"How are we sailing for this long? The map said it's not too far from Yazzalo’s rocks," Zolton whined with urgency. He was staring out to the sea with noticeable unease in his eyes. His body tensed up like butchered meat bound together with string, and he pulled on the hairs sprouting lately from his chin. But his flimsy act of tranquility fell flat with his frantic fidgeting shaking off the charade like mud on a dog. Pyrei responded to Zolton’s bickering with a glare. “Indeed it is,” she replied in her typical apathetic mannerism.
She held the map in her right hand and kept the steer steady with her left; despite the fairly rough, yet not unbearably difficult, waters. She found a point where there would be a straightforward sail for some time, so Pyrei rolled the map up and secured it between the wheel and the grip of her palm. Her focus was set on the sunlit ocean and it shimmered with the dancing photons on its body.
But slowly, it began to blur and melt into abstract nothings. The sea was there before her and she remained aware of it, but her eyes were blackening the sight as if forbidden to view the grand blue. The shining sky and shimmering sea soon faded into a void; a black realm. She awoke in a sort of dreadscape of reality - a gloomy woodland of intertwining, skeletal-like branches dressed in hauntingly white and black leaves. Beyond the canopy high in the void sky, a crimson, maddened moon grinned with its blood-encrusted mouth. “Lightbringer?” it called with an indomitable, guttural voice. “Do you wish to join me? I have gifts for you, Lightbringer.”
The opposing sides of the moon began to swell and crack in the air like the snapping of tight tendons and bones. Its sides boiled and ballooned as if pestilent-ridden skin excreting the fallen white cells of battle-felled blood. The night terror groaned as clawed, skeletal appendages breached from its body hung dead at it side, swaying lifelessly. Fluid from the birth wounds poured from the sides and spoiled the land. But then a liquid blackened by the night secreted from the dead arms and along the limbs, overcoming the previous pus coating like fresh paint. As a single drop reached the fingers, it froze. The creature’s internal juices began to harden from the fingers up, coating the arm in a reddening and pinkish fleshy mass. And alas, the limbs began to twitch and curl. Its harrowing grin grew great, splitting the corners of its face into an even greater smile as it tore open space to express its joy. “My gift to you… Accept my token, Lightbringer.”
The moon brought its claws about its blood beaming face. In a blink, it swiped at itself and dropped a pile of facial mass on the dead soil. For a moment it began to… sob. It wept lightly before slashing itself once more, but the cries stopped. “Do I— Do I need do… more? Have your expectations been left unfulfilled? I–I can fix it, Lightbringer…”
The arms popped and crackled, stretching the fingers to terribly disproportionate lengths. In a red flash, the devil entered a frenzy of self-mutilation. It cackled, cried, and screamed as it drove claw after claw into itself, shredding its face into an unsightly mess. Its facial fluids and chunks flew aloft, dripping through the canopy with blood rain as it cackled in its unrelenting self-destruct. The celestial demon ripped at its face in tearful inebriation and tossed aside its ripped away parts, growing greater in its clashing cries and euphoria. Then the masochistic lord of the sky froze. It jittered and trembled as its arms rose upwards, breaching the surface of itself to displace the limbs. Then with its arms skyward, it began to spin slowly, picking up pace at a steady rate. Before she knew it, the thing had entered an uncontrollable spinning blitz, assuring the ejection of its bodily chunks reached globally. Pyrei gawked on in terror as the thing bellowed in agonizing jubilation, forcing her to cower behind one of the wraithlike tree. She stood back against the tree and broke into wailing when shielding her ears in a desperate attempt to deafen herself of the monster’s non-lexical nightmare chants proved fruitless.
Her eyes nearly fell adrift with an inhuman torrent of salty liquid pouring from her sockets; only kept secure by the sacrificing of her ears to salvate her vision. But then a cold wave hit the scape; a lengthy pause of manic silence gripping the world by its throat. Cautiously, Pyrei removed her hands from her eyes. The river of fearborne eye water had vanished and her visual organs seemed secured in their place for now. Perhaps frozen in time, or more likely shock, she did not move. When enough drips of courage moistened her soul droughted by terror, she peeked the side of the tree with a single eye and was, in an instant, blasted with a wind-breaking shriek that ejected all trees into the distant void – all but the one which she was stowed behind.
“Lightbringer. Oh, Lightbringer please…” it called. The tone became even more grotesque and unstable. It spoke as if millions of screams from within it joined and spoke in unison to form a vocal. Its words bellowed omnidirectionally, even arising its voice from the dirt she was curled upon.
