"I don't like the look of it," mumbled Troyard, his back against a wall of rock and his gaze set disapprovingly on their latest discovery. They had followed the path out of the deadly paradise without any further incidents, only to find themselves underground once again. This time, however, there was some filtered light, and the way through the caverns was spacious. So much so, that there was some danger of getting lost if one strayed too far into the shadows. Now before them was a sort of underground oasis with a pool of clear, glistening water, which came pouring in from a fissure up above, and at its center was very small island with something lying on its grass. The thing glowed, and though it was difficult to tell from such a distance, it appeared to be made of something like glass or crystal.
"I'll bet that's your cure-all," Inaho conjectured, "the 'room full of antidotes', if you will. I'll get it. It can't hurt to try."
Troyard frowned, his eyes still fixed ahead. His fingers brushed idly over the growing web of red lines just under the skin of his forearm. Inaho sighed inwardly. There was no time to waste, they had to find some means of nullifying the venom. There was nothing very dramatic about Troyard's symptoms thus far, except perhaps cosmetically, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be a sudden, delayed onset. He seemed tired, but then that was natural considering they hadn't yet managed to sleep since entering this place. They were both exhausted.
"We should continue on towards the end," spoke Troyard at last, "We haven't the time for this sort of unnecessary excursion."
"Unnecessary? You could perish within the hour, for all we know."
"All the more reason to press on."
Inaho's jaw tightened and he looked again at what they were about to give up. He was so certain it would cure Troyard. Surely there was some sort of hidden obstacle to overcome in order to obtain it, but they had already managed to come this far. He was confident he could do it. "I'll only be a few minutes."
"Kaizuka. Don't." Warning eyes angled up at him, and for a brief moment he felt inclined to do as he was told. But as their eyes locked, he noticed that Troyard was trembling, and his breathing was not quite regular.
Inaho shook his head with resolve. "Will you save my life, and then deny me the chance to save yours?"
Troyard gave a long sigh. "Kaizuka," he repeated quietly, pulling himself to his feet as he spoke, "I know what I said before, but this isn't your fault. You have no obligation to endanger yourself for my sake. If we delay, and something happens to you, I may not be able to come to your aid, and I especially won't have enough hours left to accompany you to the end. If you do this, we could very well both die."
"You have very little faith in me, for someone who went through such great lengths to obtain my help."
Troyard laughed softly, and his lips parted as if to reply, but no words came. Instead, he leaned forward suddenly and sank to his knees. His hands shook as they curled against the stone floor.
"Are you alright?" Inaho hurried forward to assist, but was waved away.
After an agonizing moment of suspense, Troyard glanced up at him through sweat-drenched hair. "Don't stare at me," he protested faintly, with a strained smile that did little to conceal his distress, "really, Kaizuka… please-"
Inaho had only just turned away when Troyard emptied the contents of his stomach onto the cave floor. The silence that followed was unbearable. Inaho began to wonder if Troyard was really alright, or if maybe he'd collapsed. "Troyard?" he ventured. If the venom had already spread so far as to make him this sick, he could have even less time than they'd imagined.
Troyard vomited twice again before finally responding. "Shall we head on?" he inquired casually, as though nothing very out of the ordinary had just happened.
"Are you mad?!" demanded Inaho. He turned briskly on his heel to face Troyard.
Troyard blinked at him over his upturned canteen, from which he was now taking small sips. His eyes seemed to be barely focused, and there were beads of sweat on his brow. Wiping his mouth and returning the cap to the canteen, Troyard cleared his throat. "Who knows," he chuckled, "but I'm not the one who suggested walking willingly into that death trap."
"It's no longer a suggestion. Wait here until I return."
