"We're leaving," Rask declares. "Leaving. You're definitely not yourself, Lander. This place has something wrong with it- it sure ain't like any proper church I've ever been to."
"How many churches have you been to?" Anizev asks.
"Not one," Rask replies, stuffing supplies into his bag. "Until now, anyway. 'N this can be the last one."
"You don't understand," I mutter. "The church, it's just the beginning, what's behind it is-"
"I don't care," Rask snaps. He stares at me with a mixture of reluctance and fear- he doesn't want to spend another night here, and damned if I want to imply otherwise. "I don't care what it is, I want no part of it, bruv. Y'hear?"
I clasp a paw to my forehead in exasperation, although in the pit of my heart, I agree. The church is cursed and there's easily something monstrous here if the previous day was any example. Part of me wants to stay and let them leave, but I know they'd be lost without me.
And I'd be lost without them too.
"I suppose Dantalion will want to know what happened," I sigh.
"Think clearly, Lander," Anizev says. "Tell me just what went on in there."
"If I knew, I'd do something about it." Stepping over another gnarled root, I trudge along with Anizev and Rask on the path back to camp. Everything seems to run into each other; like a forest repeating itself every acre. It seems like I've traveled past the mossy rock and chewed up tree branch for the sixth time. I know I'm just overthinking things.
Everything is starting to bear down on me... I feel like the smallest of slights seem to affect me like impending doom. Since I arrived in this strange, foreign land of Mossflower, I can't shake the feeling that I don't belong here.
Even worse is the feeling that I'm not the only one who thinks so.
"I want to go home," Rask grumbles. "Really home. Not this, not the camp. Back home, where at least I wasn't seeing things like this happen." To illustrate his point, he spits in disgust, saliva splashing the ground like tides against the coast.
I need to stop it with the ocean imagery, I think out loud.
"Hm?" From Anizev.
I tell them it's nothing, not to worry. Unimportant.
Like I shouldn't be worrying about the reoccurring dreams of drowning, at first night terrors of being lost at sea but becoming waking dreams and day illusions that strike at any moment.
In all of these visions, I'm always eventually sinking, but there's no bottom; no visible end to the depths. Nary a fish or any sort of ocean life- just darkness.
I never learnt to swim.
"It's going to be a moment before we get to camp, really," Rask says. "But I guess the main thing is getting the hell away from there."
"Worry about Redwall, not the churches," Anizev quips. I haven't noticed until now, but they're locked arm in arm. Even through possibly living structures, a hallucinating fox and enemy territory, they're at least able to find solace and comfort in each other. When Rask limps and loses a step, it's Anizev's eyes he looks into and then continues to walk.
I'm happy for them and yet I wish it away; I guess it reminds me too much of the growing loneliness I've been feeling. I'm feeling an emotion more than terror- I'm feeling pain. I hurt where it matters the most, the soul.
Somewhere out there, my guardian angel is weeping.
Time passes, and I've probably walked across more land today than some beasts do in a year. I'm past the point of exhaustion. My legs are working like automatons now; I can walk but I cannot feel.
"It's like we've passed this tree for the umpteenth time," Rask moans. "We're lost. No doubt about it."
Anizev sighs and rolls her eyes, but it's obvious that she's tired as well. "Perhaps we should set up camp and rest," she says. "It's getting dark and we've traveled for most of the day."
"We have nothing to set up a camp with," I grunt. "Nothing but our clothes and the things we carry. I can at least make out the lights of a campfire in the distance."
Rask comically flops forward, grumbling. Even though his frustration is very real, I can't help but crack a wry smile at this predicament. Poor Rask, dragged into all this.
Dantalion said something about writing history. It goes both ways; if you don't watch your step, you'll fall off the pages you've written.
Standing here in the woods on a nameless Mossflower evening, I wonder if I strode too far, if I'm in too deep.