“Please, my dear Lightbringer,” it swooned, “Why won’t you embrace me? Am I ugly? Have I been cursed with such an unsightly demeanor that even acknowledging my presence with a sole eye is too great a punishment for you? I… I can fix it, Lightbringer. Look—look at me, Lightbringer! I’m fixing it! I–I’m fixing it! Gaze upon my beauty!”
It continued tearing at itself again, soon ceasing as it met the problem of lacking any more face to desleeve. “No, do not worry, dear Lightbringer! I have a solution!” the moon screamed as it moved onto tearing out its innards and throwing them aside in a frenzied mess. “Is this what you seek, Lightbringer? Do you hunger too greatly to be concerned with me? Here – have it! Take it! Fulfill your guts with my own! Yes! Be hungry no more!”
Pyrei degenerated into a fetal position behind the sole tree and her legs reduced to mush. She collapsed into a yowling mess on the ground as she was made inundated by Blood Moon’s mania. When the mound of flesh dropped beside her and splashed its juices aloft and splattered her in red, her heart tightened and she alas her silence.“Stop! Stop it!” she cried, but the madly prancing beast drowned her pleas in his own insanity. She jumped onto her feet and stepped out for a final shout, “I said stop!”
The moon twirled to her and stopped abruptly, causing a tremendous gust to blow aside the final tree. It grinned as more of its innards slid from out itself. “Kill me, Lightbringer, Kill me! Slaughter me for I am hungry! Hungry for the sweet release of death!” The blood moon guffawed. A fleshy tendril ejected from its gored, gaping wound and wrapped around her like a constricting boa. In an instant, it ripped her inwards at bone breaking speed until she was submerged within its body. As what was left of its internal organs crushed her body, a blinding light blasted her. She stared down, finding herself now standing upon a wooden floor. The ambience of gulls squawking and crashing water reactivated her mind so her widened eyes scanned about. The bow of the sailboat was uplifted on the sand and drifted fairly deep into the shore. Pyrei paced over to the bow of the ship and looked on into a lush tropical forest before her. But she felt her hair raised and body stiffened, resulting in a beam of light blasting from a kick behind her; barely missing the ship and steaming the water further back. Her chest bumped and her breath fought as the smoke cleared from her victim. “Whenever I see you just standing around looking aimlessly, I’ll make sure to stay away from now on.”
“Zolton?” she uttered thinly in breath, “What– Did you see it?”
Zolton rubbed at a burn on his right arm. “Sure did. I saw you freeze up a while ago at the wheel. I tried to get your attention but you wouldn’t answer so I sat you aside to finish the rest of the sail myself. Then you got up and started screaming… I couldn’t really do anything about that but thankfully, you stopped before you tore something. You seemed to have regained consciousness so I wanted to check what was up, only to be blasted — again. What’s going on with you?”
She rubbed at her eyes and was struck adaze. She fell onto the deck, creating a cold thunk with her knees and palms. “What the hell? Are you sea sick?” Zolton inquired as he took her hand and aided Pyrei back onto her feet.
“Y—Yazzalo must be right. The visions I’ve been having… Vivid hallucinations— No, these vivid nightmares; all so terrible; malevolent… So often they come about, it seems even more frequent now. I can’t deal with this forever, Zolton. I can’t do this forever... I refuse. The walls are closing in too fast, too tightly. Zolton, would you— would you be able to put me out of it if I needed you to?”
“W–what? What are you talking about? I know you like to speak so… sophi—sticatedly, but why are you talking like— wait, put you out of it? Out of what? What the hell do you mean by that? Are– are you asking me to…”
“You’re right,” she barged, “what will that do? What if they’re awaiting my death? What if they aren’t restricted to my conscience?! Is this just them trying to fool me into it? Is that why my magic is sapping away at my soul? What happens if I die? Is that why the ghost at Windview spoke to me? Was he an omen? Will I be with the greater demons upon passing?! Monstrosities far more baleful and evil than the Blood Moon? Is it even possible for such things to exist? Do realms harboring such evil as a commonality even remain intact?! How could they? What if they’re competing to prove who’s the worst of the worst?! Is this my punishment? Do I deserve to be the ball in their game?”
Zolton froze. He opened his mouth but the words fought with one another. “I… I—what? No, you don’t–you don’t deserve monstrosities… I mean, death! Death, you don’t deserve death! You don’t deserve eithe— what is going on?”
The weeping Pyrei fell into the giant and grabbed his shirt, dampening his shirt with tears and spittle from her cries. “I know my time is inevitable, but not yet… Why won’t they leave me alone, Zolton? Why won’t they just leave me the hell alone!?!”
