(Rose)
I'm trying to run back to the house, but I don't have enough breath. I walk then as fast as I can.
The man's dying words were awful. He knew too what Blume was, I didn't even need to ask.
I've always known beings-like-her could be evil for us...
My heart aches a lot and not only because I'm out of breath.
In the tales of my youth, they were tricksters, spirits trying to play wits over us or taking advantage over us. The tales gave us lessons about trust, cautiousness and most of all humility...
In the days of my adulthood, I've seen them as most of all egocentric beings, egoistical beings, just not caring about what is right or wrong. Some lovingly kind, most just living as they please; and a few just wanting to kill and destroy as they go in life.
And naïve me thought they were the worst kind, the killers.
It can be so worse... Life can be corrupted into living hell and nightmare.
Control, manipulation, and mere slavery...
There is one being-like-her on this island alright. One that turned the only inhabiting family into slaves to its will, one way or another.
They could go as they pleased as long as they behaved, but were turned into puppets once they stopped complying to its desires.
It didn't want them to leave this place, for she needed something from them.
He only told me a few words before dying, but I was able to fill in the horrible parts missing from the jigsaw.
The demon demanded a sacrifice.
Plunge thing fallen from the sky into someone.
So it could devour her...
When Blume starts reopening her existence into a living body, she would meet her fate.
I'm reaching the house and slam the door open.
What have they done?
I run upstairs. They're gone. I run downstairs, out of breath again. They're nowhere to be found. The door to the basement is locked.
I grab another axe I saw elsewhere and break it open.
I head to the basement.
There is a study with weird altar. There are notes, pictures and scriptures here and there.
In the next room, I find the body from yesterday and a kind of bed with restrains.
There's blood everywhere around it on the walls, but only one stain on the sheets.
What have they done to her?
Another body lies there. The mother I guess.
Where did they go? I leave the house, dead worried about Blume.
The being-like-her hidden somewhere here wants to eat her, as well as the girl being her host currently, probably.
Because of my stupidity, Blume is trapped outside of my body...
Some things about the situation still are unclear to me, but I know I must save her.
If no one can leave, I'll see them from the mountain... I must find them before something more awful happens.
I head for the higher mountain in a hurry.
I think I can feel that she's in danger, unless my mind is breaking down from breathing too much of this dark fog.
I can hear her. I was right, she's there! They're all up there.
I hear screams and I actually reach the young man and the girl. I call them. They turn around to look at me approaching.
The man is holding her by her wrists. They're still a little far away above me, I can't see their faces against the sky light, only their dark silhouettes.
The man says there is no other way I think. The girl is broken and just sobs.
Then I begin to see something of Blume around her.
A sigh spreads in the wind around us. I recognise Blume's voice calling my name.
The man is worried.
My ribs hurt as I yell back. I'm here Blume!
Something hostile suddenly slides like an avalanche over the slopes of the mountain and pushes me away.
When I recover my balance and manage to stand up, they're gone much further. I hold on tighter onto the axe I can barely carry and restart running.
~
Behind me are the leftovers of the dead people seen everywhere around. They now are running on all four after me, remaining flesh and bones melting as they go. Ahead there's a sudden storm falling against me and slowing me down.
Soon to be atop the place, the young man is bringing the likely unwilling host of Blume toward her sacrifice. An offering to a monster holding them both between its jaws...
It's my fault that Blume now risks being devoured body and soul. I won't let it happen!
I rush ahead and climb the slippery paths barefoot, a downpour now slowing me down.
One of the monsters behind is about to reach me but I evade its grasp by pulling myself up a rock in time.
As it tries to do the same, I bash its already broken head with the blunt side of the axe.
It doesn't make it fall unfortunately as I wished it to. It's just a puppet now, whose head doesn't matter.
I cut its first hand, striking the rock without restraint, then move on as it slips back and down.
I'm reaching the old castle, ruins of a little fort from another age.
