Chapter Four
He couldn't breathe.
The world was still fire and smoke, and he couldn't breathe.
He was surrounded by it, covered in it, fire and smoke and heat and ash and darkness.
Everything hurt, everything burned, fire and smoke, and somewhere in this distance, somewhere behind the darkness and the heat rang an Emerald tune.
Come here.
It was like a call. Urgent and sharp, like the fire.
He couldn't breathe. He didn't think he could move. He didn't know to where.
But he needed to go.
He struggled to reach out for the green light, felt along its pull, and it wound around his soul like a blanket. Soft, cool, almost a promise.
Come. Get out of there.
He latched onto that link, that chain, that lifeline, and from somewhere, the darkness lit up in that steady green that rang in his ears like bells.
He tried to draw a breath again, ended up coughing on dust and heat that burned all the way down into his lungs, clutched desperately to that green promise. That cool, safe glow.
When the dust settled, Knuckles found himself curled against the base of a rock, still halfway buried in thick, dark ash. He blinked. His vision was swimming with tears or whatever, a blurry, grey swirl spiraling around him that wanted to drag him back under.
But the Emerald shine was still bright, a guiding light out of here, away from fire and smoke, and he fought to get his feet under him somehow, steadying himself against the rock in his back. His back burned.
Everything burned and the world was spinning in dark, swooshing circles, but he had to go somewhere. Try to reach that Emerald glow, or that weirdly familiar blue spark of chaos flickering somewhere much closer, and slowly, unsteadily, he stumbled towards it.
They'd moved so far apart now, at opposite positions on their spiral out path, that Tails was hard to see through the haze and the ash still raining down. Sonic had a feeling it was going to get dark soon, but he didn't want to waste the time and check.
He threw a look back to the center of their search pattern. If Knuckles had been where his board was, or somewhere close, how far could he have run? Sonic studied the hill above. The crater wasn't visible anymore, hidden somewhere behind that curtain of smoke and ash. Sonic guessed he himself would need several seconds by now to run up there, or down from it to where he was now.
The lava obviously was much much slower, and thankfully it didn't look like it would get much farther at all. The initial explosion was something else entirely. That would move at sonic speed, or at least close to it.
He couldn't have gotten far. "Knuckles!"
Sonic went back to surveying the area closer around his position, brushing his feet through the dust here and there in spots that looked odd to him, to make sure he wouldn't miss a buried body.
Person.
He really didn't want to think about finding a body right now.
He wiped at his eyes, stinging and watering with the smoke. He couldn't risk missing something important because his vision was blurry!
"Knuckles! Can you hear us?! Knuckles!"
The call for his friend ended in a rough fit of coughing. Even with the protection of the cloth, his throat was scratchy and dry.
They'd been here much too long already.
Sooner or later, they would have to call a break, at least to have a drink, maybe eat the chocolate bars for energy, and it wouldn't be much longer until they'd need the flashlights to search. The smoke was smothering what little daylight was left.
Sonic kicked at another could be shape on the ground, throwing up more dust and coming back empty again, kicked another time at it for good measure, harder than was warranted. Stopped. Forced a slow breath. It didn't help unleashing his frustration on the dust.
He looked back up, another long, slow searching look all around. His concentration wasn't at its best by far anymore, and the haze and wind and unsteady fire light were bound to play tricks on your perception. A few times, both him and Tails had thought they'd seen movement, but it had been just rocks in the flickering glow, or a whirl of dust thrown up by a gust of wind.
As he set back out along his path again he first dismissed the motion he caught from the corner of his eye at another such mirage, but a moment later he heard the coughs. A horrible, strangled sound.
Disregarding all precaution, he was running before he'd fully processed the decision. Jumped over a fallen, smoldering stem of a tree, landed in a wild slide and barely recovered his balance and sense of direction. He almost didn't manage to stop before crashing into the nightmarish apparition in black, grey and red before him.
