The Man walked alone through a city. He'd come here not long after separating from his companion and the one who was once a monster. He'd initially intended to go back to the tower, go back to his research. But, life had a way of messing with you, didn't it? When he'd got to this city, he'd made some friends while drinking, some hunters. The group was loud, boisterous, and all a far cry from the usual type a researcher would typically associate with. But, to The Man, they were friends who he'd fought with several times over the past three years. Time and again, they'd risked themself for pay or glory. Time and again, The Man had relished in a victory fought beside them. A few times, they'd lost a member, and The Man had mourned them the way he once had his own parents. They were friends, and they were family, but The Man felt that his time with them would soon come to an end.
The Man had spent three years in this city, three years longer than The Man thought he'd spend away from the tower. After four years traveling with his other two companions, getting one of them used to the world, and learning the capabilities of the other, He'd opted to return first. He'd done this primarily because he wasn't confident he could outrun Lillian if she'd tried to chase him to the tower, but his other companion was. So he'd left and started the journey back to that black tower hidden in the mountains.
But, The Man didn't return. The Man had estimated five years between the death of The Husk and when he should return. Four years of aimless travel and one year for the journey home. But, that year of travel had long passed, and then three more had followed behind. Originally it was a baseless fear that Stopped The Man's journey. A fear that the answers he wanted wouldn't satisfy the thirst for knowledge in his heart. That knowing who The Husk was would only create more questions that didn't have answers. A fear that if he returned, that thirst for knowledge would consume him and that he'd never be able to walk off the path set by The Husk. And that the path paved by The Husk wouldn't lead to a life of glory and happiness, but one of desperation, obsession, and reckless abandon. The Man felt that fear growing, stopping his feat the closer he got to the tower until he'd stopped in this town and stayed till tonight.
However, over time, The Man realized that the feeling of caution came from somewhere else. A foreign feeling from out in the world cautioned against returning to the tower. A change had occurred, and the change seemed to resonate with The Man. An odd resonance with his mind and soul, telling one to stay away, but calling to the other That feeling had tricked The Man into thinking he was choosing not to return. For a time, that is. When He'd noticed that it wasn't his choosing to avoid the tower and The Husk, The Man had decided that he would listen to that foreign entity for the time being and stay away from the tower. But, tonight, that feeling had vanished. The ever-present caution The Man had experienced for the past few years completely fell away with no sign as to what had caused it.
It hadn't gone unnoticed. The Man wouldn't usually be awake right now. The sun had gone down, and most people had blown out their lanterns. But, that feeling had been so consistent in his life that when it disappeared, it had woken him from his slumber. The streets were almost pitch black, the light of the moon above providing minimal illumination, forcing one to provide their own if they wished to see. And, while the city was silent, the majority of its inhabitants asleep, the night itself was far from it. Winds howled over roofs and down alleys, chilling The Man to the bone. The cries of nocturnal beasts shot over the city walls, and the roars of monsters further out companied them in the dark of the night. The sounds were ordinary things to The Man, the winds were near-constant around here, and the creatures beyond the walls never slept for long. But, tonight, the sound irritated The Man, and he didn't fully understand why.
Any other night, he'd sleep through the sounds, unbothered by the constant commotion. However, tonight he couldn't sleep through them. When he'd awoken to the vanishing feeling, he'd tried to return to his bed, deal with the change in the morning. But, the sounds had kept him awake, almost drilling into his mind, demanding that he seek silence. So, The Man had wrapped a cloak about his shoulders and stepped out into the empty streets. He didn't know where he'd go, no destination or goal in mind, but he walked into the chilly streets nonetheless. The Man's feet carried him down street after street aimlessly. A small orb of magical light illuminated his path, but it held little relevance to The Man. After all, it's impossible to get lost in the dark without a destination in mind. So The Man kept walking, in search of something, but not aware of what it was.
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The Woman groaned. For three years, she'd fought against that odd compulsion not to return to her teacher. But the closer she got to the tower, the stronger it got. When she'd reached the mountain range where that black structure lay, she'd felt outright fear of the place. She knew it wasn't her emotion; it was an invader, but try as she might, she could prevent its influence. She could never climb the mountain. She'd tried living nearby for a time, but that had grown too stressful, her life a constant fight to avoid collapsing in fear whenever she turned to look at that mountain. So she'd moved away, far enough away that she could continue to live her life, what semblance of one she put together, that is, but close enough that she could reach the mountain within a few days if she tried.
