At a key point in my life, I had been plunged into an awful abyss of the unknown. There was a profuse amount of darkness in my midst, but there was also one shining light, which emitted an ever-burning radiance that only grew in brilliance in accordance with the dark.
Oskar was the one to act as that for me, a guiding light, and a beacon of hope in my own time of dim despair. That is why I owe him everything. He pulled me out of that terrible world of darkness, of which I had been so suddenly cast into, and for that I will never be able to repay this debt even if he insists no such thing exists.
I was made to flee soon after being saved. There was no chance of my survival, even with allied forces protecting, if my departure was delayed in the slightest. So, it was with no clear direction that I used my small legs to run far away—an unclear amount of time passing in the process.
It was incredibly difficult to navigate the world alone with my new, forced ailment. Blindness was not a foreign concept but there was clearly more to it.
At that point I had yet to understand what this ‘sense’ was. I mean, how was I supposed to? It was a completely foreign concept of unknown properties with no existing precedent to liken it to. I could only theorise and hope to attain a shallow understanding of what was happening.
Everything was conjecture. I could see, but my vision was clouded by a thick miasma; and all I could do was wave my hands around in the dark and hope for something resembling an answer. No one was there to help me through this.
In the vistas I describe, it is likely expected that my perception of events would differ from the reader, for I am the one who witnessed it firsthand. Except that is untrue. In the case of myself, who can only see the world as if through a broken lens, my knowledge and understanding does not exceed the descriptions I give. Your ideas for how a vista may really appear are as good as mine in a sense.
That was the earliest understanding of how this new vision worked. The fact that it did not work, in a conventional sense at least.
Living this way after the incident was quite frankly terrifying. My world was one deprived of detail. What I saw appeared to mirror what was real, but was different on a fundamental level. I had to largely rely on intuition to navigate it.
In the beginning months, I may as well have been completely blind. Eventually there were people along the paths I followed. But no one I questioned afterwards or spoke to knew anything either, and most assumed my hastily spewed words to be the mere imaginative fantasy of a young child. A sad construct from a blind child who knew not the concept of ‘blindness’.
I would not come to any sort of understanding until I came across a strange woman who went by the curious name of ‘Gwynevere’. To describe what Gwynevere was to me, the most direct and truthful identity I could apply to her was like that of a second mother, or a foster mother. A few months after becoming separated, shortly after being saved by Oskar, I would meet her.
I intend to tell more of that initial meeting at some point in the future, but the important thing to note for now is what she taught me. Earlier, I appraised her as ‘strange’, and even I, without the hindsight of the unbiased, unknowing reader, can tell how such a way of describing the one to take care of you as if you were their own child is inexplicably rude-mannered.
And I mean no disrespect to her. If one were to insult her to my face it would equate to insulting my birth mother, and it would not go lightly; however, you must understand that she truly was strange by all definitions of the word.
The instant we first met I could tell she was different. I remember it all very well. Before even so much as exchanged a word, her first act was to pick me up firmly despite my fierce struggling and stare deep into my eyes.
This was well before I did so much as to even mention my condition. In her exact words, she assessed there to be a ‘peculiarity in my being’—though I am still not sure what was meant by that.
From what I could tell as I stared back into her eyes, some aspect in the makeup of her soul was inherently different from other people—and then there was the way she looked at me. It was only a few months following the gift of this ‘sight’, and I still had yet to become skilled in reading a person’s ‘aura’.
I could not see the complexities of their facial expression or the way they looked at me, whether that be with kindness or hostility. However, Gwynevere’s gaze was piercing. The cloudy fogginess of the common person did not exist on her visage.
Gwynevere said no more before beckoning me to tell my story. On the walls of the ruins which she found me we sat, and she listened. To all words, to all my worries, and to all my fantasies; the whole time she listened attentively, but she lacked what others often held as I told my story. That mocking smile and a face of feigned half-interest.
I’m sure they meant no harm, but I hated that. I really, really hated that. Her face was graced with a gentle smile that did not mock me and saw me kindly as an equal. But funnily enough, what I took note of most in that moment was the way her vibrant red hair swayed beautifully as she nodded along and affirmed she was still listening.
