I'm still soaking wet. Rask is ragged and heaving, heavy breaths that seem to echo through the cathedral. Both of us, quite frankly, look ridiculous.
"You two look ridiculous," Anizev says.
She kneels at Rask's side, staring at me with accusing eyes. "Where did you go and what did you do?"
"We were in the church undercroft," I say.
"And we didn't do anything," Rask groans. "I didn't, 'nyway."
"You two are soaking wet in a church with the nearest body of water a day's trek away," Anizev frowns, pulling Rask into a sitting position. Rask is still coughing and wheezing, sounding something a bit less sincere than a death rattle, yet still unsettling to hear. "Rask's all... I don't even know."
She looks up at me again, with confusion.
"What did you get us into, Lander?"
Nothing can be obtained by grasping at the wind
There is no escape from the dualism of life, vanity of vanities.
I am embittered towards these lives for their failures
Yet I possess all of these same shortcomings.
I used to wake up in cold sweats, shivering from head to toe. I can't even close my eyes at all now.
Rask is curled up, still wheezing, eyes shut in the chapel darkness. Not even the events that happened here are enough to bar him from sleep. Anizev watched over him in a manner that made me think of my own mother, though even she fell asleep, leaning against a toppled pew. In any way, I should have joined them in rest.
But I can't. Every time I close my eyes, I see myself dying in more and more elaborate ways. And every time I die... I see that symbol. That insignia.
The rune looked like a blade in the waves, though it was so incredibly strange, I couldn't and can't make heads or tails of it. A tilde crossed out? Something more?
I don't understand and that scares me. I lay awake in nights like this, staring at the ceiling, or the stars if I can get outside. I think of how I'm a statistic and at best I'll be mentioned as ancient history in enough time. I am not immortal. I can accept that.
But the thought of there being something more is what keeps me wide awake from dawn to dusk.
It's the little things; he slight movement in the corners of my eye. The air acquiring a chilled breeze from out of nowhere. The feeling like I'm being watched by someone. This someone, somebeast or something more or maybe less. Lurking behind every door, thousand ember eyes watching and waiting. A creeping, stalking death. Someone with influence. Not influence over other beasts, influence over the very domain of this land. As if the valleys could, and would, crest solely by his willing it. Someone with power.
And the feeling that this someone doesn't like me.
The hours pass and I still feel like I'm being watched.
"I'm sick of this," I mutter.
"But I adore her."
I jump up, bristling. "Rask?"
"Nnnnn," he groans. He's lying on his side facing away from me, chest still rising and falling erratically. Asleep. This is something given to dreams.
"But I adore her," he's droning again.
I briefly look towards Anizev, who's still asleep. Who knows what she's been through to get to this point. Rask, clearly, has taken a liking to her.
For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I smile. Facing the black as jet void, I'm smiling, finding jest in someone's romantic woes.
"Bbbuuut this will..." Rask says, surprisingly clear for someone unconscious. "Never..."
"You're talking in your sleep, mate," I whisper gently.
I grab Rask's shoulder to try and rotate him onto his back.
This is where I notice his eyes are open. His eyes are solid black, runny, as if they'll overflow from his sockets and leak onyx fluid onto his muzzle.
"But this will never happen."
It seems almost like puppetry. Long, night-colored tendrils coming out from his orbital bones. Wrapping around me like coils, cold yet dry as sand. Scratchy and foreign. It reminds me of birth in some way. Rask begins calling out; names, trees.
None of these places sound like home.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes running over like a fountain, Anizev just laughing and crying.
Why, I ask. Why is this happening to me?
Rask looks at me- you can't see his pupils in that wretched ocular pool, but I know he's staring, and says, "This will never happen."
And it feels like my very fabric is being torn asunder. Bones, skin, fur, pieces of me, peeling off. Falling to the ground shattering like vases. And I'm howling over Rask's screaming and Anizev's laughter, trying to pick up the pieces, putting them back together like a jigsaw. Every breath is labored and the air is salty like the ocean. I'm bobbing up and down in the sea, waves drowning me. I can't even see anymore. It took my eyes. I scream and scream and-
This will never happen.
Blink.
Everything's normal.
Rask is curled up, but silent, thankfully with nothing jutting out of his eyes. Anizev is snoring. All is silent in the chapel- still pristine and bright. It's morning,
Nightmare, I think. A bizarre, intensely disturbed nightmare, but nothing I hadn't already been through.
"Hey," I call out.
Anizev wipes her eyes, squinting at the sunlight. Rask mutters and grumbles and rolls over.
"I think we need to get out of here," Anizev declares, yawning. "I don't like this talk about a labyrinth. All in all, Dantalion needs to know about this."
Rask grunts, "Take us far away from here. From that thing inside." He nods as if to bring us back to the creature we saw in the undercroft.
"We can leave, but it will still be here," I reply. "Not in the undercroft, not in the church, it's everywhere. Waiting."
a/n: i know i'm terrible and need to try harder. sorry for the delays.