Without waiting for a reply, Inaho set his things down and headed for the edge of the water. He looked into it, trying to see if there was anything lurking beneath, but the sunlight that streamed in from above cast a shimmering glare over the surface, making it impossible to see what lay below. He did notice, however, now that he was closer, a line of stepping stones leading straight to the little island. It was leading from the other side of the pool, the half that was shrouded slightly in mists and shadows. Without delay, Inaho began making his circuit around the edge, glancing around him all the while in an attempt to notice as many potential hazards as possible. There wasn't much hope of his foreseeing something amiss in a place so lovely, but he would try anyway.
Before placing his foot on the first stone, he glanced across the water, just to be sure Troyard was still there. Not that he expected him to have gone on, but it was reassuring to know that nothing had carried him off, at least. The figure lying on the ground there both set him at ease and lent him a new sense of urgency, and he began his journey across the water.
It was strange, and disconcerting, how easy this was. He began to fear that if he took the thing at the middle, it might trigger this whole place to fall apart, or some such calamity that would kill the both of them. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone standing at the edge of the water. His heartbeat quickened, though if it was a human he felt fairly confident of his odds. The shadow moved, flickering in and out of sight, until there it was at the first stepping stone. He let out a breath of relief. It was only Troyard.
"What are you doing? I'll fetch it, you should rest."
He turned to continue on, but there was Troyard again. Inaho started and nearly slipped backwards off the stone. At this point he began to feel a growing sense of dread. Something was terribly off. He tried to snatch a look at the far shore, in hopes of confirming that Troyard was not, in fact, still lying there, but was interrupted by something brushing against him, and looked downwards instead. His stomach lurched at the sight below him. The water had been tainted with blood, and at his feet was a woman, her weak hand clinging to his pant leg. She looked up at him with resentful eyes.
"Y-Yuki?!" He recognized her immediately and leaned down to her with a trembling hand.
But no sooner had he moved toward her, than she slipped away beneath the surface. He stared at the murky red ripples, too stunned to think. Yet the longer he stood there doing nothing, the more he began to notice the terrible things all around. Troyard was still before him, now gripping a bloody knife, a dark smile on his lips. Others appeared, littering the water, and seeping from every crack and opening in the walls was a thick, moving black cloud. It advanced slowly, soundlessly across the water towards him, swallowing up everything in its path. He had to get quickly to the island before it reached him, but Troyard was standing in his way. The panic he felt was strange, as though it wasn't truly his. He was quite certain that none of this was actually happening, and yet, it was all so realistic. Either way, the fear was real, and he no longer possessed the mental faculties to explain it away.
Finding that his dread of Troyard was significantly less than his horror of the creeping shadow, he advanced boldly in hopes of maybe dispersing this one figment of his imagination by physically proving its nonexistence. But Troyard only moved someplace else, always just too far away, and at the same time too close. A glance at the empty far shore did not help settle matters in his mind. If he was honest with himself, this could actually be happening. It wasn't impossible.
A cloud must have passed over the sun, because suddenly the bright shimmering was gone, and everything became dim. As he jumped hastily over the stones towards the center, he could now see beneath the surface more clearly, though it was still clouded with blood and swamped with things he did not want to see. He immediately regretted looking. Something was indeed down there, a grayish creature weaving silently through a forest of white branches. Whether they were branches or bones, he couldn't quite tell, but for his own comfort it was best to assume that they were the more pleasant of the two. At last, somehow managing to shut out everything around him for a few desperate moments and focus his teetering steps in a forward direction, he reached the island and hastily snatched up the vial that lay there, before it, too, could transform to something he would not want to touch. He quickly put the silver chain it hung from around his neck. It would be no good if he dropped it by mistake. Now for the journey back.
He turned to face what he'd been able to run away from all this time, now wondering how on earth he was meant to run towards it. Perhaps if he shut his eyes… but then he might fall into the water, and who knows if that thing was actually there or not. Most likely it was, and if it was, those branches were likely bones. The bones of others who had died here, probably from falling into the water.
