Intermission #11 Annalina

Ann watched the light enter Adir’s body once more as the large man gathered seeds from a nearby tree. Like clockwork, each time he picked something up, light fed into his vibrance. She deactivated her aspect a moment later, sighing in exhaustion. She dipped a hand into the lake beside her, feeling the refreshingly cold water against her skin.

Adir came back to her, “You need to eat. I’m concerned that you’re losing weight.” he said, staring into her eyes.

Ann looked down at her other wrist. She couldn’t deny that she could see more of her own bones and joints than she had in the past. She nodded and took the handful of nuts from him. “I feel like I’m eating all the time,” she muttered, wiping her hand dry on her clothing.

Adir nodded and walked a short distance away, collecting more food from the forest. “You’re using your divinity too often. Your body is working hard to replace it.” He paused. “I really wish you’d let me hunt something. My skill is far higher there.”

Ann stared down at the seeds in her hand. “I can’t. I just can’t,” she repeated firmly. Too often she had to insist on not eating animals anymore. Adir didn’t understand, but there was something about their vibrance that she just couldn’t stomach. She had tried, but she threw up shortly after. Deep down, she knew it had something to do with her aspect’s influence over her. “Fruits, nuts, roots… anything that grows from a plant is all I can manage to keep down.”

Adir bent down and began to dig into the dirt. “I’ve heard about this from The Twelve. They found themselves changed after bonding and using their aspect. I remember when I learned that Haco eats only cold or room temperature foods.” He suddenly pulled out a large root from the ground. “I guess hating meat is a relatively minor change.” He pointed at the dirty root. “Does this look tasty?”

Ann broke into a laugh, and nodded. “Yeah. Wash it off and I’ll try it. You’re saying Haco doesn’t eat warm food?”

Adir shook his head. “She hates it. Everything is served chilled with few exceptions.” Adir stepped down to the lake they rested beside and cleaned his prize. “Everything is beginning to taste a little better now that my skill is getting higher. Don’t you think?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

She nodded. “Are you getting good skill options?”

The big man shrugged. “Sure, if I wanted to open a vegetable shop. I’d make a killing in Termily. Richest vegetable vendor ever.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Ann said, giving him a sad face. “Vina got a healing benefit added to every foraged item she picks up.”

Adir sputtered in shock as he approached her with the root in hand. “That’s absurd!”

“Yeah, I know. Etana and I talked about it. We think it’s her Traveler title. Maybe she could access some deeper or more diverse pool of skill options than we are.”

Adir held a hand out, helping Ann to her feet. “She’s a curious one. I’d like to meet her some day.”

Ann nodded slowly as her thoughts returned to her sisters. Worry began to fill her. “I’m sure you’ll meet her someday.” She gestured eastward upon seeing the pained expression on Adir’s face, “Let’s go.”

As they walked, to avoid the awkwardness, Ann changed the subject. “Why would vibrance come out from the ground?”

“I have no idea.” Adir said stiffly. “I can’t feel it enter my body. I just see a number get closer to the next rank on my character sheet. What does it look like?”

Ann activated her aspect momentarily. “When it isn’t moving, vibrance is just like a bright light like Vina described in her painting. When it is moving, it creates long wispy streams. That’s what I see leaving the soil and entering your body.”

“What about you? Does it do it to your body?” Adir asked.

Ann looked down at herself, and saw the ruined outline of her vibrance. The scar on her vibrance was clearly visible where the aspect had been bonded against her. She could see the hole clearly now in her chest. It was slowly getting smaller, but the light was different around the edges. It was more her and less whatever was once there. “I can see my own vibrance. When I absorb it from something else, yes it is also wispy with long streaks of light.”

Adir was quiet for a moment. “Next time I forage something, just take the light and use it to heal yourself.”

Ann gasped, her eyes widening in shock, “I could never…”

“But it’s free and doesn’t hurt the world,” he explained.

“But it could hurt you,” she countered. “Besides, what would even happen? Would you gain any experience in skills?”