"Chaos, Knuckles!"
The ashen ghost lifted his head, stared at Sonic for a moment from hazy, reddened eyes - and toppled bodily against him. For a moment something strange and green flashed around them, but they were going down before Sonic had a chance to think about it.
"Oof!" Unable to break the fall under the sudden weight, the blue hedgehog twisted into it instead, letting his spines and back take the brunt of the impact. A fresh cloud of dust swallowed them up immediately.
Knuckles landed sprawled on top of him, coughing and wheezing even worse now. Sonic wasn't even sure if it could actually count as breathing at all.
Hastily he struggled to get out from under the listless weight of his friend and find some purchase on the slippery ground. He ended up basically pulling Knuckles backwards out of the worst of the dust, slowly and as carefully as possible, trying not stir up more dust and hoping to keep from hurting him more than was unavoidable.
Out in as clear atmosphere as he could find within the next half a mile, he hurried to sit Knuckles up. The spines at the back of his head were black as soot, but the rest of him was too covered in ash to see where and how badly he was hurt, and nothing of that mattered if he choked here anyway.
Kneeling behind him so he could hold him up by the shoulders, the hedgehog spent a few anxious moments trying to coax Knuckles to breathe. Only when he was halfway sure he wasn't going to suffocate right here and now, he turned his head around and hollered for Tails.
In the short time it took the fox to make the way over, Sonic at least succeeded in finding a thready pulse under the cuff of the tattered cloth that was left of Knuckles' gloves.
"Sonic! Knuckles!" Tails, miraculously, had the presence of mind to drop down to the ground a few meters away so his tails didn't cause another whirl of dust nobody needed. "Is he –"
"Alive." Barely. They didn't have time for details. "Quick, we need a mask for him to breathe through. In my rucksack, but I can't reach like this."
Tails nodded sharply and unzipped Sonic's bag to drag out the heavy first aid kit. Within seconds he had folded another cloth into a triangle shape.
Knuckles stirred in Sonic's hold on him when Tails moved to tie it over his face, struggling away from it.
"Hey, easy, we're trying to help you!" Sonic gave his shoulders what he hoped qualified for a soothing squeeze. "You're breathing in way too much of this smoke!"
Knuckles' eyes fluttered open again, but Sonic wasn't sure if he understood what they were saying right now. Either way, he was holding still and Tails finished the make-shift mask.
"It's probably way too late for that," the fox mumbled, critically studying his work and the way Knuckles was still struggling to draw breath. "He most certainly has smoke poisoning already."
"But we don't need it getting any worse," Sonic insisted.
Tails nodded. "True." He looked between Knuckles and the first aid kit, then at Sonic in an unspoken 'what now'.
"Put it back for now. We can't really see a thing here, and I think the smoke is the worst."
Tails looked doubtful and worried and still fairly terrified underneath. "Can we even move him? What if –"
Sonic understood the concept of internal injuries and all the other terrible things that could potentially be wrong, but the truth was that they were really short on options here right now. "He was walking when I found him. Well, at least he was on his feet."
Tails stared. "He was conscious?"
"Close enough." He nudged the echidna. "Knux? You with us?"
Knuckles stirred, mumbling something into the fabric across his mouth that sounded suspiciously much like "Emerald".
Sonic watched him for a second, remembering that weird feeling when he'd first grabbed him. Green. Something about or around Knuckles had been green. "You know, maybe that's not a bad idea."
"What?" Tails was apparently unsuccessful trying to keep track with Sonic's train of thought. To be fair, also Sonic was failing to completely make sense of things in his head.
"His Emerald." Maybe that was what made no sense. A lot about Knuckles and his shiny rock never really made sense. But could it fix this? What else could?
"That's halfway across the island!"
It was a distance even Sonic wasn't fond of travelling at the moment. "I know. Probably not our first stop." He coughed on that scratchy feeling at the back of his throat again. "Come on, we need to get out of here first."
