Aydra glared at him as he and the others took steps back from the creature.
Bones continued to crack, and the creature started to lift off the ground, as though it were putting itself back together. Slowly, she felt its empty core return, and it hovered between creature and being for a moment, before it found itself doubled over on its hands and knees on the ground.
Not a creature, but a man looked up at her from its mangled hands.
One yellow eye. One blue eye. Nose crooked, but slowly straightening as the flesh twisted on its face, morphing from burned and disfigured to smooth and handsome. Its wide eyes pleaded with her from the ground.
“My Queen,” she heard it say. “My Queen, please. I mean you no harm.”
Aydra stared down her nose at it, weary of the begging it was doing before her. The memory of it running at her across the beach reminded her of what it truly was.
A monster manipulator.
It reached up towards the bow in her hands. “Please, I—”
The double-take it did behind her then caught her off guard. It must have seen Draven, for suddenly its face flashed of the obscene creature once more, and it hissed in Draven’s direction.
The creature bolted to its feet and took off running in the opposite direction.
Aydra pulled the arrow through her bow, aiming for the neck, and—
The arrow landed with a thud in its throat. Its feet dragged midair on the grass, and then it fell flat on its face to the dirt.
“Look at that,” Draven muttered behind her. “The Queen does know how to use a weapon not made of her body.”
She glared back at him. “Shut up,” she smarted. “What now?”
“Just wait,” he told her.
“For what? For it to get back up and run away again?”
Draven wrapped his arms over his chest and his jaw tightened beneath his beard. She glared back at him, and he raised a brow and gave an upwards nod back at the body once more.
The ground began to tremble.
The earth snapped.
She could see a gaping crack in the earth moving fast towards them. Fissures opened up around the Infi’s body. A violent tremor shook her to the point that she nearly lost her balance. Lex grabbed her arm as she too almost fell.
The wind wrapped around them. Aydra looked bewildered back at Draven and started to speak, but he was collectively watching the Infi, completely unphased by what was happening around them.
Tree roots shot up from beneath the fissures. Her eyes widened back at the scene as the roots finger-like ends paused above the Infi as though it were waiting to pounce. The wind whipped past them once more, and then—
The roots dove inside the creature’s body.
“I think I’m going to hurl,” she heard Dorian say.
She could see the roots wrapping inside the creature’s mouth, ears, and wounds. The wind began to slow, and she noticed something white inside the roots’ grasps as they reemerged into the open air.
Bones.
The ground began to tremble again, and the fissures slowly closed. The last root to retract back into the earth carried the Infi’s heart in its grasp. And then—
The hills were silent once more.
Aydra couldn’t move.
She’d just watch a man’s insides be pulled back into the ground by its own giver.
