AN: Two new firsts today: first attempt at BK and first attempt at second person. I think the ending could have been better, I'd like some opinion. Disclaimers, I own nothing, etc. The guardian spirit's name is Avitrix, just to clarify.
You thought you would be okay. Sure, you regret falling what was probably a thousand feet through poisonous clouds that could probably kill you. Sure, you struggle to regain your consciousness for the next half an hour, and yeah, you know that won't be the worst part.
At first, you feel like you're choking on the very air you breathe. At some points, you aren't not even sure if you are still breathing. You wheeze and you hack and you cough but the gas still fills you from your feet to the edges of your eyeballs.
Hey, it's all for the sake of being a hero, right?
That's what you try to tell yourself, anyway. That the world needs saving and you and your friends are the only ones who could finally reclaim the peace and prosperity that had once existed.
Maybe it had, and maybe it hadn't. Maybe the world had always been like this, torn apart at seams held only together by the efforts of bleeding, broken fingers now lost to the darkness.
Maybe it's a dream, and maybe it isn't. Maybe it's just a nightmare and someday, on one of those days that you know happiness is so far away that you can't even see it, you'll wake up safe and sound back in your own bed. Maybe your grandfather will make you a cup of tea and your brother will tell you stories of freedom. Or maybe they won't.
Your breathing turns to stone, hard and heavy and harsh. Parched lips seek water, seek a world where every inhale doesn't taste like poison, dirt, and thousand-year-old blood. You lean into the crease of your elbow and convulse into your sleeve until you don't have the energy to keep doing so.
In some ways, you think you deserve this. It is the atonement for your sins, for the betrayal that you pushed upon your companions. You bask in the fact that you can suffer, that you can still have the emotions to understand that what you did to them was wrong.
In some ways, but not the all of them. You hate the fact that you can't breathe and the walls are too high and you don't know where you're going. You are lost to the maze, a victim of a trap that you cannot open, a mere lump of a rat forever doomed to wander in circles for the rest of eternity.
There has to be a way out of this, you believe. And after a moment that seems like a lifetime, it comes to you: all you can do is struggle forward, dizzy and weak. Even if it gets you nowhere, it's better than doing nothing.
You still have to save the world, even if the world is a hundred miles away.
Left. Right. Forward. Retrace. Right. Right. Curse under your breath and retrace your steps yet again. Dip, dive, twist. Battle your way through scourge and slime, slash through beasts and dig through empty pots.
Turn again and find yourself in an area cold and desolate.
You stop, clench your fists and slump against the wall. It's not enough. It's never enough, and at the rate you're going, it never will be.
One wrong turn. One stupid, simple wrong turn that you know a kid wouldn't have taken, let alone six thoughtful heroes. And that one wrong turn leads you to a series of them, down passageways and alleys and so many turns it makes your head hurt.
You are trapped whether you like it or not.
Maybe there's a way out and maybe there isn't.
You wander with no aim, not knowing if the outside world is just beyond your fingertips. Stuck forever in the Labyrinth of Duhr, doomed to search for the right gate until your death.
.Good job, Kalas.
Shut up, Avitrix.