Author's Notes: As I'd feared, I've not been able to regain my lead on this story. So, basically this fic will be on a monthly basis from now on. The climactic chapter 12 will be published on March 1, and then the conclusion will appear on April 1. Sorry about that, but at least it will be finished, eh? Anyway, enjoy this chapter...

- Chapter 11: The Lion's Den -

"'I want you to apologize again'! 'I want you to apologize again'!" Felix splashed water on his face as hard as he could, but the icy shock didn't feel like sufficient punishment. "Mars, what was I thinking?"

But he knew what he was thinking. However she felt about him, he was in love with Karst. More than anything, he wanted to reconcile his desire for her with doing the right thing. Pursuing the woman who had killed his friends and wasn't even sorry about it would be wrong.

But gods... what a stupid way to go about fixing that! If she were unapologetic about it, what good would asking her again have done? But she really was sorry... I should have known that. Why did I have to be such an asshole? If I ever had a chance with her, it's gone now.

Karst's words kept coming back to him: "You need to stop wasting all our lives by trying to do the right thing and just take what you want!" The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she was right. What good had it done anyone for him to abandon Karst in Mars Lighthouse? Isaac and the others could have lit it without his help. He'd have witnessed Karst and Agatio being restored, and this whole mess with the them killing Isaac and Garet, Jenna seeing him act like a vicious animal, the wreck of the Lemurian ship, Piers and Agatio being eaten alive... it all could have been avoided if he'd done what he wanted instead of worrying about doing the right thing.

And what good had it done to refuse Karst's advances? It would have at least been a start to their relationship if he'd given in, and it was what she wanted. And for all his efforts to defend her, Sheba's life would never be the same as before her abduction. What good had his noble intentions done anyone?

A strange voice cut in on his thoughts. "F-Fel..."

It was Karst's voice, but sounding half-strangled. On instinct, he ducked and rolled. A wave of heat singed his back, and he saw that a pillar of flame had just missed him. Rolling to his feet, he scanned the area for his attacker. Since the sound of Karst's voice had given him a clue, it didn't take long to spot him.

He was Proxian, on the tall side, with skin a sickly shade of pink, like a beached squid. His eyes gleamed with a cold maliciousness. He held Karst in front of him, one hand gripping her neck, the other wrapped around her waist. She was limp, suspended by her captor's arms like a hand puppet, yet her eyes watched Felix with an intense anxiety.

"What a willful girl, eh? With the poison I injected her with, she shouldn't have been able to even move her lips, much less get out a warning. Of course, that just proves you mean a lot to her, eh? So by my guess-" Felix strode towards the two of them, planning to tackle the man while he was busy spilling his guts, but he responded by tightening his grip around Karst's neck. A choked gasp came out of her mouth, making Felix stop short. "Un uh uh! I really don't need this girl to protect me from you, so believe me, I won't hesitate one second to snap her neck if you make a move I don't like."

Felix stood frozen in place, eyes darting around for some possible advantage, and finding none.

"Yes, that's what I thought. You care for her as much as she does for you. How sweet."

"You just said you injected her with poison," Felix said, in a tone that made clear he was still contemplating attack.

"Non-lethal," he clarified. "A little something I brewed from a rare plant - rare around Prox, at least. It keeps its victim paralyzed for hours. Though for this little vixen, I'd expect only one hour."

A sort of outrage and revulsion burned through Felix at seeing Karst this way. Limp, helpless, as though she were nothing more than the stereotypical damsel in distress. It was a horrible distortion of her true nature. For that alone, he felt nothing less than hate for the man who had reduced her to this.

"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice slow and deadly.

Karst croaked out, "Tri... Trieg... Triegen."

Triegen. This was his first time meeting the man, but Felix knew the name from his time in Prox. Faced with the famine brought on by the decay of alchemy, Triegen had taken to murdering his neighbors and eating them. He had nearly claimed a third victim when his crime was discovered, and he fled Prox. A party was organized to hunt him down, but he could not be found. When Felix arrived in Prox, the people were still wary of stepping outside the village borders for fear of Triegen.

It all fell into place: How the cavern had come to be in this place, what kind of animal would use it... Triegen must have melted the cavern out himself over his years of exile. It was a perfect hideaway, almost inaccessible to anyone who didn't already know where it was, yet allowing him to swim out and get food when he needed it.

"What do you want?" Felix demanded. "And why did you wait until we were about to leave to attack us?"

"About to leave?" Triegen chuckled. "Oh, wouldn't that be an irony, if you happen to be telling the truth." His sick smile dissolved into a hard, angry glare. "What I want is to have my home, my peace, to myself. You have invaded here and disturbed both. Tell me now - and the girl will die immediately if you lie - were you sent by Prox? How did you know to search for me here?"

