With every breath, with every strained movement, the girl refused to yield. The regeneration was no less brutal than the damage itself. Worse, perhaps. It wasn't just the physical pain—there was also the show; her terrified gaze, too weak to look away, watched the entire process of her flattened arm slowly inflate back to its original state; the rolling reconstitution of marrow and sinew churned her very soul.

  Some vomit somehow managed to traverse along her battered digestive system and drizzle out from her newly reformed mouth, mingling with the dirt beneath her.

  But at last, after what felt like an eternity, the worst of it passed. She had regained enough strength to brave the daunting task of the next battle. She craned her neck to look at the source of her immobility.

  Her spine. It refused to heal.

  Her bow was now a broken fragment, snapped in two. Once slung across her back, it now jutted grotesquely through her back and out from her malleable abdomen, like the rising horns of a demon birthed from within her.

  The tool had always been an extension of herself, but now that concept took an uncomfortable specificity.

  Her bow, her mother's bow, was shattered. Destroyed beyond reconstruction. The many carvings and speckling of historied character were littered as bristled shrapnel throughout her body, bathing upon her organic spew.

  For the first time, not on the fall, not on her wakings, not when her mind was shattered, not when she regained sensation; for the first time in this whole event: she cried.

  She cried for her mother's bow. Defeat washed over her, burying her in its weight. Her tears defiled her dirty visage, all while she wailed to the careless skies. Her mother was killed in her uterus.

  And as her writhing sorrow twisted deeper, the bloody bow, too, twisted further inside her, whirling as a perverted ladle to a biotic medley.

  Her breath slowed, each laboured inhale and exhale harder than the last. Ironically, her wracking sorrow had enticed enough blood loss to dull her mind and actually restrain her mourning enough to let a sort of calmness return.

  A cold callousness settled over her—a protective shell entombed her emotions while her survival instincts commandeered the reins of consciousness.

  She took two nearby gems and put them in her mouth without consuming them. She held them there, the smooth surfaces pressing against her tongue, the slightest tickle of warm energy calling her to absorb them for relief, but she did not consume them. She held firm.

  Then, with a single, desperate surge of strength, she seized both broken limbs of her bow—one in each hand—and wrenched them from her body. The sickening moan of flesh releasing wood was drowned out by the snapping crack of the gems crunching between her teeth.

  The battling slurry of death and life tugged wildly at her being. She was certain that she must have died and resurrected multiple times in between the span of each heartbeat.

  Her consciousness was rolling in and out of reality, but she refused to avert her eyes from the deed either. She forced herself to watch the wooden stakes birth from out of her. She watched as ribbons of despoiled muliebrous organs clung to the deathly sapling, refusing to release the relative.

  But the power from the chewed gems coursed through her, washing down her abdomen, down into her nethers, as her body frantically reassembled the woman once been.

  She cradled the broken vestiges of her mother in her arms. For the first time since Sapphic's departure, the full weight of loss began to flood her again, this time uncontrollably. A river of grief surged through her, raw and unfiltered.

  The bow, now damp and slick and coated in her own amniotic viscosity. The sticky substance clung to her hands as if gluing her to the remnant weapon. It felt almost alive to the touch.

  Her eyes, blurry with tears, caught the faint glow of the gem's energy still lingering in that fluid. It should have dissipated, should have vanished to nothingness without a source of essence to nourish it—but instead, it remained, soft and pulsing, like an ember refusing to die.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  As she watched, her amniotic fluid seemed to melt into the bow. The wood absorbed it, and in a sudden burst of strange, otherworldly power, grey fur grew from the bow's surface. The fur spread across the broken limbs, mending them back together until, impossibly, the bow was whole again.

  She lay aghast as she witnessed her mother's bow, now clothed in long, soft, silvery-grey fur, reconstitute itself. Her fingers ran gently over the new coat, and she could still feel the familiar hardness of the wood underneath—yet it was different now, harder than before, like bone.

  The bow breathed, an almost imperceptible rise and fall beneath her touch as if it had awakened to something new—something powerful. The remnants of the gem's energy continued to shimmer faintly within it, swirling in quiet pulses of light. The energy refused to disappear, even slowly rebuilding itself as if it had its own source of essence.

