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Chapter 28: Agonizing Present
🕑 Added 2023-01-06 05:25:52 +0000 UTCThe flames of the funeral pyre graced Dan’s cheeks in a forgotten way.
Sully was dead, his ashes scattered against the dome’s stale air. Dan sat alone watching the orange flames and pondered his existence. His guiding star was gone, his only friend dead, the man who kept him from falling to the madness. The man who taught him everything, the man who... who…
Deserved better.
The thought crushed Dan’s spirit. He sulked back, his arms wrapping around his knees in locked shame. If only he had checked on Sully earlier, if only he had told the high priest with his rituals off, then maybe. Maybe the old man would be alive. Broken and neutered, but alive, nonetheless.
Was that any way to live, however? Madness inspired dementia? Alzheimer’s? A destroyed body and endless pain? Maybe Sully was better off, maybe his death was a mercy killing from whatever god watched over this world.
Dan forced himself not to laugh, thinking, If it was mercy killing, then I’m going to burn this whole place down.
Sully would have smiled at the human’s dream. He would have conceded the idea, stating some vague memory from his past while getting across the point that burning the camp would be stupid.
“Where would the slaves go?” Dan asked himself with a poorly created impression of his friend. “They would just have to rebuild and the cultists would kill you.”
Yeah, he thought. That’s what he’d say.
Across the way, past the pyre, a white shockwave bloomed across the outside dome. The cause, a monster that shifted between dark pastels of purple and black, nestled its front appendages into the damp blood grass. With a loud curthunk the beast snapped forward, colliding against the protective barrier.
The sight, while terrifying, was a sign of what was to come. Steeling himself, Dan looked back into the fleeting flames, the knot in his stomach draining as he flicked away the madness that felt it was their time to act. Monsters, the kind out in the Blood Rains, just weren’t scary anymore. Not when he understood that they were no more monstrous than the beings he was locked in the dome with.
The influence of madness, the dead god below the cave, the high priest, the creatures of the Void, they were true monsters. The predators in the Rains were just that, predators. This world’s mindless animals, this world’s tigers and alligators. While he couldn’t name them, Dan thought he understood them.
They were like him, like any of the slaves really. They were just surviving, they were just looking to thrive. A nice shelter, a food supply, water, whatever else was needed to live. They fought for their lives, they lived through grueling bouts of dominance and territory.
They were understandable, albeit terrifying.
The cult? The god? The madness? What did they want? Why did they feel the need to kill Sully?
Dan shook his head, the licks of flame seared his eyes. Everywhere he looked was fire, everything he had come to learn burning. He blinked a few times clearing the effect, the image, however, stayed with him.
A streak of lime green broke the distant edge of the dome in half. The white barrier healed nearly instantly, the monster however did not. It crumbled against its sheared form, falling apart just below the torso. The cultist who fired the attack turned towards the insidious flames, finding the human cause.
Just like Sully, split apart, Dan thought over the yelling cultists.
Changes were coming and not just because Sully was dead. The prophet, the high priest, the drawn name. A sacrifice was inevitable, but the events before that? Dan assumed they were going to be filled with more pain than he had yet experienced.
The sound of cracking glass pulled him from his grievous thoughts. Turning, Dan found a monster watching him from beyond the dome. Hairs of madness gripped to his seated form, stretching and pulling at him as he stood from his funeral seat. Calmly, like cornering a starving dog, Dan crept to the interior edge of the dome.
The monster panted as it stared at Dan with glowing yellow predatory eyes. It leaned into the dome, sending a web of cracks up the rounded bevel. It hung there, slop spilling from its starving mouth, desperate. A meal was right in front of it, but it couldn’t reach it.
Curiously, the monster watched the human walk closer until only the thin white barrier stopped them from meeting. It could smell its prey even through the cage, it wanted to eat so badly. The Rains were usually desolate and the creatures that inhabited the land knew that meals were not a common occurrence.
Slowly, Dan held his hand out, touching the barrier like a zoo exhibit. The memory of the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans came to mind. Thick glass, the closest way to experience the beauty of dangerous animals. The monkeys never held their palms to the glass for him like the viral videos, the monster before him did, however.
Just like us, Dan thought, summoning forth a ball of light.
With the heat of an open fire behind him and the tears of a lost friend in his eyes, Dan released his spell. The orb morphed as it caught against the interior of the dome but ultimately slipped through. The dome quickly repaired itself, filling in a hole the shape of a crude set of wings.
Briefly, the golden wings lit up the bloody forest before entering the monster’s body. The forest went dark, like a parent turning off the lights of their child’s bedroom. The child, however, had a secret. They would count their parents' footsteps and listen for the creek of the master bedroom door. It was then the kid braved the dark. Bundled in their warmest blanket, they flipped on their nightlight they said they were too old to use.
