Sol's attention is somewhere else; he forgets the tail has a maw the csezul uses to latch onto the ceiling. He never thought the tail would be used to bite living creatures.
The tail.
Pain spreads instantly, a searing heat along the left middle of his back, worsening by the heartbeat. He loses his balance. His vision narrows and blurs; the edges of his perception darken.
Shit. I didn't know.
Nia gets out of the lake just in time to evade a larger rock tumbling through the opening above her. More snow starts to pile in; more light starts to shine in.
Wanwan focuses on Sol and, understanding he's in great pain, darts sideways to help. He doesn't know the csezul's head is tracking with him. It clips him mid-run, tripping him hard.
Left prone, Wanwan tries to stand as fast as possible, but the csezul is faster. The tail that bit Sol is already halfway to Wanwan's position and, with a flail-like impact, smashes him square in the side of the face, hurling him into the boulder Sol set to protect his littermates.
SLAM.
The boulder loses its balance.
Reeling from the impact, Wanwan cannot avoid the boulder that falls on top of him in time, striking him on the back.
Sol and Wanwan are incapacitated, just like that. They underestimated this enemy.
Nia's breathing quickens; her body is cold, freezing even. She starts to shiver. She has to do something.
The csezul's head and tail retract toward their stubby lengths and, on its two rotund legs, it starts to move toward Sol.
The head expands, exposing the circular, leech-like teeth hidden behind its pink-red lips. It starts to open wide. It is trying to swallow Sol whole.
Sol still has some consciousness left, but it ebbs and flows like ocean waves.
Nia.
Wanwan whimpers. The rock is not impossibly heavy; the damage from the csezul was. He tries to stand. If possible, he wants to draw the csezul away from Sol. His efforts are fruitless; his body took too much damage.
The maw of the csezul lowers toward Sol's head, opening wide.
"Nia…" Sol whispers weakly. If she lives, she can save Wanwan and his littermates later.
The massive circular, leech-like maw begins to swallow him whole.
"…Run." It is his last whisper before his head is swallowed by the csezul.
Nia stands, wet clothes clinging to her skin, hair no longer moving with the ambient air. She stretches both hands as far as possible to her sides, palms open. Seeing this with her own eyes, something awakens inside her.
She ran once.
She will not run again.
"No," she says, her emerald eyes set with determination. She knows she can still act. She is the only one who can tip the balance.
She clasps her hands together with a sharp crack. She will attempt something she has never succeeded at before.
A Pulse of Life.
It is not simple restoration. Not mending. Not ordinary healing. It is the only thing that can save Sol, Wanwan, and the Garm pups—if it works.
The thing is, it is not a simple spell to attempt.
Inside Lumen Octavum — The Eightfold Light, Pulse of Life is one of the hardest white magic spells to cast, even by a talented priestess's standards. It has been banned by the priestesses since before the Last War, for fear it would bring new vigor to conflict.
Healing is a form of magic that defies the natural order. Things are supposed to live, then die. It is the law. Healing magic taught from the Eightfold Light was problematic and banned for a reason, so that people wounded by war could finally die.
If healing exists, war drags on, and with the many possibilities that healing poses to conflict, it reshapes destruction in many forms: torture, slavery, undeath.
Furthermore, Pulse of Life was considered the worst offender. It is indiscriminate. It heals everything within its area of influence, no matter the side. First created to stop conflict, it was instead used to lengthen war, corrupted into a tool of wanton violence.
All at the expense of its caster.
The spell is so hard to cast, and its toll on the caster's body so heavy, it was classified as an Ultima Fracti. Not to be used unless the situation demands it, and only if there is no other option.
A limit that was not supposed to be broken.
A last resort.
That was why healing was forbidden, left behind, forgotten.
Cruel, but it is the reality of things.
Nia was born with healing in her veins. "A Spark," her head priestess said.
Nia knew this. She was taught not to use that gift in front of anybody else. She was moved to another temple entirely, to live in seclusion. Her talent could spark hope, or spark a new desire for war. Whose desire, she does not know.
And to be honest, at this moment, Nia does not care.
She knows what her healing entails; she knows how heavy the toll is on her body. But she cannot ignore the fact that she can mend things, make things better, save beings from pain.
The moment she touched Sol's forehead and healed his wounds.
The moment she touched Wanwan and removed the poison running rampant within his body.
She knows she was sent here for a reason.
If not as a messenger, then as an amendment.
She blinks.
What she cares about now is making sure Sol, Wanwan, and the puppies are safe.
She strains to remember the words the head priestess forced her to listen to over and over.
Only your memory and knowledge will be able to save you there. It's a place for the demons. Read.
And thus, that is what she will do.
She will read.
She clasps her hands; threads of light leak from the cracks between her fingers. She opens them slowly, revealing a sphere of white, golden, greenish light that shines like a sun in the cavern.
The light from the opening dims, absorbed by the orb Nia created.
Her hands move to her sides; her feet leave the cold cavern floor as she floats upward.
The orb buds and blossoms like a flower, and the flower then forms a book, Lumen Octavus: De Conjuratione Clara — The Eightfold Light: On Luminous Conjuration, made entirely of light and mana, its pages flipping wildly. She lifts her right hand and stops the book at the page she wants.
It exposes the incomplete memory of the spell, Pulse of Life, right then and there. Nia lifts the words and sigils out of the book and closes it beneath the floating letters and diagrams.