Her hair was lovely, but the specific detail that made it especially memorable was simply that I could see it. It felt like I could see again. Although, it also left a deep pain in my heart—for I would never be able to see what she looked like as I would were I to have retained my old eyes.
It was as if I only knew the details second-hand, like I was never actually there. Still, this was the closest I had come to seeing again ever since my eyes were slashed, and though it may sound a little silly, or perhaps immature, it is by this cherished memory that I do not cut my hair short—even if I am often painstakingly mistaken for a girl because of it.
It was also through her that I would come to understand the true nature of my newfound sight. She had an abnormal understanding of these foreign concepts, and the accuracy of her proposal for what this ability of unrecognisable origin may be was in hindsight—frighteningly accurate. I still remember today the words she used to describe what she saw in me when our eyes first met.
“You are further beyond the boundary of death than any living mortal should be.”
When she uttered those words—that was the first time I felt genuine fear from something she said or did. Her gentle gaze became something more resembling that of an empty stare, and the detached way in which she spoke of ‘mortals’ implied such that she was not mortal herself. Even with the meagre intuition of a seven year old child, I could tell there was a certain weight behind her words—some sort of unknown history or depth.
Before I tell you what it was she said about everything I told her, let me state some facts: For the earliest years of my life, I lived in a quaint village with my mother. We were refugees from the war and the villagers had kindly taken us in. There were many more like us, who had fled from the worst places the Fraylands had to offer.
It was a custom for the more peaceful areas to take in refugees and give them somewhere to stay. Such kind people are a rarity nowadays, but it was often that these people had been through the exact same circumstance. There was a communal understanding between each other.
They were kind and welcoming. And for a while, I as well as my mother were able to live a normal life—unknown to us who had been through the harshest of landscapes.
However, one day we were attacked. In such a remote and distant place, which for so long had been untouched by conflict, a surprise flank by aberrants occurred. We weren’t even their target, just a village along the way.
Everyone died. The villagers—the men, the women, the children, and my mother—all killed. If not by steel, then by claw. If not by claw, then by fang. If not by fang, then by fire. I was forced to watch as the steel tip of a spear ripped through my mother’s chest. Her corpse was shortly engulfed in flames, leaving naught but charred flesh in the place of a mother.
I was the sole survivor of that day and the only one the soldiers managed to save after arriving to combat the aberrants. I was made to flee shortly after, for the first-responding soldiers were outnumbered and could not guarantee my survival when fighting off the deadly assault.
With the status of sole survivor, I bore a guilt as the only one who escaped alive. Why not the villagers who had been so kind? Why not my mother who had sacrificed so much for me? Why me—why did I deserve to live? There was a crippling weight on my shoulders from that day onwards.
Nightmares plagued me, as if the villagers haunted my dreams, embodying these abhorrent horrors of the dark. And as the guilt seeped in, an unfound hatred came upon me of which the origin was obscure.
Gwynevere enlightened me. That day, I had been given a 'gift’ of sight and a 'curse’ in the shape of a cross to carry upon my shoulders. Now, all these years later, shortly after sighting that man on the path to Cherepakha, this overbearing responsibility was painfully brought to me once again.
An awful sight only I could see: ghoulish apparitions crawling up my arms and latching onto my waist and chest, their faces bearing putrid depictions of all things unholy. They whisper to me terrible demands of a detestable nature; unthinkable ideas they howl in my head, these echoes of dreadful duty. Oskar… They want me to kill him—that is why they gave me this gift, this blasphemous power.
At first I dared not allow them to come into contact with him. What would they force me to do? Would I be able to resist their harrowing temptation? But they must know! It was not his fault, it was nobody’s fault! The villager’s want vengeance, and that is why I must make them understand—make them understand that his true nature holds a virtuous and innocent man that did everything in his power to protect the people, even if it only amounted to a single life! That man was able to prevent at least one death and that is something to be celebrated, for there could have been no survivors; there could have been even more deaths.
With Gwynevere’s assistance, I discovered their true nature. The vengeful souls of the dead had attached themselves to me, and they would use my flesh as a catalyst for their hatred if I were to lose my sense of self and sink into them.
