Gasping, I open my eyes to stare at the open ceiling above me. Blinded by the blue beam of light, I could barely move and discern my location, as if a thousand bricks are piled upon me. I crawl away from the blinding formation, a few of my nails cracking and bleeding as I force myself out of the formation. Only when I stumble and roll away from it, does the feeling of gravity lessen and I am able to breathe more easily without my rib cage on the verge of collapse.
I pull myself together, both mentally and physically, as I stand on two unsteady feet.
Looking back, I am stunned to have woken up at the same room I had woken up to in my dream, and yet there are contrasting things. The current chamber I am in has an open-top circular ceiling, with the formation casting a strong blue beam upwards into the sky.
I stagger backwards, belatedly noticing a cool heavy thing on my neck. I glance downward, forgetting to breath as I expressionlessly study the teardrop-shaped blue pendant.
…It wasn't a dream?
I take a minute to digest everything that happened, until a dreadful reality dawns on me, and I rush out of the chambers, directly jumping over the balcony railing to run to where Vera is.
My eyes constrict as I witness the beast hovering over Vera's body. Having been too horrified with my own encounter with the beast, and the strong emotion of wanting to protect the people close to me, I managed to overlook the lack of hostility in the beast's stance, as if it was looking at something it had loved before but it had long lost it.
Previously bathing in the formation's blue light, my power feels slightly rejuvenated and healed, allowing me to cast a strong defensive shadow that manages to push the beast several meters away. Not wasting any time, I grab Vera and dive to the pond, hearing a soulful melancholic howl that made even the water vibrate.
I struggle to drag her to the only exit I know—downwards. Using my vines to create a makeshift propeller, we reach the bottom of the pond, until the world tilts into a hundred eighty-degree and we are pushed upwards, no, downwards—I'm no longer sure.
Breaking out of the water's surface, I gasp for air desperately and realize, we are once again falling. I look upwards to see the mess of a field, but there in middle, was not a lake, but a field dead squashed flowers and insect guts, with a hole in the middle of the five boulders that hid an underground lake. It would have been fine if we just safely fell on the water, but seeing the numerous spikes below and above the water, I'd rather not freefall into such a place.
I use every bit of my strength left to condense my domain into a net, grabbing at the stones and praying they don't get uplifted.
Thankfully, I manage to make a net of shadows. I slip up a few times, until I successfully get a vine to carry Vera to the safer solid ground. I release the net once her body hits the soil, and use my shadow to swing myself to the side and climb up from the high drop.
Kneeling on all fours at the edge, I look back and briefly wonder how we even entered Aovialutre's temple, before I shove the thought to the back of my head again. There are other things to prioritize.
Burnt out by the repeated over usage of my power, I fight back the fatigue as I lift Vera's body and place her on my back. The coolness of her skin makes me endlessly worried. Surveying our environment for any danger, only now do I fully register the scene into my mind; the splattered pieces of bug flesh and blood painting the whole field anew.
I fight the nausea along with the fatigue, shrugging Vera upwards so she doesn't slip off my hold. When I don't see Obrecht and Krael anywhere, I head to the only place I could think they may be. My only solace in this mess of a field is that I don't see any humanoid bodies. That itself is a huge relief.
When my consciousness got devoured by my own power, I wasn't able to discern if I may have accidentally hurt my friends. At the time, attacking the enemy was all there was in my head.
If I had harmed any of my friends…If I had harmed Obrecht…
I shake my head, releasing a shaky breath as I push a low-lying branch out of the way, trudging the earthen path to our campsite.
Bedrolls and kitchens utensils strewn here and there at our tiny camp, illustrating the sign that the people here were definitely in a hurry—and I'm sure they were.
I drag a bed roll by hand, too tired to even call out a wisp of my shadow, not to mention set up my own shadow domain. The risk of being out in the open makes me nervous, but faced with no choice and Vera's circumstances, I take the risk alongside the worry. I flick off the dirt the best I could, and then slowly place down Vera.
Immediately, I take off her outer clothes and armor, leaving only her inner shirt and pants, before I check her breathing. Affirming her shallow but steady breath, I ease a little, and start to make a fire using two flint stones I managed to discover in one of the discarded bags.
I break a few large branches and bury half of it in the ground, taking up quite some effort, before I could successfully hang our wet clothes near the fire. Slightly shivering, I move closer to check on Vera's condition once again, intending to look for a pot where I can boil water.
With the adrenaline gone in my system, I try to suppress the shivers.
When rustling sounds arise from nearby, I suddenly perceive that I was spacing out. I tense up, my eyes darting everywhere for a suitable weapon. Not knowing since when I have lost my pair of daggers, I am left defenseless, if not for the nearest and thickest branch I could get my hands on. I crouch lower, moving ever so slowly to Vera's direction. Assessing myself, it would probably be a struggle to even produce a vine, much less run.
