Inside was another Dremin—one Asher had grown familiar with. After all, it was the same one he'd gotten knocked out helping. It was staying with them for a while now. Clara was feeding it some of her emotions till it could get back on its feet.
Through brief moments of lucidity, the once avian Dremin managed to tell its name. It was Falk.
"They're fascinating aren't they?" Clara asked as she mixed some ingredients up to the side of the bed.
"Mysterious." He nodded. Asher read up on them while he helped take care of Falk.
"Poor things...no home...no history." She thought loudly.
'Isn't that better.' Asher didn't say that out loud.
"They have a history." He retorted to stray his thoughts away from any uncomfortable thoughts.
Nobody knew how Dremin came to be only that they were first recorded about three hundred years back in overpopulated areas. Sludge like things that were attracted to humanity like moths to a flame.
"Wouldn't call a genocide much of a history especially when humans wrote it." Clara mused.
Their arrival was ill timed. The pyre wars ended a mere decade or so ago and the people were just starting to get settled in before this new species started spawning in droves beyond mere pest control. Thus came the sin hunts that kept their numbers in check.
'Fancy name for a genocide...' Asher scoffed. When the people finally realized that they were only harmful when the dozens of angry townsfolk subjected them to their rampant emotions the hunts stopped and the creatures integrated to human society.
It was only a matter of time before they lost their monstrous forms to become more humanoid and educated. Although this entirely depended on the diet of emotions and their living environment.
"How long do you think till he wakes up." Clara broke his reverie of the history lesson she gave a while ago. It wasn't all new information to him, but Asher liked spending time with her so he pretended otherwise.
"A week at most." Asher summarized as the sludge was slowly coalescing back together and forming proper limbs. He approached the bed to take a closer look but just as he did, the sludge began to bubble.
The black goo slowly convulsed out of Falk's broken mask till it...
"ASHER...GET BACK!" Clara grabbed him by the scruff and shoved him aside, narrowly dodging the spikes which sprung everywhere from the bulging dark mass.
The viscous sludge struck through both furniture and walls barely giving Clara enough room to do block the sudden attack with here metal arm. She dodged to the side and eyed the boy in the corner of the room.
"Get back...I'll deal with it!" Clara shouted uncharacteristically however her voice didn't reach the frozen boy. Asher stared at the rampaging tentacles and the debris around him. It wasn't fear that prevented him from backing away or listening. It was the realization that Falk's transformation was his fault.
Only Clara and he interacted with the Dremin. Clara drank calming potions to feed Falk serene and happy emotions so this form must be...
"It's...it's my fault..." Asher muttered. He knew it wasn't time to hesitate or worry about whose fault it is but regret didn't make it any easier to focus.
"Try...try...try...but all you're good at is causing more problems...getting other people hurt." The haughty voice screamed so loud that it hurt to think. Asher closed his ears but the screaming only got louder.
Now a sitting target, a tentacle flew in his direction but he was none the wiser. Just as it was about to hit him Clara launched herself at him and dragged the both of them behind a wooden counter.
"Breathe...Asher...Breathe...!" She caressed the boy till he calmed down and looked at the panicked eyes of the masked woman.
Asher's chest tightened. "I'm sorry." He whispered. The boy couldn't help but whisper. He was too ashamed to face her knowing this was his fault. The counter shook with the lashing of one on the tentacles as dust and wood fell next to them.
"Don't worry...I'm more handy than I look." She made another hand joke and wiped a tear from Asher's eyes. Even though her hand was made of metal it still felt warm to him. Another lashing and some of the cabinets fell over with their contents littering the ground nearby. Amid jars and bottles Clara notices a small purple crystal.
"Stay here...I've got an idea." She said confidently as she ruffled the boy's white and black hair. Clara lunged from cover, ducking under one thrashing limb and slamming her metal arm into another with a hollow clang. When she finally grabbed the crystal Clara motioned to pierce her arm with it, but the sludge was one step ahead and unleashed a torrent of its viscous mass that pinned the woman to the wall.
The crystal fell the ground again and the black sludge covered most of Clara's body, leaving barely her head intact but it didn't stop there. It slowly moved upwards to swallow her up.
Asher flinched as all this unfolded. His anxiety spiked further when the purple crystal became in arm's reach, leaving both their fate's up to him.
"NO NO NO! She told us to stay...we should stay...Stephan has to come...we can't...we shouldn't!" Fear began to shout almost drowning the chaos and flailing tentacles.
'I can't...I won't...I have to help...it's my fault!' The boy resolved himself.
It took Asher a minute to calm down. He took a deep breath and grabbed the crystal before starting to run towards Clara. He didn't have a plan, but he trusted that Clara did.
Without the agility or experience to completely dodge, the flailing tentacles grazed his arms and feet but that didn't stop him from reaching the struggling woman.
"STAB my ha…." The sludge reached her mouth and made its way inside, choking Clara. Asher froze for a second as he watched her gasp for air but he quickly shook his head and dodged another tentacle in his attempt to lodge the crystal in Clara's hand.
A tentacle swatted the boy back to the counter, knocking the air out of his lungs. He barely managed to keep his eyes open to watch Clara free her arm with what little strength she had left and lodge the crystal in her other hand.
The sludge peeled back, dropping Clara to the ground. Her prosthetic glowed—first red, then orange—growing brighter with each second. Gears whirred and sparks danced as electricity rippled across the metal.
Clara quickly removed the prosthetic and threw it at the core of the tentacles. A small violet explosion ensued, stunning the feral Dremin.
Finally able to get close to the main body, Clara grabbed the potion she made earlier and poured most of it over Falk causing the mass of writhing sludge to grow docile and halt its rampage.
She drank what was left of the potion and sat beside Falk's head where the sludge was slowly drifting back into. She took a deep breath and slowly calmed herself with the help of the potion.
In about a few minutes the sludge all returned to Falk's body which regained a decent amount of its form back.
While this happened, Asher didn't watch in silence. He felt guilty for hesitating to help and began to nervously clean the room of the debris.
When Clara was done, she looked at the boy and realized what Asher was doing. She sighed and walked over to him, grabbing the broom he was holding.
"When you asked for a hands-on experience, I didn't expect to lose an arm." She made another one of her dumb jokes, but it calmed the thoughts running amok in the boy's head. It even made him crack an awkward smile. He hadn't expressed one in a long while.
"You've done enough today…go rest…The white flame knows I need a shower...and some mouth wash" Clara gagged and fixed her crooked mask. Asher noticed some kind of burn marks under it, but he was rushed out of the room before anything stuck in his mind.
He didn't know that once he left Clara slumped at the door's side. With gritted teeth, she grabbed onto the stump where her metal prosthetic used to be and cursed.
"Blights…for an arm that isn't here it's quite a handful." She tried to make herself laugh off the phantom pain till Stephan showed up suddenly in front of her. He was smiling per usual, but Clara had lived with this man for a long time now and she knew what his smile hid.
"Was it worth the trouble?" She huffed, her head leaning at the door.
"I hope so." Stephan sighed with his carefree smile as he kicked some rubble aside and dusted Clara's clothe.
"Never thought you'd use that word." She smiled behind the mask and stared at Stephan who was check her for any major injuries. He sat next to her and sighed again
"They were right when they said that having kids changes you." Both of them laughed.