Chapter 31: Harvest (Patreon)

The list ran to eight items. I read it twice, then folded it into my palm.

Blood Sap, Ghost Vine, Luxapus Secretion, Nibbler's Teeth, Nether Ooze, Screaming Bark, Soulleaf, Strangler's Root. Quantities were modest for most—two vials of this, a bundle of that—except the Ghost Vine, which required enough to fill a half-litre jar, and the Nether Ooze, which wanted a sealed container of unspecified size with the note collect generously appended in Auriel's precise script.

Aria took one look at the list over my shoulder and groaned.

"Oh my Hell." She pressed both hands to her cheeks. "This is going to take forever. Do you see how many stops that is? Blood Sap's on the west side of settlement, Strangler's Root is apparently in the outer cultivation beds, Nether Ooze is going to be—" She stopped mid-spiral, and her expression reversed completely. "Okay, wait. We got assigned Luxapuses."

She said it the way someone announces a surprise holiday.

"What's a Luxapus?" I asked.

Aria stared at me. Not the theatrical stare she deployed for comedic effect—genuine, flat surprise.

"You literally spend half your free time in the Library," she said.

"Hey." I put mild offence into it.

"No, seriously, how have you not—you've been in there every other evening for a month."

"I can't read everything."

Aria tilted her head, considering this with exaggerated solemnity. "No," she agreed, "not yet. But give it, I don't know, a few thousand years, and you'll probably be the only succubus who actually has. They'll name a shelf after you. The Nightstar Collection."

"The Luxapus," I said.

She grinned. "Lesser demon. Totally mindless, no higher function whatsoever, just pure instinct." She paused for effect. "But they can be really fun to play with. You'll see."

"Thrilling," I said.

Isabella had been reading her own copy of the list with the focused quiet of someone drafting a tactical plan. "We should leave them last," she said, not looking up.

"Why?"

She turned the paper over, checking the back for anything written there, found nothing, and tucked it into her jacket. "The secretion dissolves non-organic, non-magical material on contact. Equipment, clothing, anything artificial." A slight pause. "And the encounter itself tends to be somewhat taxing. It would be counterproductive to attempt the remaining reagents in that condition."

I thought about the phrasing somewhat taxing, and what I knew of Aria's definition of fun to play with, and arrived at a conclusion I decided not to examine further.

"Fine by me," I said.

We started toward the western edge of the settlement where the Soulleaf grew, according to the rough map Auriel had sketched on the reverse of the assignment sheet. The packed earth path between Thornvale's buildings was narrow enough that we walked single file for a stretch—Isabella at the front, Aria at the back, me in the middle watching the settlement's edges.

The trees lining the path here were the managed kind, spaced evenly, their lower branches trimmed. They still shifted when there was no wind. Still showed that subtle motion I'd clocked from the clearing. I kept my eyes forward and didn't think about the bark.

The sweet scent thinned a little as we moved away from the flowering vines near the gate. Replaced by something earthier. Loam and something underneath it, faintly mineral.

"Soulleaf first because it's safe," Aria announced to no one in particular, bouncing on her heels as she walked. "Smart. Build confidence. Classic opening move."

"It is the most straightforward item on the list," Isabella said.

"I know, I'm agreeing with you." Aria sounded almost surprised by this. "Don't make it weird."

The path curved left and the canopy opened ahead, letting through a wide bar of pale, dusky light.

*

The Soulleaf had been straightforward. The Ghost Vine had involved careful work with gloves and a short knife. The Nether Ooze had filled its container without incident, though the smell required some adjustment.

The Nibblers were something else.

They lived in dense colonies under the root systems at the forest edge—small things, maybe the length of my hand, with too many legs and jaws that moved on a different axis than anything I'd seen in nature. The teeth were visible even when their mouths were closed. Crystalline and ridged, faintly luminescent.

Aria reached into the nearest cluster without preamble and came up with one in each fist.

"They still sting," she announced, dropping one into the collection jar and prying the second one's mouth open with both thumbs. "Like, I know they can't actually—ow. See? That's annoying."

"They cannot pierce the skin," Isabella said. She had three immobilized against a flat root, working through them methodically. "The pressure is purely superficial."

