Chapter 17
The Dive
“But mama, I don’t want you to go!” The high-pitched cry of a young boy carried over the docks, but was lost in the voices of all the other children that didn’t want to see their parents leave. “I want you to stay home.”
“Oh, I want to, honey, but your papa needs to kill all the monsters, and I need to stitch him up if he comes back hurt.”
“But Miriam should go, not you!”
“Terrill, don’t say such cruel things.” The young boy felt a rapping on his knees from the elder’s cane, remonstrating him for his wish to keep his mother home. To keep her safe from harm. “We need Miriam back in Hart to heal the cuts, scrapes and bruises of rowdy little boys like you.”
“I’m not rowdy,” Terrill said, puffing his chest out as any five-year old would. “I just look after all the other kids so they’re not bullied or hurt.”
“That’s my little Terrill, always looking out for other people.” His mother bent down, tussling with his hair as she tried to comb it with her fingers. Next to her, his father placed a hand atop his wife’s shoulder. “Oh, your hair is growing so long these days. I’ll have to cut it when I come back.”
“You’ll both come back soon?”
“Soon as we can, Terrill. You look after the town, my little Chosen One.” His father joined his mother in rustling through his hair. The horns sounded from the boat.
Terrill could remember it so clearly, the image of them walking away. He could remember the elder praying, and he started praying, himself. He wanted them to be okay more than anything. For his mother to give him that haircut, and his father to teach him more about the sword to continue protecting the village.
But they never returned.
He could never share a moment with them again, and as he grew older, his muscles more defined and his vision and purpose larger than before, he began to look at them not as the parents who went away, but as the people he couldn’t save. It festered in him as a regret that stained his soul, even if he never told anyone. The only ones to guess it were his best friend and the elder, something that became more evident when he turned eighteen and was passed over as Chosen One.
“You can’t help what is decreed within the Citadel,” the elder tried to assure him, but Terrill didn’t believe a word. He kicked at a rock, unable to control that it went further than it should have. “You failed inside. Terrill, I understand you wanting to help others, but you did so to the detriment of yourself. Sayn doesn’t need a Chosen One that cares about every town and person in their own little way. They need someone who will take care of the bigger picture.”
“Then what’s the point?!” Terrill screamed. He wanted to tear at something, everything he had tried to be to honor his parents’ memory or to make some sort of difference in protecting people amounting to nothing. “If we can’t help people, what good are we doing?!”
“Giving them a moment of peace. I’m sure we have a fine Chosen One this year, and Atrum’s father will take care of him well. Don’t worry, my boy.”
But Terrill did worry, and his worries had become quite well-founded.
Weeks they had waited, until too much time had passed to simply say they had been lost on the way home. It was obvious then that the Chosen One and Guardian of Hart were not making it home. Another person he couldn’t save. If he had only been chosen…
You can’t do a thing…The whisper in Terrill’s ear reminded him of that, playing out across these memories he was reliving.
His parents walked away. He failed to become the Chosen One. Then the more recent memories started to play, and Terrill slowly felt himself begin to sink, unable to crawl out from that well of regret and despair.
“You’ve some skill with a blade. I noticed you training at the inn.”
“More than some skill, Charles. He made quick work of those monsters!” Lumen. That was Lumen. Terrill could remember how giddy he had seemed when first laying eyes upon the pair that was Terrill and Atrum cutting a path through the monsters. “We can use another hand, Charles!”
“Absolutely not. Just because some boys on the way home are skilled with a sword does not mean we let them in. It is a Chosen One and Guardian alone that are meant to-”
“I know all that, but…it’s just one request.” Charles stroked his beard, his tired eyes growing wistful, yet cast down. Terrill remembered finding it odd.
He wished he’d known then what this meant to the both of them, and what it had dragged Terrill into. Not that he’d had a choice.
