Eren fell long and fast.
He twisted sharply midway through the air, reaching out for something to grab onto, finding only scales. Petra and Annie fell below him, their voices dissipating before they could climb back up and reach Eren. But Corporal was there. His massive body filled the passageway and Eren kept twisting until he came parallel with his friend. Pushing against the wind that rushed by he grabbed hold of Corporal's horns.
The moment he did Eren was sure they must have plunged into water. He tensed, held his breath… but no. There was no cold, no wet, nothing but the imagery of blue around him, dark bubbles and caches of seaweed floating by. It was like someone had taken the best that water had to offer, a visual paradise, and superimposed it over the darkness. Eren tried breathing—and he could breath. He forced a sound and heard it rushing by his ears. Fingers tightening around the horns, always holding fast, Eren and Corporal soared among the waves with a purpose that didn't feel anything like falling, and as they did Eren realized that he really wasn't afraid. Not of something like this. The weightlessness as he floated above Corporal's back… the soothing rush of water along his limbs… there was nothing but exhilaration here.
Which informed Eren that it couldn't possibly be real.
They crashed seconds later.
Petra hit first, letting out a scream that startled Sasha off her post. Connie came rushing in right as Annie tumbled out of the hatchway, staggering away from the blast of magic that broke her fall. Then came Eren and Corporal. The two employees manning the boiler room were left gapping as one human and one dragon proceeded to crash through the ceiling, rending it to pieces, and then decimated the rest of their workspace.
"Human, have you lost your mind?" Sasha shrieked even as Corporal's tail lashed near her head. The spikes cut a neat tuft of bangs away and it was up to Connie to pull his stunned friend aside. Annie dragged Petra to safety even as Corporal continued to writhe against the endless collection of cupboards. Herbs and tokens of every imaginable type were cast into the air, only to fall back down on them like rain. The drop certainly seemed to have woken Corporal up again; instilled him with an energy that, while reassuring, wasn't exactly helping any of them.
"Eren!" Annie called. "Get away from him."
"Who's Eren?" Came Connie's baffled voice.
"The human."
"Oh… oh yeah! Oh wow. How did we forget—?"
"Move!" Petra kicked Connie's legs out from under him just as Corporal's tail took another swipe. He landed hard on his ass but the violence saved his neck nonetheless. The four spirits continued to back up towards the boiler, all the while searching for the tiny human lost underneath a dragon's colossal, struggling body.
For his part, Eren hadn't been crushed yet. He dove beneath Corporal's long neck even as he continued to knock his own head against the wall. Using the opened drawers as a makeshift ladder he climbed high enough to reach Corporal's snout, the teeth gleaming white before him. Annie may have healed the superficial cuts he'd been dealt but whatever was still killing Corporal had caused new blood to spout over his gums, some of it running out through his nostrils. Eren grimaced at the sight even as he used one hand to keep steady while the other dropped to the elastic of his pants. There was the bottle, magically unbroken from the fall. It rested against his thigh with a familiarity that Eren couldn't help but resent now. If he'd remembered it sooner…
"I'm sorry, Corporal," he whispered. His apology was lost to the echoing growls his friend let loose. Eren pulled the cork out with his teeth and spat it far away. "I'm really, really sorry. But here. I've got it now. Here…"
Eren reached as far as he could. Corporal was opening his jaw in sporadic bursts, still emitting those howling sounds. All Eren needed to do was pour the mixture down his throat and then everything would be better.
He tilted the bottle… then stopped.
If he gave it all to Corporal, how would he ever heal his family?
Just as Eren hesitated a hot flash of pain cut across his cheek. It was the cut, Historia's cut, acting as a brutal reminder. Eren didn't need another. How stupid of him. His family was far off in a barn. Corporal was here. He could finally do something.
"This is going to taste like shit," Eren said and poured the medicine straight down Corporal's throat.
Whatever agony Corporal had been experiencing before, it increased threefold. Eren remembered the feeling well and he'd only had a sip. With the entirety of Dot's fearsome concoction burning its way through Corporal's stomach it was no surprise that his body tensed, warped, and then seized with a violence that shook Eren right off the wall; like swatting a fly. He fell directly onto Corporal's snout and narrowly avoided having his fingers, if not his whole arm, snapped off. Corporal seemed to realize what had nearly happened—maybe the medicine was already kicking in—because he lowered them both to the ground as gently as his quivering body was able. Eren hung on, using the whole of his chest and the strength of his legs to keep that massive jaw closed. Corporal seemed determined to cough up the foul liquid and though Eren was sympathetic, that just wasn't gonna happen.