Tails nodded, and between the two of them, they made one abortive attempt to put Knuckles on his feet before deciding to carry him. The echidna didn't protest, and that was frightening all over again.
Grimly Sonic tried to focus on finding the quickest way to a safer place instead. Somewhere with fresh air and water.
Even the shortest "way out of here" they could find took much longer than it should, but they didn't want to risk dropping their load, and Sonic was stumbling backwards for the biggest part of the way.
Knuckles' head was a heavy weight against Sonic's shoulder and collarbone, the tousled, scorched quills poking and stinging, but he was a hedgehog, he wasn't worried about getting poked.
He was worried because he was pretty sure Knuckles had passed out on them minutes ago. Nobody wanted to stop and check; it wouldn't do any good.
Holding him like this, Sonic's arms wound under the echidna's armpits and across his chest, and it meant he could feel every shallow, wheezing gasp for air. He hoped his grasp didn't add too much pressure that made it even worse.
Tails was silent unless required to give a direction, holding under Knuckles' knees and focussing hard on the way ahead Sonic couldn't see properly. Guiding them out of this mess. Just every now and then he'd steal a horrified, wide-eyed look down at their way too still friend.
Sonic had stopped trying to reassure any one of them that it'd be okay. He was nearing the end of his rope, too, and maybe they should save their breath for later.
The change when they passed over the crest of the next hill over was stunning. A cool, fresh evening breeze suddenly danced through his spines, sweeping them against the back of his head like a gentle caress.
Tails obviously felt it too, he looked startled and relieved as it blew into his face. "I think we're coming round the windward side!"
Sonic nodded. Angel Island was odd about its winds, their flow ever changing as they wrapped around the Floating Island. It could be almost a lull here and a gusty, capricious near storm in just the next zone, just slightly around the mountain.
There was a light pine forest here too with patches of thick, flowered shrubbery here and there in between. It was much less dark than just a minute ago. Here it looked like it was still a good while until sunset. Sonic turned his head to get a look over his shoulder. The sky was still an ominous grey, but over there, the clouds looked heavy with rain, not with smoke.
Turning back, the way they'd come was hidden behind the dark shape of a hill and the fire was only still visible as an eerie orange halo around the hill top.
"Sonic, look!" For the first time in what had to be hours, Tails sounded... hopeful?
The blue hedgehog turned for another glance back and felt a smile spread on his face that pulled at the dusty cloth and tickled his nose with it.
Up a small incline, at the base of a rather large tree, two straight lines of rings span gracefully in the dim evening light, a bright spark of gold twinkling their way with every revolution.
Inviting. Friendly. Sonic thought it was the first inviting, friendly thing he'd seen all day.
The mysterious Gold Rings spawned as randomly on Angel Island as all over Mobius. Sometimes, you'd find a lot in one small area, and then you could run around for hours without much chance to locate more than one or two of the spinning rounds. As far as Sonic was concerned, the things had a mind of their own somehow, and here on the Floating Island it was as if they avoided the zones where you'd be most likely to need them. Maybe the rings hated volcanoes? They could be suspiciously rare at parts of Lava Reef, and they'd found none over the entire course of the afternoon. Right when they would have needed them.
But it didn't matter, because they were there now. Sonic turned back to Tails, and without having wasted a single word on it, they accelerated their steps up towards the shiny rings.
A series of bright, golden plings surged through him in a dizzying rush. Pling, pling, plingplingpling. The energy spiralled into his blood and bones with a familiar urgency before gently fading away.
Knuckles gasped and for the first time since - he couldn't even remember - the hasty attempt at a breath was followed by cool air all the way down into his lungs. The relief was instantaneous and so dizzying in itself that it almost stole his fragile hold on his senses right away from him again.
He focused on his newfound ability to breathe for a moment before trying to make sense of anything else.
There were still a number of aches and pains clamouring for attention all across his body. His back still felt like it was on fire, but he thought it was cooling.