Triegen's outrage seemed genuine. It occurred to Felix that if he could just talk him down, he and Karst might be allowed to leave peacefully. He hated the idea of letting him go after what he'd done to Karst, but such feelings were trivial against the matter of getting her out alive.

"We weren't searching for you," he said, keeping his voice as calm and plain as he could. "Our ship crashed, and when we tried to swim to the surface we came out here. Happening upon this place was just bad luck."

"Bad luck indeed," Triegen agreed. "The worst you've ever had."

Felix's heart sank. Of course he can't let us go. We'd go right back to Prox and tell everyone where he is if he let us live. On the other hand, that is my bargaining chip.

"Then I guess you don't leave me any choice. Let go of Karst now," he warned, "...or I'll dive into the water, swim back to Prox, and gather a party to capture you."

"Now, that would be quite inconvenient for me. I'd have to immediately leave my home and head for some other place. After killing your companion here, of course. Altogether inconvenient for me... but positively tragic for you, eh?" He twirled a lock of Karst's hair with his finger. "Are you as unimpressed by his bluff as I am, my lady?"

"You mean to kill Karst anyway," Felix pointed out. "She's as much a threat to your peace as I am. You're just trying to negotiate to killing us both."

"Not true. I could also just kill her right now and then try to kill you in the usual fashion. I might fail, but really, I don't need to negotiate for your deaths. You're the one with something to gain here." He reached down with one hand and pulled out a small knife with a hooked blade. "This is the poison I used to immobilize the girl. If you take it willingly, I'll let her live for one hour. If she recovers quickly enough, she'll have a chance to escape."

"You really expect me to trust you on that?"

"It's your one chance of saving her."

So that's it, then. He thinks I might be so obsessed over Karst that I'd throw my life away in the faint hope that a madman will keep his word and give her a tiny chance of survival. "No deal."

"Hmm. Pity. I suppose we'll just have to do it this way, then." With that, Triegen flung Karst's limp body at the cavern's entrance pool. She sank like a stone. "Save her if you can!"

"Son of a -" Without thinking, Felix leapt towards the pool.

A blast of bright red and orange flame met him mid-leap, searing at his body, consuming clothing and flesh, igniting his body with pain. Throwing Karst had been nothing more than a distraction, he realized. But somewhat to his surprise, this made no difference to him. It was a risk he would have had to take.

He hit the water, and the scorching heat of the flames was slammed aside by icy cold. The violent switch in temperature was one of the most painful things he had ever felt, and he scrunched his face up at the shock. It was an effort to make his eyes open again so that he could locate Karst.

The cold water had put out the flames, but the intense heat of Mars psynergy was enough to do grievous injury in a split second. Through the blur brought by the water, he could see large patches of his flesh blackened and purpled, flaps of ravaged skin hanging loose. He focused some Ply psynergy into undoing the damage, but it wouldn't be enough. To heal himself properly, he'd need to focus completely on the healing process, and he couldn't afford to do that at the moment. Even if he could, it would take a good deal of time, time he was sure Triegen had no intention of giving him.

Karst was sinking through the water, her limp body oddly positioned on her side. Even her mouth wasn't struggling; it hung slightly open, allowing water to slip in. Only her eyes were still alert, and they looked at him with a mix of confusion and dismay.

Felix swam for her with the most powerful strides he could summon. There was a wonderful sense of victory when he felt his body collide with her warmth. He grabbed hold of her waist with one hand, and clapped the other over her mouth to keep her from losing more precious oxygen.

He kicked his way to the surface, knowing that by this point he was probably under the ice rather than the opening to the cavern, mind scrambling over how he was going to break through it without letting go of Karst.

That question was answered for him when he bumped into the ice. Before he could make a move to break through, a hammer of flames came crashing down towards them. He kicked himself out of the way just in time to avoid being consumed by fire a second time; the ice where they'd been shattered, and the water boiled. He could feel the heat of it.

Shit! Should have known he'd be waiting for me to try that. Now what? Even if I can swim out of here, Karst will probably drown before I make it. She must have hardly any air as it is. How long was she under before I even reached her?

He glanced at her face, and though it was hard to tell through the blurring effect of the water, it looked as though she were already about to black out.

Felix's mind went blank in that moment - from panic, from despair, and perhaps from simple indecision - and he acted without true thought. He covered Karst's mouth with his own, sharing his remaining oxygen with her. Her breath promptly sucked the air from his lungs.

The second after, it hit him how foolish this was. He couldn't save Karst, only postpone her death by a minute or so. He should have just left her to die and try to escape. It's what Karst herself would have wanted him to do. He could hear her scornful voice: "Pathetic... not only are you too weak to save me, you're too much of a fool to even save yourself!"

It didn't matter. Just like jumping into the water after her, it was something he had to do. His only real misgiving was at leaving Sheba behind, and even the thought of that responsibility couldn't dissuade him. Karst was a good person; even if it was futile, he had to try to save her, just as he had had to try to protect Sheba.

