Weary step after weary step, Dav trudged his way through the indigo sand. He’d long since lost track of how long he’d been in this wasteland. He knew only that he had 72 hours left. 72 hours before the Indigo sickness took him, and he became a puddle of water. With every drag of his feet, he cursed Her - she had painted blue the desert separating Tellocon and Amgod, and he’d been caught up in her madness. Now nothing waited for him but a pitiful, wet death.
A hare flitted across his vision, and, instantly, he put into practice his Method, perfected during the two or so weeks since his haven had become a blue hell. Limbs growing leaden, nausea filled him as he fell face first into the sands. He’d converted all his stamina into Pilkey, and this he shot into the hare’s fleeing figure, even as more Indigo seeped into him from the sands. His death would come faster now, he knew. Even as he watched, the blue tinge that had previously only touched his nails sped up his fingers, covering them to the third knuckle. He tried to ignore it, focusing on the meal he had just secured, but trying to move his head only worsened matters and he retched onto the sand. The Indigo took hold of it immediately, his yellow vomit transforming into a navy blue liquid that quickly became clear, pale water. Dav sucked it up thirstily, not caring that it had been stomach acid just seconds ago, not caring that he brought yet more Indigo into him as he did. The hare. With food, he’d have energy to run for the next few hours… perhaps he’d find a Domainer of the Third, and they’d heal him of his illness. For a price, they would. At worst, he’d have to give up a limb, and those were easily come by for one with his… quirks.
He lay there for a time, Indigo Nausea coming and going as he slowly recovered his stamina. Taking a breath, he pushed himself up on his arms, and crawled towards his victim. It was, of course, blue, and it lay motionless. Even so, Dav knew that it yet lived. After all, all he’d done was make it forget how to move. Hands still weak from his use of Pilkey, he shakily wrapped them around the thing’s neck. It knew not how to move, so it couldn’t even struggle or give death throes in its final moments. Only the stilling of its breaths told Dav it was dead. He shot Pilkey into himself to forget how to smell and taste and sick up, and his face fell back into the sand at his expenditure. He had used relatively little compared to what he’d spent on the hare, but he was so, so weak!
Would that he could pause for a spell and take a nap - but he knew that if he even closed his eyes, he’d never wake. And yet, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. He could be done with the struggle, with the unending striving to be better, stronger. It really wouldn’t be that bad. He blinked. “... wouldn’t be that bad.” The words echoed in his head, and Dav remembered the nigga he wanted to kill, his hateful, smug smile filling his mind. I can’t let Her madness be the death of me. Not when I need to killdemboys. Resolutely, he bared his teeth in a rictus of a smile, tearing off the hare’s foreleg and shoving half its length in his mouth. He bit down, hard, snapping the bone in two, and chewing mindlessly, swallowing bone, fur and all.
Ten minutes later, a snarling, naked man took off across the sandy blue plains, leaving nothing in his wake but an ever-growing growl. Of the hare, there was no sign.
The scenery changed not at all as Dav sprinted across the region once known as Lacrosta, his fatigue forgotten via Pilkey. He supposed it still was Lacrosta… perhaps now it was Blue Lacrosta? Useless thoughts, these. The monotony of Dav’s surroundings kept his mind focused in a way it hadn’t been for a time. Why had he been fatigued, he wondered now. With Pilkey, he could have easily forgotten his hunger and tiredness. He’d been out of it for far too long, his objective fading to dust in his mind. But no longer. He’d rid himself of this illness and kill that nigga. Up ahead, the landscape was finally changing, the flat sands solidifying into mesas… and was that a village he saw, built into the rock formations?
But that was the least of Dav’s concerns, for the energy he’d acquired from that hare he ate raw would soon run out, and he’d rather take his chances collapsing around other people. Better that than to be naked and alone in the Indigo sand, where a blue vulture would feast on his body before he was even fully taken by the Indigo. Besides, this was Lacrosta, blue though it was. The people that lived here wouldn’t have been killed off by the blue, and they were the superstitious type. Their desert god would send them to their desert hell if they didn’t help him. Dav almost chuckled at the irony of it all. The shit he spent so much of his life trying to fight would likely save his life. As Dav got closer he realized that the village buildings weren’t actually blue, but pitch black. That was another good sign. That evil bitch’s painting hadn’t affected them. That meant at least more than one Domainer, which meant there was a high chance that someone here could heal him. Dav just tried not to think about the potential cost.
