Dull orange light glittered slowly over the horizon, as though the dawn itself had trouble reaching the corrupt earth below. Yet even that wan glow was too much. Purple thorns and tainted trees strained away from the sun, seeking an altogether different star, unseen by the light of day.
A filthy glove broke through the tainted earth, reeking of rot and steeped in decay, fingertips torn from breaking free of their earthen tomb to reveal matted grey fur beneath. Bone stabbed upwards through the dirt, wiggling from side to side to widen the opening until a ragged figure dragged free, foul smelling soil and dust tumbling back into the hole. A groan tumbled from the figure's lips as he flinched from the light of the sun, raising two tattered tails to shield eyes too long used to the dark.
How long had it been?
Miles shouldered his bone pickaxe, aching body and soul as he gazed out across the desolate landscape.
Days? Weeks? Longer? Shivering in the dark, trying to dig through a maze of black stone too tough for his pickaxe to penetrate, fighting endless waves of nightmarish horrors.
And not sleeping.
Never sleeping. No matter his weariness, no matter his pain. He couldn't let them in. He hadn't let them in.
Unless they were already inside. Unless this was a trick. They wanted to leave and let him carry them from the dark to the world above.
Unless he was already mad, and there was no work here for them to do.
Pickaxe vanishing without a thought, Miles rubbed both hands over his head, mussing his fur, feeling the lumps on his scalp. Stimulation, overstimulation. Focus on the physical. The real. This was the surface. The desert lay behind him, away from the rising sun that blinded him. Had it always been so bright? So sad? His eyes hurt. All of his eyes hurt. He was losing himself.
Miles tilted his head as a ball of acrid spit soared past his ear. His lips parted into a grin as an eye monster floated close behind, five times his size, snapping its jaws. Plenty of spitters down there too. Had he really left?
Focus on the real.
He twisted, grapnel launching from his wrist to embed itself into the spitter's central eye. Momentum carried him hurling towards its waiting jaws, wide open to accommodate him.
Miles swiped in mid air, bifurcating the monster in a spray of green gore exploding outwards. The spitter sighed as its two halves fell, fizzing against the ground as it went home.
Miles yanked at the fur of his cheek.
Focus on the physical.
Something had fallen from the spitter. They didn't drop food. Only the small ones did that. And they didn't spit. Food didn't spit either, he was mostly sure. Mostly sane. Mostly whole. Too whole.
Focus!
There, surrounded by chunks of flesh so far past rotten they were closer to liquid than solid. There, a tiny paper bag, half torn open, a plus symbol on its side with unreadable text. Pharmacy? A prescription? The bag gave way as he lifted it, soaked with liquid "meat" as it was. A small brown bottle bounced to the floor, rattling. Pills? Miles grabbed the bottle, holding it up to an ear and shaking it. Listening to the clatter. Driving back the whispers and the fears and the trap that was sleep.
People would think he was crazy to look at him.
Perhaps he was.
Burned, torn, cut, chewed, over and over again the dark had taken from him. And over and over the wounds never were. Was the world upside down and back to front or was it him? Wouldn't a sane man in a mad world be every bit as incomprehensible and strange to its residents? Was he the proverbial Alice in Neverland? Or was it Wendy? Hard to think. Hurt to think. Perhaps he was the white rabbit?
Rabbits?
He'd been supposed to fix that. Supposed to stop them. Too late. Not what he was doing. What was he doing?
Where was he?
The girl. Not that girl. The found girl. Cosmo? Cosmo hated him. He…
He rattled the pill bottle while he flailed after thoughts he couldn't catch, things that made so much sense before slipping away… What was the trigger for the thought that triggered the thought that triggered the- that's right. The caretaker.
Miles glanced up across purple fields at a squat, angular hillside. Miles stared at the sad sun peeking from above.
"Towards the rising sun."
