Despite the boom of their own screams being enough to make Yellow feel like their brain is rattling around in their skull, the Valkhound is somehow able to push through it and close the distance shockingly quickly. Suddenly it's looming over them and the lurid blood and neon quills and massive twisted jaws and teeth dwarf the sifaka, making them feel like an ant about to be crushed. Dinner about to be tossed up and caught in those teeth and ripped apart.

NO. THEY CAN'T. They won't just let this happen. They can fight now. If magic won't save them then the gun will. The jaw hovering over them is also a target hovering over them. Would it still be able to crush them in those jaws if they were broken and bleeding? BANG. Another gunshot, aimed right at the vulnerable underside of its head and throat.

At the same time as they raise their gun, the Valkhound's giant claws are coming down on it. Desperately, Yellow pushes with their magic. At their best, this spell could lift a deer off its feet. Here, now, it's barely enough to shift the incoming strike off-course. Vicious claws slam down on the ground, just missing them, but it's too late for the Valkhound. The ground reverberates with the impact and the air reverberates with the gunshot and neon gore explodes out and splatters all over.

Then the Valkhound is gone, consumed within its dark chrysalis, and Yellow is alone on the ground, shivering and covered in blood and bits of flesh. They're safe. They've won. This has never happened before.

They're so dirty. Gradually horror overtakes their mind. They drop their gun and desperately start trying to groom the blood off of themself. River. There was a river nearby, wasn't there? They needed to get there. They couldn't be this messy, this disordered. They needed to clean themself.

It was a trippy feeling to have their mind torn in two directions at once: the horror of the neon gore soaking into their fur on one hand and the blazing triumph streaming in from the entire Hive on the other. For a moment they gave into the luminous joy beaming through their mind and bloodstream. Then they obeyed Mother's instruction to depart, picking up their gun and heading north toward the Crystal River. Once there, they could clean themselves off (although letting the blood stay on them for this long was agony, they did not want it touching their teeth and tongue if they tried grooming it away normally) and disappear to the safety of Ursa or Gemini, as they had originally intended.

It was the Collector's reward, they thought to Mother. For giving him a piece of my stone. A powerful weapon, he said, with a small chance of exploding in my hands if it backfired. A risk they had been willing to take--exploding in their hand wasn't that bad, all things considered--and that had paid off tremendously.

Mother faded into the background. Now at the Crystal River, Yellow carefully clambered down the steep banks—leaving the gun where it was safe and dry once they confirmed no one was nearby—and waded into the swift-moving water. It was bitterly cold, but not as cold as Ursa, and they could endure it for a short time for the sake of being clean. Neon gore diffused from their fur and was quickly washed away in the river's flux. Once clean, they climbed out, picked up their gun, and made for warmer places in leaping bounds.