The monster burst from within, brightening the dark forest like a switch had been flicked. Its haggard fur cast long, crooked shadows against the dome Dan stood before. He watched the monster’s veins highlight and its heartbeat from within. It landed within the blood grass screaming and clawing at its ruptured body.
Dan removed his hand from the zoo’s glass, thinking, Just like us.
A single heavy tear fell from his eye.
“What are you doing!?” a voice from behind yelled.
Slowly Dan turned, his eyes lazy and body cold. The pyre didn’t warm his dejected attitude, the two guards before him didn’t instill jolting fear. One had blunt weapons drawn, the kind often used for punishment beatings, the other hoisted a barrel of water over his head. The sizzling pop of the pyre dying caused Dan to move his eyes.
For a moment he touched upon his core. For a moment he almost let the madness take control. For a moment Dan almost killed the two before him.
His knee cracked from the first heavy whack. Dan bit the inside of his cheek as his leg crumbled below him. Another slam took his left shoulder, a third landed across his chin. A line of bloody spittle roped across the silent blood grass. A fourth hit gave him the opportunity to know what the grass tasted like.
He spit out the unholy plant and clawed to his elbows. A fractious slam broke his spine and kept him down. Dan stopped counting after the twelfth hit, his focus elsewhere. Across the barrier to the Blood Rains, was the lifeless corpse of a monster. It stared at him with lifeless eyes, just like he did it.
Just like me, he thought as the guards finally got bored.
Instead of beating Dan, they looked through the dome at the dead creature. One of them spoke up, “Was this you?”
Dan didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question, scum.”
A fist grabbed the broken human’s disheveled hair, pulling him to match the guard’s glare. “Yes,” Dan spit.
Dan was dropped unceremoniously. He crashed against the ground, what little remained of Sully steaming before his eyes.
“Make another fire and I’ll kill you,” the same guard said as his friend pushed him quickly away. They walked away, the calmer of the two giving the other a warning about “him.”
Dan didn’t mind their conversation, his thoughts transfixed on the belittled half burnt body before him. Did he bury the rest? Did he start another fire? Down the mountain cultists blasted spells from within the safety of the dome, killing all those who approached.
It took only a minute for Dan’s broken body to fully heal. It took a few times longer to dig a hole. He used a plane of golden light, fueling it with his mentor’s utility teachings, something that brought tears to his eyes yet again. When he was done and Sully’s partially cremated body was under a few layers of dirt, Dan fell to his back staring up at the center of the dome.
He wondered about the three stars he had seen so long ago. Were they still up there? Were they guiding poor lost souls to this hellscape? For some reason his thoughts fell to Bob and the man they tried to help in the forest. It felt like so long ago, but the military man and the lone mage dying were the last time Dan cared about someone dying.
He had long grown accustomed to death within the camp. Miners dropped like flies, only for their replacements to drop not too much later. It was a vicious cycle, one he hoped his presence helped soothe. He needed to get up, he needed to make his daily rounds. Burning Sully took precedent this morning, but the funeral was over, he needed to accept that. He needed to get up.
But he couldn’t, not without knowing.
He eyed the crest of the dome, he looked to the peak of the mountain. A single blast, a beam a size far grander than himself, Dan drilled through the top. Golden light lit up the immediate area as his pillar fully formed, mimicking the feeling within his chest. His core relished with pride, shredding the loose restraints that kept it from flying free.
Dan saw through the dome’s melted appearance as his spell failed. His core was spent despite the seal crumbling away. He didn’t mind, however, it would regenerate to its full potential long before he made it all the way to the mine.
Darkness found Dan through the self-correcting hole. He could lie to himself and saw he saw the stars, that he knew they were still up there. But the few drops of blood that landed on his face told him the lie would be nothing but superficial. The rains went higher than the dome, the mountain didn’t divide their path.
I guess I’ll find out once I get out of here.
The thought roused him from his daydreams and eventually he reached the mine. He walked slower than usual, taking the extra time to feel through the whole of his light core. Without the seal, Dan felt his power limitless. He knew it was a thought that would only get him in trouble, but the volume difference was immeasurable.
Now without the seal, Dan realized just how much of his light core he was missing. It wasn’t just capacity that had been taken away. Flow, regeneration, and purity were all taken away. His core reacted and refilled faster all the while being more refined. His idle steps weighed heavier at the realization of what he was missing.