Everything was cooling. Something softly brushed through his fur.
He was in the water? Had to be. Floating on top of the waves. Weightless, dizzying still. Sonic was talking to someone, but it wasn't him. Was it?
Why was he in the water? Wait, why was Sonic in the water? Something didn't make sense here.
Knuckles struggled to open his eyes, eyelids sticky with irritant. When had he closed them? He didn't remember.
His vision still swam and swirled when he managed to blink, and he found himself looking into a blurry, grey face with no mouth and nose. There were hands holding his legs and under his shoulders and - there was something over his mouth and nose! Had someone captured him?!
The echidna struggled with sudden panic.
"Sonic, put him down!" The voice sounded vaguely panicked, too. And familiar. Tails?
He was indeed being set down, quickly but gently, instead of being dropped to the floor as he'd almost expected. It didn't matter though, as soon as his back touched the ground, it was as if someone had put a hot iron to it. Knuckles barely bit down on a yell, choked on his own breath instead. He was vaguely aware of hands on his shoulders, of being sat back up.
Of shouting.
"Knuckles!"
Sonic? The guardian struggled to catch his breath and clear his eyes again. Adrenaline pulsed sharply in his veins, taking an edge off the pain, but not the confusion. "What-" The word came out as hardly a croak.
"Easy, just a second!" Tails for sure. At least he sounded like Tails. Through Knuckles' watering eyes, he still looked all sorts of grey and - something was off.
"Let me get rid of that, okay?" Sonic. Trying to sound calm when he really wasn't.
Knuckles blinked at the bluish grey blur, but didn't resist when Sonic reached for him. Whatever had been wrapped over his face disappeared.
The world was starting to slowly clear around him. Tails was holding out a bottle at him. That seemed a good idea! Knuckles reached for it with a shaking hand. The liquid was lukewarm, but like balm to his dry throat. It was sweet, too. The taste took several moments to register. Grape juice?
A lot of things really made no sense right now.
"Don't drink it all at once. I think you're not supposed to do that when you're dehydrated, and you most certainly are." Sonic sounded less than sure of what he was saying, but he was quicker than Knuckles and that wonderful bottle disappeared from his grasp.
"Hey!" Looking after the hedgehog in protest, Knuckles came up short again at the notion that Sonic too had some dark grey, triangular thing wrapped around his face.
The hedgehog caught his look and pulled at it, bringing it down to his neck like a scarf. "Sorry. I suppose we look a bit on the spooky side?"
"What -" At least now he could speak a little more clearly, even if he realised after that one word he had no idea what he was even asking.
"There was an eruption," Tails said, reappearing in Knuckles' field of view. He really did look quite grey, with a scarf like Sonic, only the fur on his muzzle was still mostly white and orange, a weird line that ran along horizontally under his eyes. Grey and orange and white.
"Do you remember that? Knuckles!" Sonic sounded urgent enough that the red echidna made another attempt to focus his scattered attention.
He needed a few seconds to backtrack far enough in the conversation to recall the context for the question, then he nodded. Eruption."Yes." Fire and smoke. Nothing but fire and smoke. He shuddered at the memory. "I remember." And he remembered them not being here? "When did you -"
"We're not sure how long it's been since the eruption." Tails had a scary way of guessing his thought process without much input from Knuckles' side right now. "When we arrived like, three or four hours ago?" He paused, frowned, then shrugged and continued. "It was well underway when we came here, and we needed a long time to find you."
Sonic sat back on his heels, but one hand remained a steadying hold on Knuckles' shoulder. "How are you feeling?"
"Floaty." It was the first thing that came to mind, and as soon as he said it he realised it probably made no sense. But it was kind of true. Even down on steady ground, he felt... off of it.
Sonic sighed. "Okay, I'll ask again in a minute."
"Smoke poisoning means not enough oxygen in your system. It makes sense that you're dizzy." At least Tails was agreeing, even though he sounded like something terrible was happening.