She built a rough single-room house at the edge of a small village. She didn't know its name, nor did she know the names of any of the inhabitants. She'd spoken with them a few times; they were friendly, for what that was worth. But The Woman's relationship with them had never developed into anything more than giving a passing nod to them when they walked by. She kept them safe, if only because doing so kept her house safe as well. They didn't sneer at her when she walked around with weapons strapped to her body, nor did they call out to her in a provocative manner, so The Woman mostly ignored them. Occasionally she would exchange the pelts of the monsters and beasts she hunted in the area for other goods. They would happily take whatever she gave them and provide what she asked for in turn. If it was cause they were scared of her, respected her, or were ripping her off, The Woman didn't know.
Outside of this simple life around this tiny village, The Woman spent almost every moment trying to rid herself of that foreign, invasive emotion. But she never could. She trained with her weapons and grew to understand them better every day, but she never managed to use any of those weapons to fight off the foreign emotions. They persisted every day, constantly telling her to get further from the mountains, to leave this place, to run and hide and never look back. But The Woman refused to give in and kept trying to find a way to return to her teacher. But she had failed, for three years, she had failed., a glaring failure in what The Woman felt was a series of failures in her life. Her teacher never told her she failed, not once. That creature had never once uttered even the slightest displeasure at what The Woman had done. But she still felt like she'd failed time and again.
She didn't succeed without the use of spirit. She didn't take to the energy as fast as she could have. She didn't fight for long enough in that final exam. She felt like she hesitated at the concept of reincarnation. She couldn't assist in the fight to restrain Lillian while she was a husk. She had failed to understand the reason for her teacher sending her to travel with Lillian. And now she'd been unable to return when that time of travel had come to an end. The Woman knew that these thoughts were, at best, simply wrong, and at worst, self-destructive. She'd succeeded several times. The most recent note being with Lillian. The Woman had felt it in the other girl's gaze that she would try to follow back to the tower. She'd noticed it when The Man left and had stopped her then. So when The Woman made to go, she'd successfully made sure that Lillian wouldn't be able to track her. So she hadn't failed at that task, but she still hadn't been able to return or shake this invasive emotion that stopped her from going home.
Tonight, however, things were different. The Woman had been sleeping when that foreign feeling of fear had vanished—the sudden lack of its presence dragging THe Woman from her slumber. At first, she'd grumbled around, trying to ascertain why she was awake. The village was safe; no monsters had come by to bug the small settlement. The area wasn't a noisy one, so the sound wasn't ever an issue. These and other thoughts crossed The Woman's mind before she noticed the change. She could look toward that mountain without the desire to run and hide, and she could go to the place of her teacher.
She changed in moments; her sleepwear was exchanged for her usual garbs. Weapons, quivers, and all the straps involved were pulled tight in moments. The Woman spared a thought for the villagers and scribbled out a short message saying that she'd left and that the village could use her house for whatever they needed. She didn't know if they could read, but she hoped they'd find it before any danger found them ill-prepared to face it. But those thoughts were forgotten quickly as she raced out the door toward the mountain, the ground ripping at her passage.
The woods were almost deafening, the sound of the nocturnal animals somehow louder than it should be. Mice squeaked, wolves howled, and birds' wings flapped. Each sound was so loud to The Woman that she almost felt pain from her ears. It was almost like the world demanded that The Woman seek an unnatural silence, a shroud to keep out the noise of the world. So The Woman raced forward, looking for the one being she felt could grant that silence, her teacher, The Husk, a being of horror and nightmares that had granted her every dream and more. She ran, racing to the black tower, it's almost mirror reflective bricks and the unnatural presence that emanated from its walls. She tore through the landscape, her feet faster than they'd ever been before. All this, so she could go home, go to her teacher, and go to the other who followed the same monstrous path as she.
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The Man walked down an alley. He hadn't chosen the path at random. No, this alley was unique. This alley was quiet. Not silent but quiet. The Man had found a trail, an odd one, but a trail nonetheless. The Man had walked the city at random, not knowing where he should go or what his objective was until he found a single street where the sound dulled. It was a barely perceivable change, so subtle a difference from the rest of the world that The Man almost missed it. That street had been the first part of the path, one that gradually grew closer to that unnatural silence a part of The Man's mind demanded. The path wound and looped about almost nonsensically. It would double back on itself, twist around a building several times, cut over a section multiple times, and more. The actual path made little sense when thought of as a way to get somewhere. But as The Man walked, the world growing silent around him, he noticed the reality of what he was doing.