She will have to assemble them right here, right now. That's her only option.
She spreads them around her. The letters link with lines of light into words, then rearrange into new words, which then rearrange themselves again.
Each attempt traces a shining lattice around her that brightens and dims with every try.
The sigils—circles, triangles, squares—combine and reshape, unsuccessfully, again and again.
She has to remember the right combination of each letter, of each word, of each part of the diagram. Dozens of attempts are made in the span of a second. Each attempt takes a toll; her body aches with pain each time the lattice shines and dims, but she is not stopping.
The veins around her eyes start to shine with the same colored light she conjured.
The csezul's maw already encloses Sol's head. In his waning consciousness, he feels his vision darken as the crushing pressure of the flexible throat wraps around him. But light shines through the csezul's skin and muscle and reaches Sol, who is almost on the brink.
…Nia?
Wanwan whimpers and opens one eye weakly toward Nia's glow. He knows what she is doing. He knows what Nia is feeling, the ache, the pain. He cannot do anything. He growls to himself and whimpers again.
Floating near the snowy hole, each attempt refracts the natural sunlight.
"Lumen…, no." Mana motes begin to flow in; she draws more ambient power with each attempt.
'Pain.' The head priestess' voice echoes in her head.
"Lumina…, that's not it." The csezul pauses its swallow, as if realizing something. It has no eyes, yet it feels the shift in the air.
'Remember, Nia. The foundation of healing is pain.'
"Lux… yes, it starts with Lux. Lux aeterna, dona pulsus." The cavern dims as her light grows.
'It's a miracle that was created in order to alleviate pain. The pain that was healed has to go somewhere. Thus, we were created. Embrace it. Only then and there, shall you be a true priestess of the light.'
She closed her eyes. She remembers the last time the head priestess kissed her forehead, right before the portal closes.
'I shall remember that, head priestess.'
She opened her eyes, even though the pain doesn't seem to go away, they are no longer distracting her. She might be able to finish rebuilding the memory of the spell.
"Vita clara, dona fluxus." The letters that circle her start to form words above her head, those words in turn forming sigils that collect above her, forming what seems to be a flower, budding.
"Per octo radios." The flower opens a little more. "Dona sursum."
Wanwan's littermates, bathed in light, use all their strength to open their eyes, even for a moment.
"Vivifica totum." Nia's arms lift toward the now-blooming white lily, made of pure white, gold, and greenish light.
A moment of darkness: all light is absorbed by the lily for a heartbeat.
All sound is absorbed, all senses are dulled, all color is muted.
In the middle of that oppressive silence, one sound cuts through:
"Pulsus Vitae."
A wave of pure light, heavy as a torrent, washes over the cave. Warmth rushes through Wanwan, Sol, and the pups.
Like the light of dawn washing away the night.
Wanwan howls. His littermates howl with him.
The Garm pups, perfectly healed, no longer ravaged by poison from within, emerge from the alcove. If the csezul had trouble with one, it now has five to contend with.
The csezul's body is also healed by the selfsame light, but Nia knows it will not make a difference.
One of Wanwan's littermates helps him lever the boulder off his back; another dashes at the csezul still swallowing Sol.
It leaps and spins in midair, raking the csezul's back, and lands behind Sol's feet, biting his ankle to stop him from going farther inside the csezul's throat. Another pup tears at the wings, opening fresh wounds. Another springs and clamps down on the csezul's back, biting.
Wanwan and the one who freed him growl together, ruby eyes bright even within Nia's radiance, and dash in tandem.
They vanish and reappear right on the other side of the room, right in front of the csezul. Behind them, a series of slashes, rips, shreds, and tears follows; a burst of gashes opens at once; green blood sprays.
The csezul staggers with pain, pulsing pressure through Sol's skull as he is crushed alive.
Sol's wound is gone. Consciousness returns. The inside of a csezul's head is not as pleasant as one would think. His hands scrabble and find two small shards of lunoxene, which he uses to stab the throat repeatedly.
Reeling, the csezul spits him out. It backs away, its body healed for a moment and now riddled with even worse wounds than before. It plants on two legs, flabby, scaleless wings spread.
Outnumbered, outarmed, outspelled.
It tries to run.
Sol vaults onto Wanwan's back, both hands gripping the lunoxene pieces. Wanwan instinctively knows what to do; he dashes and jumps with everything he has.
It's not enough; the csezul's flight is still a bit faster than he is. However, his eyes are still locked on the csezul, fully trusting the others with him.
That trust that was offered is now returned readily.
At the peak of Wanwan's jump, Sol leaps from the Garm's back. As if time slows, he feels himself float.
Like a shadow, a pup appears beside him, bites his collar, and yanks, slinging him farther.
Another springs in front, giving him a step to kick from, driving him even farther.
Two other littermates jump and bite the csezul's wings, weighing it down until Sol can reach.
He hurls the lunoxene shards over the csezul's head into another cluster of crystal. The blast sends hundreds of shards flying and drops the csezul again.
Sol's momentum still carries him forward, and the explosion drives splinters into his body, but he does not care. His aim is true.
His vision locks on one thing: the dagger piece stuck in the csezul's belly.
With both hands he seizes the blade's middle and, though it flays his palms, lets gravity pull him down.
He screams. A wet ripping tears the air. Green blood rains, warmth washing over Sol and the five pups.
He lands in a precise three-point crouch and springs aside before the wyvern crashes down.
The light fades.
Nia falls into the lake.