Page 15 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
They come and go like fragments of a dream. Sometimes, it is the sharp, authoritative voice of the woman, Elira, cutting through the fog with clinical commands. "Keep pressure here." "Her breathing is shallow." At other times, I hear My voice, a strange, disembodied sound, whispering that everything will be alright. Then, most beautiful and painful of all, I hear my mother. She is humming the lullaby from my childhood, her voice a soft, gentle melody that weaves through the sharp edges of my pain and offers a moment of impossible peace.
In a brief flash of clarity, I understand. It’s Thorrin. He is walking beside me, a looming shadow of silent misery, and he is using his mimicry not as a lure, but as a desperate attempt to comfort me. He is throwing every voice he has everlearned at the wall of my pain, hoping one will stick. The effect is bizarre, a disorienting chorus of ghosts from my past and present. It should be terrifying, to hear My voice coming from a place outside of myself, but in my delirious state, it is a strange, profound comfort. The voices are an anchor, a thread of sound connecting me to the living world as the dark tide of unconsciousness tries to pull me under. He cannot touch my wound or offer words of healing, so he is trying to mend my spirit with the only tool he has: the echoes of those I have loved and lost.
The pain recedes, and the world dissolves into a soft, warm haze. I am a child again, small and burning with fever, tucked into my straw mattress. The room is dark, save for a single candle flickering on my bedside table. My mother is here. Her hand is a cool, soothing weight on my forehead, her presence a solid wall against the frightening shapes the shadows make. She is humming that lullaby, her voice a low, comforting vibration that I can feel in my own bones.
“It’s alright, my darling,” she whispers, and the sound is the purest comfort I have ever known. “I’m here. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
I look up at her, but her face is a blur, a featureless oval of shadow against the candlelight. I can’t see her smile, can’t see the familiar kindness in her eyes. But I can feel her love, a palpable warmth that is more real than sight. In the center of her chest, where her heart should be, a soft, golden light is pulsing, a gentle, steady rhythm that matches the cadence of her humming.
Her hand, so cool and soft on my skin, begins to change. It feels larger now, the fingers longer, tipped with something hard and smooth like polished stone. It is still gentle, but it is no longer just a human hand. It is something more. Something ancient and powerful. The voice that murmurs my name is hers,but underneath it, there is a deeper resonance, a gravelly rasp like stones shifting at the bottom of a river.
The figure beside my bed is both my mother and a towering creature of bone. The love that radiates from her is both the gentle care of a parent and the fierce, desperate protectiveness of a monster. In the strange, fevered logic of my dream, this is not a contradiction. It is a perfect, seamless fusion. The two greatest protectors I have ever known—the mother who pulled me from the ice and the monster who pulled me from the darkness—have become one and the same. The comfort is absolute. I am safe. I am cherished. I am loved by a creature with my mother's voice and a monster's form, and in this dream, it is the most natural thing in the world.
A sharp, violent jolt tears me from the dream. The warmth and safety vanish, replaced by the biting cold and the sharp, grinding pain in my side. I am back in the snow, back in the endless, jolting journey through the forest. The comforting presence from my dream is gone, and I am filled with a sudden, sharp sense of loss and a terror so profound it is a physical ache. The voices have stopped, leaving only the sound of the wind and the heavy, rhythmic crunch of footsteps in the snow.
I am lucid enough now to know who is carrying me. The hard, unyielding bone of Thorrin's arm is beneath my back, his massive frame a living shield against the elements. The memory of the dream is still vivid, the feeling of his hand and my mother's hand as one. The desperate need for that comfort, for that impossible fusion of love and protection, is an overwhelming force. The figure from my dream is gone, but one half of it is still here.
I have to let him know I am still here. That I am still fighting. That I do not blame him. I gather every last shred of my strength, pulling it from the deepest, most hidden corners of my being. I force my lungs to take in a breath that feels likeswallowing glass, force my lips to form a shape, force a sound from my throat.
“Thorrin.”
The name is a bare whisper, a ghost of a sound, almost lost in the sigh of the wind through the pines. It is so quiet I am not even sure I have said it aloud. But he hears it.
He stops dead, his entire massive frame going rigid. The swift, relentless forward motion ceases so abruptly that the world seems to lurch around me. The silence is absolute, shocking. I feel his body tense beneath me, a statue carved from sudden, desperate hope. Slowly, he turns his skull-face down to look at me. In the dim, snowy light of the forest, I see the glow in his chest, which had been a dull, sick green, flicker violently. And then, in the very center of the despairing gloom, a tiny, hesitant spark of warm gold appears. It is a small thing, a single ember in a sea of darkness, but it is there. It is a sign that he has heard me. That my voice, even at its weakest, can still reach him. That the bond my subconscious forged in the fever dream is real. He holds my gaze for a long, breathless moment, and I do see not a monster, but a soul in agony. Then, with a new, more desperate urgency, he begins to run again, plunging us deeper into the saving dark.