No, every single thing from that moment on was something he had no control over. From meeting Krysta to fighting Winifred. To the war and the wound he’d received. Even down to now, he was just a nobody from the town of Hart who wanted to be something bigger and failed every time that he tried. It was an endless cycle of regret mixed with those he had failed to save, over and over.
He couldn’t stop Walter from exacting his revenge, and he couldn’t stop Lumen from offering himself to Atrum. Floyd and Torry had been sucked in. Krysta had shed tears when he promised he would never let her do so.
And Atrum…he was still a prisoner of Golbrucht, who he had been so adamant to defeat.
Even he had given up, and Terrill thought, for that one moment, that perhaps it was easier to. Perhaps accepting the flow of the world was easier than trying to pretend you meant something, or that you could do anything. It meant less pain and suffering for everyone involved. In the end, fate winning out was the easiest surrender.
Then I wouldn’t have lost anyone. Or it wouldn’t have been in my control.
That thought lasted for a mere second. His eyes snapped open.
The reel of memories faded away, replaced with a whirling black torrent of souls floating around him. Each radiated their own despair and regret, like an endless storm, all of it pouring towards Terrill and filling his head. His own had been dispelled, but the Shadow that he rested in tried to start it back up, tried to give him more of that regret to fuel itself.
Once more, all of those people had their backs turned to him, heading off to their most certain deaths. It was a constant reminder that he had failed to save them. That he should have done more.
But I can do more! Terrill realized. His mind became more aware of his surroundings, floating on the bed of shadows that either held him in stasis or carried him to a place unknown. It tried to forcibly yank him back into that well, but Terrill’s soul refused to go. It wouldn’t be deterred anymore. I’m still alive. I can still save people.
“I…promised…” he croaked out, barely able to form the words while he drowned in the abyss. His hands reached out for something to hold on to, but it was all so ghostly that he failed to clasp anything at all. He kept trying, nonetheless. He could feel it just beyond… If Golbrucht had his strings to tie it all together, then maybe there was something else tying him to them. “I…promised…I wouldn’t let anyone else…die. I’m going to…bring them home!”
His conviction was met with another assailment of shadows, running through him and attempting to drag him down again. It didn’t work. Terrill beat against it, looking for that light in the darkness. He knew it was there, could feel it. At his grasping, there was a curdling hiss from the shadows, and it spoke to him, though not in Golbrucht’s voice, but in a rather cold, raspy way, reminiscent of some eldritch creature.
“Why? Why are you not affected by my shadows? Weeheehee!” Terrill spun around, looking for the source of the awful voice, but found it was just an echo around him. He was inside the creature speaking to him, though it was elsewhere, concealed deep within the cocoon. “Why don’t you want to play with me? With your memories?!”
“Because I’m past that!” Terrill kicked upwards, banishing some shadows from around him. It cleared away the fog in his mind and his brain worked back into gear, remembering the cocoon that surrounded Atrum and the Lifeblood of Darkness. They were all tied within, and that included that Lifeblood. He had found the thread to tug. “I’m done living in regret. I’m done thinking about what I can’t save.”
“They are all mine… You cannot help them. They are mine. Agh!” Terrill first thought it was he that had caused the Shadow’s cry, but a glance to his hands proved he felt no magic channeling through, restrained by the darkness around him. Instead, the Shadow’s sudden cry hinted to something else burning it, and Terrill saw the light piercing through the darkness. It cleared away the smoke, driving the Shadow to retreat further inward upon itself. Terrill, still floating, swam forward towards the light, and before long, he could hear the voice calling for him.
“You who have overcome darkness, free us! Free her!” Terrill’s brow furrowed at this disembodied voice. He drew closer to the light that was trying to pierce the darkness, but was covered up time and time again, a muted presence that Golbrucht would not suffer to interfere. Outside, Terrill knew that Adversa must have been ravaged, their torment all feeding back to this place. He could hear it rushing past him. “Follow the strings of the souls, and cleave the shadow.”