Lightning strikes somewhere close. The rain is getting lighter, and the sky clearer as we're above the black fog now. I can see better and run in the courtyard.
The man is there, bringing the girl close to a kind of small garden.
Some flowers bloom amongst a few trees. The trees are all dead but one.
I see it moving as I'm running for them.
Something is thrown at me. I avoid it and feel as if a canon had fired right at me. The wind suddenly deafened me and I felt the gust of air impact my balance.
The man is bewildered and wondering about what to do between us.
The black thing is pushing the roots of the tree out, and grabbing the girl. She screams with her own voice and I recognise Blume's voice overlapping with her.
The man faces me as I run for him on my way. He's younger than me. He's fit, and he's desperate enough to believe there is no other way for him now.
Yet I'm the one running like a crazy vagrant in rags, axe in hands and insanity in the eye; so he's a little uncertain about how to react. I would have a second of doubt too if I were him.
I signal him to move out of my way and yell it with surprising strength.
In the ends, he steps aside and lets me reach the real monstrous being of this place.
The girl is halfway buried now, being pulled in the ground by the roots of the tree.
It's just a small fruit tree, it breaks apart in pieces when I try to chop it down to hurt it.
It's still raining. I broke the trunk into pieces and the tree fell. Everything is turning darker though as if a fountain of ink had begun spilling its content with force into the air.
I dive though, and grab the girl's leg. I yell at Blume to burn everything while keeping hold onto that cold skin.
Something goes through. The ground trembles. The thunder suddenly strikes me.
I feel my heart stop and all my nerves and muscles spasm and stop responding for a moment.
Everything is lost in the ink. I hold on tighter onto the girl's leg. The ground is trembling. I try pulling her out even if I have to break her leg doing so.
I'm suffocating.
The ground is trembling again. Earthquakes?
I give it all. I can feel my blood beginning to spill around me from wounds I didn't notice before.
I manage to rip her away from the ground warming up. She's unconscious. I'm not sure about how come I still am.
I wish I had a bomb or dynamite to drop between the open roots of the monster. Unfortunately I don't.
I can feel the presence of a ribbon from Blume pointing in that direction.
She's as mad angry as me.
It explodes. There's blinding light and fire. We're flying away and rolling on the ground.
I held the child along and we crash against the wall of the main building a few metres back.
I'm passing out but I see fire burning the thing and all its garden parts, right before losing sight.
~
I wake up as I heard screaming suddenly.
I can hardly move. The sky is clear and bright.
The girl is standing there, and trying to kill the man with the axe.
He's bleeding, crawling, holding a wound on his arm.
She yells at him with a very hoarse voice. She attacks him again, and chops halfway through his leg. He's screaming.
She delivers a final blow to his head before I can say anything.
She killed him.
She's walking toward me, still sobbing.
She's thankfully dropping the axe halfway from me.
I'm lying there, wounded. I see that the tree has burnt well, along with their roots below, that's reassuring.
As she reaches me, she's crying not for me but for all she's been through.
She tries to move me and it hurts a lot. I manage to sit with her help.
I'm looking as disgusting and beastly as her right now.
I don't get what she's saying... All I can say is that it's over now.
R - It's over...
She sits too and resumes crying. I breathe in. I can breathe moderately normally at long last. I close my eye and enjoy the delicious air again.
It feels as if I hadn't the pleasure to breathe fresh air for days...
I know Blume is safe now, no matter where her main physical body can be currently.
We're safe...
~
We can rest a little before we have to figure what to do. Or what truly happened on this awful island place lately; what happened to all of us...
Maybe we'll be better not knowing. I might.
I fall asleep again rapidly since everything is now calm again. I need to rest for a little while...
In my head, as I sleep, I see Blume.
She's smiling a little.
She says she doesn't want to bother me while I rest, but that I did it right, I saved her, and she's glad that we're together again.
She missed me...
I missed you too... No matter how short this nightmare we just went through has been...
I missed you...
~