“No one has had your aspect in hundreds of years, Ann. We won’t know anything unless we experiment like this. Please think about it.” Adir suggested.

Ann fell into deep, quiet contemplation. His words hung heavily in her mind as they walked for hours through the dense forest along the lake’s edge. It was true that they knew very little about her aspect, but what she did know did not encourage her. Her reluctance and worry at hurting Adir won out. “I can’t risk dissolving him like those plants,” she told herself. She was still deep in thought as the day started to dim around her.

She looked up and frowned. Checking her timer, she saw that barely four hours had passed since the morning had started for them. Looking into the distance, gray clouds loomed in the distance. “Rain?” she asked aloud.

“No. How much time is left on your timer?” Adir asked, his tone growing more serious.

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“Eight hours still,” she said. “What is it, Adir?”

He sighed heavily. “In about an hour, we’ll be approaching a gloom I think.”

She stared at him in silent horror before finally managing. “We can go around right?”

Adir looked around before pointing, “Lake on our right. Sheer rock wall on the left. We’ll see if it opens up ahead, but I know from experience that The Darkness is not stupid. I would guess it was placed here to block easy access between Halos and Randar. We might have to go through it.”

Ann’s mouth opened to protest, but she stopped herself. “Have you done that before?”

“I’ve fought in glooms before,” Adir confirmed. “We were exploring them to try to find Trina, but we were often met with just as much force as we brought to them. We might face little resistance from creatures if it is just the two of us. I am mostly concerned about the shadow fall.”

Ann nodded in recollection. She had read about the black spiked specks falling from the sky near glooms. Supposedly they burned skin and could be absolutely overwhelming to anyone caught in it. “Is there anything living in there? I might be able to create light.”

Adir shook his head. “It’s desolate inside. Everything is dead. There won’t be any opportunities for you to save yourself if your timer comes up. I’m thinking we move closer, scout it out, then wait for your timer to reset if we have to go in.”

Ann furrowed her eyebrows in worry. “Will twelve hours be enough to get through it?”