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The Woman's breath grew heavy. Her legs burned, and the act of lifting her feet became an arduous task. She'd stopped running to the mountain. That was no longer the goal. As she'd run through the woods to reach her destination, she'd passed a small patch of land where the near-deafening sound of the forest faded away ever so slightly. It was a strip of land so small that when she'd first ran over it, she'd nearly missed the change in volume. But nearly is only such, she'd caught the subtle shift in the sound around her and returned to that section of the forest.
Now, she chased the ever closer silence. That patch of land was a trail of some kind, one that shifted the world to adhere to it rather than follow the laws of nature. The trees bent oddly around the bizarre space, avoiding it. The underbrush didn't thin visibly but stepping on it indicated it was thinner to a noticeable degree. The Woman didn't keep track of where she'd been, so she didn't know the shape of the trail, but she felt like she'd seen some of these trees several times before and frequently felt like she was stepping in the same spots for a second and third time. But despite the inclination that this trail was looping back on itself, The Woman followed it to wherever it leads. With every step on, the sound of the forest faded further and further away. Like the trail separated itself from reality and pushed the world away from The Woman as she walked.
The experience was slightly unsettling but still well within The Woman's tolerance. She was more than used to the odd and unnatural silences, and this walk through the dark forest was far from the worst thing she'd put up with for her teacher. But, as she kept walking the trail, the noise of the forest fading beyond her hearing, and eventually her own heartbeat vanishing from her perception, she grew unsettled by what she saw around her.
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The path was a ritual. The Man realized. A grand replication of a course taken by another in a different location. By following the steps laid in front of him and continuing to let the world's sounds fade away, The Man was participating in a form of ritual magic. Such a massive spell, spanning not only this city, but at least one other location of the same size, was astounding to The Man. The Man was highly intrigued by the formation, not only because of its size and planning but because, even as a participant in the ritual, he had no idea what the result would be. The Man could tell some parts of what he was doing. The fact that the space around him was distorting, changing from the city he knew to something foreign. Or that the city's sound wasn't as much fading as actually growing distant in an odd fashion. And that the ritual wasn't something anyone could fall into, the start was open only to someone with something to act as a key, not that The Man knew what he had to serve that purpose.
But outside of these things, The Man didn't know much about the ritual. He assumed it was something created by The Husk, considering the nature of the presented effects and the timing, but that was only an assumption. The stone-paved path continued, long, almost never-ending, and as The Man walked, he noticed that the moon above had stopped moving at some point. The sound of the winds blowing over rooftops was long gone at this point, so to was the sound of anything but The Man's own breathing. The buildings around the path were no longer those of the city The Man was living in, but some approximation of them. There were windows where none should go, doors with no walls, walls at odd angles, and entire buildings too short for a man to stand in. The structures matched that of the city, but they were anything but genuine. The light of the moon overhead faded away as The Man walked, the great circle of light growing small like it too was receding from the world.
Shadows flicked around in the buildings. They resembled disfigured people. Some of them stretched into odd shapes or squished down smaller than The Man thought possible. They peeked from windows, then flickered in the moonlight as The Man walked by. The false city was covered in these shadow creatures, so many that even if The Man had tried to stop and count them, he'd fail. The Man grew curious about these shadow creatures and the oddly mangled interpretation of the city around him, but even with that curiosity, he wouldn't stop. Something said that, while the path was safe, it was only that way while The Man moved. And the instant he stopped, the creatures around him would stop merely watching and enter the path alongside him. So The Man kept walking, step after step, the world growing stranger and stranger the longer he walked.
The sound of The Man's breathing faded away, followed by the dull drum of his heart, then finally even the sound of his own thoughts cleared away. Then it all snapped away, everything from sight to touch and back to sound. The strange mangled world vanished, and The Man understood the ritual he'd taken part in.
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The trees around The Woman stretched, their branches too long or too thick for the trunk they grew from. Shadows twisted around the bases of the trees, warping them, cutting through them, and sometimes climbing them like living creatures. The canopy was too thick to see the sky or let any light past. But occasionally, among the branches, The Woman saw faces, looking down on her. They watched for merely an instant before they vanished into the thick leaves, and The Woman continued along the silent trail. Branches twisted into shapes that resembled bones in the corner of The Woman's eye.