"C'mon, Corporal." Eren muttered, his own teeth vibrating with the thrashing. "C'mon. Don't be an asshole about it, just swallow. C'mon. Just a few more seconds…" But then Eren felt arms snaking their way around his bare waist, Annie's, finally succeeding in pulling him out of danger. As he was dragged backwards—hands along his shoulders now too, another pair grasping at his ankles—Corporal's maw unhinged and he hawked, just like a cat letting loose a hairball. Eren shivered under a cold douse of fear. Corporal was rejecting the medicine, he was going to die… that is, until something that definitely wasn't Dot's mixture came flying out of his mouth. It landed with a clink against the floor, right smack in the middle of a group of soot-balls. They scurried away even as Eren and the others inched closer.
"What is it?" Connie whispered.
It was small, rectangular, gold, and had black markings on at least three of the sides that Eren could see. Beyond that though… he shrugged.
"It's a seal," Petra said. "I remember it used to sit on Irwin's desk. At least, I think it's a seal. The one time Gunther tried to use it—"
"No doubt he was punished." Annie finished. "It is a seal in its most literal form but you'd be better off thinking of it as a vessel." Her expression darkened so fast that Eren was compelled to pull away. He didn't though, casting only a quick, worried glance at the now still Corporal before huddling even closer, maybe trying to offer comfort, maybe just hoping to receive it. Annie allowed the close contact either way; the lines of her face easing.
"It only used to be a seal," she muttered. "Now it's a storage container. For magic." Her sneer grew. "How nice to know that I wasn't the only source he was hoarding. At least he didn't stuff me into something that size. Huh. I'll admit though, I've never seen a vessel with markings like that bef—"
The markings moved.
Like a rubber band they stretched out and then snapped back together, forming a little black clump that poised itself amongst all the gold. Then it began dripping off the edge of the seal and Eren supposed that it must be ink of some kind… until it solidified into a body.
Surrounded by four spirits, a human, and nearly fifty soot-balls, a black slug with pin-prick eyes blinked up at them all.
"WHAT IS THAT? THAT THING? GET IT OUT OF MY BOILER ROOM." Sasha's voice reached a pitch Eren hadn't thought possible. It certainly startled the slug. The thing dove amongst their feet in a panicked frenzy as Sash lunged for an open drawer. Eren saw the slug slither over Petra's shoes and duck behind Connie's left heel, he lost sight of it then, turned—and came eye to point with an arrow Sasha had nocked and had ready to loose.
"Woah!"
"Death to the squishy thing," she hissed, pulling her bow back another inch.
"Shit, shit, shit, Sasha, just wait a second—" Eren took a step away, purely out of self-preservation, and something squashed underneath his bare foot.
It was the slug, now oozing out between his toes.
"Oh, ewwwwwww," Eren moaned. He tried scraping it off against the dirt but it just ended up staining his skin. His friends just stood there ignoring his plight, Annie and Petra stunned, Sasha huffing with her arrow still nocked, only Connie's hand steadying her.
"Don't shoot his foot," he squeaked.
"Yeah, no. Sasha! Don't shoot me or my foot." Eren's eyes on Sasha, everyone else staring at him. It was just the moment of distraction the slug needed. It reformed with a tiny pop and shot for freedom.
Or rather, it shot straight at Corporal.
In the seconds it took for the slug to surmount the ledge and skim the remaining distance to Corporal's body Eren had an insight he really could have done without. It was like the reverse of his dream: instead of a vision that felt too much like reality it was reality growing muddled, a sharper version of his fall into an ocean that wasn't there. Eren saw a slug—not this slug because it hadn't done these things yet, it was still a different slug—reach Corporal before anyone else could and it slithered back between his teeth. In a time lapse Eren watched as Corporal began to writhe again, contort, scream silently through the experience, and as he did his scales turned as black as the sludge that had invaded him. Only when all the blue and green of him was gone did Corporal lie still. Dead.
Eren pulled back into the now and whispered, "No."
The slug had nearly cleared the ledge.
"KILL IT WITH FIRE!" Sasha screamed and loosed her arrow. It hit the slug dead on but it reformed almost instantly. Annie had taken the command to heart though and had obediently summoned another handful of fire. Eren forced his legs into a run.
Several things happened at once:
He jumped the ledge and skirted around Sasha's arrow, Connie shot off a stone with a slingshot Eren hadn't even seen him produce, he came within three feet of the slug, Connie's shot went wide, two feet away, he heard Petra's shout—"You'll hit Corporal!"—and then the heat of Annie's fire, still coming, unstoppable. Eren dropped and slammed his palm down on the slug just as the flames engulfed them both.
