Mia botched her first spell, her attention still just mostly there and her thoughts muddy, which almost blew her arm off. As it was, it was her damned Familiar appearing before her and sending a flash of warning through their Bond that made her stop and actually think.

The problem was obvious. Her Spell Tome had been screaming at her from the back of her mind that her spell was absolute garbage and that half of it didn't match the proper spell circle at all. She had been too out of it to notice it, though, too focused on 'must help, must cast spells or friends die'.

Mia took a moment, taking a deep breath and slapping her cheeks. It didn't help, not with the icy numbness Nikki had left lingering in her body, dulling all the pain away. Still, she tried to clear up her mind and, if nothing else, fix the spell circle. Arcane Blast had been a part of her original set of spells bestowed upon her by the System itself, so it was deeply engraved in her Spell Tome, which in turn made it a walk in the park to replicate even under duress … though apparently there was a limit to even that.

Which was actually listening to the Spell Tome's whispers.

The next task at hand was aiming, something that usually came so easily to her, but was now proving to be much more difficult. Not only did she have to avoid even just risking Blasting her favourite vampire's head off by accident, but she also had to somewhat predict which monsters would end up with an ice spike sprouting from their heads so as not to cast a redundant spell on them.

Did icy spikes kill instantly?

Mia eyed a twitching corpse, then another that still crawled towards the unsuspecting Ice mage with a spike poking out of its chest.

"They explode on death," Mia said, her voice still hoarse as she ambled over to stand a few metres to Nikki's side. Her first target was the crawling asshole, who made himself a blessedly easy target and earned an instantaneous head-disintegration as a reward. "The ones that still cling to a bit of life after you shoot them, they explode in a shower of iron spikes that hit like a truck."

"Got it," Nikki said, nodding seriously, and while her next few spells came out a bit slower, they all had pinpoint precision in how they blew holes through the skulls of monsters. The blue-haired mage gave Mia a glance, grimaced, then nodded towards the injured people behind them. "Maybe you should get some potions down their throats while they still draw breath instead? You could gather yourself while at it. We are holding … for now."

Mia frowned, but nodded, then glanced at her Familiar. "Help them."

Reluctance radiated from the weary-looking pink lynx, but it nodded and then charged into the fray, circling around Carmilla's position and instead going for the monsters further back to alleviate the pressure on the vampire. Smart cat, far too smart.

Mia shook her head, her eyes zeroing in on the closest person who looked injured. She froze, staring at the woman, who had a deep, bloody footprint in the centre of her chest surrounded by bloody spikes of bone that had to be what remained of her ribcage. Her eyes were glassy, staring listlessly at the canopy above with a look of pain and horror frozen on her face.

Mia recognised her. She had made an effort to remember the names of everyone who seemed approachable among her comrades, and the brunette girl lying dead before her was one of them. Gwen, the cute summoner with those strange Water constructs of hers, had sent them forth to scout the Rift ahead of the others, making sure it was safe for them.

And now she was dead.

A ragged gasp snapped Mia out of her useless daze, pulling her attention to the other brunette woman, a few years older than Gwen. Lori, the squad leader of the second Union team besides Aiden's, was also coincidentally Gwen's elder sister. Mia almost froze again, horrified at what was to come, but then rushed over to the woman.

Lori only got her left arm stomped on, so she was mostly … alright. Still, Mia hurriedly nabbed a System potion from the woman's belt and poured it down her throat, tilting her head back to let the liquid flow down smoothly.

When the pulped left arm started rebuilding itself with a series of stomach-churning cracks and wet pops, Mia pounced on the next injured person. She pushed emotions and even sensations like noise and smell to the very back of her mind, forcing herself to become an organic machine of efficiency and cold professionalism as she went from injured to injured, leaving those already dead behind without sparing them another look. When she found an injured person, she nabbed their System potions if they had any, and took one from her own supplies if they didn't, then poured them down their throats as gently as she could manage without sacrificing swiftness.

She didn't dare look at their faces, afraid she'd once again be held frozen by the glassy-eyed stare of another one of her dead comrades. If that happened, someone could die because she got to them a moment too late. She had to help those she still could. The dead were beyond help. She had to do her best; that was the least she could do. What was expected of her, and more importantly, what she expected of herself.

