ORIGIN

Time seems to come so much slower, in a disaster. Everything happens at once, and yet, Astéri's mind picks out the details with a delicate eye, one by one by one.

His internal glow, revealing just the outline of some colossal shape, the glint of massive white teeth in the dark, a mauve skin peppered by festering boils. Attikias's hand, pushing into his chest fur, the glint of desperation in his eyes. A shove, water weighing down what would otherwise have been a solid throw—even in the midst of chaos, his head racing a thousand miles an hour, he feels the very beginning of the oncoming current and instinct takes over. Run. Flee, get out of the way.

He doesn't need to be told twice. He can feel the eddies of smaller currents slipping past his pads as he twists and pushes, pushes as hard as he can, swimming for the doors, swimming for safety, before the beast slams into him—!

Sound doesn't carry well, down here in the depths. There are no screams, no cries of pain, to alert him to what has happened. All he can feel is the rushing wave of water, so fast, too fast, coming closer, closer, closer—

—the weight of something big, huge, larger than anything Astéri has ever seen, slams into his back legs, throwing him bodily through the gap in the door. He cries out at the blooming of what will later be bruises beneath his fur, for a moment twisting and rolling in the depths, momentum uncontrolled. Thrashing at the water, it takes a moment more to come to a stop—another to right himself, and then, and then.

He thinks a swear word Dad doesn't like him using as he sees light flash through the gap in the doorway, eyes going wide.

He can't stay back here, outside the chamber, even though a part of him wants nothing more than to run, run! Even though there's another gembound, kinda snake-like if it wasn't for the arms and crocodilian head, bolting through the door himself. He could run, too. He could be like that. He—he doesn't want to be in there. He doesn't want his bones crushed and lungs popped by the coiling grasp of that creature who could break him in its tentacle in an instant, if it really wanted to. He doesn't—he doesn't want to end up like Elroy, like that chrysalis in front of the spire, like that fleshy, gooey puddle of something that was once a bird that haunts him in his nightmares. He doesn't want to end up worse. He doesn't want to die…

...he doesn't want his family to die. He doesn't want anyone else to die in there, either. Attikias and Carja and everyone else, all the other Gembound that came down here on this mission, came down here knowing that danger awaited, if not knowing what—he doesn't want them to get hurt all alone. Even if he ends up chrysalizing, even if he ends up worse...

...if he doesn't go back in there, he can't say he tried his best. He can't say he tried at all, because he wouldn't have.

If his magic and claws and fangs can save even one Gembound back there, if he can take the place of even just one Gembound, then it will have been worth whatever pain that comes afterwards.

For the Gembound fighting in there.

For the Elenyas.

For Elroy.

Resolve steels his movements, guides his magicka—as he pushes away his fear and begins to swim again, ignoring the ache of bruised back legs, fire flows outwards instead of inwards, pooling in his extremities, in his paws. Just like Attikias told him; light up his paws, and then he can burn away the monster that threatens all of their lives.

Or at least try his damn best to.