There was a cool tingle, like the pins and needles of a limb reawakening. Then the fire dispersed. The slug was gone.
"You did it," Eren half-laughed. On his knees he tilted backwards until he could see Annie's face. "Yes!"
She pursed her lips.
"No I didn't," Annie said.
Eren blinked at the slug-less floor. "But you—"
"No." She shook her head. "I would have harmed you and your friend. I told the fire to cool right before it hit. It shouldn't have hurt the curseling."
"Curseling?" Connie asked. He gave his slingshot a kiss and tucked it into his back pocket.
"A curse, or in this case a poison that's been given physical form. No doubt it latched onto your Corporal when he stole the seal. They're despicable."
Connie hesitated. "It was kinda cute looking though… or, you know, not." He withered under Annie's stare.
"Then how…?" Eren's question was cut off by the arrival of Sasha. Slinging her bow over her back she took Eren's hands between her longer ones and turned the right one over. There, a smear of black dotted Eren's palm.
"Ew." He groaned. "Again?"
"You did it," Sasha crooned. Her manic energy had died down somewhat at their victory but now it rose once more in the form of excitement. "Human! You killed the evil sluggy thing! I'm so glad I kept you around."
"We've been over this, Sasha. You kicked him out." Connie said.
"Shuddup."
"Not gonna do it, you can't make me."
"Oh really?" Sasha fingered her bow.
"Uh," Eren interrupted. "Anyone want to explain this?"
Now that the danger seemed to have passed Eren became aware of just how grimy his palm felt. Not just dirty but somehow tainted. Seeing his expression Connie rushed over. As he made gagging noises at Eren's hands Sasha shrugged.
"Love," she said simply. Joining them Petra and Annie both nodded. "Just squashing icky things like that doesn't work. Squashing out of fear or violence is even more useless." Sasha frowned down at the arrow she'd tugged out of the floor. "I should have tied food to you." She murmured to it. "Pure love. That would have done the trick."
"Sasha."
"But!" She cried. "You squashed it out of love for Corporal, and ta-da!" Sasha grabbed hold of his wrist, waving his hand as proof. Really disgusting proof.
"What are you even on about?" Connie snatched Eren's hand for himself.
"Love." Sasha sniffed. "Something you wouldn't recognize."
"Oh ha. Like you're such an expert, Mrs. I'm-So-In-Love-With-My-Dinner."
"Dinner is GREAT don't dis DINNER, you—"
Eren stared desperately out at Annie. Annie turned to Petra.
"Are they always like this?" She asked.
"Yes."
"Fantastic."
Petra's sigh was lost amidst all the bickering.
"Evil be gone!" Connie shouted, making Eren jump. While distracted he'd made a circle out of Eren's fingers, only to then cut through them with his own. He grinned triumphantly.
"There," he said. "Now you're all clean."
"Except he's not." Sasha scoffed.
"No I'm not," Eren agreed. He held up his still blackened palm. Connie spluttered.
"Well I… you know… meant it… spiritually?"
"What idiocy are you spouting, we are spirits, ding-dong head."
"I don't know okay, I read it in a book."
"A book! Oh for—"
Eren rolled his eyes and decided to just wipe his palm on Connie's pants. He didn't notice. He and Sasha were still shouting when Eren got to his feet and then paused, his bare foot nearly stepping on a bottle, one that clearly didn't belong among Sasha and Connie's things.
It was small and now intimately familiar. Dot's medicine. Gingerly Eren took it into his palm, warring emotions of relief and disappointment clouding him. He'd never regret giving it to Corporal but now that there was none left for his family he simply didn't know how he'd change them back.
Except…
Except that there was still a tiny puddle at the very bottom. Just enough, perhaps, for two adults and a very small child.
Snatching a nearby rag Eren re-plugged the top, hardly daring to think on the possibilities. Instead he hid the bottle in behind his back and went to join Annie and Petra around Corporal.
He was breathing much easier now, slow and steady, with a faint steam issuing from his nostrils. Petra was busy tucking Corporal's form around itself so he appeared to be a coiled snake, warm and sleepy.
"He'll be okay then?" Eren whispered. Annie nodded.
"Yes. He's lucky. Let him sleep as long as he needs and when he wakes he'll be the friend you remember."
Annie smiled, maybe for the first time since Eren had met her. "Oh," she added. "And good job."