24
ELIRA
The elven outpost materializes through the swirling snow, a collection of sharp, dark spires that jut from the mountainside like broken teeth. It’s a place I know, a festering little settlement on the fringe of Kaerith’s territory that he suffers to exist only because wiping it out would be more trouble than it’s worth. The dark elf guards on the ramparts spot us immediately, their violet eyes widening first in alarm, then in a kind of horrified disbelief. Two Waira, walking in truce, approaching their gates. One of them, my Kaerith, is a figure of legend to these elves, a ghost story made flesh. The other is a trembling, pathetic creature cradling a broken human.
“Stay back,” I command, my voice sharp. Kaerith stops instantly, a silent, menacing shadow at my back. Thorrin follows my lead, his desperation a palpable scent on the frigid air. This negotiation is my burden to bear.
I approach the gate alone, my human face the only thing that keeps their archers from loosing a volley. “We need your healer,” I call up to the captain on the wall, my voice carrying easily in the still, heavy air.
His gaze flicks from me to the two monsters waiting behind me, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “The beast of the Ridge brings us a gift?” he sneers, his eyes lingering on Lyssa’s limp form. “We do not treat his table scraps.”
A growl, low and threatening as an avalanche, rumbles from Kaerith’s chest. I shoot him a look over my shoulder, a silent command to remain still.
“The girl is human,” I say. “She is dying. Your outpost has a trained magus. You will heal her. This is not a request.”
The captain laughs, a sound like breaking glass. “And why would we do that, little human pet? What do we get in return for helping the creature that hunts our patrols for sport?”
“You get to keep your outpost,” I reply, letting the threat hang in the air. “And I will owe you a favor. You know who I am. You know my word is good.”
He hesitates, his eyes narrowing as he weighs his options. He knows my story. The human who survived Kaerith, who bonded with him. A favor from me is a rare and valuable currency. Finally, with a grimace, he gives a curt nod. The gate groans open. “The girl and you may enter,” he calls down. “The beasts stay outside. That is the only deal you will get.” I turn to Thorrin. The desperation in his glowing sockets is a painful thing to witness. To hand her over, to trust his rival’s mate and a pack of hostile elves with the one thing he values—it is an agony I understand all too well. With a reluctance that is almost a physical tremor, he kneels and places Lyssa in my waiting arms. Her weight is slight, her body alarmingly cold. As I take her, our eyes meet, and for a moment, the hatred between us is eclipsed by a shared, desperate purpose.
The healing chamber is as cold and sterile as the elves who inhabit it. Glimmering crystals hang from the ceiling, casting a sharp, blue-white light on the stone table where Lyssa lies. An elven magus, an old creature with eyes like chips of obsidian,moves around her, his long, delicate fingers tracing glowing runes in the air above her broken body. The air crackles with contained power, the scent of ozone sharp in my nostrils. Lyssa is unconscious, her face a pale, sweat-sheened mask of pain.
I stand in the corner, a silent sentinel, my arms crossed over my chest. The healers ignore me, their movements efficient, precise, and utterly devoid of compassion. They are mending her body as a carpenter might mend a broken chair, with a professional detachment that sets my teeth on edge. As the magus chants, the runes he’s drawn settle onto Lyssa’s skin, glowing with a fierce, hot light. Her body arches on the table, a silent scream frozen on her lips as the magic knits bone and expels the dark blood from her lungs. It is a brutal, violent form of healing, and I watch, my hands clenched into fists, feeling a ghost of my own past pains.
I see myself in this girl. I see the terror, the impossible hope, the reckless courage it takes to love something like a Waira. I look at her pale, still face, and I remember the early days with Kaerith, the constant, humming fear that lived beneath my skin, the terror that his monstrous strength would one day shatter me by accident. Thorrin is a fool. A weak, sentimental fool who let his hunger be twisted into an obsession he could not control. But he did this. He swallowed his pride, violated the sacred laws of his kind, and carried her here, begging for the help of his enemies. That level of devotion… I understand it. I respect it, even as I despise the creature who feels it. He may be a monster, but he is her monster. And he is trying, in his own broken way, to save her.
The magus finishes his work, the last of the glowing runes fading from Lyssa’s skin. Her breathing is deeper now, more even. The immediate danger has passed. I move to her side, brushing a damp strand of hair from her forehead. Her skin is still too cool, but the color is slowly returning to her cheeks.She stirs, her eyelids fluttering. Her gaze, hazy with pain and confusion, finds mine.
My voice is harder than I intend it to be, a rough, unvarnished truth. “You’re lucky he brought you here.”
Lyssa winces, a small, pained movement. Her own voice is a fragile whisper, but it is laced with a stubborn, familiar defiance. “He didn’t mean to hurt me.”
