Gardenia’s Heart

She was late. Nia cursed herself dozens of times for arriving late.

Upon leaving the house, she tried to follow Hector towards the river, but quickly lost sight of the fast man. Unfamiliar with the location, panic spun in her mind as Nia desperately searched for a way to reach Lily.

(Lily, where are you? Why didn't I go with her?)

Blaming herself for the situation, she quickly used her teleportation to create a portal to the roof of the house. Her initial thought was that an elevated view would help her locate the river. However, when she tried to use her 360° vision to find the water flow, she soon realized her mistake.

(Darn it, the fog)

Observing just fifteen meters ahead was difficult enough; finding a target hundreds of meters away was nearly impossible. Inside her, panic continued to spread through her mind, further clouding her thoughts.

Among the spells she knew, none would be useful. Her teleportation would take her to a random place if the portal's exit location wasn't defined.

(Crap, crap) Almost losing hope, an idea emerged.

When she circulated dark mana through her body earlier, it was possible to enhance her physical characteristics. Nia remembered how Hector's leg was surrounded by a bluish aura when he broke down the door.

Giving it her all to calm herself, Nia began to circulate the dark mana within her body. Every part of her gelatinous body emitted a purple and reddish aura. Feeling as if all her senses were maximized, Nia tried to find Lily's traces.

Every living being emits signals of their presence in the world. Smells, sounds, tracks, and mana, among various others. If Nia focused only on those of the person she knew best, she could discover the path Lily had walked today.

Her concentration heightened to the extreme as she tried to separate a single thread from an infinity of lines stretching in all directions. A snap hit her mind when she found the one she desired. Without wasting time, she conjured a portal above the sky in that direction and headed there.

The line was not linear, circling through houses and sometimes trees. It took the use of several portals until the small metamorph finally managed to observe the river. On its bank, she could see some figures and quickly approached.

However, the sight that awaited her was something that completely shattered everything within her. A gleaming blade pierced the almost lifeless body of Lily. When all efforts from Lily's thin arm against Hector's ceased, her limp body was thrown into the river.

For the first time since acquiring knowledge, the girl's mind was completely blank. Even the panic that previously seemed to destroy all her senses vanished, and she stopped feeling anything as if she were completely empty.

A second that felt like an eternity followed, her entire field of vision turned gray as the world's brightness faded. The only color that existed was the transparent water that turned red as it mixed with Lily's blood.

As she watched the blood being swiftly carried away by the river's water, all the senses that had been swept away returned in a single instant, and Nia fell into the river.

Nia didn't know how long she had been alive, perhaps it was only a year, or maybe it was dozens of years. The notion of time never mattered to a monster, but when she gained consciousness, time became a factor that mattered within her.

She had discovered many things since she left. Fear, panic, joy, anger, sadness. In just a few days since gaining consciousness, she had experienced things that surpassed everything up to that point. But among all of them, the most special to her was undoubtedly the one that took her the longest to understand.

Love.

Her time with Lily was short compared to her life. At first, the girl had been afraid of the human, but the few days they spent together were more important to her than anything else. The girl had given her much, much more than anyone else in the whole world. Nia didn't have a heart. But she knew that if she had one, she would store every moment she spent with Lily inside it. Her smile, her voice, her warmth, her embrace. Every little part of Lily would be stored within it and protected at all costs. 

Gardenia the Metamorph loved Lily the Human.

Pressing forward into the almost frozen river, Nia used all her strength to reach Lily. As the red in the water intensified, she knew she was close. In that cold water, sinking with lifeless eyes, was a beautiful girl with silver hair. A large cut on her chest had leaked much of her blood. Not only the tips of her fingers and lips, but almost her entire body was turning purple from the cold and lack of blood.

When she finally reached the girl, Nia extended her tentacles and pulled her towards her. Even now, she didn't know what to do. 

(Lily!) she shouted in her mind, but it was obvious the girl wouldn't hear. 

