a better sort of ant

Jane.

Blue isn't sure when she fell asleep. The last thing she remembers is her mother, the sickening fade of her eyes. "You aren't looking in the right place," Maura had said, not dreamy like Persephone, but frustrated, impatient. "You should know how to do this by now."

It hadn't started unlike anything else in this place, or ended that way; it had seemed a little more real, though, her mother's hands in hers, her voice, and no tearing nightmare creature, just a dullness that stole the gloss and life from her skin and eyes and lips. She'd thought she'd cut off its power, her power, but it came anyway.

It always came anyway, somehow.

And then -- right at the end --

Blue closes her eyes against it.

Jane, wake up.
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If she thought she'd be rid of it after that, that discovering its source would be the key to defeat, she was wrong. The battle is shorter, and longer than she expects. The dark shadow isn't gone from her at the end of it, the way it leaks and spills onto all the people near her, but she's no longer running. She fights it, and tears it from herself, and takes its hits, and it disappears under her hands.

At the end of it, Blue crawls out of the tunnel into a sunny, breezy park, covered in ichor and oil and blood, ripped clothes, torn skin. She sits on her knees, dizzy. But she's done.