The mine was his first stop in the typical healing rounds. Some of the miners looked at Dan with nothing short of anger. Bruises and open gashes were enough of an explanation for the human. The mine’s output had slowed, resulting in beats.
It took an hour, but eventually Dan’s healing touch enabled the able bodied miners to continue. Their stares concerned Dan, telling him that there were significantly worse off individuals. Finding them was trivial at this point, the surface mine and buildings were simple enough to search within a short time.
“Why did you even do it?” an injured woman glaring at Dan asked. Her eyes were harsh and swollen, her legs beaten and broken. Using hand chisels she continued to chip away at a large nodes of crystal that required downsizing.
The question made Dan pause. Any excuse he made would spread around the miners, any lie he uttered would only cause more issues. Was it fair to all of the miners that he started a fire? No, of course not. But he still did, and he said as much.
“I was honoring a last request for Sully,” he whispered through chattering teeth.
“Don’t do it again, even though the pyre was beautiful. I don’t remember the last time I saw real fire…” The woman went thoughtful as the light magic washed over her body one last time. Just as the human was leaving she spoke, “Who is Sully?”
“Sullethan,” Dan said slowly, doing his best to match the highs and lows of his friend’s language. He repeated the name several times, each in different languages and accents native to the camp.
“I understand you,” she said. “I just do not know who that is. Is that a cultist? A guard?”
“What? No. Sully, the man who is always with me? The other healer? Old, probably the oldest one here?”
The woman just shook her head. “You’ve always been alone. I do not understand.”
Dan recoiled. “Three months ago he and I healed you after the collapse. You had multiple ruptured organs. You almost died.”
She pursed her frightening lips. “You were the only one to heal me. I know no Sully, nor Sullethan.”
Dan nodded slowly, honestly thinking the madness had finally gotten to her. She was around during the fight with Jokaad, she had seen his brutal murders. She was in the collapse and was one of the few who lived to see the event through.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it finally got to her, Dan thought while finding a new patient.
Something got the better of him, however. He knew the question didn’t matter, rather he wanted someone to talk to about Sully. The new patient fit the bill in Dan’s eyes.
“Hey…” he whispered to the freshly healed man. “Do you know Sully? Sullethan?”
The man didn’t answer in words, but his grunt was answer enough.
Dan continued, “Old man, healer, we worked beside each other. He was in a cauldron?”
“I do not know,” The man said, flopping over to his side to stare at a rocky wall until he fell asleep.
Dan went to the next, asking the same question.
The man, another collapse survivor, spoke, “Who? You are always alone.”
The same answer came from many mouths. Some near the cave and its madness, others further into the camp away from the corruption. It just didn’t make sense. After all Sully had done for the camp and its residents, this was how they repaid him? Dan scoffed at the thought, glad he started the pyre. Whatever legacy was left, he would make sure the old man’s soul could rest easy. He’d remember for everyone…
But something felt wrong.
Three days of thinking about Sully changed something in Dan. Memories shifted, details blurred. The old man was his only friend, the only being in the camp that he could stomach. But now? The memories were just like the other beings. They scared Dan, to the point that he missed his healing rounds in fear.
People would suffer because he didn’t get out of bed, but he couldn’t. He was breaking, he knew. Sully was a monster just like all the others. Something stirred at the realization. Something finally snapped. Dan’s memories continued to bleed away, first into something horrifying then into reality.
Sully first disappeared in his memory of something rather minor. Dan was eating whatever slop the guards forced down their throats, and Sully had given away his portion of the one edible course. It was nothing more than the old man being friendly, but now the memory was gone.
It was replaced with what really happened. Dan swallowed as he remembered it, shuddering in alarm. He remembered the slop that day, he remembered a portion of something green, something blue, and something red. The red one was the only somewhat tasty one. But he only had one serving of it.
Sully wasn’t there. He hadn’t given Dan his food, because… because…
Dan’s head fractured, shadows shifted, his cores rumbled. Far below, below the caves, below the mines, below the red double doors, something moved. The dead god deep down twitched in giggled excitement. The camp felt it, like an earthquake that knocked picture frames from walls. The cultists felt it, the guards, the slaves. Everyone within the Blood Rains felt it.
A dead god of this infernal world had just moved, and Dan realized all of his memories were false.
Sully wasn’t real, he was a coping mechanism. An entity created by Dan’s brain to help him through his struggles. He self-learned magic , he went to sleep alone every night. He was friendless, he was scared. There was no Sullethan, there was no man born a slave… or was he something else?
The question bloomed in Dan’s mind as memories of Sully’s shifts came to him. In the false memory Sully slipped between lucidity and reality, along with an oppressive presence. Now, however, Dan knew the truth. There was no old man in the cauldron backpack but there was a presence. And now he could see it.