If she didn't do her best, she just knew, in the back of her mind, that the guilt would eat her alive. Maybe it would anyway. She could have been faster, could have been better, could have avoided that spike. Could have … would have … what if? None of it mattered, but those questions still nagged at her distractingly, even after she shoved them into the back of her mind and shut the door on them.

She kept the idiots Carmilla had to knock on their ass for last, and only used the homemade potions on them, seeing as all of them only had minor wounds besides their concussions. All of them were the toughest bastards around, the towering beastkin or some other race she didn't know the name of.

Without sparing another thought for the dead and those who would at best be spared permanent disability or death by the potions, but would likely be out of the fight going forward, Mia turned back to the monsters. Monsters, she could deal with. The tumultuous emotions roiling in her gut? Not so much. She also wanted to be as far away from the people currently locked in a nightmare as she could before they woke up. She did not want to see Lori's face when she saw her dead little sister's mangled corpse, and she would rather jump into the tide of monsters than risk witnessing that.

It helped that her shoulder had mostly scabbed over, and while the wound still threatened to reopen if she moved too quickly, she could function. Her mind was clearer now, clear enough that she trusted herself to cast spells again, and even Nikki's numbing magic was fading. Some pain resurfaced, but it was a low buzz compared to the blaring screech it had been before.

She already had a pair of Blasts primed by the time she made her way over to Nikki, standing just a bit further away from the fight than the Ice mage. It had been made quite obvious to her just how much better than her the blue-haired woman was at magic, so she felt no shame over letting her take point and handle being the primary target of the monsters.

Carmilla was also there of course, but she had made it abundantly clear to the Wolflings just how little of a chance they stood against her, so the majority of them treated her more like a natural hazard than a viable target. Meaning, they swarmed around her, knocking the unfortunate monsters nearby into the vampiress' range to distract her while they tried to strike at the mages behind.

Somehow, Camie had avoided getting her heart nicked so far, but Mia didn't know how long that would last. The vampire was quick, strong as a bull and healed rapidly, but she wasn't especially tough. Regular knives could still make her bleed, and so a level 15+ monster's claws would have little trouble carving up her flesh.

She released her Blasts, one after the other, into monsters a good while away from Carmilla, just to be sure the silly vampire couldn't accidentally jump in its path. Both hit, though only one of them was the instant kill shot to the centre of the chest she had consistently put out before. Pain flared in her right arm as her mana flowed through the major channel in her injured shoulder, and her fingers twitched just enough that she Blasted the monster's arm off at the shoulder.

It screamed in pain, bleeding profusely as it got thrown to the side, and Mia couldn't help but feel a dark satisfaction at its noises of agony. That's what it feels like, asshole.

It wasn't the monster that hurt her. That one was likely dead already, and likely getting an arm torn off hurt more than a spike going into your shoulder, but Mia didn't care. They were hurting, and that made her happy. It was as simple as that.

"Ah, you're here," Nikki said, her voice tinged with relief. "Please, try to get her to calm down a bit; she's going further and further ahead and before long, they'll start to just circle around her position wholesale."

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Mia looked at the storm of crimson death and flying body parts that was Carmilla and swallowed the lump in her throat. That task was easier said than done, and she had little wish to get close to her berserk vampire girlfriend; all she could do was hope her voice would be enough.

"I'll do what I can," Mia said, trying to sound confident.

"Alright," Nikki said, then her mana surged, and she started chanting under her breath for a second or two. The pair of spell circles above her palms shone a bright icy blue, and just looking at them made Mia feel cold. Then Nikki clapped her two hands together. A writhing bluish orb shot out of her hands and up into the air, where it broke apart and sent a shower of icy spikes falling down on the advancing monsters like a miniature hailstorm. "Go."

Mia didn't need to be told twice. The magical hailstorm didn't last; it wasn't even a proper storm, just a single mass of spikes falling down from above. Still, the effects of it were disastrous on the monsters. Dozens of them died in the moment it took for them to blink as a spike went through their skulls and sent them crashing to the ground.

Tiptoeing between the still-twitching corpses, she closed in on her girlfriend, her trusty Familiar circling around her and kicking away any Wolfling daring to come close to her. She ducked with a yelp, feeling something warm splatter across her face as the top half of a monster flew by above her head, its intestines trailing behind it. A shudder ran down Mia's spine, and she decided that whatever had hit her was blood. She didn't want to think about any of the alternatives.