"Superficial hurts."

"Then work faster."

Aria stuck her tongue out at Isabella's back and reached for another one.

I held mine. The creature scrambled against my palm, legs cycling, jaw working. It wasn't heavy. It didn't look at me with anything behind its eyes—no fear, no recognition, nothing that resembled awareness. Pure stimulus and response.

"Lily." Isabella had turned. "Everything alright?"

"Fine," I said.

She held the look for a half-second longer, then went back to her work.

I looked at the Nibbler.

The practical case was obvious. I wasn't incapable. What I felt was closer to reluctance, the same flat resistance I'd feel watching a surgeon work without anaesthesia. Besides these mindless creatures probably didn't experience pain the way anything complex did. Probably.

But Aria and Isabella were burning through them like it was nothing, and I was standing here running ethics on an animal in the Fifth Circle of Hell. I'd need the goodwill I spent on visible hesitation for something that actually mattered. Not this.

I set my thumb against the lower jaw and opened it clean.

The first two teeth came out wrong—I misjudged the angle and they snapped at the root. I adjusted my grip. Third attempt, I found the correct pressure point and the tooth came free whole, intact, still faintly warm.

I worked faster after that. There was a geometry to it: two fingers at the jaw hinge, one thumb at the base of the tooth, a short rotation rather than a pull. The creature stopped struggling within a second of being properly held. It was almost a reflex—the grip itself seemed to suppress them, something in the pressure.

I moved to the next one.

The technique refined itself. I wasn't thinking about the step sequence anymore, just executing it, and the jar was filling. I had a small count running at the back of my attention but most of me was in the motion—the grip, the angle, the clean extraction.

"We have enough."

Isabella's voice. I looked up.

The jar was full. More than full—I'd been dropping them into the overflow container Aria had produced at some point.

"What," I said. Then, "Sorry. Got too absorbed."

Aria was watching me with her head tilted, expression unreadable for once. "We know," she said. "That's why we didn't interrupt." She capped the overflow container and tucked it under her arm. "It was kind of mesmerizing, honestly, but we need to move. What's next?"

I checked the list, though I already knew.

"Screaming Bark and Blood Sap."

"One stop." Aria pointed toward the tree line. "Come on. I know where."

*

We walked in silence for maybe three minutes. The forest pressed closer on either side, canopy thickening until Asphodel's twilight dimmed further. I was thinking about Earth. About what Daniel would think if he saw me now—pulling teeth from live animals without hesitation, walking through Hell's forest like it was a field trip. About Faith's face if she ever learned what I'd become.

The question wasn't whether I could go back. It was whether I'd still be myself after everything I'd done.

The screaming reached us before the clearing did.

Not animal sounds. Words. Pleading. "Please—no more—please—"

Aria rounded the bend ahead of me. I followed and stopped.

The plantation stretched out in neat rows, each tree maybe twenty feet tall, bark pale and smooth. Workers moved between them with long knives and collection buckets. Standard operation, professionally organized.

The trees were begging them to stop.

"Don't—don't—oh god please—"

I winced. The sound hit something primal, the same reflex that made you turn toward a scream in a crowd. But it wasn't coming from people.

The bark had faces.

Twisted, agonized, mouths open in perpetual cries. They shifted as I watched, surfacing and sinking back into the wood grain. A worker drove his knife into a trunk and the nearest face contorted, scream pitching higher.

My stomach turned over.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Aria said. "Are they all going to do that? Because that's going to get really annoying really fast."

"That's why most of the work is usually delegated to servants." Isabella's tone was matter-of-fact, like we were discussing laundry services. The noise becomes... grating."

The ground shook.

Not violently. Just a single heavy impact that travelled through the soil and rattled the collection buckets hanging from posts. The workers paused mid-motion, looked toward the deeper forest, then returned to their tasks without comment.

"What was that?" Aria asked.

"Likely one of the giant trees fell," Isabella said. "Or was felled. Difficult to say from this distance."

"Well, at least it stopped the noise for a bit."

It had. The screaming had dropped to whimpers, then slowly climbed back up as the workers returned to their rhythm.

