Chris trudged over hard cracked ground, sending stones clattering with each footstep. He was using his spear as a walking stick but it did nothing to ease the pain spiking up his leg with each footfall. Left with no choice, he ignored the pain and bent his will toward putting one foot in front of the other.

He’d been doing that for weeks now and arrived at a vast expanse, saturated with jagged mountains. They towered over him, rising like monolithic spires that pierced the clouds. A vast array of tumbled boulders stretched around them, spreading out like dunes on a desert.

At first, he had found the sight majestic. The way each mountain folded into the next like an unbroken chain that stood the test of time gave it a weight of significance that transcended time. It was a spiritual vastness that grew before his eyes, unfolding into a scene of antiquity.

However, weeks spent sleeping on solid stone and waking up to cramps and a sore neck helped him get over it rather quickly. He barely noticed the winding slopes and sheer rock cliffs anymore. He just wanted to put it all behind him and chalk it off as a bad experience never to be repeated.

Yet there came no end to the mountains. No matter how far they walked, or how many hills they crested, there were always more waiting for them. Day followed day until time lost all meaning.

He lost weight. His combat suit sagged around the waist. His throat was parched and his eyes had thinned to slits. His mind was turning numb, his body running on fumes, and his sanity was on the brink of collapse.

He felt himself being winnowed down, scoured of his substance, reduced to his base components until nothing but spite kept him moving. Long weeks of endless walking had sharpened his will into a bestial, almost primal will to live. He refused to die in an unknown stretch of mountains in the middle of nowhere.

More than once, he’d wanted to turn around and call it quits. If there was ever a time for that, it was long gone. He was in too deep. The ‘Sunk Cost Fallacy’ had him by the balls, and there was nothing for it but to see it through.

After coming out of a forest brimming with carnage and distant horrors, the mountain range felt like walking through a corpse. Nothing moved in the mountains. There were no bird calls, no small creatures scuttling underfoot, no buzz of insects; just an oppressive gloom that hung over them like a noose.

They hadn’t come across a single Blightspawn. Yet the oppressive silence and endless stretch of land brought its own horrors. Ones that couldn't be confronted with a simple spear and determination.

Now and then, phantom images of black and red sludge oozed into his mind, leaving him cold and shivering. He saw the same thing happen to Dante and Zareti on a few occasions. And by some unspoken agreement, none of them brought it up. Some things were better left forgotten and unsaid.

“You see that?” Zareti suddenly rasped out ahead of him.

“See what?” Chris asked, his voice coming out like gravel.

He looked up to see Zareti pointing at the ground ahead of him. Chris trudged over to join him and they looked down on an obnoxiously large sketch drawn with a precise hand. It was how Dante was communicating with them while scouting up ahead.

At first, the sketches had been no bigger than dinner plates and he stashed them in hidden nooks and crannies in case they were being followed. Naturally, Chris told him he was nuts and that he should make each sketch bigger for easier reading. Since then, he started making parking space-sized sketches and Chris couldn't tell whether he was being funny or if he genuinely thought they couldn't read anything smaller than that. Either way, he could have handled that scenario better.

The old man didn't speak much. Chris still knew next to nothing about him. He never mentioned his homeworld, his goals, his dislikes, not even his name. He started calling him Dante when it became clear he wouldn't be giving them his name.

“What do you think it says?” Chris asked, crouching to get a better look.

“I know that one means water, that one land… and I think that last one means grass, right?”

“Yeah. Grassland, maybe?” Chris asked skeptically, looking around at the endless dry mountain range.

Was the old man losing his mind? How could there be grassland in a place like this? The sketches were always rudimentary depictions of landscapes or easy-to-interpret calligraphy. Arrows for direction, small pictures for hills and gullies, and a bit of both when conveying more complex messages.

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Chris enjoyed deciphering the more complex sketches. They provided a pleasant break from the monotony of rocks and mountains. Still, what was this about grassland?

Until now, the man had been an excellent scout. Could the heatwave be getting to him? He was an old man after all, though he seldom acted like one. Being out in this sun all day couldn't be good for him.

Chris began ambling in the intended direction. He vowed to keep a closer eye on him from now on. The old man was essentially his survival kit at this point. It wouldn’t do to stay too far away from him.

“Wait, we’re going after him?” Zareti asked after him.

Chris closed his eyes before saying, “Look around you. Do you know where we are? The old man is the only one who can get us out of these damned mountains. And if we leave him hallucinating somewhere, we’ll die.”

“A simple yes or no would be fine,” Zareti muttered but his crunching footsteps followed after him.