As he approached the village he could hear the sounds of civilization, people speaking, bartering, singing. Hearing was one of the things he hadn't had to forget while running in the desert and the wasteland’s silence had been getting to him. As he ran into the village, people stopped at what they were doing to look at him. The busy market place seemed to quiet down as he walked through. Children laughed and pointed at him and parents covered their eyes. To be fair, he was naked. Just before he could ask for help, his face was suddenly connecting with the ground. The village ground was paved with stones. He had used Pillkey to forget the feeling of pain so much that falling face first onto the ground just felt like pressure. That was going to hurt later. A lot. He tried using his arms to push himself back up, but they failed to cooperate. It seemed he was at his limit. His eyes began to close despite his efforts to keep them open, and soon there was just black.
*
Dav was back in Dreflen, his hometown. His body was moving against his will. He was having The Dream again. He wished he could wake up, but he knew that was not how it worked. It was never how it worked. Whenever he used too much Pilkey, the memory resurfaced in the form of a dream, and no matter what he did, he had to see it through. He prayed someone would wake him before it got to the worst part. He didn’t have much time left in real life, what with all the additional Indigo he’d taken in; maybe 2 hours at most now. He just had to hope he had enough time to get cured once he woke up.
His 16 year old self ran through the war-torn, collapsed buildings all around him. He heard explosions in the distant desert, where the rebels were fighting. Unfathomable levels of Pilkey were being used over there and Dav had wanted no part of it. What he wanted didn’t matter though - his hometown hadn’t been spared. Gretna had promised to the World Union that they would not hit civilians or residential areas, but of course, they had lied. All powerful nations did. Dav’s younger self ran through the streets. Mangled bodies everywhere. Whenever Dav experienced this dream it was like he was living the event all over again. He could hear the constant wailing and yelling. The smell of dust and blood was ever so present. Dav tripped over a heap of rubble as he ran, looking back to see that the ‘heap of rubble’ was actually not a heap. It was the motherly woman who lived next door, Julane. He could tell it was her from the black dress she always wore, but her head was a mess of gore, as if a giant fist had crushed it.
Dav didn’t even cry out, didn’t even feel bile rising in his throat the way he once had. He’d seen so, so, so much worse. He got up, rubbing his hands on his thighs. He’d scraped them in his fall, but he felt none of that pain now. All he could think about was his mother and sisters. Dav saw Gretneshi soldiers ahead of him in their purple uniforms and he turned right to duck into an alley. Despite what Gretna told the world on TV, they rarely took prisoners of war.
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Dav ran through the alleys, taking twists and turns until he found his home. It was the dead end of one of the alleys with a door. The door was open and Dav ran inside. Looking back at his younger self, Dav was surprised he took so few precautions during the war. The person inside that house could have been the enemy, but Dav at the time was only concerned with worry. Dav didn’t want to look anymore because it was coming, but the dream forced him onwards.
Dav dashed into his home, his anxiety too strong for him to feel tired. His mom had left it spotless clean and the use of Pilkey hadn’t touched their apartment building. Dav heard sounds coming from outside the front of the apartment. Dav looked out the window above the sink to see that Gretneshi soldiers had lined up his three sisters and his mom on their knees outside in the courtyard formed by the apartment buildings. There were at least 50 purple coats rounding up more of the women who had stayed back as the rest of the men and boys had gone out to fight. Like his family they were lined up on their knees.
Dav didn’t have a musket so he reached for his sword to go out the front door into the courtyard. He knew what those soldiers were going to do to those women. Dav’s youngest sister was 13. Before he could turn and run out, a hand grabbed him by his face and his body went slack. Pilkey. He forgot how to move. His body slumped and the person behind him held him up. He panicked, wondering if he still knew how to breathe and once the hand was removed from his face he realized he still could.
A voice whispered into his ear in accented Talmic. “If you go out there you’ll get killed, boy. This is not what I signed up for when I joined the military,”
Dav wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t. Back then, when he had lived through the moment, he couldn’t, and he was trapped in the eyes of his former self. Dav saw a man he had seen once before on TV. A man proclaimed a hero of his nation, the famous Gretneshi soldier, Ulav, was in his courtyard, about to commit war crimes against people he loved and cared for.
Dav watched out through the kitchen window. It was a one way window, laced with Pilkey to keep all those outside from remembering that they saw a window at all when they looked at it. Right then, Dav wished it were a normal, non-magical window, so they would stop what he knew they were about to do. Ulav walked down the line of women and stopped in front of Dav’s family.
“I am sorry to make you watch this,” the Gretneshi soldier holding him said, “but I can sense the gift in you. I am unable to kill that devil of a man out there myself, but I will engrave the face of every man in this courtyard in your psyche until you are one day able to kill them all.”
