Jess’s head was sent spinning by this information. They could barely think straight, but even as they could, their eyes grew wide and they headed back towards the stairs. “No… We have to save it…”

Beth bolted after them, grabbing their hand, causing them to pause. Beth could feel how much their body was trembling. “Where are you going?”

Jess turned to her. “We have to go protect the origin shard in the second chamber… Please… It’s alive… We can’t let that thing get to it…”

Beth sighed and rushed forward. “Jess… You still have next to zero essence in your body… You’re so weak right now… You would die…”

Jess shook their head. It was only now that Beth realized that Jess’s hair had shifted from the terrified purple to a deeply aggressive red. “I won’t die… And even if I don’t have essence, I can still fight… Plus, I have a little primal essence still… And you have essence.”

“You can’t use primal essence in such a depleted state… you could hurt yourself… permanently…” Beth explained, concern creeping further in to her voice.

“I have to try…” Jess said, still walking up the stairs.

Beth wanted to argue with them more, but she realized that, at this point, it would be completely useless. “Fine…”

Beth rushed back forward and once again slung them over her shoulders, ensuring that wouldn’t exhaust themself anymore. When they reached the top, Jess paused for a moment and searched the tunnels once more. Beth didn’t say anything, but they noticed a piece of one of Jess’s fingers disappearing in to haze of green. They were at zero and they were compensating by using the essence of their body. Jess pointed towards the tunnel they would have to go through and Beth just stared at them, a mix of concern and amazement at the fact they were still conscious.

They headed back in to the tunnels, listening to the far off sounds of the creature reverberating through the stones. When they reached the second chamber, they were both relieved to find that it was still almost entirely intact. Other than the tunnel that had been dug, it seemed that the orb was untouched. Likely, the creature was unable to sense the origin shard through the rock exterior. Beth set down Jess and they rushed to the orb, examining it for any damage. They let out a sigh of relief, finding that the orb was in perfect condition.

They then turned to Beth. “Beth… you need to feed the orb your essence so that the outer casing will disappear…”

Beth raised her eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that leave me totally drained too?”

Jess shook their head. “The only reason I lost all my essence was because I fed it to the shard and… because I have such a small supply… You’ll be drained a little, but you’ll recover it pretty quickly…”

Beth nodded and took a deep breath, placing her hand on the stone surface and feeling as her essence was pulled from her. Unlike Jess, the orb only drained around half of what Beth had left. The rock then shattered, leaving the shard exposed. Even Beth could feel the energy it was emitting. The two took up defensive stances, Beth forming a seal on the back of her hand. They could hear the frantic screeches of the creature change direction and begin coming towards them.

Within a few moments, the sound became immense and the creature burst forth from the walls, letting out a loud screech. They took notice of the added size and the fact that there now seemed to be a section object inside of its body. Beth quickly took to launching waves of stone spikes at the creature, but they seemed to have no effect. The creature was essentially a cloud of darkness being vaguely held together by a network of concentrated essence that was hard to perceive let alone attack.

Beth quickly coated her fists in construct magic and rushed forward, using another seal to boost her in to the air, so that she could directly strike the creature. This time, the attack connected and creature screeched in anger, clawing at Beth and sending her flying backwards. The shirt she was wearing began to emit purple smoke and Beth quickly cast it aside, leaving her with even flimsier defense.

As the creature was beginning to regain itself, Beth took a moment and began to try and sense the structure of the creature, finding that there were two large masses of essence in the center, the two origin shards it had taken from the lions. Emanating out from them was the structure that seemed to be holding the entire thing together. She quickly coated her entire body in construct and rushed forward.

The creature swiped its claws at her as she approached, but she dodged out of the way, only receiving a small scrape to her coating. Once she was close enough, she boosted herself upwards once more, but this time, she flew directly in to the body of the creature. Since origin shards were essentially indestructible, she didn’t want to destroy them, just remove them from the creature’s body. As she entered the creature’s body, her coating almost immediately began to dissolve and so Beth had to act fast. She swam through the body and reached out to grab the origin shards. As she closed her hand, she was shaken forward, thrusting her out of the creature’s body.

Beth opened her hand, finding that she had only been able to grab one of the origin shards. She quickly tossed it to Jess who pushed it to the side, not wanting to touch it. Beth then geared up to go get the second origin shard, but she dropped to her knees, a wave of nausea taking hold of her. She was struck by the realization of just how much essence she had used.

She shakily made her way back to her feet and used what essence she had to form a coating over her arms to ensure she could grab the shard, but as she looked up, she found that the creature was already swinging its massive claw at her. As she watched the claw flying towards her, all of time seemed to slow.

Jess had seen this coming and was already rushing forward in an effort to stop the creature, but they were thrown backwards against a wall. Watching in horror, Jess saw the second claw reel back and begin to swipe. In that instant, Jess cried out and glowing green flames exploded around them. In a burst of power and emotion, they had finally flicked the switch. The effects of the primal essence around them were no longer just simply sparks, but full-blown flames.

Despite this, they didn’t have any essence remaining, so they had to use their body. Gazing down at the injury on their finger, they sighed and decided in that instant that, if they had to sacrifice their whole arm, they would do it to save Beth.  They reinforced their muscles and were met with blinding pain as their arm began to dissolve in to essence. With blinding speed, they launched forward at the creature, passing directly through its open mouth.

As Jess passed through the creature’s mouth, they pushed further, more of their arm disappearing and their body beginning to succumb to the effects of the destruction that surrounded them. They finally saw the second shard and they grabbed it with the arm they still had left before dropping out of the creature on to the ground beneath.

The creature let out a final cry of anguish, its body dissolving. However, as Jess righted themself, their vision blurry, they were met with the sight of Beth standing back near the platform. Jess hobbled towards her, Beth’s body slowly coming in to focus. When Jess got closer, they saw something strange, so they began to rush forward. In the nick of time, they caught Beth from falling to the ground.

Jess’s eyes began to fill with tears as they stared down at Beth’s body. Despite the fact that they had destroyed the creature, they had been too late. Going through Beth’s torso, there was a deep gash that was emitting deep purple smoke. Still hanging on to an ounce of consciousness as the light was fading from her eyes, Beth turned to Jess and managed a pained smile. She reached a hand upwards to gently hold Jess’s cheek.

Jess sniffed and held the hand to their cheek, feeling just how cold Beth’s body had become. “Hey there… Jessie… Did you win…?” Beth managed to choke out.

Jess just nodded, unable to speak through the lump forming in their throat. Beth met them with a confused look. “Why the tears…? We passed the searcher trial… Like we… always wanted…”

Jess just stared at Beth, watching as her body began to dissolve. “You know… I was gonna… tell you after… but… I… love you…” Beth choked out. “I… love… you… Jessie…” she managed before the rest of her body dissolved, leaving only a small glowing green soul fragment and her badge which Jess could see was now glowing.

On their left, Jess heard a soft rumbling. Pushed forth by nothing but force of will, Jess picked up the badge and put it with theirs before reaching out to gingerly pick up the soul fragment with their remaining hand. They trudged towards the rumbling, a tunnel out of the chamber having formed. They couldn’t even cry as they walked, their energy too depleted.

When they reached the top of the tunnel, they were met by an excited crowd. By now, all Jess could hear was muted ringing, their body having gone numb to the world around it. As they stepped on to the stage holding the soul fragment and now missing an arm, Jess just stood there. The crowd fell still and so did Jess. Their vision quickly faded as they collapsed to the ground, the world going dark as they fell unconscious.