One step, then another. Not many more steps before his tails took over, spinning behind him, sliding between grey trees, beneath oily slime, past eye monsters big and small.
No mummies. No burning green flame. No crying.
Here in the sun he was safe. No matter how blurry the world got. No matter how loud the whispers got. No matter how much his eyes hurt.
Miles bounced off a tree at full force, some surprisingly normal looking black berries tumbling from its alien boughs. He shook off the impact in a moment, hopping back to his feet. Food? He scooped them up, biting down on one without hesitation, then the rest when the bittersweet taste hit his tongue. Even if it was poison, it probably couldn't kill him before the world made him whole again.
Even if it was poison the pain would only help keep him awake.
An eye monster, not-spitter, caught up. A peeper? Didn't matter what he called them, he'd just forget anyway. He'd just kill it anyway. The biter didn't survive more than a single strike from his pickaxe. No hesitation, no thought. Just instinct. When he didn't fight he bled, so he killed. Cut, burned, crushed, whatever worked. Up here was no different from down there, just more thorns, less fire. More of the sun, trying to tell him something. Warn him. Why was he holding a bottle? Where was he?
Running. He'd been running. Follow the sun. Find the dark. He ran again, feet pounding on purple grass. Always purple grass. He ran anyway, sweeping his pickaxe through thorns, crushing the grass to bare dirt. Didn't matter if he missed some. He'd had worse. Done worse. So much worse. Barely even felt the sting of the thorns. Helped to keep him awake.
The hill ahead was blue, not purple. And a building, not a hill. Fifty feet tall. More. Sheer brick. Part of something greater. A castle? Or a wall? Keeping him out? Keeping him in? The sun shone between ramparts. The shadows at the base of the wall lurked invitingly. Calling him back. Repelling him. But he kept running. The wall kept growing before him. If there was no door inside he would leap it. If it was too high to leap he would scale it. Answers. Before it was too late, answers.
Another spitter. They never stopped. It spat. He dodged. Unthinking. Murderous he pounced as it got close, tentacles and tails wrestling with one another. He shoved both hands into its eye socket and heaved, splitting it in two, laughing as he slammed back to the floor, grass and thorns breaking his fall, blood flowing freely into his fur. Where did it end?
Where did he end? Where was he? He was stretched so thin. He could feel the land beneath his feet, heavy and still. He wanted to open his eyes and see it. Why was he resisting? What was he resisting? Halfway between light and dark, it was so easy, just open-
Yellow.
There he was. Miles blinked. A ray of clarity in his sleepless lightless hopeless brain. Golden petals, making its own light in the shade, sprouting from an island of green and life and purity, adrift in a sea of decay.
A flower. Taller than him, shining with light and filling him with alien joy. He drew close, staring at it, reaching grey fingers to touch its stalk, tears streaming down already stained cheeks.
One of Cosmo's flowers.
Miles dashed away a tear, leaving a black stain on his glove. He could see an oily black slime moving towards him from the way he'd come, fluttering on wings stolen from an entirely different creature. Even here, there was no rest.
How long had his fur been grey? How long had he been awake?
Reaching into hammerspace, Miles pulled a cube of dirt free, dense enough that his feet sunk into the green grass by his feet from its weight. The accumulation of all the dirt he'd dug through and collected, bound together by the madness of the world.
Bonds that could be broken.
Bonds that could be exploited.
Miles broke the cube into two halves, each as big as the original, laying half onto the purple grass outside the flower's green haven. Another split, over and over, the first cube never shrinking, the second different only by its weight. A dome of earth, whole and unbroken save for a tiny air vent, a barrier against the world outside, impermeable by the mundane horrors of the surface.
Then he lay, curled in that safe shell, bathed in the light of a different kind of sun as he wept silent tears, dull orange fingertips laid against that flower as he fondly remembered the last month's hellish struggle to survive.
And with his back pressed against dirt, curled against grass and swaddled with light, Miles closed his eyes.
All of them.