Between the two of them, their air quickly ran out. Felix's head began to feel fuzzy. He couldn't concentrate on a way out of the situation anymore; he just wanted to keep holding onto Karst until the end.

A feeling of warm contact made him start. Karst had reached up to press her hand against him. It felt like she was focusing her psynergy into her palm, to warm him.

Unbelievable. She's already starting to recover from that poison? Triegen could have lied about how potent it is, but why would he?

In truth, he wasn't all that surprised that Karst was strong enough to fight off the poison, any more than he was surprised that she was compassionate enough to give him the warmth of her psynergy. That was who she was.

The layer of ice above them was abruptly blasted apart. He flinched, expecting the end, but this second burst of Mars psynergy did not go past the surface of the water. It was clearly not intended to kill anyone.

A minute before he would have agonized over whether or not this was a trap, but at this point he had no choice. It was either head for the surface and probably get killed, or stay where he was and allow both himself and Karst to drown. Even if it was a trap, there was still a chance Karst would survive, thanks to her Proxian resistance to Mars psynergy.

He kicked his way back up, and gasped as his head broke the surface. Not pausing even to catch his breath or look around to see what the situation was, Felix propped Karst's head up on the surface of the ice and put a hand in front of her face to check that she was still breathing. The feeling of her warm breath against his palm was a greater relief to him than his own first gulps of air. Gods, I don't know what I'd have done if I had lost her to the world. I don't think I ever could have forgiven myself.

"Felix!" a voice snapped. Felix's gaze darted up, and his heart brightened at the sight of his sister. She glared down at him. "What are you doing? Don't you remember what Karst did to Isaac and -"

"She saved my life," Felix interrupted, then looked around for Triegen. Sheba and two Proxians(he recognized them as Jarrabar and Delihra) were chasing him back into the cavern, sending blasts of psynergy at him. Satisfied that they could handle him, he turned back to Jenna. "Is... is there any hope that any of the others survived?"

She shook her head. "We don't know. I... I just had to get myself to safety."

"I'm glad you did," he reassured her. "We at least have a chance at finding the others now. How did you know where we were?"

"It was Sheba. She couldn't believe you'd drowned, so she figured you had to be somewhere near the shores. We kept wandering around there until she could pick up your thoughts. She told us there wasn't time to find the way in, so those two Proxians just blasted a hole into this cave."

Felix blinked. "She can pick up thoughts from that far away? I thought her psynergy only worked when she's just an arm's reach away."

"Well... I think it's different with you."

Before Felix could ask what she meant by that, Karst managed to groan, "Felix..."

His eyes snapped back to her. "Are you okay?"

With a grunt, she slapped her hands to the edges of the hole Jenna had made and pushed herself up, out of the water. She was clearly weak, and Felix noticed that her legs were still dead weight; if he chose to hold on to her, there was no chance she could break free. But he made no effort to stop her. He simply climbed out of the water himself and watched her prop herself up into a crude sitting position.

Her eyes zeroed in on Felix. "Why... did you save me like that?"

He shrugged. "You did the same for me."

"What I did... wasn't the same thing at all."

Felix might have replied to that, but his mind was distracted with thoughts of Sheba, Jarrabar, and Delihra. Their quarry didn't stand much chance against the three of them all together, but it was still dangerous, and one of them - maybe Sheba - could be killed. He wanted to go after them, but he couldn't leave Karst alone, and leaving her with Jenna didn't seem like a good idea. On the other hand, he hated to think of what Jenna would think if he asked her to leave him alone with Karst...

Screw it. Sheba and the others could be in danger, and I'm supposed to be the leader; I can't be worrying about my personal dramas. "Jenna, go after Sheba. Make sure she's safe. I'll look after Karst, and come after you as soon as she's recovered. If I don't show up, meet me back here."

Jenna stared back at him. "No."

"What?" He felt anger in his voice. He didn't have patience for insubordination in the middle of a crisis, not even from his sister.

"Look, Felix, something is going on with you. I don't know what it is," - she paused to jab her finger at Karst - "...but it's pretty obviously something to do with her. You've been acting crazy ever since she and Agatio attacked our ship - heck, maybe even before then! I don't know what kind of freaky spell she's got you under, but I'm not going to just... just walk away and let it happen!"

"Jenna -" He stopped. Shit. What can I say to even make her think it's possible that she's wrong? If I had seen Jenna act the way I did in my fight with Agatio, and after, I would have thought she'd lost her mind, too.

Felix stood up and turned in the direction Sheba had headed. "Alright, then. You stay here with Karst. Don't let anything happen to her, understand?"

A voice came from above, like a god speaking down to his new creation. "I'm sorry to hear you ask Jenna to do something like that, Felix. I can see she must be right about you."

Felix looked up. Through what he assumed was the same hole in the cavern ceiling Jenna and Sheba had come through, Isaac and Garet floated in.