This chapter is short, but I feel like I'm able to update a lot more often if I don't try to reach a minimum chapter length. Especially with working getting a tad nuts again
Noctis shook his hand to get the numbness out of it. They took a small detour, no more than a hundred meters, so Noctis could replenish his elemental powers. But they found that the lights on the haven's runes were out, and only thunder would answer Noctis's call. The stone's own lights faded, and what once would have been a glowing patch of blue runes with red, yellow, and white surrounding it, looked like nothing more than some old rock carvings. He tilted his head to urge his friends forward.
"Hey Iggy, is it supposed to rain or something?" Prompto asked after they crossed some distance. Ignis looked up at the sky and shrugged. It was overcast, and he studied the sky for some moments. "Uhh… buddy?" Prompto asked, knocking on his forehead. Ignis flinched and drew back, shaking his head and giving his forehead a rub.
"Sorry." He apologized.
"No stars to make a wish on." Gladiolus said.
"I was simply cheking if there was any black in the clouds." Ignis replied.
"You're getting too paranoid." Prompto replied with an unsteady laugh, looking up at the sky again. "totally just too paranoid." Noctis nodded at his friends, grimacing a bit at he pat his empty pocket.
"Hey I think I see them." Gladiolus said, pointing fifteen degrees from where they were walking. There were vague dark shapes moving in the distance, the overcast sky not allowing enough light to make out adequate detail from a distance. Another twenty minutes of walking and they were seeing that it was their quarry.
"Well the high bounty for just a bunch of garula makes a lot more sense now." Gladiolus remarked. The beasts were bloated, causing them to stagger rather than walk. The ground was patchworked and sparsely covered in shivering blackened shrubs. Dead grass bent against the breeze but the bloated beasts were still staggering in short paces to nibble at it, or drag a hoof over a shrub and leap back as the branches reached for it.
"What the hell guys." Prompto asked, pointing to what must have once been a calf. It bleated, the sound a deep wet gurgle that carried over the plain with a branch wrapped around one of its legs. It tried to pull back, thrashing its head, bucking. A thin line of red was appearing where the leg joined to the body. Two of the adults lumbered over to the calf and started to stomp at the bush, only to be caught themselves. Further beyond they were able to see that this had happened earlier, a still-pulsing mass was wrapped in thick black branches.
Prompto stepped back, shaking head. The money wasn't worth this. The gil wasn't worth this. Noctis turned, and saw the stones behind Prompto's leg barking awarning a second too late. Prompto fell, dropping his gun to catch himself with a hand. He landed with a small oomph that turned into a hiss, and then a scream. He jolted upright, bringing a trembling hand in front of him. Half his hand was coated in the thick black moss from the ground around them, his voice a shrill high-pitched sound as he struggled to his feet, rubbing his hand against his shirt and wailing.
"Prompto! What is it?" Noctis asked. His throat felt try and he swallowed, coughing and trying to help his friend who was dissolving onto sobs, a hand clutching his wrist as tremors shook his whole body.
"My hand!" Was all he managed. "Help!" Noctis looked at the extended limb. The smell hit him at the same time as the sight of him. His fourth and fifth fingers were missing, as well as part of the side of his hand. Bits of black still clung to his hand, small holes dotting parts of where his shirt was stained black by trying to rub the moss off.
"Get that stuff off his hand!" Nocits tried to shout, his voice strained and high. He fumbled for a potion, an ether, anything liquid to get that moss off of him. He cursed, pulling his own shirt up off of his head and tried to wipe at Prompto's hand but his friend screamed and withdrew. Tears burned his eyes and he tried to think through the rising panic.
"Gladio hold him!"Noctis commanded, finding his voice again. His own hands trembled as he gripped Prompto's wrist so he could better wipe away at the moss. It was sticky, and a sob broke his own throat as he winced, Prompto backing further against Gladiolus's chest.
Ignis was watching, and Noctis wished he would tell him what to do. Anything! It seemed they got much of the black off, the flesh left was beef-red, two clean white circles marked where his fingers had once been and a thin line of yellow outlined the wound. Noctis drew back, bile rising and he vomited into the dirt. He placed his hands on his knees, gasping and choking for air as he retched again. He heard Ignis commanding Prompto to remove his shift. Noctis squinted, and opened his eyes through the blur of tears and could see he was standing in the moss and something looked wrong with his boots.
"Guys! Don't step in it! Shit!" he barked, trying to backpedal and nearly lost his balance. His heart pounded harder as he thought he was going to fall. Phantom pain burning his skin at the thought of touching that moss. Gladiolus was still supporting Prompto it seemed, but all four of them were trying to find clear patches of dust. Kicking and dragging their feet like mad animals. Noctis bent down and tried to still his fingers enough to unlace his boots, cursing and shaking his head as he struggled. He eventually got the boots off, stepping away. He looked around him, looking for any sign of the black on the ground. Everywhere the shrubs were trembling, grass shivering.
