was becoming unbearable. His ears felt like they were going to pop. He could hear the Nymphs behind him, the rhythmic thrum-thrum of their leathery wings in the water. They were gaining.
Forty feet.
His lungs were on fire. He was seeing spots.
The indigo light of the bond was flickering, turning a dull and dying. The Nymphs were closing the gap, their clawed hands reaching for his ankles, their pale faces twisted in a final, desperate hunger.
Revvyn reached out, his fingers breaking the surface of the water just as the cold, iron grip of the leader Nymph closed around his leg.
He sucked in a ragged, wet breath of air, the moonlight hitting his face. For one glorious second, he thought he'd made it.
Then the leader Nymph surged out of the water behind him. She was shrieking, her jaw unhinged, her claws digging into his calf as she tried to drag him back down into the dark.
"Mine!" she screamed, her face inches from his—beautiful and rotting at the same time, the moonlight reflecting in her dead, hungry eyes.
Revvyn's hands found the shore. He dug his fingers into the damp, silver sand, his nails tearing as he fought the weight of the creature. His muscles screamed. Syll was barely alive, pulsing weakly on his skin.
The leader's grip was tight, but the slime from Syll's failing fusion was still slick on Revvyn's skin. She slipped, her claws slid an inch down his leg as she struggled to find purchase on the mud.
Revvyn didn't hesitate. With the absolute last of his strength, he rolled onto his back and brought his free leg up.
THUD.
He slammed his heavy, water-logged boot directly into the center of her face. Her nose flattened with a sickening, wet crunch.
"Oops," Revvyn rasped.
The force of the stomp sent her reeling backward. She let out a gurgling cry as she splashed back into the dark water, disappearing beneath the surface.
Revvyn didn't wait. He clawed his way up the bank, his limbs shaking, until his entire body was on dry land. He collapsed onto his stomach, gasping for air that finally tasted clean.
On the back of his hand, the indigo mark flickered once and went dark. Syll was exhausted. Revvyn was broken.
But as he looked up, he saw the trees. They weren't green or brown. They were silver, their leaves glowing with a soft, ethereal light that matched the moon above.
He'd made it. The Moonlit Forest.