“How…how do I do that? How can I do that?” Terrill shouted. He couldn’t be sure the Lifeblood would even hear him, or what it would say, but there was no choice but to float through and wait.
“You have become a singularity,” it said, resonating within his mind. A corridor took shape before him, and Terrill could see it twisting into its form, a string running through it, much like Golbrucht’s but white in color. Feeling he should take it, Terrill lunged for the string and grabbed it tight. Once he’d pulled it taut, he could feel a familiar, warming presence inside it. Something like home. Like Krysta. “You have weathered the Shadow inside you, and it has made you immune to its presence. You can float through, unharmed. But she cannot.”
“She? Do you mean Krysta?” The Lifeblood would not answer, but its silence was its confirmation. “Where is she? How do I find her?”
“Sinking into the darkest abyss, guarded jealously by a Shadow who will not harm her, but will not let her free as she is. Follow the strings, and free them from regret.” A hand reached out of the darkness, the face of a man appearing within the Shadow. He looked young at first glance, but the smoky quality of his face made it unclear what age lie between his eyes. He grabbed Terrill’s face, pointing it towards the corridor of string along which they traveled. “All are connected in a chain, in a flow. One can call it fate, but we can call it connection.”
“We’re not alone,” Terrill confirmed, nodding. He pulled himself further along Krysta’s string. She was sinking fast, but deep within, she was guiding him forward, helping him. Though she believed it was over, deep down, she hadn’t given up. He knew she hadn’t believed it.
“This darkness is unnatural. Darkness is not just regret,” the Lifeblood said, beginning to pull away through no will of its own. “It is pain. Beautiful, glorious pain that when we overcome it, we find ourselves truly alive. In that essence, my darkness is…”
“Hope.” Terrill grabbed it with both hands. He was the only one left that could fight against the Shadow. The only one capable of pulling them out of their own deep despair. His body was sent into a funnel, towards where, he knew not, but he steeled himself the same. “Don’t worry. I’ll give them all hope. Especially her.”
He sailed forth, and the darkness soon began to lighten, becoming a space of memories for someone he was connected to. It filled in with white clay homes by the sea, and a young redhead standing near a fountain, surrounded by onlookers.
“Isn’t he amazing? My boy is such a prodigy!” a woman exclaimed, the crowd cheering her with glee. The redhead grinned as he tossed flaming matches into the air and ran around them before they could fall. “My little genius!”
“Floyd…” Terrill breathed. The little boy turned at his voice, hearing it in the memory, but that soon transitioned to the older redhead, this one just a few years younger than present day. He was sat in a chair before a professor who had his work tossed on the floor.
“Floyd, what kind of trash is this?” Floyd flinched as the papers flew from the desk to the ground. “You’re smarter than this. Find better ways to use Fire Magic than pursuing a pipe dream like Time Magic. You have the potential to be the bright shining star of this Academy, but you waste it on frivolities!”
Whatever it was about, Floyd didn’t appear to take to it kindly, kicking at the desk and storming out of the room. Terrill could see something in the boy that was familiar to him. That burning potential to do something great buried underneath. He focused on acting like a buffoon, all so people wouldn’t expect any more of him. He could do what he wanted.
And what he wanted had led to ruin.
The fires of war burned across Invaria and Valorda, and Terrill could see through Floyd’s eyes what he felt he had caused. In a cold room in Sheeris, he sat alone, huddled in a corner. His hands were shaking, the brunt of his mistakes in Invaria coming to rest on his shoulders.
“All my fault…” he whispered, and no one was coming to help him. Not even Torry. Terrill floated through the space, preparing to reach out, but stopping when the boy spoke again. “I’m such a joke. I could have done so much more. I could have been like Terrill, but I just…made things worse.”
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“Floyd…” Terrill breathed. The boy was broken in by his regret over that singular moment, haunting him from that day. There was only one way to help him and Terrill reached for him, plunging his hand through the darkness until it wrapped around the boy’s wrist. He looked up. “You don’t have to be like me. It’s okay to make mistakes. You’re not alone, and even if you messed up, the rest of us will be there to lighten the load.”
