“What do you mean?” I asked cheerfully, trying to banish numbness from my body. There was no reply. Not one for human ears. Inaudible reverberations shook the snowy branches, occasionally scattering their heavy load to the wind. We stood and waited, so did the menacing figure. The pressure was suffocating, and I unwittingly turned to check if the mountain still stood where it ought to have been. It hadn’t moved. However, just like my senses told me, there were some changes in landscape. Sparse pines that were perfectly upright were now all askew. Something moved under the snow. Not quite mountain, but massive nonetheless.


    I started walking backwards, to the safety of village and other people. Logically I knew they would not be able to help. Still, I desperately wanted a shelter. Somewhere far, far away. In a place without monsters. It was illogical, I knew they weren’t the cause of worst things that have happened to me. I couldn’t help it.


    The vibration from ivory monster nearby picked up and turned into a full-blown echoing growl. I froze still and after a moment dropped to curl up on my malfunctioning legs. That was all I could do anymore.


    Choppy hissing racked up in intensity and I imagined words distorted within it. “Sss-tohp…” inhuman cadence commanded, scrubbing my entire mental capacity clean. What could I even be doing wrong, when I was barely breathing anymore? “… You… Ss-carr-ing him,” tension started to ease and my scrambled noggin deciphered more meaning within the noise.


    I really really wanted to make a terrible remark and laugh it all off, but my jaw was still clenched shut.


    “You go on ahead while I deal with this,” completely normal voice informed me and ground under me moved as well.


    “No!” I shouted immediately. Staying close to him felt safer, even though I knew I would still be with him even whilst carried by some distorted abomination. But I clung to humanity in front of my eyes. There goes all my baseless insistence.


    “Give him to me,” voice called out and this one was still coloured by low echoing growls. An unmistakable, awfully familiar speech. I raised my eyes to look and found exactly what I was expecting. Monster with large coiling horns and black cloak, who was carefully threading forward through rippling snow as if battling the tide.


    “What the fuck?” My brain shorted out and that was the only prominent concern.


    “I am not giving you to him,” human look-alike argued as though I was about to bolt. I might have, if I knew what’s going on. Was I with a wrong guy? This appearance was highly suspect. Since when? He already looked like this in the hole. And he undoubtedly was the monster who ate my friends… Or was he? The few most complete ones were grossly inaccurate. This life form could create people from nothing, if they were there at all. What if all of it was some wild hallucination?


    Most infuriatingly, both of these creatures hadn’t learned a thing!


    “I’m not a god damn trinket to be passed around!” I shouted hypocritically, fully aware of how such mistake could have been made. After all, I was for sale most of my life.


    Anger dispersed some of the fear and I tried to stand back up. More human of the two offered me a hand, which I did not take.


    “I won’t,” he reiterated, human voice crackling with something more.


    “Who even are you?” I tossed back at him.


    He hadn’t replied, nor was there any emotion on the handsome face. Scent of a fresh cut intensified as if in response. If disappointment had an odour, I bet that’s how it would present. I couldn’t take that direct indifferent gaze any further and looked away. Whips cracked not too far off and served as a good distraction to concentrate upon. The battle under the snow drew nearer. I could see protruding spines and filaments meet and dodge. Horned monster was almost upon us.


    The other, gritty voice rattled off, “That means nothing. We split off too recently.”


    “That’s… both of you are you?” I asked dumbly.


    “No,” human imitator said somewhat disdainfully, “That’s a backup.”Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    “You’ve lost control. I’m now primary functional brain. Yield.”


    Air pressure started rising again. Growling noise lowered more and more until I didn’t hear it anymore, but ground shook and I was sure their discussion merely elevated somewhere beyond my comprehension. Before I became crippled with terror once more, I let out a desperate shout, “Stop!”


    To my great surprise, they did. Tremors quelled.


    “If both of you are the same person, why are you fighting?”


    “We aren’t anymore. He just wants to take you,” more human of the two explained.


    “Apple didn’t fall very far,” I muttered to myself and added with exasperation, “This just makes me not want to go with either of you.” At least they vouched for one another and I knew I wasn’t inside some delusion or got kidnapped by a completely new party. Probably.


    “That’s irrelevant,” growlier monster dismissed without a hint of consideration. The timbre and meaning behind it carried familiar lordliness, but somehow felt worse. Like he was about to pull out a leash. “You’ve allowed damage to him,” the horned one snarled out. The reprimand wasn’t aimed at me, but the ire would have been better than to be discussed like an item.


    “Perfect! Guess you don’t want me anymore since I’m soo damaged,” I announced cheerily.


    “He doesn’t know why he wants you,” a calm, deep voice commented with cemented conviction.


    “I know he’s important, and that you failed to preserve that,” distorted words did not deny the accusation. So this one had nothing, just some vague idea. After all, most recollections of me were ripped apart. Survivor of the monster mash must have put whatever remained safely aside.


