“Not bad,” a raspy voice says from somewhere. “Not bad at all.”

  Slowly opening her eyes, Hazel begins to register the feeling of something cold and grimy against her skin.

  Her vision is blurry—so much so that she can only make out some pale, blobby shape near her face.

  Every bone in her body feels like rock. Her throat is raw and sore, as if she’s been screaming for hours.

  'What happened?' Hazel thinks. 'The last thing I remember was—'

  Everything crashes back into her at once.

  Feeling her heart begin to race, Hazel quickly breathes in and out. The bond to her tentacles starts to register in her hazy mind, vibrating with a flood of emotions.

  The only thing she can make out is the rising panic urging her to get up—to run, bolt, sprint.

  All of this only made the girl’s rising panic worse. Her tentacles, specifically, usually don’t let much—if any—of their emotions flow through the bond.

  They typically keep the bond quiet and calm. For them to show any emotion at all is nerve-wracking.

  'What? What is going on?' Hazel thinks through the fog as she tries to bring a hand up.

  Pain immediately wracks her entire body at the movement.

  The pain stabs into her nerves like flaming icicles—burning cold and hot at the same time.

  Opening her mouth, Hazel tries to scream.

  The only sound that comes out is a small whimper, making the soreness in her throat even worse.

  'What’s going on?' she thinks, trying to wiggle her body. 'What’s going on? What’s going on? What’s going on?'

  With every spinning thought, Hazel feels her throat start to close up, making it hard to breathe.

  Through the bond, the tentacles send out reassuring pulses, trying to calm her down.

  Even then, there’s still an underlying panic slowly rising within them.

  'Crunch!' 'Crunch!' 'Crunch!' 'Crunch!'

  The sound reverberates through the silence. To Hazel’s ears, it’s like several plates shattering against the ground, sharp and jarring against her increasingly ragged breathing.

  As her vision slowly clears, the girl weakly tilts her head toward the source of the noise.

  There—far above her—stands a shadowy figure, donning a top hat, perched atop what appears to be a hill made from some sort of piled objects.

  Hazel narrows her eyes, straining to see through the darkness and her still-hazy sight, trying to make out what the pile beneath the figure is made of.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The stench of rotten eggs grows stronger by the second. With each passing moment, Hazel notices more and more small, black, buzzing things whirling around her.

  'Crunch!' 'Crunch!' 'Crunch!' 'Crunch!'

  “It’s not enough,” a raspy voice rings out as the crunching momentarily stops. “It’s not enough.”

  Hazel watches as the shadowy figure in the top hat suddenly rises.

  From her vantage point, she can see what looks like tentacles sprouting from his back.

  Through the bond, Hazel feels confusion and horror flow suddenly from her own tentacles.

  The tentacles on the shadowy figure’s back are riddled with holes—so many that they look like Swiss cheese. Globs of fluid drip from them.

  “It’s not enough,” the shadowy figure repeats, the raspy voice gaining an edge. “It’s not enough! It’s not enough!”

  'Bam!'

  The shadowy figure suddenly slams their hand onto one of the objects he’s perched on.

  With a quick yank, the figure pulls the unidentifiable object upward.

  The object resembles a humanoid figure, with tentacles sprouting from parts of its body—just like many Essevians Hazel has seen in her group.

  But the humanoid figure in the shadowy person’s hand looks wrong.

  Its limbs are all crooked, some parts so rotten they’re barely hanging on by a single shred of flesh.

  The most noticeable thing of all is the large, gaping hole in the figure’s chest—right where many Essevians’ cores are located.

  Hazel can only watch as the shadowy figure throws the humanoid figure aside.

  'BAM!'

  Pieces of debris fall against Hazel’s face, some landing in her eye, making the girl wince.

  Clamping a hand over her mouth, she barely manages to quiet herself.

  Freezing in place, she feels her core pounding rapidly as she strains her ears for any sound that might indicate she’s been found out.

  After a long moment of silence, she lets out a shaky breath of relief.

  Quickly blinking, Hazel tries to clear the debris from her eyes as her vision begins to blur again.

  Once she manages to clear most of it and her sight sharpens a little, she immediately searches for the shadowy figure again.

  She spots him now perched near the bottom of the hill, closer to where she’s hiding.

  In one of the shadowy figure’s hands is a pulsating, glowing sphere, dripping with thick, red fluid.

  Hazel’s eyes slowly widen. She watches, her mouth falling open, as complete terror floods through the bond.

  'That looks like an Essevian’s core!' the girl realizes, her jaw still slack. 'How? Why?'

  Before Hazel can even begin to question what’s happening, the shadowy figure suddenly shoves the entire organ into his mouth.

  'Crunch!' 'Crunch!' 'Crunch!' 'Crunch!'

  As the shadowy figure loudly chews, spitting droplets of fluid everywhere, the tentacles on his back begin to convulse.

  They writhe wildly, their tips twisting as if possessed. More holes appear across their surface, old ones growing larger.

  Blood drips from the shadowy figure’s back, pooling on the ground below.

  “It’s not enough!” he rasps between chews. “I need more. I need more. More! More!”

  Only able to watch in horror, Hazel feels her stomach turn over itself.

  'I need to get out of here,' she realizes. 'I can’t stay here!'

  Forcing her eyes away from the figure, she slowly turns her head.

  As Hazel turns, she comes face to face with the blobby shape she saw in her blurry vision when she first woke.

  The figure’s face is painfully familiar—the face of someone Hazel often sees within her group.

  Deathly pale, the skin stretched tight and riddled with holes crusted with dried blood.

  The eyes stare wide open, a fly perched on one, and the mouth hangs agape—frozen in horror.

  Letting out a small shriek, Hazel jerks upright, her back slamming against something hard.

  Pain immediately wracks her body, making her stomach flip as bile rises in her throat.

  Save for Hazel’s sharp breathing, silence stretches across the open space, threatening to constrict her in its grasp.

  As she struggles to calm herself, the ground beneath her suddenly gives way.

  A cold, bony hand clamps around Hazel’s wrist, yanking her upward.

  Panic strikes her chest like a bolt, barely registering the sharp pinch of fingers digging into her skin.

  “Ah, so there was one more,” the raspy voice sounds, unnervingly close to Hazel’s ear. “…Good…”

  Before she can turn, a burning pain stabs straight into her chest.