“Terrill…” The Guardian grinned at him, gripping tight as he yanked him from the steeped shadows. It tried to hold him tight, trying to pull him deeper within that despair, but Terrill refused to let go. “I screwed up. If it wasn’t for me, then this Shadow…”
“Would have been caused by someone else!” Terrill shouted. He tried to plant his feet, but with nowhere to gain purchase, it was proving impossible. Floyd was sinking further. “You have so much potential, Floyd, but it’s up to you to determine how you want to use it! Not a professor or a parent or me. It’s your potential! And there are those of us who believe in it, so don’t let this regret consume you! I need you here, Floyd!”
“You…need me…?” These words were, somehow, the ones to break through to Floyd, his eyes lighting up upon hearing that. The sludge of darkness holding him down became looser, Terrill finally making headway on pulling him upwards. “Then…they need me, too. She needs me.”
“That’s right. I believe in you. Torry believes in you. So, keep struggling! Keep fighting! Lead me to her!” With a final pull, Terrill finally ejected Floyd from the mire he had been in, tumbling down another corridor, where another string lay. Krysta’s connection was guiding them to the next, leading Terrill down until he knew he could find her and all the rest. The string burned with fire, too, Floyd’s connection to Torry burning all the brighter. “See? We’re not past hoping yet.”
They stumbled through the darkness, and into a stormy night. Just one night. Unlike all the other memories before that Terrill had experienced, this one was the sole product of the little girl in the focus of them.
“Mommy, don’t go!” the little girl yelled, running for the manor doors but tripping over her feet. The woman, black-haired and cold, looked back at her daughter, her thin nose wearing a look of disdain. Terrill didn’t know if it was merely Torry’s memory of her, or the true reality of whatever was playing out before them. “I swear, I’ll get better at magic, mommy! I’ll be the most powerful mage there is!”
“That…will never be possible, Torry.” She turned, walking away and slamming the doors behind her while she strode into the torrential rain. The young Torry collapsed, crying on the floor before her father could pick her up, staring at the spot his wife had left.
“It’s okay, Torry. Mommy will come back. You’ll see. She just needs to figure some things out.”
“Mommy! Mommy!” Torry cried, reaching for where her mother had left.
The memory rewound itself back to the beginning, an endless loop of Torry’s mother leaving and Torry crying. There was nothing from the present day but that one defining moment that had shaped Torry and her efforts to become the top student at the Academy.
“She never got over it,” Floyd said. He floated down, still holding to Terrill until he was near the little girl. His knees brought him to a crouch, and before Terrill knew it, Floyd was wrapping his arms around the little girl. “Always. She always thought her mother left because she wasn’t good enough. So, she worked hard to become the daughter her mother wanted her to be. The mage she wanted her to be. But her mother never came home…”
“Mommy!” Torry called out, reaching from beyond Floyd this time, though he held her tight. Terrill reached his side, and gently placed a hand atop the little girl’s head. “I’ll be better, I promise! I’ll be better!”
“It’s okay, Torry. You don’t need to suffer that anymore,” Floyd whispered, but the girl couldn’t, or wouldn’t, listen to a word he was saying. He tried to hold her tighter, and the memory attempted to restart but became like a broken clock, twitching with its attempts. “You’re not your mother, and you don’t have to be like her. You don’t have to be strong for her.”
“But if I’m stronger, mommy will come back! She has to!”
“Torry, let go,” Terrill said, kneeling with Floyd. The little girl turned her big blue eyes to him, staring at him like some sort of foreign object. Floyd let go, allowing Terrill to take the little girl’s hands. “Let go. You’re fine as you are.”
