Chapter fourteen:

Tears running silently down his cheeks, his mind stubbornly arguing that what he saw could not be real, yet, even though his eyes were closed, he could feel the ground and the rocks he used for support were slick with blood, as if the nightmare was real. Normally, touch would have convinced him otherwise, but it seemed that he could not even trust this sense any longer. Shivering, he paused, his nostrils filled with the stench of death, and he found the voice arguing it was all an illusion to grow weaker and weaker. He tried to focus on the thought of Catti-brie and her warmth, yet his mind twisted it, turning it to a far more gruesome sight.

A sob escaping his lips, thoughts churning in his mind that he could not stop, Drizzt fell to his knees in despair and clutched his head as if trying to squeeze out the visions.

"They're not dead.. They're not dead.. They're NOT dead..," he whispered to himself as he rocked back and forth, trying to will his senses to accept the mantra as the truth. "They're not dead…"

Fighting the steadily rising feeling of panic and despair, he forced his legs to work beneath him, in a whisper telling his body what to do – if nothing else, then in the attempt to drive out the spiteful and almost gleeful voice that once again had entered his mind, telling him that he had been the cause of all those deaths.

"Left foot forward, place on ground… Right leg forward, keep weight on left, place foot on ground..," he muttered, putting every ounce of focus he could into the relatively simple motion of walking.

Opening his eyes, it took all of his willpower to look straight ahead at where he could see the entrance to the dwarven mines, and not glance to the sides and see the corpses that lay where they had been slain. Shivering, feeling an unnatural chill within his body, he pressed on, clinging desperately to the thought that it was all naught but illusions, and turned his gaze towards the ground, seeking respite from the carcasses as he continued his stumble towards the mine.

A soft voice called his name, and he turned his eyes upwards again, seeing a figure walk towards him. He easily recognized Catti-brie, but, to his horror, she appeared to constantly flicker from a living, breathing creature into a horribly mutilated corpse. Shutting his eyes, fighting to keep his breath under control as panic threatened to overtake his senses, he blocked out the image of the human female.

Warm arms wrapped around him, holding him in a tight grip that usually would have been uncomfortable, but, at the moment, allowed him to sense the soft pulse of her heart and thusly her life. He buried his head by her shoulder, hearing her hum soft nonsense as she clearly understood what plagued him, and did what she could to help him. A soft sob escaped the drow elf as he clutched her desperately; the memory of what his brain twisted his eyes to see in her stead burned into his mind and refusing to leave him. As it was now, only the feel of her kept his final shred of sanity from disappearing.

"'Tis okay," she gently muttered, holding him and rocking him gently as if he was a child. "I'm here. Nothing's happened…"

A/N: I'm sorry for the late update. My inspiration decided to try bungee-jumping the Empire State Building, and haven't yet returned. I'll try and update the next chapter faster, but I cannot, at the current moment, make any firm promises.