“Stop talking all that bullshit!” Zolton roared with the grab of Pyrei’s hands. “Where da hell did this shit come from?! You’re always so cold; so c–cynical! Yet the one time you aren’t, you start actin’ like this the end of days and all hope is lost? Are you saying that your ass is gon’ give up before even tryin’? Don’t give me any of this crap, Pyrei. This is ain’t how you do shit— this was never how you ever did shit. Not once have I seen you melting into a self-loathing puddle of piss like this before... No— ever since I met you, you were always a brick wall. You were the one that stepped up to the demons and put them down! Do you not remember what you did back at Valtrice, in the catacomb? You saved all of us from Klazza! If it weren’t for you, we’d be slaves in there still! So how the actual fuck have you fallen so gawt’damn hard from then?! One or two bad dreams is all it took to break you?! Please tell me this is a garbage joke!”
The broken woman trembled to her knees and wept. The giant’s grimace broke down into a frown and he kneeled close to her level. His heart was choking and his tears were underway, but he kept them locked in. He wrapped his arms around her and brought her in for a tight embrace. “I’m sorry, Pyrei. I didn’t— I didn’t mean that… I just hated seeing you do that to yourself. Can you look back at everything you’ve done and still tell me that you can’t get over another hill? D–don’t ever do that to yourself again. Don’t sit there and degrade yourself like that ever again… I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
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She wept. “It’s just been so damn much… Being stoic for so long, bottling everything up… It was just too much. Just too… damn… much! I was holding my breath for so long. It has been years since I was able to truly breathe; to have someone to open up to especially after the damn Growth captured me… Yazzalo was there for the longest of time but he just means business! I never wanted to bother him with something so… so trivial. Ever since I first met him, he was just so stern; stoic. He never seemed under pressure… he was never angry, anxious, depressed. No, always bold; stern; fierce A fantastic role model; my fantastic role model. I wanted to learn from him, master his way… And I thought I did— but I didn’t; I failed. I truly thought that I could be like him and hated myself when I cracked even slightly! I once again am reminded that I’m still failing… Or what if this isn’t who I’m supposed to be? I–I don’t know anymore.”
“No, shut up– Shut up with that shit, Pyrei! You’ve trapped yourself by trying to act? I haven’t known you nor Yazzalo for as long as you two have each other but think about what you’re doing. You’ve trapped yourself in a trench of a million. You fell into one and then just moved onto another when the previous failed. Eventually, you don’t even know where you began or what the previous was. But you never considered just looking up at the rope that’s been following you through each and every cavern you traversed into. You never noticed the light that’s been shining above you either, right? You made yourself blind to it. No, you begin walking down trench after trench, never thinking to pull yourself out. You just need to pull yourself out of the trench and then you’ll see how bright and open the world is above. Yeah all the opportunities are overwhelming, but you have that freedom to go any direction you want now instead of being confined to a path that wasn’t even yours to begin with. Is that not better?”
The Light mage felt a deep, warming in her chest. As if her cold soul had felt a bit of warming rays for the first time. Her tone began to break down and tears soon followed suit as her weakening hands clenched the giant’s shirt, stretching it. “Zolton… your— you’re right! Being in my own trap for so damn long… I’ve brushed against that rope so many times, yet I just pushed it away further and further… I don’t even know who I am supposed to be anymore! What do I do?”
“I’ll put off my sailing. I don’t want to leave you alone right now. I can see that you’re going through it…”
She unlocked their clasp and rose to her feet. “No, I can’t allow that. I know there’s someone you’ve been dying to see and I couldn’t live with myself knowing I was the reason you were delayed in visiting them.”
Pyrei placed her arms on the wood border of the boat and lifted herself onto the edge. She concluded the desertion of the ship with a push and landing feet first onto the sand. “You’ve done too much for me to snatch that away from you. That would be… evil. Take as long as you need, I’ll figure a way off this island should the time come. I need to stay here— for a while.”
Zolton mimicked her, leaping over the front side of the boat. He clenched Pyrei once more, holding her for an extended period of time. “Goatbeard said the island is deserted… that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any animals that could cause trouble. Be safe, I’ll try to be back soon.”