  The bow was dressed in magic!

  The realization caused her to let out an amazed gasp. The movement from her soft sound, however slight, was enough to send a sharp reminder of her fragile condition through her body. She recoiled instinctively, her eyes darting downward.

  The sight of her mangled form was enough to drag her under again, and in an instant, her consciousness slipped away.

  Time passed slowly, each moment blending with the next, but eventually, her body stitched itself together. Not quickly, but steadily. She could feel the energy returning to her limbs, just enough to move—if only a crawl.

  The last remaining gems were just out of reach, teasing her with their proximity, but with her balance shot so badly, the distance between her and her salvation felt insurmountable.

  Yet, a stubborn refusal to accept defeat stirred in the space where doubt should have settled. Near insurmountable was not insurmountable. So she began to crawl, one weary arm in front of the other, each motion slow and deliberate, pulling her body inch by inch across the dirt. The effort was excruciating, but she kept moving. The world blurred; the only thing left in focus was the next precious gem in sight.

  She circled her crash site, slowly increasing the radius of her search as she hunted down the scattered gems, each one a spark of life she couldn't afford to leave behind. She could barely feel the ground beneath her, her sense of touch numbed by the exhaustion and pain. But her will—her relentless will—kept her moving, and with each gem acquired, the world became more tangible. Each gem she gathered felt like a victory, like the promise of a future reclaimed.

  Nearly a month had passed since her fall. She had no way of knowing for sure, but the slow crawl of time had become tangible through the subtle changes in her body and the landscape around her. Only now, after an excruciating journey of recovery, could she finally manage to stand.

  Her body was still far from whole. One leg was still broken and fired wrathful stings of pain with every jostle. Generally, all of her limbs were far from the smoothly dexterous things they once were. Her movements were still stilted, hesitant—but far more controlled than they had been when she had first awoken.

  She limped painfully out of the crater, simply eager to get away from the nightmare of her past couple of weeks. The gems—her saviours—had long since been depleted. They had mended her, given her the strength to survive when it seemed impossible. But now, with nothing left to fuel her healing, she was left with only herself and no longer a reason to stay in that place.

  What she had gone through shouldn't have been possible. The only reason the gems could do anything at all for her was due to the unique condition she inherited from her mother. Even then, from what little she knew, it wasn't a condition necessarily known for its restorative capabilities.

  Her leg bellowed in distraught protest with her every step. Her first priority was to address her broken leg. She searched the surrounding area, eyes scanning for anything that might serve her needs. A thick branch caught her attention, just sturdy enough to help, and with an almost mechanical focus, she began the painful task of constructing a makeshift splint.

  The resin-coated leaves she used were sticky and unwieldy, and the plant fibres, though strong, were difficult to weave with her trembling hands. She cursed under her breath, frustrated at her lack of precision. It wasn't a clean solution, and she knew it—this splint would never hold for long, but it would have to do for now.

  She couldn't be completely to blame for the shoddy workmanship; she was really working with the worst possible materials in the worst possible conditions.

  When it was in place, she tested her weight on the makeshift support. A wave of sharp pain shot through her, but it was bearable—only a mild stab of agony, not the unbearable torment she had endured before. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, there was a semblance of relief.

  With the immediate concern of her leg sorted, her mind shifted to the next pressing matter. As if granted permission to escape from her subconscious, the girl's stomach rumbled with an urgency that startled her, its desperate growl louder than any physical pain she had endured. Her throat, dry and raw, only amplified the gnawing need, and she became acutely aware of how parched she was, the emptiness inside her nearly as agonizing as the broken limb.

  Her body was suddenly much heavier than she remembered it to be. Without the constant rush of adrenaline and the numbing haze of pain coursing through her, she was left with a deathly weakness. She felt so frail that she feared that the smallest breeze could take her away without the protection of the trees, leaving her scattered, lost in the wilderness, never to be found again.

  How she managed to even block this horrible deprivation from her mind, she had no idea, but now it was impossible to ignore. Suddenly, the idea of travelling back to society felt terribly far-fetched.