I would become a mindless vessel hellbent on killing that man, the one person I wanted to repay the most. Gwynevere taught me how dangerous they were, but also taught me that they too were lost; that they could be pacified, that they were not to be feared, and how they too were not to be blamed.
The villagers were inherently kind but their spirits were warped and contorted by the prelude of death, fear, and hatred. When I think what may have become of me had I not met Gwynevere, a most dreadful chill runs down my spine. I am incredibly thankful that she was there for me, and there for them.
But now, my resolution wavers. What is it that I saw when I bore witness to that man’s visage after all these years? He had become something of foreign nature, unknown to me who had clinged to that lone memory of him and retained my sanity until now because of it. His aura had changed fundamentally.
Change was anticipated—it had been a decade after all—but not this drastic of a shift from what I had known. The once virtuous soul now resembled a dark chasm, empty and wailing from an unimaginable pain and hunger. Hatred, disgust, and… fear were the strongest emotions I felt from him.
He yearned for a similar vengeance to that of the lost souls clinging to my shoulders. His presence had grown peculiar, far from the common man, more resembling the spirits I had been burdened with, encompassing a likeness to the inexplicable peculiarities of Gwynevere even. Just what had occurred in the past ten years, what manner of hell had he been dragged through?
As my sight gradually returned to normal, I looked around and to my despair could not find Oskar. I do not know how long I must have stood there, but he had long left by that point; which perhaps that was for the best in my current fragmented state of mind. As I acknowledged my surroundings to find a stable grounding in reality, my eyes landed upon the pile of corpses once again.
There appeared to be a sword that rested at his hip, but the desecrated corpses lacked even the slightest hint of a stab wound, which could only imply that he had brutalised them with his fists alone—a monstrous feat unknown to man, yet it was the only answer the evidence could give me at the time.
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To completely and utterly break the skin of these aberrants of which was akin to rock, what kind of inhuman strength would be necessary? The state of the corpses and his gloves suggested that so too should the bones in his hands be destroyed and the skin torn to pieces.
That was the sensible outcome, but Oskar did not wince, waver, or show pain. He had sat there, calm as if uninjured; in a complete state of mind-numbing zen, to which was not a show of great perseverance or tolerance, for such things are not capable of being hidden from my eyes. He either felt no pain or was not injured to begin with.
Promptly taking a deep breath, I gave myself a moment to gather my thoughts and assess all that had just occurred. I was erratic and agitated, so it took me a little while before I could think on a more rational level. However, as I came to a more sensible state of mind, a realisation finally set in as my heart rate rapidly increased once again.
He was gone. While painful memories flashed through my head and the world as I knew it disappeared before me, he had left without a trace. With this realisation, I felt an immense rush of heat in my head as beads of sweat dripped down from it; as if the flames I perceived as hallucinations were not mere machinations of the mind but were actually real.
Would I really lose him again so suddenly as I had found him? I gripped my head in a fit of unfound frustration and anxiety I had long since not felt. The villagers’ and surrounding spirits seemed equally as jostled, goading me to chase after him with haste; breaking the self-induced trance as the thought crossed my mind that indeed not all was lost.
It was so simple, it was laughable! This was not at all comparable to the last decade, and would hardly be a set back unless I allowed it to be as such. Oskar could not have made it far, thus as the spirits commanded I would make haste and chase.
“Away! I do not chase him for you—!” I yelled through ragged breaths, swatting away the incessantly howling dead clinging to my arm. I make chase, though I do not do as such by their command.
They hissed and writhed at my rejection of them, but it is necessary that I am firm in my denial, for I must perpetrate myself as their master. I do not live through their borrowed time. They live–and die–by mine. Although, more than anything, I said it as a conscious reminder for myself, so that I do not let them consume me.
Following the path, I had suspicions that so too would his destination be Cherepakha as it was mine. I was not basing my judgement off blind assumptions for I had reason to believe as such. No visible tracks had been left behind and all appeared to be hopeless, but it would only seem that way to the common man for there are ways available only to me granted by this double-edged sword.