With his farewell, he placed his hands on the opposing side of the exterior sailboat bow. He pushed on the boat and his veins swelled as the seacraft drifted back into the water. Before Pyrei knew it, Zolton already pulled himself aboard and vanished into the blur of the sea, leaving her alone with nothing but the life of the island. She eyed down the trees and they waved back. The luscious tropical trees began to lose all of their foliage and turn monochrome, but Pyrei refused. She closed her eyes and took a deep inhale before slowly releasing the breath and grudgingly returned permission to her vision. Upon reopening her eyes, the trees sat lush, green, and fruitful again. For the first time in a long one, she beamed – even if it was short lived. She carried herself into the forest, forgetting to even search for some sort of clearing. Through the canopy, great white light dazzled through. The life of the island made sure that newcomers were aware of its vibrancy; fantastically colored avians flapped and squawked about, a clear river gently flowed from the inland outward and the wind made the trees and flowered bushes chortle. I should follow the river, she pondered. It must lead to some sort of basin or waterfall. Judging by the river, it shouldn’t be that large of a waterfall. Not bringing supplies may have been foolish, but perhaps Yazzalo did not warn me of that intentionally…
She trekked alongside the river, occasionally stopping by some of the lower trees to pick from their fruit or finding any on the ground. She picked up a bumpy green fruit and inspected it for bruises or signs of rot. Next, she broke it open quite easily and found its insides to be somewhat sticky. “Looks like a breadfruit,” she murmured. “If I can get it into a flame it’ll be a nice treat.”
She picked another from the ground and performed a quick examination. Finding nothing in her glance, she continued following the river. Upstream, the trees seemed to become generally shorter. Pyrei noticed the phenomenon, but did not pay much mind to it. Instead, a grinding sound echoing throughout the forest concerned her. It was faint from where she stood but grew louder as she continued alongside the water trail. For a moment she paused. Should I continue forward? If I stray off path, I could end up lost and be in a worse position. I better continue onwards, perhaps it’s just an animal doing what it does daily, like scratching itself on a tree. But how big an animal must it be to create a sound that reaches here? Maybe I’m just closer than I think and it’s not so extreme.
Somewhat bold, she decided to move forward. The crashing of water soon reached her ears and it brought a bit of glee to the traveler. Pyrei’s pace picked up as she made it through, yet still carefully avoided stones or other tripping obstacles in her way. And much to her expectations, a graceful waterfall poured before her. Its mist blew a short distance over the pool it fell into, but inevitably rejoined its whole without reaching the stony prison which guided it all into the river.
The trees’ very tops failed to hide the sky and allowed the shine to fall in an angelic descent to the water. Her blood ran untroubled and her mind unclouded in the small bit of paradise, thus Pyrei found her settling area. She walked the rocky perimeter of the waterfall, following it around to the waterfall. She looked into the clear water during her stroll and, to her surprise, discovered some life swimming about within it. Terrapins, shelled crabs and almost unnoticeable fish roamed the pool. Each creature distanced themselves from the falling water, likely put off by the commotion and roughness of it. The stony bank stretched behind the waterfall and a cave extended into, no more than a dozen feet or so. A pile of blackened wood and ash contained by some stones sat before an old tent in the hole, scentless. She wondered, This must be Yazzalo’s. He probably just leaves his stuff behind to save the hassle of having to bring it along and resetting it all.
She opened the tent to look around and found it barren of all things except an old hide mat and fairly large rusted blade. She took it up and threw it to the back of the cave where it collided with something and made a hollow crashing. Investigating, she made a discomforting discovery- bones. A plethora of them belonging to a diverse array of species. Skulls of turtles, bodies of birds, fish and what was undoubtedly a hand of man. Pyrei’s hair raised and goosebumps infiltrated her skin. Did Yazzalo leave this here? He— was he attacked here? He wouldn’t have said the island is deserted if he was, right? But why would he carry a hand with him? Would he have stored a chopped off hand with him until it rotted to bone? No, that doesn’t make any sense… Am I going mad again? Is this just my mind?
Once unfrozen, Pyrei frantically deconstructed the tent and moved back to the outside. She set it up at the far end of the pool, just beside the river running down to the sea. After rebuilding the shelter, she ventured into the forest for some dry wood and suitable stones to develop a new flame. As she was finishing up the campfire, a cold began again very similar to the grinding from not long ago. It was substantially closer than before, almost as if in her ears so she searched. She scanned the area but failed to see beyond the dense green most near, only able to sight birds on them or the oncoming dusk sky above. In haste, she brought about a Light circle at her index finger and concentrated a small beam of light towards the wood but caught herself and closed it. I shouldn’t be using magic so mundanely if I can help it. Remember why I’m here… Maybe I can get some stone and spark a flame quickly.
She snatched some white rocks in the dirt beside her and started clashing them over the wood, but they failed. The river had managed to splash them so she threw them aside and frantically searched for more. The scratching metallic grind grew greater in frequency, sending Pyrei’s heart into a frenzy. In a panic, the frightened lady caved to the pressure and summoned the light beam once more and focused it into the wood. In a few seconds, it caught fire and crackled. The metal-like scratching soon ceased and the sound of shaking bushes grew more distant until inaudibility. While pleased, her chest was still beating like a drum and her breaths ran hyper. Whatever that is… it’s definitely not just in my mind as I had hoped – at least I don’t think it is. That does not sound like something just getting an itch on itself... I had to hope that whatever it was would be warded off by fire and fortunately it seems banking on that worked out. Flame must be a repellent to it then. I’ll have to keep the fire burning throughout the night assuming it’s nocturnal. I can’t do that all while both tired and hungry so I’ll have to take care of one at least.