Chris ignored him and resumed his task of putting one foot in front of the other. The blistering sun was unrelenting in its heat and he had taken to walking with his head bowed to fend the worst of it. That, and to avoid seeing the endless stretch of mountain range ahead of him. Seeing no end in sight day after day was beginning to erode his spirit.

If he died here, he wanted to die thinking he almost made it out. Pathetic maybe, but that was what he was reduced to. So when the first sparks of yellow grass sprouted through the cracks of never-ending dry dirt, he was the first to see it.

Startled, he looked up to see the impossible. Nestled between a long stretch of collapsed boulders, stood a narrow alcove seeping deep into the earth. Yellow-tufted grass unspooled from its confines, radiating a luster that stood in stark contrast to the barren wasteland he’d grown used to.

“Zareti, are you seeing this?” Chris asked nervously.

“Yeah, I see it. Raging storms, Chris. Calm down. You look like you’ve never seen a little grass before,” said Zareti, coming to stand next to him. “You can stay here and wait while I check it out if you’re not up for it. I’ll come back to fetch you once I deal with whatever’s in there.”

“That won't be necessary,” said Chris, annoyed with his outburst. “I can handle myself. I just thought it was strange seeing grass where there should be none.”

“Stranger than seeing the Blight Gates, or the Taint, or even fighting Blightspawn?”

“Alright, fine. You’ve made your point. Now let’s get on with it. The old man’s in there and we can’t afford to lose him.”

“How come you never say things like that about me? I’m important too you know?” said Zareti, trudging next to him, his spear at the ready.

“Who said I didn't?”

“I’ve never heard you say anything like that to me.”

“Why do I have to say anything? Do you think I would be entering this cavern if you weren't with me?”

Zareti paused for a moment, before nodding, “Fair enough.”

That was that. Chris held his spear at the ready and felt his heart thunder against his chest. The diminishing sunlight made him hold his breath as he crept further into the shadowy confines of the dim cavern. It wound down like the gullet of a living thing, swallowing them whole with each step.

Looking up, he noticed the only thing keeping the narrow cavern from crumbling, was circumstance. The boulders just happened to collapse in a self-sustaining concave formation, in this particular place, where grass sprouted where it shouldn't. He slashed his spear at the space before him, thinking it would ripple like a bubble.

“What is it!?” Zareti hissed, nerves and tension making his voice taut as a bowstring.

Chris shook his head and advanced. The shadowed alcove unspooled before his eyes like he were walking through a distortion in space and time. The grass became greener, the aroma more fragrant, and the air ripened with moisture until it was full to bursting. Each step felt like walking through a timelapse reel of nature reclaiming itself from ruins; step by step, frame upon frame. Until suddenly, almost imperceptibly, a burst of light spilled from the opposite end of the cavern like the gates to the promised land.

Entranced, Chris approached the light at the end of the tunnel, wondering what he was getting himself into. The radiance blinded him. By the time it dimmed to visibility, he was engulfed by a veritable cascade of colors.

An oasis unfurled before him like a tapestry suspended in time. A vast expanse of lush grassland spilled over the horizon, rippling up and down shallow mounds like waves hurtling through an ocean. A wide river channel wound through the endless green, its currents gurgling lazily through a narrow canal.

Throughout the field, a carpet of knee-high plants burst out of the ground in an explosion of color. A wide range of red-tinted petals flowed into white blossoms, into blue, into an endless cycle of colors blending seamlessly into the next like a banner. Plants didn't just grow in this oasis, they flourished. Even the air was charged full of vitality.

Chris felt the oasis embrace him. Radiating its essence into his being until all his weariness melted away. In that moment, he forged a tentative connection to something called peace and knew tenderness for the first time.

New life surged through his body and his fatigue from wandering the wasteland faded away. Tension eased off his shoulders like chains clattering on stone. And an eerie lightness came upon him, making him feel light as sand.

It wasn't until he was standing there, submerged in the oasis’s embrace, that he realized how heavy he was. Heavy in a way that was deeper than weight, older than age, and louder than sound.

All his life, he’d been searching for meaning in a vacuum. Trying to dig roots in a world that kept shifting and turning around him like a whirlpool. Somewhere along the way, he became accustomed to the cycle of uprooting and digging anew. So much so that it became a part of him.

He was unbound. A lone raft tumbling through the tides of a raging ocean. A leaf caught on currents too vast to contend with.

Physically, nothing had changed. The damage ran deeper and uglier than that. Being unbound was a slow withering of the soul, a dissociation of the spirit, a gradual unraveling of self-identity until anything but conformity became an anathema.

It reached a point where he stopped trying and began to hope, pray

Immersed in the oasis‘ embrace as he was, he felt that weight drain away like a long drawn breath, wheezing out of him. For just a moment, he could breathe again.