“You are further beyond the boundary of death than any living mortal should be.”
Through shallow breaths I repeated the words Gwynevere once spoke to me long ago. That was no figure of speech, every word was meant in their ordinary everyday meanings.
Spirits, such as the vengeful kind that are bound to me, and the living populace were never meant to interact in anything more than an indirect manner. The realms of life and death are cut off by a distinct boundary, but I by some unprecedented phenomenon reside in between the two. That is why I can ‘commune’ with them.
The way it works to its full extent is peculiar, and the technicalities behind this phenomenon are numerous and strange in nature, but to put it in layman’s terms, the so-called ‘afterlife’ actually exists on the same plane the mortal man resides.
They exist in the same space, yet are disconnected entirely and can never interact with one another. They are layered, you could say. It is for that reason a man and a spirit could stand right next to each other and never know.
For me, who is further beyond the boundary, my flesh resides in the physical world, but my eyes peer into the spiritual plane and allow me to interact with its denizens as if I was one of their kin—though the same unfortunately cannot be said for the physical world. I am cursed to never fully realise the existence where my body lies, only given an inkling of a clue as to the imminent happenings.
Out of the many feats possible through this phenomenon, tracking was a key specialty of mine, born through the mastery of my sight over the past decade. The presence of a living creature was sickeningly attractive to those who no longer wield warm flesh.
Many spirits would linger around the remnants of a person’s presence, and there were so many spirits that clung to where he had been to the point it was abnormal. And so I ran. Along the path with great haste so that I do not miss this long-awaited opportunity, following the fluctuating tracks.
After chasing those vestiges of his aura for an unprecedented amount of time, for I had long since stopped caring how far along the path or how much longer the trip to Cherepakha would take, I was forced to come to a halt after it became noticeably harder to distinguish his tracks.
The density of spiritual presences grew to a substantial amount, where there would not normally be so much unless I were to enter a glorified domain such as a temple. However, these unsanctified lands which made the forest had not struck me as any kind of holy place, and most strikingly, the pressure I felt was different to that of any temple I had visited prior.
“F-Foul… What—What is this feeling?” I grimaced as my spine tingled. Malintent and terrible implications ran rampant, causing every hair on my body to raise in alert. I remembered what the locals I met before I came here had told me.
The words and warnings they spoke of, their hesitancy and apprehension in even mentioning the existence of this trail, their fear, reverence, and awe; and then there was the sheer number of aberrants Oskar had slaughtered, of which I failed to recognize the peculiarity in such an improbable amount at the time. Were there deeper reasons behind the tucking away and burial of this location after all?
I soon came across more carcasses of similarly damned aberrants, this time more humanoid than reptilian and heavily clothed. They were beaten to a pulp just like those before them, a clear indication of Oskar having passed through the area.
But what was with their presence in this location? To see so many in such a place; one that seemed to be of no great importance, yet was deep in Christeyeran territory and such a long distance from their home country of Lyre; it was strange and utterly unexplainable to an extent that I could not wrap my head around it no matter how much deliberation I did.
It simply made no sense. The only possible reason I could think of was that they were somehow related to the density of spiritual presences prevalent, though I struggled to find a link between the two.
But my attempted reason and analogy, which I had largely begun as a way to pass the time whilst I stopped and collected my breath from running so much, was soon interrupted by a sudden movement I caught in the corner of my eye. Turning my attention to the thing I had seen in my peripherals, I realised that some of the corpses had strangely started to move and twitch.
I presumed it at first to be mere rigour mortis. Over the time spent in the harsh and unforgiving Fraylands, I had seen plenty of dead men and had come across this occurrence many times. Many times it gave me a fright. However, corpses lacked souls and thus had no colour to them.
Corpses are generally something I should have difficulty recognising. That was why I had gotten so close to observe the pile back when I met Oskar just previously. I couldn’t help but watch them with suspicion, that was when I quickly understood why I mustn't stay long.
Spectres and ghoulish apparitions creeped out from their rotting points of rest, their faces so much more abhorrent and contorted than any of those which stuck to my flesh. They were of an entirely different nature. It was made evident to me that I had not met true horror until this point.