The conjureress took the previously split breadfruit and skinned the two halves. Next, she held one and paused with a gaze upon the fire. Post some pondering, she rolled back her black sleeve and took a breath of preparation. With the fruit in hand, Pyrei extended them both into the fire and waited. The flame crackled around her hand, overwhelming it, yet she was not phased by the heat. She counted, “eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen…” before a yelp cut her timing short and she ripped her arm out of the blaze. A sense of pride born from her realization sparked a grin of accomplishment, giving her some hope in her circumstance.
“Five more seconds than before; my body is toughening more. I haven’t had any combative encounters in a while yet my body is still becoming more durable,” she uttered in low breath. “Zolton was right, I shouldn’t have broken down like that. What was I thinking? His anger in me for belittling myself… I should have that attitude. Maybe I should take that accent he had brought about out of nowhere, too,” she jested.
With the final bite of the smoked breadfruit, thus removing it from the word, Pyrei gathered some extra wood around the immediate area, simultaneously scouting the perimeter for any immediate inconveniences. Upon returning to the tent, she fed three dense branches into the flame and piled the remaining wood just outside the entering point of the tattered tent. With a crouch, she sunk into it and drowsy darkness melted over her, submitting her into a well deserved slumber. Not long after she awoke, lifted off the old hide mat by a force. Her surroundings atomized in her wake and she plunged into a similar black landscape. Her body and soul entered a panic with the prompt realization of her location. A red sphere began to form in the sky, grabbing her gaze and forcing her to look upon it. “No, no…” she hyperventilated, “I’ve been here already, what is this?”
A gaping maw formed on the cratered red titan. A sole eye formed at the center of its head and stared down at her, stretching its dark pit into a harrowing smile. “Irresistible, my dear Lightbringer returned so soo–”
With a white flash, the crimson titan swelled and boomed. A gut wrenching explosion of flesh both soft and hard splattered the land with gore. Eyes widened by rage, Pyrei froze with her arm extended outward, magic circle in hand. Her lungs nearly bursted through her chest as her fiery, hateful gaze stayed locked upon the former position of the Blood Moon. Her maddened expression soon melted, evolving into tearful triumph. “I did it… I–I killed one. I can… I can kill them? I can kill th–”
Ear-grating scrapes quaked her out of the dream. Her eyes locked to the leftmost side of the tent interior. Her stare frozen by terror was unphased as the scraping moved from behind the tent. Deep, inhuman breathing followed the cold grinding as it shuffled past the back of her rusted joints. Pyrei’s eyes fell to the entrance of her encampment, nearly experiencing combustion of the heart upon finding the orange glow of the campfire no longer reached under the hanging front flaps of the beast-skinned shelter. As the breathing arrived at the front, the scraping ceased. A hand painted by the night grasped one of the dangling flaps and paused. Slowly, it pulled back one flap and its guttural breaths poured into the confinements. A silhouette of a head with forward facing horns leaned in, trespassing into the makeshift abode. It kept its head centered and appeared to be focused at the back of the tent, overlooking her resting body. The stiffened Pyrei laid gaze-frozen to the side of the tent, utterly refusing to even glance at the stenched beast or so little as twitch a muscle in its presence. Even her heart strangled itself to silence.
But by a straw of luck the thing deserted, allowing the poor shelter to shield its inhabitant from the outer world. And then, a great force ripped through. The tent was uprooted and demolished with a single swipe into the wind. The horned beast howled and shrieked in a tight-throated cry as it raised a grand cleaver high. The beast stood in a blanket of the night’s blackness, but some outlining features could still be barely made out. Its shoulders hung low and its head seemed geometric around its general shape. The thing’s arms were noticeably bigger in proportion to its bony torso and it seemed to stand uncomfortably in a digitigrade posture as if attempting to mimic the inhuman posture. “It’s another dream, it’s another dream, it’s another dream, it’s another dream…” a shambling Pyrei cried in a desperate cope. Then, the blade came down. With an involuntary reaction, she caught it between her palms. But instead of waking up from the nightmare, metallic-savored liquid dripped onto her face and streamed down to her mouth. The red ran from her guarding palms and she felt something radiating from her sliced palms unlike any dream could accomplish: pain.