"Carmilla," Mia called out hesitantly, catching sight of her vampiric girlfriend for a brief moment as she rang a monster through, using her lower arm like a spoke and her talons as its tip. The vampire didn't react. Her eyes shone a brilliant crimson, and her face was twisted into a vicious, bestial snarl, framed by her dishevelled mane of blood-red hair. Mia repeated her call once, twice, then a third time, with each one louder than the one preceding it, more forceful and desperate too. "Carmilla! Camie? CAMIE!"

Desperation dripped from her last call, and the vampire stilled mid-swing, her claws pausing just as they were about to tear through a monster's neck. The disgusting little shit saw that as a sign of weakness, its demeanour shifting from fearful to malicious in a blink as it pounced on the frozen vampiress.

'Kill it.' Mia screamed at her Familiar, hoping her emotions projected well enough through the Bond to make the elemental act with all the swiftness she needed. Thankfully, it seemed like it did as the little cat shrank in size and launched itself at the monster with no less speed than one of Mia's Arcane Bolts.

It didn't kill the monster outright, but it sent the creature on its ass as the cat grew into its lynx form and then introduced its claws to the monster.

Mia only had eyes for her girlfriend, though, for she looked horrible. Her clothes were a mess, torn and practically shredded in place and dripping blood from a dozen cuts. The flesh underneath was grimy, blood old and new coating it, and while no wound could be seen, Mia was sure some of that blood was Carmilla's.

She seemed to be twitching, shifting from face to face as her hands clenched and unclenched. Her talons lengthened, then pulled back into her fingers. But she was no longer consumed by rage. She was holding it back, and that was enough of a reason for Mia to risk getting close.

While Camie was locked in a blind rage, acting on bloodthirsty instinct alone, Mia wouldn't have been confident that the girl could recognise her before she acted on instinct and tore her apart like one of the monsters. Mia trusted Carmilla, trusted her to keep her instincts in check and to hold herself back from hurting her girlfriend, but this was different. All that was based on the idea that the vampire was aware of who she was, and that even just a little bit of her conscious mind remained, tugging at the wheel when the car was about to run her over.

Now that Camie was visible, fighting her instincts, trying to throttle them, she felt confident enough to approach. Ignoring the stink of death and the coppery scent of blood that made it hard to breathe, Mia made her way over to the still vampire without any hesitation in her movements. Ice spikes struck any monster daring to approach them, and the Familiar kept the rest back with a furious crusade of claw and jaw.

"Hi, Camie," Mia said softly, now a single step away from her dishevelled girlfriend. From this close, she could see her ruby-like crimson eyes staring into the distance while her ragged breathing threw the locks of matted red hair hanging over her face about with each exhale. Carmilla was a mess. She stank, barely had any clothes on, and was drenched in blood and other organic stuff Mia couldn't even name. She ignored all that and encased the taller girl in a gentle embrace and rested her head on her shoulder. "I'm fine. See? You can stop now … come back to me."

Mia felt the warm, ragged breaths caressing her face and tussling her hair. It reminded her of staring into the face of a panting horse a bit, and Carmilla shared that same bestial vibe where a single wrong action could set her off. On that note, anyone who said horses were gentle, trustworthy animals and rivalled dogs in just how good of a companion they could be to humans had clearly never seen what the kick of an annoyed horse could do to a human.

Mia, like many girls, had decided to learn to ride once upon a time. That urge died out the moment she'd seen one of her aunt's horses kick her uncle so hard on the chest that half his ribs shattered as he went flying half a dozen metres. That kick wasn't even that bad, though, as it was nothing in comparison to the kicks the horses gave each other or the vicious bites they gave to other bovines trying to eat their portions of food.

Stop thinking about dumb fucking horses, Mia. This is important. She held her girlfriend, her arms wrapped around the girl's waist and squeezed tightly. Carmilla was not a slender woman with a thin waist; her liquid diet had seen the girl fill out quite a bit, and now she was well on her way to looking more like an Amazonian warrior. Though a miniature one, since her 170cms of height was one of the things that refused to change. Most of her muscles also refused to show, instead hiding beneath softer, feminine curves. All that combined made Carmilla with a body that was really huggable, and also a superb cuddle-buddy.

Mia listened to Camie's heartbeat, that thundering engine in her chest that was the source of her power and also the source of all her troubles. Vampires were creatures of Blood, and so it was rather obvious in hindsight that their hearts would be their most important organ, the core of their powers. That very heart was ever so slowly changing its thundering rhythm from that of a war drum to a more relaxed cadence.

