When he heard those words, Asher froze. It was not fear that made him stand still but dormant memories he'd long had buried. He had to act…to move but his feet refused to budge even as one of the sharp tentacles aimed straight at him. The moment he realized she was depending on him made the entire world spin. Asher's chest tightened and he fought the urge to vomit.

"Even If you try to escape…you'll still be a failure." It was regret who spoke. Listening to her didn't spark anger but instead made Asher realize that he was still the weak little bandaged boy from a few weeks back and no amount of soap or affection would wash the truth away.

Just as the tentacle was about to pierce through him, Clara shoved him again to the side, blocking the tentacle with her metal hands, causing sparks from the friction to fly everywhere.

Watching her from the side Asher realized that the witch wasn't a fighter. Her movements were clunky and unbalanced, but she still persisted in blocking the feral Dremin.

"Don't even dream of it…You'll just get in the way." Fear spoke up before the boy could muster any courage to help.

"STAY THERE ASHER! Just Stay clear!" Clara shouted before Asher could rebuke the boyish voice. Fear was right and even if he wanted to deny it, Clara made it obvious that she didn't need the 12-year-old's help.

Defeated, he crawled further away from the tentacles as Clara weaved over to a cabinet and grabbed a purple diamond-shaped crystal. She then tried to insert the crystal into her arm, but the Dremin was faster. It sensed the agitation and pinned Clara to the wall making the crystal fly towards Asher.

Clara was fighting the beast off, barely holding it back while Asher stared at the crystal, the anxiety welling up inside him.

"Be a good little boy and hide…She told you to hide." Fear was right again. She asked him to stay, and he would listen. 

"Look at you…here you go getting someone else killed. What's the death count now?" Regret laughed at Asher whose eyes were welling up with tears. The boy's body tensed as he watched her dodge the attacks...his fists tightened. He gritted his teeth.

"I was never good at listening." Asher mumered as he grabbed the crystal and ran towards Clara. It took effort to recall the faint memories of the training he used to watch as a child.

"Deep…Breath…observe your surroundings…Dodge." The tentacles were comparatively slow for Asher who had the experience of being a street rat. He managed to dodge most of the tentacles while the rest slightly grazed him.

When he reached Clara the sludge has mostly covered her entire body up to her neck. It slowly creeped up to enter behind the edges of the mask.

"STAB my ar…." The sludge covered everything. Next, the feral Dremin would cocoon her body and induce a series of dreams to feed off her, but Asher would not let that happen. 

He dodged one last tentacle and jumped towards the wall where Clara was pinned. He aimed the crystal like a knife and its tip at where Clara's hand would be only to be swatted away by a tentacle sending him flying across the room and into a bookshelf.

"Now look at you…got both you and girly killed. What's the point now." Regret chided as Ash watched Clara's hand pierce through the sludge and grab into the falling crystal. 

With panicked swiftness she pierced it into her left arm which began to slowly glow brighter and brighter with heat, frightening the portion of the sludge holding her to the wall. Free at last she quickly removed her left arm and threw it beside the rampaging Balar, producing a small explosion which stunned him.

Finally able to get close to the main body, Clara grabbed the potion she made earlier and poured most of it over Balar causing the mass of writhing sludge to grow docile and halt its consumption of the room.

Now came the tough part. She drank what was left of the potion and sat beside Balar's head where the sludge was slowly drifting back into. She took a deep breath and slowly calmed herself with the help of the potion. It contained fairy dust. Fairy dust was a strong relaxant and being in the right state of mind was important when trying to feed a Dremin calm emotions.

In about a few minutes the sludge all returned to Balar's body which regained a decent amount of his form back.

While this happened, Asher didn't watch in silence. He felt guilty for hesitating to help and began to nervously clean the room of the debris.

When Clara was done, she looked at the boy and realized what Asher was doing. She sighed and walked over to him, grabbing the broom he was holding.

"When you asked for a hands-on experience, I didn't expect to lose an arm." She made another one of her dumb jokes, but it made Asher calm down. It made him crack an awkward smile. He hadn't expressed one in a long while.

"You've done enough today…go rest…The white flame knows I need a shower." Clara ruffled the boy's hair before rushing him out of the room. Asher walked to his room on the second floor while thinking the whole day over.

He didn't know that once he left Clara slumped at the door's side till she reached the ground. With gritted teeth, she grabbed onto the stump where her metal prosthetic used to be and cursed.

"Blights…for an arm that isn't here it's quite a handful." She tried to make herself laugh off the phantom pain till Stephan showed up suddenly in front of her. He was smiling per usual, but Clara had lived with this man for a long time now and she knew his smile hid pain.

When he realized that she saw through him, he quickly turned around and began to clear the rubble. It was his way of helping and she appreciated it nonetheless.

