My Last Dive [Made in Abyss Fanfiction]

26| Wrath of the Abyss

"Len, your foot..." she said, her voice taking on a frightening new sense of shock. I became confused. What was wrong with my foot? I looked down as well, and my heart plummeted into my stomach. There was a puncture hole in my right boot, halfway down my foot. Blood welled up from the hole, forcing its way up around... a broken quill.

Now I was the one in disbelief. When I realized it was there, the pain finally registered. Deep and burning, the feeling filling my whole foot. I went cold then, every part of me filling with a frigid ice that made me shudder uncontrollably. I hadn't completely dodged the Piercer's attack back there, I'd gotten stuck without my knowing.

I was poisoned.

I looked up at Melva, my mouth falling open as I wanted to say a million things. But all I could get out was, "M-Melva..." Weak, fear-choked, sounding like a lost child. That was what I felt like then. A new wave of tears spilled down my cheeks. What was I supposed to do?

Something seemed to snap in Melva then. Her shock and sadness was erased in favor of a grim determination. She dropped to her knees, grabbing hold of the quill and ripping it from my foot. I let out a small cry, but she grabbed hold of my ankle and shoved my pant leg up. "We're goin' back to camp. Bite your lip an' don't give in," she muttered.

"But taking out the quill does nothing, I-I'm still—"

"No, ya ain't dyin', not you too," she snapped sharply.

She pulled a cloth from her pocket along with a pen, one of the few non-survival items she carried with her. In seconds, she had the cloth wrapped around my leg a couple inches or so below my knee and jammed the pen into the knot she tied—a makeshift tourniquet. I did my best to not squirm as she twisted the cloth tighter and tighter around my leg; it had to be painfully tight to cut off circulation. The numbness quickly began to spread through my leg, making it difficult to stand, but Melva supported me.

"C'mon, we're goin'," she said. I didn't know why I didn't want to move for a moment. It wasn't like I wanted to lay down right there and die, but the sheer shock and hopelessness of it all wouldn't let my feet move. We had antitoxins, though they surely weren't for Orb Piercers, and the only other alternative was... My stomach tightened as I forced myself to avoid the thought. I just had to focus on getting back to camp now.

Our progress was disgustingly slow, with me barely being able to put weight on my injured foot. If I didn't have the tourniquet, I could likely walk fine for a time, but that wasn't an option. Melva forced me to move as fast as I could, and I just bit my tongue and tried to keep up with her pace. But we were of course halted by the curse.

Melva tried to keep us moving, but I couldn't. The new pain filling me seemed to set my wounds on fire, especially the one in my foot. I looked down at it, only for my heart to drop in disgusted horror as a green-brown liquid began to ooze up from the puncture and out of my foot, soon followed by more blood. Was that some of the poison? Did it have to be expelled from me before the blood did? If only all the poison could have left me, but there was only blood. I gagged on the rank taste as it rose in my throat.

As I continued to bleed, I began to feel lightheaded. My footing faltered, and Melva tightened her grip on me. "St-steady there, klutz," she joked weakly, almost completely holding me up now.

My mind seemed to be working more sluggishly now. Had I really lost that much blood? I took my hand away from my side, numbly staring at the blood that soaked my glove and was spreading out in a black stain on my undershirt and jacket. The wound on my arm was bleeding harder as well, beginning to trickle down into my glove.

"Shit!" Melva swore when she saw this, both angered and alarmed. "You're bleedin' elsewhere?" She reached around me and clamped a hand to my side as I leaned against her, just trying to stay upright as blood spilled from my lips and turned my vision red. My leg up to the tourniquet was burning fiercely, and traces of that feeling stung throughout the rest of me as well. Or was that just the curse? "C'mon, don't already be goin' down. We're almost there, just another few yards!" The treeline along the cliffs was visible above us now, but it seemed so far away.