    I quickly made my conclusions and rattled out, “Wait, wait, wait. No. First of all, I did that to myself. Second, you’re way too judgemental for someone who wasn’t even there. And third, with memory so full of holes you shouldn’t be this full of yourself, Alzheimer.”


    They must not have liked my brash logic, because blind demon’s probing ticks intensified and the human figure countered it with unbefitting quiet growl. It looked like they were about to get back to shredding each other. I coughed, trying to disperse the tension which I sowed, “Anyway, seems like we won’t see eye to eye. You can fuck off now.”


    Tick, tick, tick… tick. “I see. Scurry aside, human. I’ll find you afterwards.” Looks like my preferences amounted to total of zero. Disappointing, but unsurprising. I really wasn’t a fan of this new (old?) guy.


    “That implies you think you’ll win,” I probed tentatively. This conversation was making me feel uneasy for entirely new reasons. My buddy was unwell, I knew that much. Had not imagined it was this bad. That it could even be this way. That apparently when monsters got sick, their bodies came alive to finish the job.


    “Correct. He’s too bloated to function. Holding onto spoiled tissue and permitting tertiary consciousnesses to sprout and take root within himself.”


    Yeah. I might have an idea why that’s happened.


    “No. Hold on. We’ve just had this entire discussion already. Aren’t the two of you brothers, if not the same person? Can’t you like… Mesh back together and fix your body? This scrapping in the middle of fields is unbefitting all that giant intelligence you supposedly have.”


    “One would still have to dissolve,” gentler timbre of the two explained. That was quite the conundrum - for them, anyway. If there was identical copy of me, we’d fight to be the one to leave.


    Okay. Breathe. There’s got to be a way out of this.


    “Alright. I know exactly what we’ll do. Give me a moment,” I said only having vague idea.


    I dragged the backpack off monster’s shoulders and began rummaging. There was nothing but food. Not at all what I’ve been looking for… but would make do. I started undressing. The gloves, the hat, the coat. Sweater and shirt. By then I was wildly shivering and would have loved to stay with at least the footwear, but pants had to go too so I ended up stark naked.


    “Unwrap these too,” I pulled on the bandage on my neck and the arms.


    “The wounds are too deep to let them loose yet,” monster’s eyes were wide and frankly, crazed. I had no patience for his theatrics in this getup.


    “We can stand here and wait until I get pneumonia or just get on with it?”


    The tissue reluctantly retreated and disappeared.


    “Cool, cool, so here’s what we’re gonna do. You wait here,” shaking and clattering, I picked up two jars and strode off towards the horned devil. He was so terribly far and the drifts – too tall! I knew my request was disregarded because even I could hear the crackling slithering behind me.


    About halfway, horned monster wasted no time snatching me up and dragging far behind himself. The animalistic growling and scuffling resumed with full force. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said some of those were pained roars. They went on and on as if neither needed to breathe.


    Suffocating pressure returned almost immediately too and I had to concentrate really hard to not give into my primal urge to lock up and weep. I had to be moving, damn it!


    “So, anyway, I’m cold and dying?” I enunciated clearly, demanding to be warmed. Even among the booming battling and unholy screeches the stranger with horns obliged, crafting a cloak and a surface to stand upon. These felt like dead leather, were merely above snow temperature. Still, I wasted precious seconds savouring a windbreak.


    Thus far everything went fairly as planned. Better, even. I was far behind enemy lines, having expected to get just as far as the bipedal manifestation. This was preferable by far. The whole field must have contained horned creature.


    Sky had been brightening, but night appeared to have fallen again. Not only that, the snow was melting. Scraggly plant life and bizarre growths were too intertwined to be distinguishable. I was afraid to look up and observe the rising shapes.


    Wasting no more time I smacked the clattering jars together, shovelled several pieces of fruit in my mouth, then traced my skin with the glass shards scattered around. Not deeply, but plentifully nevertheless. This creature was reluctant to heal me, just like when we’ve first met and he’d just dumped me at the churchtown for the others to do the job. He let me bleed. And I did, all over him. The living fabric confusedly twitched, then began retreating.


    “Hey, where are you going?” I chased the escaping pad that I used to stand upon, dying the remainder of snow all around me. I flicked my trickling arms towards anything I saw move. Quite soon I’ve found myself breathing hard within an empty circlet. The rattling battle of the two titans seemed so far. Perhaps they just moved away from cloud of poison. This was tear in the ocean, but this was all I could do to help.


    Well, there was one more card to play.


    “Oy, Al! Why don’t you just copy me and fuck off?”


    Ear-splitting screech could not be confused with anything else – it was a wild disagreement with my proposal. I saw a thick vine try to make a brave return, but drown within itself midway. Then another, and again until one did manage to touch a tip of my outstretched finger. The bloodied tendril contorted and deformed just before being ripped off by claws.


    “That’s unnecessary. He’s already swapped enough to be suffering from internal damage,” disembodied voice informed me as several pairs of jagged bone arms locked up around my torso and sprung away from scorched earth.