I looked at the nearest tree. A face resolved in the bark directly in front of me, features pulling themselves out of the grain. Male, maybe, though it was hard to tell. The mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, then found voice.

"Please," it said. Eyes—actual eyes, wet and desperate—focused on me. "Please don't—I didn't—I never—"

I swallowed.

The worker to my left drove his blade in again. The tree's scream peaked and broke.

"They're super dramatic," Aria said. "Like, we get it, harvesting hurts, but the whole begging thing? Bit much."

Isabella had already moved to the nearest tree with tools ready. "We need bark samples and three vials of sap. The sap only flows when fresh wounds are made, so timing matters."

The face in front of me hadn't stopped talking. The words had degraded into repetitive loops—please please please—like a broken recording.

I made myself look at it properly.

The eyes tracked me. There was awareness there, not just reflex. Real recognition that I was standing here, real understanding that I could help or hurt.

I forced my jaw to relax and walked toward Isabella.

*

I approached Isabella, keeping my breathing steady. The faces were disturbing, sure. But this was Hell. Everything here was designed to distress, to horrify, to make damned souls wish for oblivion.

The screams were probably just the local equivalent of thorns. A defence mechanism. These trees were plants—vocal ones, admittedly—but still plants. The faces were just... mimicry. Pattern recognition gone haywire in my brain, seeing humanity where none existed.

I repeated it like a mantra. Just plants. Just defence mechanisms.

Isabella held a wide chisel ready, positioning it against smooth bark. "Here. Drive it in at this angle. I'll lever the section free once you've created the initial separation."

I took the tool. The weight was solid, reassuring.

I could stop. Walk away, let them handle it. Aria and Isabella were fully committed to their demonic natures—they wouldn't hesitate. I could maintain the moral high ground by keeping my hands clean.

The chisel's edge touched bark.

I drove it in with one clean strike.

The face directly beside my hands contorted. "NO—please—PLEASE—"

Isabella slid her blade into the gap I'd made and levered. The bark plate separated with a wet tearing sound. The scream peaked, broke into sobbing.

"Stop—god please stop—I didn't—I never—"

I held the separation steady while Isabella worked the section free. My hands didn't shake. My pulse stayed even.

The bark came away in one piece. The face on it continued screaming.

No guilt washed through me. No horror. I'd done the job, done it correctly, and now we had the sample we needed.

I straightened, watching Isabella store the still-screaming bark in her satchel.

Was I really against all of this? Or was I just trying to fool myself—pretending I still had boundaries while proving otherwise with every action?

I really needed to go back before I turned into something unrecognizable.

Aria swept in with collection vials, angling them under the fresh wound. Sap—thick and red—welled up and dripped into the glass. "Oh thank fuck, this is way easier with three people. I would've hated doing this alone. Can you imagine trying to chisel and collect at the same time? Total nightmare."

"That is likely Professor Auriel's intent." Isabella sealed the bark plate into her satchel, pressing the clasp shut. "She specified group formation for a reason. Solo collection at this volume within the time constraint would require sacrificing either quality or speed."

"Makes sense." Aria capped the third vial and slipped it into her bag. "Okay, so what's left? Just the tentacle thing?"

The ground shook again. Harder this time, a real impact that rattled the collection buckets and sent workers stumbling.

Aria looked toward the forest. "Seriously? Are they trying to clear-cut the whole forest today or what?"

"I do not believe that was a tree." Isabella's gaze fixed on something past the plantation edge. Her posture shifted—shoulders back, weight forward.

I followed her line of sight.

A group of Academy students burst from between the trees, sprinting flat-out. Their uniforms were torn, faces white with panic.

Behind them, something massive crashed through the forest.

It tore through trunks like they were toothpicks. The trees didn't just fall—they exploded, splinters erupting in clouds as the thing barrelled through. It was black, writhing, vaguely quadrupedal but wrong in ways my brain couldn't quite process. Shadow given weight and hunger.

"Shadowbeast," Isabella said. Her voice was perfectly level. "Run."

Aria and I didn't need a second encouragement.

*

We ran.

The plantation workers scattered ahead of us, abandoning their tools, their collection buckets, their careful rows of cultivated horror. The predatory crops lunged at the fleeing figures on instinct, snapping at ankles, but even the carnivorous flora seemed to sense something worse was behind them and held back.