But Adir was already moving away from her and didn’t respond.

~~~

Ann took a deep, calming breath. There were no other options and she now stood facing a black wall that stretched far to the left and right blocking their path. She waved her hand through the boundary just to double check it wasn’t solid. Looking down, she saw its boundary expand by an infinitesimally small amount toward her. While Adir prepared outside, she continued to watch and saw it expand again several minutes later.

“Are you ready?” Adir asked, handing her an unlit torch from the backpack now mounted on the front of his body. They had prepared as best they could, but with limited supplies they only had access to what the wild forest could supply for them.

“No. But let’s go,” she said, offering a weak smile.

“Same here,” he said nervously, giving her the same smile as he lit the torch at the fire behind them. Then he stepped unhesitatingly across the boundary.

“In Trina’s name,” she muttered as she hastily lit her torch too, closed her eyes, and forced herself to step into the darkness. On the other side she opened them to see an entirely different landscape. The morning sun was completely obscured by the darkness overhead. The once lush forest she stood in was now gone. A bleak landscape of sand and dust greeted her vision as far as she could see into the darkness. Inside she felt like her ears had been plugged. Not a single sound made its way to her ears until she moved toward Adir. “It’s just like the scars I create…” she thought. “Adir?” she asked aloud, her own voice sounding strange in the space as if she had disturbed a long held peace.

Adir pointed up and Ann looked. Overhead she saw black dust-like particles whirling around in clouds. At random intervals they would begin to slowly fall from the rest before settling on the ground, only to be whisked back up by an unfelt wind. For the moment none fell near them. Adir gestured toward her and squatted down. She quickly climbed up on his shoulders while being careful with the blazing torch in her hand. She angled the torch behind herself, protecting their backside.

Adir held his own torch out in front of himself and took off running. Ann gasped at his acceleration, but the sound was swallowed by the darkness. She grabbed at his neck with one hand to maintain her position on him, but his free arm had a firm grip on her leg, preventing her from falling. Atop his broad shoulders, she was the first to see the gloom respond to their trespass.

The shadows above began their descent with purpose over their position, but Adir outpaced their rate of descent, creating a sort of thickening black curtain that trailed behind them. She looked over her shoulder at both the beauty and horror of the event, fully aware that the growing wave was only a source of great pain. She held the torch out defiantly against it and turned her face back to the front only to see dark forms rush out from the darkness to their side with hollowed shrieks. One with spindly limbs seemed nearly a match for Adir’s speed and quickly intersected him. Its grotesque shape was indecipherable to Ann, but its six eyes, reflected in the torchlight, staring at her longingly.

Adir slammed it into the dirt and ran on with barely a pause in his step.

But, to Ann, it was obvious now that Adir was right. Something intelligent was now aware of their existence. The shadows ahead began their descent before they arrived, and she closed her eyes as Adir ran into the dark cloud headlong. The first stings against her skin were shocking. The torch Adir held did little to divert the falling shadows around him as he ran full speed through them. Ann brought her own torch forward, hoping to help burn the shadow fall away even faster.

“No!” Adir growled through gritted teeth.

Ann moved it back immediately, but the light occasional stinging burns against her skin was moving from irritating to distressing. “Can we survive this for hours?” she wondered. The darkness continued to creep in as the minutes passed. Adir was struggling to keep ahead of the descending shadows. She watched helplessly as shadows continued to cut away at his skin, and his blood began to flow, despite their torches. At seeing his suffering, Ann was moved to do something, anything.

"Kill a creature! I'm going to try to heal you, Adir!" she shouted, trying to overcome the muffling effects of the area. Adir grunted in response, a wordless consent to do what she had to.

A few moments later, a pair of hollowed shrieks pierced through the darkness and two differently misshapen figures emerged, larger than the previous she had seen. The first creature barely had time to register their presence before Adir crushed it. As it fell beneath his fist, Ann activated her aspect and spotted a gossamer thread of light spiraled upward from the ground, a token reward from the system for the vanquished foe.

The thread swiftly moved toward Adir, no doubt with the intent for him to absorb it, but Ann reached out to grasp it with her aspect. For the first time she felt the light struggle with her aspect. It wanted to go to Adir, but she pulled it back, intending on repurposing it. As her fingers closed around it, she felt a jolt. A rush of unfamiliar power filled her, and she nearly lost her balance. She could feel the creature's last moments, its fear and fury, and a knowledge, none of which made any sense to her. She looked down at the light in her hand with a sudden understanding.

“Experience is vibrance,” she gasped. In the middle of this revelation, she directed the vibrance toward Adir, thinking not of rewarding him or destroying the darkness, but healing his wounds. She could see the bloodied red burn marks the shadowfall had inflicted on him quickly mend under her touch.

As the second creature fell to Adir's blade, she repeated the process, this time with more confidence, on herself. But as the shadow fall continued its assault against them, she saw something else with her aspect still active. All around her, vibrance was being pulled up and out of the soil. Like a hurricane in slow motion, the bright threads flowed in a long arc around her, cutting through the darkness in her vision. They floated up to the sky before going dark. “Then the shadows fall.” she whispered in understanding. “Adir… they aren’t shadows. They’re vibrance. Just corrupted somehow.”

“What?” Adir huffed.

“The gloom! It’s transforming the vibrance from Palitern and creating the shadowfall, but it’s not shadows. They’re vibrance!”

Adir didn’t immediately answer. “Can you do something with it?”

Ann also didn’t respond, but she reached out with her aspect once more and grabbed one of the threads that swirled overhead. It halted its movement at her command and came to her when she beckoned it. She watched in fascination as a small section of the maelstrom shuddered at her interference. Overhead, a spot of sunshine broke through the gloom and shone down on them.

Adir stopped running in shock and Ann nearly fell off at the sudden momentum shift. “Ann?”

“What are you doing? Run!” she screamed at him, seeing more creatures approach from a distance. “I’ll keep the light over our heads!” Adir ran on slower, less rushed. She couldn’t see it, but Ann was certain Adir had a smile on his face.