All things considered, if it's an enemy or beast I can't handle, I'll grab Vera and then dash.
If things get out of hand, I had resigned myself for the worst. I glance at Vera, and then focus at the incoming creature. I don't blink, counting seconds until the rustling sound stops. Then it moves even faster.
Did it notice us?
Just when I'm about to swing the branch towards the bush, I pause in time at seeing the worried countenance of Obrecht. All of a sudden, I am enveloped into a tight hug that is enough to suffocate anyone, yet ironically, the tightness of that hug secured my heart's stability.
Everything is going to be fine now.
An anxious Krael emerges behind Obrecht as he rushes to the unconscious person that laid near the fire, her body frighteningly too still, as her chest barely even rises and falls.
"What happened", Obrecht whispers to me, but I see Krael shifting his gaze to me, his eyes demanding for answers.
I don't beat around the bush when I whisper back, "…We went to Aovialutre's temple."
Aovialutre called Vera a vessel. But a vessel for what?
Unbelieving, the other two people's eyes me for a second, before Krael couldn't resist the itch of asking questions, "What do you mean by Aovialutre's temple? It's real? How did you even get there? We saw you fall down the water. With all those sharp rocks, we thought...", he trails off, his voice growing hoarser and hoarser until it becomes unbearably hard to even utter a word. "We were looking for vines and whatever we could find so we can climb down", he suddenly changes the subject, trying to dissolve the bad after taste of the earlier topic.
Obrecht arms around me tighten, apparently having the same train of thoughts as Krael. I hold his wrist to comfort him, to assure him that I'm alive. It is the only thing I can do right now. I can barely reassure myself.
"I'll tell you what happened", I breath out, "but first, let's boil some water and warm up Vera. Her skin is too cold. She's been soaked for so long even before I regained consciousness, and she hasn't woken up yet. Her body's temperature should be even lower because of this."
Silently understanding the urgency, we start packing up, ready to head back home and find the nearest Healer-born. Kael takes care of Vera, his eyes never leaving her for the rest of the day, even until later on in the evening. I relax a little when I see that Vera is in capable hands, but though her temperature may have risen, she still hasn't woken up.
Nobody is in the mood to eat, so we simply eat our dried out rations of food with warm water.
With nothing else to do, and Krael being an attentive busy-body, I pick up a bag and bend over to stuff our scattered belongings inside it, staggering as I do so.
"I'll do it", Obrecht demands, stealing the bag from me. "You also need rest", he says as he grabs me by the hand towards the fire. He leaves for a second to pick up another bedroll and places it in a warm dry place near the fire pit. "I'll wake you up when we're ready to go."
"…I don't think I can sleep."
A few seconds pass before Obrecht answers with his back to me, "You can just close your eyes and rest." I don't answer, silently studying his back that flexes as he hurriedly rounds up our possessions.
'I'll give you a day to bid your farewells.'
"We'll head back early tomorrow morning. You can tell us what happened along the way", he says as he seems to have justified the urgency of having Vera looked over by a Healer in his heart, just as I have. "But for now, you…", he leaves his sentence unfinished as he walks over to me. Placing his hand on my forehead and lifting my hair up, he whispers, "Hey…Hey, what's wrong, love?"
My face scrunches up at his endearment, my eyes gleaming with emotion as I stare at Obrecht's nose.
"Tell me, what's wrong, Vid", he tries to coax the answer out of me. "Why are you crying?"
"…I'm not crying", I retort, very sure that I have yet to let a tear drop. I haven't cried since my sister's death.
"You look like you're crying to me", he comforts me in a soft voice, sitting down, and dragging me unto his lap as he embraces me tight.
Must I go?
"…I'm not", I riposte softly, burying my face on the nook of his neck.
I don't want to go.
We savor the moment until Obrecht open his mouth to say, "That reminds me." He leans over to reach for something, slightly dragging me along as he did. I grip his clothes so as not to fall backwards. "Here", he hands me my mask.
I receive it with both hands, caressing Tukare's necklace tied on the broken horn. I hug it close to my chest before hiding my face again on Obrecht's shoulder. I don't ask where my daggers went. He probably had searched hard already just to find my mask in the rubble.
"…I'm sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?"
I close my eyes, trying to shield myself from reality, albeit impossible.
"…" I don't know…I don't know anymore, Ob.
Even if I try to open my mouth in an attempt to name the monstrous feelings that hollowed my chest and swarmed my stomach, I wouldn't be able to. I can only quietly, voicelessly, wait until it devours me.