“But mommy…”
“Your mother doesn’t matter, Torry. Think about what you’ve done. Not for her, but for yourself, and others who care about you,” he said. His own eyes implored her to see it, to step out of that shadow of her mother. “You’ve saved people. You’ve taught them. You chose to fight Warren because you believed in the power of your soul, and that isn’t because you knew more magic, or because you were strong, but because that’s who you are. Someone kind. A teacher, and a good friend. Let go.”
“But…but…magic is everything.” Torry’s horrendous despair grew, the storm outside becoming worse than within the memory. A screech was heard, as though the Shadow had begun to realize its own loss of despair from Floyd. The string shivered, and Terrill knew it would be coming to find them.
Terrill shook his head, unable to find how to break through to her. How could he give her hope when she was so stuck? He looked to Floyd, the boy struggling with his own inadequacies. Terrill’s words must have resonated with him, however, because he took Torry by the face, the little girl’s eyes welling with tears upon seeing him.
“Magic is just a part, Torry,” he said softly. “Part of our potential, but…if you stay here, you won’t learn anymore. Your mom…she’ll always be gone if you stay here.”
“Mommy is…outside?”
“Everything’s outside, Torry. Isn’t that why you traveled the world with us?” Torry shook, attempting to reconcile the memory and what the two were telling her. “It’s okay, Torry. Even if you don’t know enough yet, I’ll help you learn enough. We’ll reach the end of our potential together. You just need to let go!”
“Fl-Floyd?” The redhead nodded, and sniffling soon joined the tears. Then, realizing the memory she was stuck in at last, Torry lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him. Her child self melted away, replaced with the Torry that Terrill had always known, crying like a baby. “Yes, I want to learn more! I want to know more! I want…”
Her sniffles overcame any words, and the tunnel of darkness rocked once again. The screeching was almost upon them, and Terrill could see the red eyes roaming for them, an emissary of the creature in the center set to tear them out of itself. The two mages turned, seeing it going straight for Terrill, sensing the threat he posed to its way of life. Torry wiped the tears from her eyes. Another corridor appeared with yet another string. It looked even worse down that way, as if Terrill was about to plunge into a soul overcome with greater despair.
“Terrill, you need to go. It’s obvious the Shadow won’t affect you, and I don’t think the two of us can get through to the others,” Floyd insisted. The Shadow’s great claws were extended, coming for Terrill, and though they couldn’t use magic, the two intercepted the blow, catching it by the arms to hold it as long as they could. With his leg free, Floyd kicked Terrill, sending him down the newest tunnel. “When you see the old man, punch him in the face for me.”
“And remember, we’ll be right outside,” Torry said, overcoming her great despair. “You’re not alone in freeing them. We’ll do as much damage as we can from-”
The Shadow was done playing with her, whipping the duo around until they were flung to the side. The Shadow opened up, exposing the light below and the ground outside. To there, Floyd and Torry were jettisoned outside, and the light caused the Shadow to recoil, vanishing back into the dark, its energy at casting them out spent. Terrill was free to continue on. They would be fine.
His body continued with the flow, and the string of connections that led ever deeper inside the Shadow. Terrill didn’t know if it was up, down or whichever, but he knew he was getting close. He couldn’t sense souls, but he knew Krysta was just beyond this place. Just beyond some invisible gate that barred the way.
That gate was a burning village in the night, screams of anguish piercing the skies.
It was undeniably Walter’s memory. Walter’s biggest regret.
“Where are you?” Terrill called. Whether it was from the memory playing out, or the popping flames, his inquiry was not heard, and Terrill continued until he reached the center of town. He pulled short, his heart hurting as he saw the bodies there, and the house burning. An older couple were holding each other, looking to have fallen behind a younger man that resembled Walter. More devastating still was the woman near the burning well, holding a child in her arms that had not survived. In front of her dead body was a younger Walter, the man panting and on his knees before the armored figure.
This time, his face was uncovered, and the memory showed Charles’s face.
If he hadn’t seen the acts of violence before, he believed them now. He also knew it wasn’t Charles, indicated by a hollow, yet ringing, laugh around the town. Walter tried to stand, blood flowing down his face as he picked a piece of broken wood from the well.