Its form, its manic form. It was nothing more than a projection, but who’s projection?
The question caused the cell to shift, mimicking the change in Dan’s brain.
Sully appeared before him, young and radiant. Shadows singing as the eternal rains of blood outside the dome picked up. Before it was a moderate shower, now it was a full storm.
Blood seeped into Dan’s cell from the walls before pooling around the image of Sully like a magnet drawing metal shavings. The blood slowly crawled up the intruder’s legs and chest, forming into a living suit of red.
As the blood encompassed Sully’s head, causing him to take on a new life, he spoke.
The monster’s words seemed to tear at reality, bending and pushing the cell into something else, something alive. Demented and dark, like the concept of torture personified into reality, the opposite of how the real Sully spoke.
The room flashed red and went black. A pile of goop fell on Dan from above, it was slimy like saliva and mucus. Then the cell switched back to stone. The illusion of Sully gave one last smile before disappearing as well.
Dan had been deep within the cave only twice. The first, the time he went too deep, he saw the same red wet walls as had appeared in his cell just then. He knew what it meant, he knew what Sully wanted.
It was time to go back.
A gargled shout clashed against the fearful chatter from within the prison. From within his cell, Dan watched explosions of gold disperse the slaves gathered in the hallways. A panting Golden Robes appeared moments later, his wooden staff drawn and dripping with power. He shoved it in Dan’s face, uttering cold words from beneath his dark cowl.
“What did you do!?”
Flattening himself against the shallow wall of his cell, Dan kept his hands up in surrender. “W-what-“
“Your core! You broke the seal!” Golden Robes gathered mimicked magic at the tip of his weapon. “And now this! Not to mention the prophet! You knew!”
Under the magical pressure emanating from the cultist’s weapon, his hood was thrown back giving Dan sight over his captor’s eyes. Gone was the bubbly mirrored form of the camp’s only human, a demented hysterical monster in its place.
It frothed at the mouth, millions of hairs of madness connected to its raving form.
“I did n-not!” Dan tried, letting the magic flow from his core into his palm.
His light hid under the impersonations, combining with the already gold illuminated cell.
Golden Robe violently whacked Dan across the mouth. “The high priest is already there! Everything is in ru-”
Two streams of magic were released near simultaneously. From the wooden staff, a golden ribbon sundered the room in two, cracking the back wall with a splatter of blood. Dan let loose his own spell, diving into his attacker.
Within, Dan’s blood hardened and heated. His speed amplified, throwing him out of the way of the brunt of Golden Robe’s attack. His skin peeled from the glancing blow, the pain never reaching him. In an instant, his spell connected and sent the room into a white hell.
Both combatants were healed, Dan’s wound being the only damaged served. The tackled connected, sending both out of the stone cell and into the carved hallway. Rock and wood met, echoing the sound of Golden Robe’s knocked away weapon.
With evolved strength, Dan led with an elbow, ignoring the low leverage and tangle of limbs. Light took form behind his head, like a winged lamp. He dove for the staff, leaving the stunned mimic with a broken nose. The lamp detonated in a bar of gold, plunging the cultist deeper into the hard floor.
Hearing his doppelganger’s cry of pain, Dan gripped the staff. His core bulged and for just a moment he felt his surroundings. In his mind’s eye, he saw the battlefield and all of its inhabitants. Slaves watched from their doorways or windows, each with various levels of awe or fear.
Taking to the magical weapon, Dan threw wild attack after wild attack. Beams, spears, winged constructs, all made of golden light barreled into the downed monster. Silver-blue blood exploded after each attack, the smell of burning ooze perfumed through the hallway.
The mimic was as good as dead, Dan saw. But he needed to experiment, he had a secondary core after all. He worked fast, not allowing the cultist to lick his wounds.
Three brutal months of torturous trials compounded within Dan’s mind as he tugged his blood magic. A small gash on his elbow, the blood from his cell’s wall, the red dye in his clothes, all of his blood reacted to his call with open arms.
His hot body went cold as he collected. The memory of Lambert came to mind, an example of how to kill. Blood inched across the floor or dripped from his person, pooling around his feet and below his right hand. The sanguine puddle shaped itself under Dan’s command, sharpening and hardening.
Slowly, he picked up the shard of glass-like blood, thrusting it into Golden Robe’s chest. Pain broke the concentration of the robed monster, causing his copied spell to fizzle and die. Dan stabbed again and again, until the struggling stopped.
He slumped back, his head pounding. With one last order to his second core, Dan forced his blood back into his body. It seeped through his skin, reentering his veins and warming him in the process.