"What is that thing?" I kept pace with Isabella, my boots hitting the packed earth hard.

"A creature native to Erebus." Isabella didn't look back. "It should not be here."

"Then why is it?" Aria called from my left, half a stride behind us.

"Shadowbeasts cross over on occasion. Hunger, territorial displacement, a breach in the circle boundary." Isabella cut left around a collapsed fence post. "It does not matter why. Head toward the settlement centre."

Aria veered with us. "Can't we just fly? We'd be clear in thirty seconds."

"Do not." Isabella's voice dropped the suggestion cleanly. No elaboration, no softening.

I glanced at her. "Why not?"

"Because flight means altitude, and altitude means your shadow stretches." She stepped over a collapsed trough without breaking stride. "Shadowbeasts consume shadows. The larger and more isolated the shadow, the more attractive the target. You would be advertising yourself."

"So what?" Aria said.

"So it feeds through your shadow, and when it does you feel everything that happens to it. Every bite. Every consumed portion." A beat. "In corresponding sections of your body. The pain is—significant."

"Like frostbite?" I asked.

"Worse."

Behind us, someone screamed. Not the high theatrical wail of the sentient trees. Something rawer, a sound driven out of a body by sheer involuntary agony.

I looked back.

One of the mortal workers was down, thirty metres behind us, convulsing against the dirt. His shadow was simply gone, the ground beneath him flat and shadowless in Asphodel's diffuse twilight. The shadowbeast had already passed over him, rolling forward like a black tide, its attention already ahead.

Its attention toward us.

I faced forward and ran faster.

We cleared a low log in unison. Aria landed with characteristic grace. I landed hard and kept moving.

"Almost there," Isabella said.

The settlement buildings rose ahead, the living-wood structures of Thornvale's centre clustering around the obsidian arch of the Transport Gate. Other students and workers were already converging on it from every direction, a panicked funnel of bodies.

The shadowbeast hit the plantation's edge behind us. Wood splintered. Something heavy and wet struck the ground.

Then the light came.

It arrived from above, golden and absolute, a column so dense it had weight. But tarnished at its edges, the gold carrying old brown undertones, as though the light had passed through something that had filtered out everything clean about it. It swallowed the shadowbeast whole.

I stopped running. Everyone stopped running.

The column held for four seconds. Maybe five. Then it withdrew, pulling upward as cleanly as it had descended, leaving the air above the plantation clear and still.

Where the shadowbeast had been, the ground bubbled. Black soil had gone molten, a slowly spreading pool of magma cooling at its edges, sending up thin ribbons of sulfur-scented smoke.

No beast. No mass of writhing darkness. No shadow.

Aria stood beside me, breathing hard, staring at the cooling patch of earth. "Okay," she said. "That's new."

*

The light was gone but the afterimage remained in my vision, that tarnished gold impression burnt into my retinas. I blinked twice, trying to clear it. The crater in the ground still bubbled, releasing thin curls of sulphurous smoke that smelled like burnt copper and char.

Professor Auriel descended from above, her blackened wings extended fully as she dropped the last few feet to the ground. The impact sent dust radiating outward in a perfect circle. She touched down between us and the molten crater, directly in the path of a group of six students who'd been running flat-out toward the gate.

The students stopped hard. Two skidded on the packed earth. One stumbled into another.

Auriel folded her wings against her back with a single precise movement. She looked at the six students, then at the cooling magma behind her, then back to the students.

"Which of you disturbed it?" Her voice carried the same measured tone she used in the workshop when someone contaminated a sample.

The students exchanged glances. One of them, a common with auburn hair and a chipped horn, raised her hand slightly.

"All of you?" Auriel asked.

Six nods. Varying degrees of shame in the body language.

"Return to the Academy immediately." Auriel gestured toward the Transport Gate. "You are dismissed from this assignment. You will receive failing marks for today's practical, and if you cannot complete a basic collection task without alerting a stray shadowbeast, you are not suitable candidates for advanced alchemical work."

The auburn-haired student opened her mouth.

"Now," Auriel said.