Her breathing mirrored her heart; those ragged, shallow gasps lengthened and turned deeper. There was a sharp, long inhale of breath that had the vampire's chest swell and then an even longer exhale. Mia smiled subconsciously, her own heartbeat slowing and her anxiety fading with every moment, then fully departing as a set of strong arms wrapped around her with jerky movements.

Tilting her head up, Mia found a pair of crimson eyes looking down at her fondly, the last vestiges of rage and red haze fading from them as they met her own azure ones. A tight, small smile tugged at the vampire's lips, mirroring Mia's own. Though it held a lingering edge to it, one that hardened when one of the hands swiftly left her back and held Mia at a length.

Forceful, but gentle fingers pulled at the ruined sleeve of her shirt, dried blood peeling away from them as Camie stared at her scabbed-over wound with a frown.

"I'm fine," Mia said with a huff, rolling her shoulders and managing not to wince at the lingering, stinging pain the motion shot through her shoulder. It was nothing compared to what it had been before. "Not perfect, but fine. The ring is still working on it, but I didn't want to waste a System potion on i- Hey! What are you doing?"

"Blood Heal," Carmilla said simply. The gathering mana Mia had sensed surged towards her fingers and bloomed into a complicated spell circle, then flowed into her shoulder in a crimson tide of mana.

Mia heard Carmilla's hiss of discomfort and knew it was from the gluttonous spell devouring a large chunk of her stored lifeforce all at once to power itself. Not that she could focus on it, as the telltale sign of itchy discomfort that was so unique to healing magic invaded her body.

She shuddered in utter discomfort, goosebumps spreading across her body into every last pore of her skin as she groaned and clutched onto Carmilla for comfort. It didn't hurt, but it made her skin crawl, or rather, made her want to claw her skin off and then dig out the flesh and bone that was itching.

Carmilla's hug returned, now comforting Mia in an inverse of what happened just moments earlier, and the halvyr girl wasted no time in burying her face in her girlfriend's shoulder while hugging her with every last sliver of her strength. If she didn't focus her body in hugging Camie like her life depended on it, she feared she would really start testing whether her Strength or constitution was stronger by trying to scratch her skin off.

The disturbing sensation lasted for ten dreadfully long seconds, then it faded away, echoes of it lingering for another half a minute as the last vestiges of crimson Blood mana finished their work.

"That was horrible," Mia said, her voice grumpy and scratchy.

"Worth it though," Carmilla said with an emotion Mia couldn't decipher thick in her voice. Was it affection? Care? Or was it … possessiveness? Maybe it was a bit of all three. "Now you are fine, really fine."

"I still stink," Mia noted, her pouty tone now holding a hint of teasing. "As do you, and I think I have bits of brain matter in my hair, too. Or something else. I really hope they aren't from the glob of intestines you sent sailing over my head, though, and you should too, because if they are, you owe me like … a dozen hair washes and scalp massages."

"I think I can live with that," Carmilla said, her voice thick with amusement and something more tender as her arms squeezed Mia tighter. " … Thank you. For snapping me out of … whatever that was before I did something I would regret. Next time, though, I'd much rather you just shoot my legs off with an Arcane Blast rather than risk yourself by hugging me while I'm in that state."

"You said my closeness helps you calm your vampiric urges, though," Mia said. "And I trust you to triumph over them every time you need to … but okay, I will try to maybe tie you up with Arcane Shackles before I get close. I'd really rather not shoot your legs off, though I don't think I could. You got faster again, and I could barely track you. I doubt I could hit you with anything if you really didn't want me to."

"We will have to train more once we get out of here then," Carmilla said resolutely, pulling away and holding Mia by the shoulders at arm's length to stare into her eyes. "I'd like to have someone I know can beat me even in that state, and I'd prefer it if it was you."

"I would greatly appreciate some assistance," Nikki called out loudly with a hint of reprimand in her voice, and Mia winced. Right. Monsters.

"Will you be fine fighting?" Mia asked before she let go, looking up at Carmilla.

"I think so," Carmilla said with more uncertainty than Mia felt comfortable with. "If you don't get injured again."

"Well, I'll try to avoid doing that then," Mia said, then fully disentangled herself from the reluctant vampire's embrace. "That big fucker that knocked us all out is still out there somewhere. Let's be careful and pull back, the others will wake soonish."

"Okay."

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