And so Dav was made to watch as Ulav bent over to look down at his youngest sister. Dav wanted to scream, but he couldn't. He wanted to break free, but he couldn’t. The worst part of the dream was coming and he was-
Dav suddenly sat up, awake. His body was covered in sweat, and though he was hot, he shivered. That was the closest he has ever been to the worst part of the nightmare. He nearly broke down and began sobbing for his dead mother and sisters but it was soon replaced by unfiltered rage. He was going to kill demboys if it was the last thing he would ever do. He clenched his fists and realized that his body was no longer blue. The skin was back to the regular dark brown, and not even dirty. He looked around to see he was in a small room of redbrick, sparsely furnished. All it held was a bed, a small table to the side of it with a tall glass of water and a lamp that flickered not at all, oddly enough. He took hold of the glass, downing the water in one long, thirsty gulp. It was the greatest glass of water he’d ever had, and as it ran down his throat, his stomach let out a growl, his appetite awakened. He moved to place the glass back on the table, but without warning his arm cracked at the joint, falling to the ground. He stared at his disconnected arm in mind numbing shock, unable to comprehend what had just happened. The disparity between what he felt and what he saw was so jarring, for no pain came forth. This must have been the debt he owed to the Domainer who healed him… what an ass he must’ve been. With his quirks, this could be easily remedied, but Dav was still overtaken by shock and outrage. He had been forcibly healed, then made to reap a consequence he hadn’t sown.
As the pain and regret from the dream slowly faded into the back of his mind, as it often did, he grabbed his fallen arm, steeling his resolve and standing to his feet. Dav walked out of the room, feeling none of the fatigue he’d expected to be hit with after his long ordeal in the desert. The guard outside his door said nothing as he made his way down the hall and toward the large doorway looming in front of him, only one thought filling his head: he had to get his arm reattached. He knew of only one way to do so, and it’d be yet another long journey, but he smiled to himself in weary anticipation at the prospect, for it meant something new. Just as he took his first step outside the doorway, his face was met with a kick that sent him stumbling back several paces. His combat experience alone allowed him to maintain his grip on the severed limb he held in his right hand.
Dav whipped his head up just in time to weave past a white skeletal fist rearing for his face. Without missing a beat, he countered, sending out a kick of the style he’d always practiced: from right to left, cutting a diagonal path through the air to take his assailant right under the chin. It hurled the man through the air, slamming his back against the stone slab of the building. Now, with the moment of reprieve he’d earned, Dav took in his surroundings for the first time. The building he had just left was an imposing mass of stone, coloured red and towered over seemingly the entire village. It gave off the impression of a monastery that had been brought up from the earth itself. Dav took in all this information in seconds, before returning his gaze to his attacker, who had just risen to his feet, seemingly undamaged by Dav’s attack.
The person that stood proudly before him was a tall, broadly built man with a chiseled jawline and jet black hair that fell roughly over his eyes. He was dressed modestly in common robes that draped him down to his ankles, accented in red and white. Before Dav could utter a word of confusion, the man struck again, lunging for the arm he tightly grasped. The sudden rush might have caught a lesser opponent off guard, but Dav leaped backwards and out of harm's way. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. If the man heard him, he made no sounds of acknowledgement. Angered, Dav leaped forth, shooting out Pilkey as he did so. As always, it took the form of a translucent, pink ray that danced its way through the air. The man seemed stunned for a moment, his face a mask of astonishment, but he was nonetheless able to dodge to the right, out of the way of Dav’s Pilkey and into his awaiting fist. He hit him square in the gut, and though his opponent had had the wind knocked out of him, he still somehow managed to leap out of range. Even so, Dav refused to let up, grabbing his arm to chase the man relentlessly, striking another kick before he could regain control of his body.
Triumph flooded Dav’s body as he relished in his imminent victory. Mere moments after he was sure he had been victorious, he felt a presence looming behind him. As he hastily turned to guard with his left arm—the one that had been severed—the man struck out with a punch to his chest that sent Dav spiraling through the air. Vertigo attacked his senses and for a moment he had no idea where he was, but a hit to his right side brought him back to reality. He looked up, and, to his dismay, the man stood before him, Dav’s left arm clutched contentedly in both of his. “The Domainer thanks you for your sacrifice,” the man spat out smugly, turning to walk away. Dav’s only remaining arm was battered and slightly numb, but still he refused to lose a part of himself here, pouring all his power into his feet as he leaped into the air, shooting Pilkey once again. The man sneered in disgust, moving slightly to the right, only to be met with yet another shot of Pilkey. This shot finally connected and the man’s body went limp. His stamina was at an all time low, and he knew he’d hate himself later for pushing himself so, but he had no choice. Dav shot forward, grabbing his arm and using that same burst of speed to run out of the compound. Fear crept up from every angle, for he knew the Pilkey he’d used on the man wouldn’t last forever. Blood spurted out his nose and mouth as he pushed himself further still beyond his limits, and he collapsed heavily to the black sands of the village’s outer edges as soon as he felt safe. I really need to stop losing consciousness in random places, he thought to himself, before losing passing out once again.