Tall, gangly creatures walked out way beyond the trail. They were grotesque things, boils, and growths in odd places. Limbs jutting out in what The Woman perceived to be incorrect ways. They strut amongst the trees, passing by them and sweeping branches away from themselves. Occasionally one would look toward the trail and stare with hollow eyes. They watched like it could see the Woman, but she told herself that wasn't possible and continued forward. Occasionally other things wondered close to the trail, immaterial things, dark even in the lightless forest. They flickered in the wind and danced along the edges of the trees before a strung gust would scatter them completely.
But still, The Woman carried onward, unsure of how long she'd walked, and unable to hear the forest around her, she walked. She kept going for so long that even the sound of her own thought faded as if the voice in her head was something other than imaginary, and it to was stripped away. Then it snapped into place. The forest was gone, and so to was everything else, sight, touch, and anything to tell The Woman where she was. An endless black that felt so empty to The Woman that she hoped it was only in her head. She remained in that void for only an instant before another change occurred, and she was home.
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"Welcome." An abhorrent imitation of natural sound assaulted the ears of the two. The sound was grating, irritating, fear-inducing, but all the same, the familiar sound was comforting to both of them. It had been eight long years without any sign of the holder of that voice. The was no impossible motion in the dark corner of a room, no oddly deep shadows cast at dusk, nor any sounds that couldn't belong to the living, nothing to indicate that he was alive. But now, both of them let out a breath that they felt they'd taken years prior, a long, drawn-out sigh escaping both their lips for different reasons. One was relieved that a question would be answered, the other hopeful for a new challenge. But both were patient, surprisingly so, because this was a moment they'd waited on for so long that they'd almost resigned themselves never to see it come.
But here they stand, ready to ask the many questions they've accrued over the years. Neither took in the environment around them. It could be something they knew or something new, but they didn't care. They only had eyes for the individual in front of them. They both remembered the same figure from years ago, an emaciated individual wrapped in dark cloth like bandages with a flat skull. And that's what they saw in front of them now, but there were some minor differences. The figure they remembered stood tall, proud, their shoulders back and their neck straight as could be. What they saw in front of them wasn't that same proud stance. His shoulders sagged low, the flat, faceless skull hanging down looking at the ground. He sat against the wall, almost resembling a heap of bones instead of a powerful monster. The jet-black near-pristine wrappings from memory were now a dull grey, with splotches and marks like they'd been strung through fire and mud. Both feet were gone, not cut from the body but crushed, mangled terribly, left hanging like sacks of powder at the end of his legs. The sight was stunning, leaving both of them silent for a good while as they took in the state of the one in front of them.
"You look like shit" The Man broke the silence first.
"Indeed, I do." The Husk replied, that rasping voice filling the space evenly.
"What happened?" The Woman asked, concern in her voice.
"Many things." The Husk replied almost dismissively. "How have the years treated you?" The Husk asked, its head still hung low.
"No, not this time. I want an explanation about this" The Man gestured to the state of The Husk. "Why are your feet crushed? Why do you look like you were shoved into a burning mud pit?" The Man took a few steps forward while talking before stopping suddenly. "AND WHY DO YOU SMELL LIKE A SEWER?" The Man screamed out between gagging fits at the smell of THe Husk.
"Does he smell that bad?" The Woman asked, taking a few steps back.
"Check for yourself." The Man said while stepping back to match her.
She did not step forward to check.
"So, an explanation is due." The Husk phrased the sentence like a question, but it felt like it was more to himself than the two. "Very well." The Husk rasped out, and for the first time since the two arrived in this space, he lifted his head.
"What in the..." The Woman gasped out at what she saw on The Husk's face.
"That's disgusting," The Man commented.
"The Simplest explanation I can provide." Another almost human voice accompanied the Husk's familiar rasping voice. "I attempted something and failed disastrously." The sounds overlapped so well that If they weren't so different, it might have caused a harmonic sound. "The result is what you see" The Husk raised an arm and gestured to its face. "My feet were crushed in a form of backlash from the attempt." The two voices contained vastly different inflections. One was cold, uncaring about the situation. The other sounded like it was crying from pain.
"What were you doing to get that kind of result?" The Woman asked, averting her eyes from The Husk.
"I attempted to free myself from this form." The Husk rasped out. "I called to the void for the pieces of me that have forgotten. Not that I know what it is that's been forgotten."
