He put out a shaking hand and touched the wall. Dry stone. Already he could feel the thirst that would torment him later. He took his hand away, leaving a bloody smear, and stumbled down the passageway. He stooped, partly because the pain in his midsection wouldn't allow him to stand, partly to avoid crashing his head into jagged points of rock that hung from the low ceiling. His right eye was totally blind. From his left, he sometimes thought he could see the passage ahead of him in a strange washed-out night vision with no color and no depth. He closed his eyes, not liking these glimpses. Suddenly there was a shriek from behind him and the passage sprang into view in sharp white light. Half-blinded, he began running.
Arix lay in bed, listening. There was only a faint drumming of rain on the roof and a funny scratching sound from the floor. He turned, afraid of he didn't know what, and saw that the sound was made by charcoal rubbing across the floorboards. Steve was sitting cross-legged, drawing on the floor and talking to Michael. "And this is the horse running away from the caves because it's smarter than Arix. See?" Michael, wadded up like a sleeping spider opposite Steve, made an impatient-sounding noise, reached out, took one of the pieces of charcoal and stared at it curiously. A shadowy hand closed around it, there was a crunch and charcoal dust floated down. "Alright," said Steve, "It doesn't look much like a horse. But do you get the point?" Michael was staring at his coal-dust-covered hand. He stood and shook it, shedding a flurry of purple flakes and a black dust storm over Steve, who sneezed. Michael teleported backward and tensed as if startled, then walked back, sat on the floor, carefully took another piece of charcoal in his hand and scraped it across the floor, leaving a black line. He froze. "See?" said Steve, watching with a smile. Michael leapt up and stared at the charcoal. A moment later he was teleporting around the room, scribbling lines on the walls. Arix snuggled back into his blankets.
He was riding a zombie horse at full gallop across bare hills. He couldn't move. The horse was taking him where it pleased. Evidently that was to the huge cave that opened up like a mouth in the mountainside ahead of them. Dark clouds hung over the mountain, and a sound of distant thunder scratched at the dry air.
He woke with the clatter of dead hooves on stone still pounding in his ears. Everything was grey. He looked up through the window, spangled with still water, at a sullen grey sky. His gaze traveled to his bandaged wrist. He'd taken a glance at it when Steve changed the bandage—a raw mess with a vague dark outline burned into the tissues in place of the mark. He rolled onto his back, looking at the ceiling instead. The mark was the last of his problems. Revenants did occasionally regress, especially early on. One reason they were distrusted by the majority of the human race. Not the main one. The main reason was propaganda. A hand touched his forehead and he flinched. "You have a fever," said Steve. "It's starting." Right. Right. Infection, high chance of further maiming or death. He was worried. Terrified. Not about the infection, though, about the things he was starting to hear, repeating over and over in the back of his mind. Things that he knew with a hideous certainty he had heard before. He'd been trying to block them out but they were back. He let them swarm back. He'd known that they wouldn't stay away forever. But for a while, just a short while, things had seemed so… normal. Human. Now he was pulled back into the blank chill of empty space, lost from the stars.
He was aware of the sunlight pouring through the window and trembling, patchy with leaf-shade, on his blanket. He was aware of Michael lazily tossing a pillow up in the air and catching it, and the constant birdsong as Steve changed his bandages. He heard when Steve told him that he needed to go foraging, and even heard him quietly begging Michael to stay and watch over him. But he felt separate. He was watching the black wave cover his mind for a second time.
He lay awake in the long hours after midnight, listening to a single bird crying out beside his window in the darkness, the rustle of leaves.
"I think it'll be alright as long as we can beat the infection," said Steve, flexing Arix's wrist and looking narrowly at the raw mess of tendons and the corrupted mark. Arix said nothing. He knew Steve was giving up on that possibility. Or maybe not, because he talked for half an hour about a new blend of herbs he was going to try, and made him drink something which, this time, really did taste like the tears of the damned.
He finally fell into a restless sleep just before morning, and again he was frozen on the back of a zombie horse carrying him across dead hills. He wondered if it was his own horse, dead because of his stupidity and its misguided loyalty. He was woken, slowly and reluctantly, by the feeling of being hotter than usual, although he was generally feverish. Morning light poured through the windows and pooled on the floorboards. He was cradled in Steve's arms, the reason for feeling so warm. Steve was humming quietly, something sad. A cool tingling sensation near his leg and a glimpse of shadow and a swirl of sparks told him that Michael was nearby.
Why is he so fragile?
"They all are."
Humans? Why?
"They just are. One story about the creation goes that humans never died, at first. When they were ready they simply passed on, eyes open, without having to age. But we forgot how to get ready. We didn't want to leave. And there would have been too many of us, all immortal in a finite world, so we started to die."
Would you rather die?
"Yes. I should have died long ago. I should have lived. Instead, I was out here, alone, bound to the earth forever, unable to die and unable to live like a human."
Because you have placed restrictions on yourself.
"I'm not one of them. I shouldn't pretend that I am."
That is true.
Steve sighed and leaned against the enderman.
What are you doing?
"I'm very tired, Michael. Does it bother you?"
Does touching things make you feel better? Is that also a human thing?
"Er yes. Something like that."
Micheal linked his arms around Steve. They sat like that for a while, then Steve left for the day's foraging, leaving Arix to stare unseeingly at the changing pattern of light and shadow on the walls and listen to the voices in his head.
A/N: Well. That's done. I don't know why this chapter was so hard to write. I think I just hit a slump for a few days, I didn't get much writing done on anything. Also there's the fact that this chapter could literally just be "Arix is insane and also sick. Steve sad. Michael confused." Next chapter will be 30 though, which I didn't expect when I was beginning this, so woohoo! A Lost Pine chapter will be going up soon too, hopefully, now that I'm out of the writing slump.
And, yes, that's a play on Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night, because I couldn't think of a better title.