“Now, they will fear the darkness! Now, they will know despair! This is that power!”
“You…monster!” Walter cried. He could not stop his own tears from falling at the loss of his family, and his desire for vengeance burned ever brighter. As he tried to stab Charles with the wood, the knight turned and brought his sword up across Walter’s right eye, rendering it unusable as he fell to the ground, screaming and writhing with agony. “Ahh! Ahh! I’ll kill you! Even if it takes me my life! I’ll kill you!”
Golbrucht had had nothing to say, leaving the man to bleed out. Walter crawled amidst the cinders to his dead wife and family, holding them and sobbing over their fallen bodies. They could not respond, and Terrill saw the rage that grew there, the same that would ferment over the many years until it grew to that moment: a vengeance that could never be his.
“Why?! Why?!” he screamed. Terrill stopped short, like Walter was stuck between the memory and his own present despair. Each fed back in a loop that provided him with constant regret. Terrill approached his body and saw that this time, instead of the white strings Krysta had provided, they were black, stretching deep into the core of the Shadow. Walter was connected to those at the center of the drama that had created Golbrucht’s plan. “I wanted to avenge you! Why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I kill that man?! Why?! Why?!
“Why me…?”
There was the center of it. That was the key proponent of Walter’s despair. Terrill didn’t know what to say, either, and he could only watch Walter sob.
How did one pull a man from despair when there was no answer for the despair he was feeling? No reason beyond pain.
Terrill didn’t know, and he struggled to find that reason. The one thing that could answer him why.
But then, he could understand, too.
He had asked it so many times, himself. Why did his parents go to war? Why did the Chosen One never come home? He had always wanted to know why people died when there were those who should have protected them. It was the reason he had resolved to do so in the first place. So, he could understand Walter.
In that, he managed to find his answer.
“Because there is no reason,” Terrill said. He held a hand to the sobbing man, his scarred eye looking positively enraged in the fires of Taro. Walter looked up without solace, never taking the hand. “We’re just stones, tossed in the river. Souls part of the flow. You, and me, we’re just random parts of the greater whole.”
“Then why, Terrill? Why am I made to feel so much pain that I can’t cut it out of me, yet I can’t cut it out of anyone else, either?!” Walter shouted. He refused to take the hand, but grabbed Terrill by his shirt, his haggard expression showing a man that was lost. Like a child, he raised his hands and began to beat against Terrill’s chest, ugly sobs choking his words. “Why not them?! Why not…them…? Why not him?”
“Because you’re better than that. Because you can handle the pain, Walter,” Terrill said. He let the man wail against him, try to batter his body until it was black and blue. “Because even though you’ve lost some most precious things, you haven’t lost everything. You haven’t lost your hope.”
“What good is hope?! What good is living if I can’t kill the person who took my hopes from me? Killing him was the only hope I had to live for and I couldn’t…I couldn’t…” His fists stopped, Walter sinking to his knees as his head buried itself in Terrill’s shirt. Terrill reached behind and held him close, just as the gateway rocked from the outside. The Shadow shrieked, and once more Terrill could feel its presence along the black strings. It was coming to harvest Walter’s despair in full. “There’s nothing left…”
“No, Walter, you’re wrong.” He shook his head, disbelieving of any attempt to break him out of this. So, Terrill relied on Floyd’s words, pulling him away and punching him across the face. He fell to the dirt, clasping his cheek. “Nothing left? Do you think I’d be standing here if there was nothing left, Walter?! Get a grip! You’re not alone anymore! You haven’t lost everything, because you have us: your team. And when we set aside our own personal goals, we can slay even shadows. Don’t you want to be free of those shadows, Walter? Don’t you want to live again? For them?!”