"We need to get the hell out of here." He said.
"We need this hunt!" Gladiolus countered. "Buy the cheapest food and water they have. Everything we can. Then we end this! Our star is dying for fuck's sake!" The Shield continued. Noctis wondered now how much of it Lunafreya could feel and grit his teeth tight together. He wanted to end the empire, to get revenge for Insomnia. For his father. As if to echo Gladiolus's sentiment the ground trembled, shifting dust into the air and Noctis reached to pull his shirt up over his mouth and nose, remembering he had thrown it to the ground.
"Gladio, can you use Prompto's gun from on top of that rock?" Noctis asked.
"I'm not a marksman." Gladiolus answered honestly.
"I have practiced before." Ignis offered, looking at Prompto's fallen pistol, then to his glove. Nocits watched his friend pick it up and climb the rock, and decided to join him, tell hing Gladiolus Prompto needed a Shield far more than him in that moment. He couldn't make out much of Prompto's words through the sobs and the screams and tried to lay his trust in Gladiolus. He had to think of what could happen if those Garula got closer to town.
Noctis wished he had been able to gather fire. To burn all of this. The blighted beasts, the trees, the grass, the shrubs, the very ground itself. His knuckles felt that slight stiffness that matched the tingling in his fingertips when he called upon thunder. He cast it out, hoping it wouldn't be too weak from this range. But the ground was covered in too much moss, sickness. The stone beneath them felt cold, and he could feel it even more without his boots, and the cool breeze bit at his skin without his shirt.
Ignis took careful aim, his first shot hit one in the shoulder, the second in the neck, and a bolt of thundaga send it to the ground. Noctis's breath started to rise again as he saw it fall into the black moss, the animal writhed and a deep bellowing mournful cry came from its throat echoing Prompto's own agony.
"Put that thing out of its misery!" Noctis pleaded. But it hadn't fallen in a way to allow Ignis a good headshot, and they couldn't waste all the bullets trying to make it bleed out. They tried to take down the two that were left, only one of them was dead but all were showing signs of that black mass starting to inch up the edge of their bodies.
"Come on." Ignis said, clapping a hard hand on Noctis's shoulder. He remembered the black in the hotel. The water. That Lunafreya was still there, with Aranea and Crowe. He wanted to get back, fuck the last two hunts.
"We have to get him to Luna." Gladiolus said. "I'll go back, scout the second hunt. If it's as messed up as this one head back." Noctis felt some half-formed joke about orders in the back of his brain but couldn't make the words come out. He couldn't stop staring at the horror of his friend's hand, and tried to suppress the urge to vomit again. He nodded, anger, sadness, abject terror all making his ears buzz and his body feel numb.
"Noctis." Ignis snapped his attention and he nodded.
"I said we should try to use your shirt to wipe off anything on your boots and put them back on." Noctis nodded again, watching as Gladiolus had Prompto settle onto his back, their conversation too dim behind the sound of his own pulse and the sound of Prompto's agony.
He wasn't sure if his boots were suitable to wear, fearful that some of that flesh-eating mass was hiding within the blackness of the boots themselves. He rubbed them as hard as he could in clean soil, then slammed the heel into the ground. And again. A third time. And he screamed. The sobs came again, his shoulder shook. Ignis knelt beside him and for a moment only placed a hand on his shoulder. But when he lifted his head to look into his friend's eyes, the pair embraced until Noctis could sob no more.
He pulled his boots on it, tying the laces and wondering if any of the tingling he felt was some tiny piece eating at him, or if his foot would soon match Prompto's hand. He stood up, dusting at his pants and rubbing at his sore eyes and trying not to hiccup.
"Noct… look at this." Ignis said. Noctis turned and saw Ignis was studying the groove in the ground he had created trying to clean his boot. He couldn't quite tell what he was looking at.
"It's hard to see. But mycelium. It's what mushrooms are like underground. Some areas have kilometers and kilometers of networks under the ground. I think the blight is using mycelium." Ignis said. Noctis shivered, shaking his head.
"So this shit is even under the normal looking ground?" He asked. The ground trembled again, causing him to throw a foot back to catch himself, careful to find a clear patch of ground. The shaking lasted perhaps ten seconds and stopped. "Is it making the earthquakes that have been happening lately?"
"I do believe that it is now hiding even under much of the non-infected looking ground. And no I do not think it is causing the tremors." Ignis explained. Noctis waited for him to elaborate further, and felt unnerved when no additional clarification came.
"I want to head back. So let's make this hunt quick."
"Yes." Ignis agreed.
I kept this chapter short mostly because it felt so well contained and intense as it is, I didn't want to kill it by having more content, as well as the reasons stated in the beginning.