The six walked toward the gate. Their shoulders were hunched. None of them looked at each other. They passed us without making eye contact and continued toward the obsidian arch where other students had already begun forming orderly lines.

Auriel turned to face us. Her golden eyes swept across me, then Aria, then Isabella. She paused on the collection jars visible in Isabella's spatial pouch, then looked at the reagent list I still held.

"You have one hour remaining," she said. "I suggest you use it efficiently."

She spread her wings and lifted off without waiting for acknowledgment, rising twenty feet straight up before banking east toward another cluster of students near the processing facility.

Aria watched her go. "So she was just hovering up there the entire time?"

"Yes." Isabella adjusted the strap of her pouch.

"That's—" Aria gestured vaguely at the crater. "That was insane. Did you see what that light did?"

"We all saw it." I looked at the reagent list. Eight items. Seven collected. One remaining. "We still need Luxapus secretions."

Isabella nodded once. "The processing station. West side of the settlement."

"Lead the way."

*

The processing station stood at the western edge of the settlement, a squat structure built from the same living wood as the rest of Thornvale. The muffled sounds reached us from fifty feet out. Moans, mostly. Rhythmic and continuous.

Aria picked up her pace. "This is going to be fun."

"Shame we've only got an hour," she added, practically bouncing on her feet.

Isabella glanced at the building. "Even lesser demons can sometimes have their uses."

"Right?" Aria grinned. "Best thing on this entire list."

I raised an eyebrow. "Lesser demons?"

"Yeah, the ones that lack intelligence." Aria made a vague gesture. "Technically still demons, but not much different than animals."

"What's so fun about these ones?"

I rounded the corner and stopped.

The chamber opened before us, wide and humid. A mass of tentacles filled the interior space, writhing and coiling in continuous motion. The appendages were thick as my arm, glossy and segmented, emerging from a central mass I couldn't clearly see behind the constant movement.

Three of our classmates were already inside. Their expressions locked in ecstasy as the tentacles worked across them, around them, in them. Every hole filled. Some by multiple appendages at once.

I took a step back.

Everything I'd done so far—the nightclub, the feeding, the casual violence—all of it had been within reach. This was different. This was something out of a hentai doujin, tentacle porn made flesh and animated and waiting.

"I'll pass on this one."

Aria turned to look at me. "But it's the only fun one."

"Someone has to keep track of time." I kept my voice level. "Less than an hour left. I'm willing to watch over it."

Isabella looked at me, then shrugged.

"Nonsense." Aria grabbed my arm, tugging me forward. "We can perfectly keep track of time while having fun."

I slid out of her grip, stepping back toward the entrance.

"Lily?"

The question in her voice pulled something loose in my chest.

"Fine." The word came out sharper than intended. "This is outside my comfort zone. I don't like tentacles."

Aria blinked. "Oh. Should have said so."

I stared at her. The question slipped out before I could stop it. "That's it?"

"Well, duh?" She tilted her head. "Everyone can dislike stuff. Nothing to be ashamed of, princess."

The nickname landed soft, teasing rather than mocking.

"Take me, for example." Aria gestured with both hands. "I hate sex with pride demons. Even if I love it in general."

Isabella nodded once. "Personal preferences are reasonable."

"Anyway." Aria turned toward the chamber. "I'll be going to collect some secretions now since we haven't got much time." She glanced back at me. "Find something else to do in the meantime. I'd feel bad if we're the only ones having fun."

She walked into the mass without hesitation. A tentacle wrapped around her waist immediately. Her laugh echoed off the walls.

I stood there in the entrance.

That's it? All this time I could have just refused?

Every feeding session. Every demonstration. All those moments where I'd pushed through discomfort, convinced I had to perform, had to prove something, had to maintain the disguise.

And they'd just accept a refusal?

My gaze drifted back to the chamber. The tentacles moved with fluid precision, coiling and stroking and penetrating. One of the students inside arched her back, mouth open in a silent scream of pleasure.

A shiver ran down my spine. Heat followed it, pooling low in my belly.

I cursed this body and turned away. "I'll be back in thirty minutes."

The question followed me as I walked: how would it feel?

I shoved the thought aside and headed back toward the settlement centre.