Sanguine Paradise

Chapter 199: [Day 214] – “Terror”

Day 214

The sound of silence.

Deafening and suffocating.

As we trod through the desolate wastes, the consuming grey mist on all sides, no one uttered even a single sound. It was as if we were all too afraid to break the glass-thin atmosphere that blanketed over us all. As if, were we to speak a word, it would shatter and we would be left open to whatever horrors lay in wait on the other side.

Despite there being no wind to blow across the arid barrens, no creatures to howl their presence beyond the mists, no anything - it was like the silence turned into a song that hummed its own melody, unique to any other song.

A song of death and desolation.

The further we dove, the worse it all became. At one point, I realized that I no longer remembered how long we had been wandering through these mists and over the sterile mounds of land. No matter how much I tried to figure it out, my sense of time entirely slipped through my hands like the dead earth beneath my feet.

It was just an endless expanse of nothingness, like that of the tunnel that had already devoured two of our numbers.

The only thing of change to be seen were the lights high above. We don't remember when they appeared, but suddenly they were just there. Still, they were either so far away or the mist was too thick, that we could barely make out what they were.

The best description I could offer if I were to try, was that instead of coming from something akin to a sun, they were more like the lights of colossal white strobe lights moving about the sky above. Almost as if scouring for something as they moved about.

We had no idea as to what they were as we continued our shuffle through the deadlands that stretched onwards.

Multiple times, we even found the group beginning to split at the seams. No, we weren't getting into arguments or having discords. No one really talked anymore, receding into themselves. But at times, we would find some suddenly begin to aimlessly wander off on their own - seemingly not realizing it before one of us managed to stop them before they disappeared from sight.

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Only Morgana seemed unaffected by the mists' plague on our mind so far.

But even so, I doubt even she was unaffected on the inside.

Time drew on until a startling fact dawned upon me.

Where was... everyone?

Heart leaping up into my throat, I felt fear like I hadn't since I was but a child - since I was human. I had faced more terrifying and fear-inducing situations since coming to this world of course. But right now, I was struck with an inescapable fear that tore away at my confidence. This place was doing something to me, like the tunnel.

Panicked, I looked all around for my group. At first, I thought them to be entirely gone. But as I looked further, I could see just the vague outlines of them. Relief flooded my mind and I bolted for them.

However... the faster I dashed for them, the further away they seemed to get. This continued until I for a second truly thought I was chasing nothing but a fever dream conjured up by my fear and delirium.

Just before my last dredge of hope went to fade, I found them.

But not all of them.

Amos was gone, and the rest seemed just about as relieved that I found them as they found me. We spent some time - can't remember how long though - waiting for Amos, but he never returned so we continued without him.

Aimless once again, the nothingness of the desolation creeps at our minds once again. I start hearing voices but realize they're nothing but figments of my mind to help me cope with the despair that had slowly been blossoming in me. Or were they?

I no longer knew anymore.

I just want it all to end.

End.

The unexpected sensation of walking into something and suddenly going into a heap of limbs managed to clear my mind just enough to realize I had bumped into Jasper. Tumbling to the ground with him.

As I met face to face with the eccentric rogue, I saw nothing but a gaunt husk of his former self.

Sunken eyes, a distant gaze, and pale face, he looked barely more alive than a corpse. I wondered how I looked. Looking to the others of my group, I saw the same I saw in Jasper as they mindlessly shambled across the dead land.

Dead - lifeless.

I looked to the ground where the soil was entirely void of the one thing that animated my existence. I wondered if, before long, we would all be added to this lifeless dirt. What if, this dirt was not once dirt.

Terror and mania clutched at my mind, wanting nothing more than to never touch this dreadful earth ever again. Abiding what life of will my mind could dredge up, wings sprouted from my back and took to the air, taking me as far from the earth as was conceivable. Air battered at my body as I ascended through the mists, striking me as an alien feeling as I hadn't felt the touch of wind on my body in who-knows-how-long.

Gaze fixed at those lights, I noticed that, ever so slowly, my mind cleared up. Not only that, the mists that consumed my every waking moment also abided the higher I ascended and closer I came to those lights. The less mist there was, the more clarity of mind I regained. Until finally, I could take in the reality before me once again.

A part of me wished that it never did.

At least then, I would've never had to see the things that I did.

At first, they were nothing more than shapes and outlines in the faint distance. My addled mind attempted to make sense of them as I continued my ascend. Only when I grasped that the undoubtedly colossal things in the distance were like crooked pillars attached to even larger entities, did I then also realize that those lights - came from those... pillars.

I wanted to deny the possibility and continue in my ignorance, by the now cruel clarity of my mind wouldn't let me.

Those pillars were living things. I couldn't even comprehend their size, nor could I breathe in the face of their now suddenly glaring presence. Rather, it was the entire lack of presence that sought to tear my mind apart that had me in such a state.

They were death - as dead and desolate as this place.

Yet their forms lazily scanned the horizon. Humanoid in shape, decrepit in nature. From long legs that crooked and bent that led to hunched upper bodies and that continued into freakishly long arms that hung like rope. I could only see their shapes as the mist still clouded their appearance, but the outline of their colossal bodies as the lights moved about was enough to remind me of their uncanny humanoid figures.

But it was not their decrepit hunch-back figures or the strip of what I guessed to be hair that hung like strips off their bodies which really frightened me. It was the single large eye that encompassed most of the small head attached to the thin and long neck.

It shone bright, like a light louse, and was the source of the lights moving about the sky. They were almost like torchlights in the mist if the perspective had been any different.

The existence of these beings was truly beyond my understanding, and unlike Ya'neath the cosmic being, these were even more so terrifying. Not because they were of a greater existence than Ya'neath - no, this time, it was exactly because, unlike Ya'neath, I was able to grasp the sheer terror of these creatures. That made it just that much worse.

True and pure primal fear took over me.

To them, I was nothing more than a speck of dust standing face to face with gods.

That was the undeniable truth presented to me, and it shook me to the core. I returned to my senses, suddenly feeling like I had realized and seen something that I shouldn't have. My soul screamed the coming of something worse than death.

Like a black flash, I disappeared from where I was, having already located the rest of my group still shambling in the mists as my mind remained clear. Even so, as I dove deep, I could already feel the mists trying to dull my mind once again.

Landing before Morgana, she looked ever as impassive and emotionless - like nothing was different. But she was like an empty husk as she continued to walk without aim, she had also succumbed.

Hoping that the rules of the tunnel no longer applied and that this wouldn't be seen as an act of harm, I took the woman tightly in my grasp and launched myself back into the sky.

Terror grabbed at my heart as I returned to the sky where those abhorrent creatures could be seen, but I had no choice. I doubted that the system would ever let me out alive all on my lonesome, so I had to get Morgana back into a state where she at least had some presence of mind.

If there were anyone best suited to keep our minds straight, it would be her - the Lady of Absolution.

Watching as the stunning, but emotionless woman of stone returns to some semblance of conscious thought, I feel relief flooding me.

That, however, only lasts but a few scant moments as a light - the gaze of a god - moves over us, only to halt and remain.

It sees us.

It sees life in a land of death.

It sees - impurity.