It kind of already had. Something quite terrible.
Knuckles nodded at his friends again, mostly to avoid having to give a vocal answer while he strained to sort through the hazy mush of memory. Nothing made sense since this explosion. He remembered calling for the Great Emerald's power, a last resort, that panicked, uncontrolled rush of the energy singing through his veins.
Oh Chaos - What happened to the Emerald?! He hastily reached for the link in his mind and let out the breath he'd held for that terrified second when he found it clear and safe. Shaky with the aftershock of his rash use of it, somewhere behind the steady idle thrum, and now that he listened, he could feel the tingle of it burn underneath the pain of his injuries, deep in his chest and down his lower back. Working on healing it, without his doing, probably since it had happened.
Probably the reason he was even alive.
"Hey, Knux!" He blinked, found Sonic's hand waving in front of his eyes for his attention.
"Sorry," he mumbled. He knew both Sonic and Tails well enough to be aware of the worry lacing the tone and made an effort to focus his straying thoughts on his friends.
"It's alright. You breathed in a lot of smoke. Might've hit your head, too. We don't know." Sonic studied him critically. "We found a few rings for you a few minutes ago. I suppose they did help, you're breathing a lot better and all, but there's only so much a few rings can do after the fact."
Knuckles nodded. Rings and Emeralds were much more effective at preventing injuries from occuring than for undoing them later, and the fact that he was quite obviously still not in good shape, even with the Master Emerald's protection and healing energy as well as the rings Sonic spoke of made it quite clear that he'd been hurt badly. "Thanks," he mumbled, "for finding me. You probably saved my life."
"You're welcome." Sonic was still watching him closely. "You might have to thank your giant shiny rock for some of it," he noticed. "You were -" He faltered over the word. "- running on Emerald power when I found you? Kinda, I guess?"
Knuckles wasn't sure of that; he didn't have a clear enough recall of the situation. He thought he remembered Sonic, chaotic and blue in midst of the grey haze, but the memory was more than fuzzy.
But it was possible. The Master tried to not have its Guardian killed, after all.
"It's not that important now," Sonic was saying, recapturing Knuckles' thoughts before they could completely run away from him again. "While you do look slightly more alive than when we ran into you, that doesn't mean you look anything but awful. What's hurting the worst? Your back? You're so covered in ash that it's hard to tell. You gotta help us out here. Do we need to try and do something about it right here, or can we try and find a place with water to help clean it?"
Knuckles struggled to follow the hedgehog's words and succeeded only in keeping track of the last part of it. Now that he could breathe - the rings, perhaps - Sonic was right, his back was the worst. But cleaning it first sounded better than anything else. "It can wait," he said.
Sonic frowned at him for a moment, as if trying to figure out the truthfulness of his words, but then he nodded.
"Do you think you can walk now?" Also Tails was frowning at him. It seemed like the expression of the day. "If we give you a hand?"
At any other time, Knuckles would've been insulted, but the truth was that he hurt all over and his head was still in a lazy spin. A hand would probably be required. He nodded his agreement. "Just, you know..."
Sonic gave a sharp nod of his own that shook flakes of ash out of his spines. "Right. We'll try not to touch anything that met too closely with a volcano."
Everything of him had made way too close an acquaintance with a volcano.
Knuckles couldn't help himself, something about the absurdity, the Sonic-ness of the words tore a laugh from his throat - which immediately turned into a coughing fit to remind him that he probably wasn't breathing as well as he'd thought.
He needed a minute to recover from it, and then had to try and reassure his anxious looking friends that he wasn't dying right now. Tails looked like he outright didn't believe him, but Sonic, ever the impatient one, but the positive thinker too, was working on getting them moving again and it was enough to distract them all.
It needed an arm over the shoulder of each of the others to keep Knuckles on his feet, but now that he could get a proper look around, he knew where they were, and which way to go.