------

After a few days of emotion therapy, Balar was back on his feet. Clara was tending the storefront While Asher was beside the Dremin making the final checkups.

Balar's body was brand new with purple glistening feathers and a cleaned-up mask albeit he was less talkative...all he ever said was...

"I'm sorry." He said it for the umpteenth time. It made their conversations awkward, especially for Asher. He hated how much he saw himself in these useless words. How it reminded him of useless things. How he hated himself for believing he could chan…

"Useless…" At first, he thought it was fear or regret who spoke up but it was Balar. The Dremin extended one of his long feathery arms and put it above Asher's shoulder. He began absorbing the negativity. This would be prone to jail time if he had done it outside, but Asher knew he meant well so he remained silent. It felt better...calmer but he backed away before the intoxication got hold of him.

"I promised not to..." Asher managed a few words with the avian. The old timer closed his red eyes and nodded slowly. It was weird how much the eyes betrayed a person's age and intelligence even a dremin's and Balar was old.

"You know...why name Balar?" The Dremin tried his hardest at forming a sentence in high loci. Asher knew that they only spoke spirillic so whatever he mouthed were stuff he learned as his life went on.

Asher shook his head at Balar's random question. The Dremin eyed him for a bit, the sludge along his neck and face was bubbling and reforming.

"I work under long ear…His name Balar…they respected Balar…I wanted respect." His inhumane voice was clearer now that he rearranged his throat. It was easier to convey longer sentences.

The Dremin fell silent while Asher digested his words. Rare were the sylphs who used slaves since some of their own were still slaves in the empire to the east and the magisterium to the south after the pyre wars.

"Now Balar don't want respect…want live…peace." He closed his red striking eyes and took a deep breath before getting out of bed. He looked at Asher again.

"You choose…live too…no shame." The Dremin's words stuck Asher like thunder. It was the emotion Tommy didn't grasp. An emotion he hadn't fed on. This was the difference between most Dremin. Some would go their entire lives and never know the shame Asher felt.

It was the knot tied around his neck. It was the anxiety bubbling in his chest. It was what kept him up at night and what he couldn't tell anybody about.

"A monster sympathizing with a monster…how ironic." Regret spoke up ruining whatever Asher was slowly coming to terms with. Balar absorbed the spike of negativity again. He walked past the boy to the storefront while Asher followed.

Balar stood by a surprised Cathy and bowed deeply. She had already told him to pay her back when he found work so the Dremin didn't hesitate to exit the store but not without parting with final words.

"No Shame…Thank you."

"You okay Asher?" Clara looked at the boy. She was still missing an arm, another thing that made him feel guilty and ashamed. He stared at the stump in a trance.

"Asher?" She said his name again. He hated hearing it. So many voices spoke it unison that just hearing it gnawed at his very soul.

"Uh…yes…I'm okay."

"We're finished for today…how about you go rest." She spoke warmly to the little boy who nodded and left for his room again.

"How long are you going to keep this up…It's suffocating isn't it…Hearing that woman's affection…her trust. Let's just leave…We're good at leaving." Fear whispered to Asher who gritted his teeth and quickened his pace to his bedroom.

Hours would pass by, and sleep would never find him. He'd pace from one side of the room to the other, sparing glances at the insomnia medicine on the counter. Clara had noticed the signs of his malady and prepared medicine without him asking.

Just thinking about using it made the knot of shame tighten. Taking it meant an easy way out and if he took it, the voices would come biting in full force the next day. He'd rather stay awake till he found a way to redeem himself until suddenly longing spoke up but her voice wasn't in his head but in the room with him.

"Remember"

He looked around frantically till his eyes stopped at the long mirror on the edge of his room before she shrieked another word like a banshee.

"The"

He traced longing's figure. It was a bony husk with disheveled clothes and grey bark for skin. Its eyes were empty sockets. Her scalp lacked a full head of hair and instead had a few strands of white. She looked straight at Asher who fell to the ground and backed away in full force, knocking things left and right.

When he calmed down and looked at her again, she began to smile and smile and smile till her mouth was so deformed it almost made the boy wretch. Her empty sockets glowed with red flames and she opened her mouth. She lunged out of the mirror grabbing Asher

"Promise." She shrieked the final word, revealing rows and rows of serrated teeth. Then she slowly faded away.

Asher, who was shuddering on the ground, cried until he fell asleep. He didn't have the same nightmare. After all parts of it seeped into his reality. He didn't dwell on the fact that his mental health was deteriorating because he knew now what he had to do.

Longing reminded him of what he couldn't escape no matter where he ran. The form she displayed herself in was enough of a reality check.

The next few days, Asher would help Clara around the shop, enough till part of his guilt abated. He returned to his room which was now missing a mirror. The mirror was flipped around and facing the wall. He was not ready yet to face his demons. He needed to heal all his wounds and rest properly for what would come next.

------

"Teach me!"