Cursing herself again, she tried to use everything in her mind to find a way out.

(Why did I discover what love was? Was it to lose everything? Why did I gain power if I can't do anything with it?) If she had never discovered what feelings were, she wouldn't feel like this, but if that had never happened, she wouldn't have found Lily. 

Nia cursed herself for being weak. She should have known, since birth, that the world was exclusive to the strong.

(I swore I would protect you, I swore I wouldn't betray you.) Even though she had no eyes to shed tears, she was crying. 

At that moment, a weak and frozen hand touched her side. 

(Lily?) That slender finger had no warmth at all; it could have been an involuntary gesture or just the flow of water moving it, but the hand gently wiped away the nonexistent tear that ran down Nia's body.

No further explanation was needed. Once again that day, the will to not give up ignited within Nia.

Observing the body of the girl she loved, the metamorph's mind raced in search of a solution. The girl's entire chest has been torn apart, her death will be caused by the massive loss of blood in all vital organs due to the destruction of her heart and by the hypothermia of the freezing water.

Analyzing the situation coldly, Nia concluded the causes of death. If she knew what was killing her, all she had to do was prevent it. It was something she had never done before, something she didn't even know was possible. 

(No! Even if it's impossible, I will make it possible!)

Carefully and using all her concentration, Nia reduced the volume of her body by contracting with all her strength. Slowly, she headed towards the wound in Lily's chest, entering her body.

Creating small tentacles, she walked through the cut and enveloped her entire body around the girl's torn heart. At a steady pace, she increased her body, completely surrounding it. A few seconds passed and Lily's heart began to dissolve within Nia's body.

The girl had never absorbed a human before, but she understood the functioning of vital organs from other animals and monsters she had consumed. If what was killing Lily was the lack of a heart to pump her blood...

(I just need to become her heart!)

A metamorph can acquire the characteristics of what it devours. Molding her gelatinous body, Nia studied in her mind the structure she had just consumed and began to transform into it.

The heart is the pillar of life for most living beings. Without it, it was impossible to send oxygenated air to the blood vessels and then to the cells. Without air, the organs would die, and when the oxygen ran out in her brain, it would be the end.

Nia didn't need oxygen; she didn't breathe in the first place. Thus, another solution came to her mind. Slowly, the low-oxygen blood entered her, there was no air in Lily's lungs for her to extract and put into the blood, so she withdrew her own dark mana from within herself and placed it into her blood. Then, Nia sent the blood back into her bloodstream.

Mana was not the pillar of a human's life, so she needed to go beyond that. Extending her tentacles through all of Lily's veins, she enveloped her body within hers in the same way as her heart.

Slowly, the dark mana-infused blood entered the girl's cells, which immediately tried to reject it, but Nia prevented it. By becoming the pillar that sustained Lily's life, she could keep the girl alive by consuming dark mana.

The amount of information her mind was taking in and having to turn on was tremendous. Modifying one's own body was the metamorph's nature, even if the number of cells in a human's body exceeded the trillions, she would not give up.

Slowly, Lily's skin color was returning to normal, the hole in her chest closing as cells with a purple glow formed and covered the exposed wound.

No, it went beyond that. A purple glow formed on the left side of the girl's body as the healed wound on her shoulder opened and thousands of purple tentacle-like threads grew from there. In a matter of seconds, her lost left arm was reconstructed perfectly. On the left side of her face, an eye appeared in the same way.

An opening and closing movement of hands was made within that freezing river. This gesture was not made by the metamorph.

(Lily!)

In a single instant, a purple explosion flooded a large area of the river. The almost frozen water was pushed in all directions and a figure slowly fell onto the banks of the river.

The noise was so loud that the five men who were leaving turned to face the source of it.

A silver-haired girl walked completely dry on the grass floor. Her torn clothes were covered in blood, but that didn't bother her.

Long seconds passed until her expression melted into a smile.

“Nia, I’m back”