Where the villagers’ souls had been twisted and misguided by postmortem resentment, I could not find the slightest hint of benevolence or good in their harrowing souls. If hell really existed, I was certain they would have inhabited its deepest and most dreadful corners and caverns. They continued seeping out from everywhere in my vicinity, hungrily searching for any living matter like a voracious sea of vultures.
They latched onto the flesh of the dead aberrants and clung to them, standing them up like puppets as if they were bringing their battered corpses back to life. I wanted to run but my legs wouldn’t move. In the midst of fight or flight, my body had come to a standstill and froze completely. I had experienced all manners of hell, but no mortal threat could compare in such pure, unbridled terror.
My sense of sight only made it worse, granting an unfiltered peer into their true nature. Understanding that I would die there at that exact moment were I to continue standing still like so, I finally resolved myself and came to a decision as I pulled my knife out from my coat with shaky hands. I pressed the sharp edge of the knife against my palm and swiped down in a swift motion where blood violently followed. It was only through a rush brought about by an intense pain could I snap out of my dazed state and run away.
What those things were, I didn’t want to think about it further. The only thing left on my mind was escaping. I would leave, get out of there alive, and find Oskar in Cherepakha. He was strong, the masses of dead aberrants told me that; and thus I believed he would have no issues getting out of here.
These flesh-eating dreadful apparitions, hunting with such carnivorous intent; with luck, he never had the displeasure of encountering them. That is why, so that I can meet him in Cherepakha, where he surely would be soon, it was imperative that I didn’t die here. It’s imperative that I do not die after coming so close to my goal.
Of my frantic and hurried escape, I cannot recall most of it. But inevitably, my efforts did not come to much when demonic spirits of their calibre were the ones chasing me. Out of all my encounters in the previous ten years, where I had come across many spiritual entities other than my own, these ghasts were undeniably the most fearsome and awful I had come across yet; and naturally, I was not prepared for such an encounter.
Sure, I was nimble; however, most of my development by that point had solely been in comprehensive ability so that I could live a life close to that of a normal human. I was not suited to this kind of setting. I was completely out of my field, you could say.
My eyes strained and my breathing quicker than that of a panting dog, I gazed at my surroundings repeatedly scanning from left to right and back again as I helplessly pressed my back against the tree trunk I had collapsed on. They towered above me. So close up, their stature was infinitely more terrifying and so much more of their deformed bodies were visible.
Flaps of detached skin and rotting meat hung loosely from their frames, accompanied by this putrid smell; a scent I could not compare to any other, for I had never been forced to bear something so vile. Furthermore, I could see by their blackened feet similar lumps of meaty flesh now melted into one disgusting pile, which followed behind them as a trail of filth. Where they stopped, a cesspool of unclean liquid collected beneath them and only added to that sinister concoction of smells. How their recently deceased bodies had already decayed to such a degree expressed how deeply corrosive the mere presence of those spirits was to living matter.
Their faces were already contorted by the possession alone, but in their delight over my visible terror, their mouths twisted and curled even further into what could only be called a detestable mockery of a smile as saliva hung from their monstrous jaws.
Were they to have hunted in full seriousness rather than choosing to play with their food, they could have caught me much sooner. From the very beginning, I never had a chance of survival.
For the first time in so long, I couldn’t prevent tears from running down my cheeks. Though do not misunderstand, I was not crying out of fear for my life. That day my mother and the villagers died, ‘Julia’ too had died with them. My presence now was no different to that of the villagers—a lost soul, wandering through limbo for eternity.
But these tears, which fell down in no small volume, surely represent the lost vestiges of that child from a decade prior. By rekindling my purpose, perhaps I would be reborn…? I long envisioned being granted a new life free from all of this pain and suffering.
But alas, death and rebirth is not possible; it is mere imaginative fantasy and anyone that dares speak such laughable ideas in all seriousness either intends to deceive, or is not of a rational state of mind.
If I intend to deceive, then the recipient of such deceit can only be myself. However, it is much more likely that I fall in the latter. It is a pipe dream after all. A childish hope.