Walter’s lip trembled. Everything about him said he was uncertain of the path he should follow. His vengeance was taken from him. His family was taken from him. Yet even he could see Terrill standing before him, and in that one, singular moment, Terrill could see the most important emotion burgeoning in his eyes: hope.
He reached for the hand.
“NO! Do not take my despair!” The Shadow came roaring in from nowhere, agitated by Floyd and Torry’s assault on the outside. Walter’s hope had drawn it, no longer able to feed from him, and its red eyes cut the darkness before it tackled Walter. The flaming village vanished, replaced by the abyss that sent Terrill tumbling.
He tried to reach Walter and pull him back, but the Shadow refused to let him stay any longer. The same portal as above punted the scarred man out and back to the surface. Terrill was left alone once more as the Shadow burst into a wind that blew Terrill haphazardly about its body. He swam about the air until his hand could latch on to something: the connection between Walter and the others. His fingers gripped tight against the tempest, the endless darkness growing thicker until his hand was forced to let go.
He tumbled around the open space, feeling more open than the corridors he had been flying through. He coughed, unaffected by the Shadow’s assault, but feeling lost all the same. No matter which way he turned, it was the same inky blackness. So, Terrill swam on, picking a direction and sticking with it until he could find those remaining. The further he went, the greater the abyss seemed. There was nothing to guide him. No strings, or despair, or memories besides. Terrill stopped swimming, and instead decided he would look for the only thing he had left.
He looked for his own connection to each of them.
Closing his eyes proved no different a sight than where he was, but it helped Terrill reach out, and after a moment he felt something else reach out in turn. It was a faint light, and growing all the fainter, but he could sense its direction, calling for him, tugging on his soul. He pushed in that direction, cutting through what shadows there were. There was resistance, the wails and torments of all the souls gathered by the Shadow trying to prevent his passage.
Terrill would not be denied, and with another push, he reached for the dim light until he found a hand touching gingerly to his face. The light receded, and Terrill saw her there. Krysta.
She was bound by strings, rolling back towards the center of the Shadow, but she remained long enough, smiling at him, and providing him a final guide. “Save them, Terrill. Bring them home.”
“Krysta, hold on!” Terrill’s hand snapped out, grabbing her arm and holding tight. The force upon her body was proving too powerful for him, though, and with nothing to hold to, he was fighting a losing battle. “I know you don’t want to give up! I know you care what happens next, so don’t stop fighting! Don’t let it drag you in!”
“You’re right… I do care. I care too much,” she said. Terrill reached further up, and as he did, his fingers rubbed against her upper arm, the sleeve of her shirt riding up and revealing something other than skin beneath. His eyes widened, the unexplainable sight making his fingers lose their grip a little bit. “But I’m so tired… I’m so tired of caring. Of the lies and the manipulations. Of people dying because I asked them to. Over and over, all to protect myself. And when I finally stopped, when I finally saw you, Terrill, caring so much about others instead of yourself…I hated it. I hated myself. It would be better for me to just…go away. Better if we had never met.”
“Krysta, no!” Terrill shouted. He was losing her, his grip slipping on the smooth substance that comprised part of her body. The strings pulled, drawing her away from him. He tried to swim after her, but found the dark waters of the Shadow impossible to get through. “You can’t believe that! You can’t despair like that! Krysta! I know you don’t want this!”
“No, Terrill, you don’t know me,” she said, looking ghostly. Her eyes were clouded over, the same pain he had always seen, now magnified, as she was pulled into the deepest, darkest abyss. “You don’t know what I am, and what I’ve done. And if you did…you’d hate me, too, because I’m the reason for all of this.
“So please…free them.”
“KRYSTA!” Terrill shouted, but it was far too late. She was pulled back in, her light disappearing behind another storm of shadows. Terrill dove into it, letting it rush by him. It tried to burn him and do anything possible to stop him from getting through. He persisted, and with a gasp, got through to the other side only to find there, hanging before him, were the bodies of Lumen and Charles, with Atrum in the center.
He had arrived at the core of the Shadow.