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"I don't trust it, I know where the ******** I am, I know we're not safe," he replied heavily, body rigid. Lucas must have had a damn target on him from the second he stepped in, and now...now Autumn was in the middle of it.

After only a second of hesitation, he slipped in front of Autumn, putting his good arm back to keep her behind himself. "I'm not going to let it get through you to get to me, but if we're going to survive this, you gotta tell me our next move." He glanced over his shoulders, his pale eyes wide and concealing his fear in the barest threads. "I don't know where to go from here!"

"A-ask it who it is. Get a name. L-l-let's see where. Where we go from there."

The crying doesn't stop. "It's me," the voice says, "It's Lady, Lucas, you need to go back, you need to not be here, you need to go back, you--"

She stops speaking, the sobbing sharp and broken. "I told you to wait," she says, and then she screams, a long unbroken wail, shrill and ear-piercing and awful--

and then the pain hits Lucas like a claw hammer to the gut, lancing down his spine as his bones twist and change shape and cartilage cracks and warps and--

and it hurts--

it hurts--

His pale eyes turned nervously to Autumn. "Why wouldn't she be able to just appear here -- " And he ducked, covering his ears at the shrill scream, his heart beating like a jackhammer against his ribs.

He tried to make sense of it but with the force of being hit in the stomach hard enough to double him over, he stumbled against the wall, and it began. The ache in him twisted and snapped and ground against itself and the man fell to his knees, gasping in shock at the horrific pain. SHE SAID IT WOULDN'T HURT IF I WAS HERE, his mind screamed, and just beneath it, an angry voice whispered, that's what you get for believing her.

Lucas fell onto his prosthetic shoulder with a dragging gulp of air and agony, grinding his teeth together and holding onto his own arms as if he could will it to stop, to -- to remember what he was. White hot pain lanced at his every thought, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to fight the sensation of warping where he lay.

IT'S NOT YOU, he wanted to scream at Autumn, but all he could do was utter a gutteral, tight-necked roar of pain, unable to find his voice.

Autumn jumped when the door opened, to... nothing. Still, her heart was pounding and her chest was heaving. There was blood, oh god, there was blood. Had Lady really needed in? Had she needed saving?

...Or had the blood been her trying so hard to get in?

Whatever. It wasn't important. Autumn dropped to put herself under Lucas's arm, and pushed up with all her might. He was heavy- so ******** heavy- but she wasn't going to leave him. Not- not if she could get him back before anything happened.

"Come on, come on, stay with me Lucas. T-think about Rylan, and Thorne, and how much you want to see them again. Come on, get through this with me!" She half-groaned, half-cried. Rosalinde, from her bag, called.

'There's an exit nearby, if you can get him there! Outside and downstairs, HURRY!'

God. God, please. Just let her get him out in time. They were ******** idiots, they'd been tricked. This wasn't kind-of wolfish, this was KILLING HIM. She was such an idiot, she'd done it again, she'd ******** up AGAIN.

The pain doesn't stop, but it... abates. It abides. Becomes, however vaguely, bearable.

Pax is waiting by Rosalinde, all six of its eyes quite wide and spinning with agitation.

Kindly One!

You cannot take

him back this way

He is hurting

May I help

Please

I mean no

harm

Pax's many legs form an odd sort of cradle around Lucas, and some of them form rudimentary hands full of herbs. As it crushes them, a fresh and clean scent rises, and the scenery changes--a grove, not Heliodora's--and Pax dunks Lucas in the crystal-clear water.

Once.

Twice.

A third time, and the red paint is gone, and the pain is gone, too. Lucas is soaking wet but human, entirely human, and alive.

The Enemy,

Pax explains,

Is in his nature.

You cannot protect

him from It.

There were dark, spindly legs and six spinning white orbs and then --

water.

By the third time, he was gasping for air and throwing himself away from Pax, stumbling and falling back on his hands. He felt like was choking on existing.

"I'm not," he wheezes, his voice raw and thick with residual pain, "going to hurt -- anybody. I refuse." He was panting, gaze turning back to...it. Pax. "And what -- good -- is any of this -- if we can't -- protect -- each other?"