"And only a portion responded." The Human voice said. It was unbearable to listen to, like a man speaking through desperate pained breaths.
"So you ended up like." The Man gestured to The Husk. "That."
The Man took in everything about the Husk's state for the first time, trying to understand what he was looking at. A heart stuck out of The Husk's ribs, almost fused to the bones beneath. It beat rapidly, but its actions did nothing as it wasn't connected to anything. Muscly spandrel seemed to ooze between the wrappings around the heart, connecting it to the rest of the body, but they appeared dry, like preserved meats. A few white veins hung from the heart limply. They didn't go anywhere and seemed to rot away at the ends.
The face of The Husk was flat like expected, on the top half. Beneath that, it was like someone had ripped flesh away from someone's jaw. Teeth jutted out of gums with no lips to cover them. A tongue flapped about inside like a slug. It seemed swollen and looked distinctly purple. It flicked about behind the teeth, sometimes getting caught on them. Occasionally a spurt of yellowy puss ejected out from underneath it. A similar oozing dry muscle to that around the heart connected the jaw to the flatter section of the face. One side of the jaw had a chunk of something fleshy hanging from it. It looked like the skin failed to stick to the bones in all but the bottom part of the jawline.
A few strands of something dirty white dangled down from just beneath the jaw to the heart. They connected to two pieces but otherwise didn't seem to fulfill any purpose. It appeared like thousands of tiny strings wrapped around each other in a random pattern, whatever it was. Sometimes The Man thought he saw a flash of light among them, but he assumed it had to be a brighter portion shining through on occasion.
Looking down, underneath the ribs of The Husk sat a stomach or half of what The Man assumed was a stomach. An open sack hung from the wrappings, a sickly puss leaking from the opening, and a grotesque pulsing occasionally shifting it. This lacked the dry muscles but instead had a stringy substance seeped out from between the wrappings. That material clung to the back of the sack and would occasionally jerk back and fling a small amount of puss out into the air, where it would vanish before touching anything.
The Man's first impression was that it looked like things had tried to occupy a space that wasn't built for them—like the organs of The Husk's original form had tried to take up residence in the current one and found something else occupying the space. But after taking a closer look, The Man had to rethink that. His understanding of anatomy wasn't perfect, but he considered himself better than some. And, from what he knew, the organs and body parts present didn't line up with an actual body. The heart was backward and almost perfectly in the center of the chest. The stomach was hanging far too low. The jaw didn't have enough muscle in some places and had too much in others. And whatever the materials holding the organs to The Husk were, they didn't look like they belonged in a healthy body. It was like the body parts were plucked at random and shoved to approximate where they went. Or, another part of THe Man's mind thought, the soul partially remembers the body's structure, and The Husk's soul didn't recall where to put the body parts.
But, regardless of how interesting it might be, The Man couldn't think about those questions all day. So instead, The Man thought to see if he could help.
"So, is there something we can do to, umm?" The Man paused while speaking Because he didn't know what he wanted to ask. "Is fix the right term here?" The Man asked, confusion overtaking the disgust in his voice.
"I don't think so." The Woman said. "But, I do agree with the sentiment."
"You two already helped me more than you know." The Husk rasped out, the human voice not accompanying it. "But, the unfortunate truth is that the only way to rectify this mistake is for this iteration of my form to parish."
"Why do you constantly speak in a way that makes so many more questions pop up in my head?' The Man asked, exasperated. "Two newest ones. How did we help you if we haven't been here? Why is that the only solution to this problem?" The Man's voice sounded irritated, but only slightly.
"I'm going to have to agree with baldy; the way you talk is almost infuriating with how you make more questions than you ever answer." The Woman said.
The Man ran his hand over his thinning hair in response to the bald comment but otherwise didn't react.
"Habits are hard to break the longer you let them be." The Husk rasped out what the two assumed was a response to their complaint. Not that it was a satisfying one. "You helped me by knowing of me. Your souls resonate with my own, wherever it might be." The rasping and the human voices overlapped again. "This body must die so that the pieces of my soul that I gathered are once more scattered to the void, lest they wither along with these malformed body parts." The Human voice was slightly louder, its tone sad. The rasping horror of a voice did not mirror this emotion. 'So, before I have one of you cut me down, ask your questions so that I may answer them." The Husk rasped out a statement that left both The Man and Woman staring in shock for a moment.
However, they recovered quickly and started asking the questions that had filled their minds for so long.