All this time, he'd been thinking that even if this was terrifying, it was actually a harmless venture, and he could complete the mission simply by forcing his way through the nightmare. But what if not everything was in his mind? It was unlikely that something in this place would be truly safe, and thus there must be some real danger here. So which of these things were real, and which were not? Suddenly, all his fears seemed justified, and he stood, unable to move, at the center of the island, simply watching as the shadow glided across the grass and over his boots.
Inaho blinked, eyelashes catching as they fluttered against something warm covering his face. He reached up to pull it away. He tugged at it, but it wouldn't budge.
"How are you feeling?" someone asked, and he recognized the voice as Troyard's.
Had something happened to him? He tried to think back to the last thing he could remember. Ah, yes, he was on an unfortunate quest with Troyard, and Troyard was terribly ill. He had set out to fetch some kind of glowing object from the center of a pool… but what had happened after that, he could not remember. Maybe he had slipped and fallen. His head did hurt a great deal, now that he thought about it, though it felt more like he'd had too much to drink than fallen on his head.
"Well enough, I suppose," he responded tentatively, "what happened?"
The pause was a little too long. "Ah. You don't remember…" Troyard sounded pensive, yet pleased, and removed his hands from Inaho's face. Only then did Inaho realize his head was cradled in Troyard's lap, and the man was peering down at him with scrutiny.
"Why were you covering my face?" He might also have asked why he was lying in such a position, but he figured one thing might explain the other.
Troyard seemed to be debating whether to speak, but eventually answered with a sigh: "Because you'd have clawed out your own eye."
Inaho tried to put the pieces together through the fog in his head. Clearly he had actually already attempted the mission, and somehow returned alive, but something had happened to him along the way. He could only think of one thing it could be. "Was I poisoned by something?"
Troyard nodded hesitantly. "I suppose you could say that." He was probably afraid of reviving the memory somehow by talking about it, but there was literally no trace of it left, and Inaho felt rather certain that it wouldn't return simply by mentioning it. It would probably revisit him on its own on some future night in the form of a terrible nightmare.
"Did I succeed?"
Troyard nodded again, and held up his arm. The bite had vanished completely. "It was a narrow scrape, but you survived it."
Inaho raised a hand to rub his face, but something caught his eye. He looked more closely at his fingers. All of them were covered with blood. He looked back at Troyard. "This was more than just a mild poisoning - what exactly happened? Who's..."
Troyard looked down at him for a long time. Then he sighed, and leaned back on his hands. "By the time you returned to the shore, you'd lost all reason. I can't say I'm surprised that I featured as a villain in your hallucinations, but it was quite convenient for drawing you back to safety without having to go fetch you, since you seemed rather keen on annihilating me. Thankfully, you were more weakened and disoriented than I was, and had left all but one of your weapons with me, so I was able to restrain you without too much difficulty. That mist over the water at the other side must be the source. Once you were away from it, within a few hours the effects faded considerably and you calmed down enough to sleep."
"Hours?! I'm sorry, are you alright?"
"Of course I am. You were right, that was a cure-all. If it couldn't heal a few scratches, it would be a sorry reward for what you endured to retrieve it. Thank you, truly."
Inaho never thought he'd live to see the day when Troyard thanked him, but then he'd also heard Troyard apologize not twenty-four hours prior. Perhaps it was truly a day of miracles. "That's a relief..." he murmured in reply, relaxing a bit, despite his lingering apprehension. This, like the false paradise, was no place for him to let down his guard. Anything could happen without warning. Inaho tried to sit up, so that he could gather his things for their departure, but was prevented by two arms sliding over his shoulders. He felt the gentle weight of Troyard's folded hands settle on his chest.
"Rest a while longer, at least until the bleeding stops. You tore at yourself pretty badly... I suppose you imagined there was something under your skin."
Inaho closed his eyes, too tired to protest such a welcome order. If he had slept, it hadn't been for long, and anyway his head was still throbbing terribly. "Wake me if something happens," he murmured, and drifted off into the deepest sleep he'd had in days.