Chapter 87

Their Story

The doe bent forward, looming over the corpse while the crow continued to stare at Sylas. White tendrils of light emerged from the doe’s abyss-like black eyes, brightening the entire forest and even blinding him due to the sheer intensity of light. A few moments later, when he opened his eyes, he saw that the doe was standing upright once more, but that the corpse was gone.

The two animals were looking at him, silent once more. Sylas himself was many things--curious, confused, terrified--and remained silent himself. It was a strange stare-off of sorts, rooted in ethereal silence beyond comprehension. Time didn’t pass--at least Sylas felt so. It seemed grounded by the feet of the doe and the wings of the crow, as though obeying the strange animals.

There were no other sounds--not the wind, not the howls, not the rattling of the branches and the trees, and not even the crackling of the fire just behind him. The longer he stared and the longer he stood within the moment, the more did Sylas realize that... he’d been taken elsewhere. This wasn’t the world he knew. Magic... the energy was everywhere. All around him. Tiny motes of light emerged like droplets of rain, but they did not fail--they floated around him, dancing like tiny wisps. They laughed. Shone. Touched him and rushed about in strange, eerie excitement.

“They like him, dear doe,” the crow said.

“They take to him, dear crow,” the doe said.

“Why do they take to him?” the crow asked.

“For he is bereaved,” the doe replied.

“What is bereaved?”

“Broken.”

“Broken?”

“Broken,” the doe said. All the while, Sylas’ eyes danced from the two of them to the wisps of light dancing about. Some landed on his nose, affording him a closer look--they were sprites, he realized. Tiny, seahorse-like creatures that shone in pure white and silver. Their tiny, beady eyes looked curiously at them, their snouts occasionally expanding and contracting, though no sound came out.

“C-c-an... can I ask,” he stuttered. “What... what is going on?”

“He speaks, dear doe,” the crow said.

“He has a tongue, dear crow,” the doe said.

“Others never spoke. Why?” the crow asked.

“They had nothing to say,” the doe replied.

“Why does he have something to say?” the crow asked.

“For he is one of those who unsaw,” the doe replied.

The doe suddenly began to strut forward, though, beyond eerily, its hoofs didn’t leave prints in the snow--nor did they make any sounds. Beyond the resplendent coating of the white fur and the wholly black eyes, there seemed to be no difference from the does Sylas was familiar with. And yet, he hardly ever froze in place before.

The creature stooped a foot or so in front of Sylas, allowing him to take a closer look at the crow--its feathers were wholly black, seemingly melded together in a singular mass, and its beak was in a gradient silver. What stood out the most were its eyes--they were white, akin to doe's winter coat.

“It is not your time,” the doe said.

“It is not his time?” the crow asked.

“It is not his time,” the doe reaffirmed.

“But he burns.”

“He burns of pain.”

“He screams.”

“He screams of scars.”

“He is strange, dear doe.”

“He is Sworn, dear crow.”

“Do you see his story, dear doe?” the crow asked.

“I see his story, dear crow,” the doe replied.

“What is his story?”

“His story is of a long, heavy road,” the doe said. “With winds and bends and tears. His story is of pain, yet hope. Of dread, yet wonder. Of fire that kills, yet births. Of hate, yet forgiveness. Anger, yet tranquility.”

“His story sounds like their story, dear doe,” the crow said.

“It is like all stories, dear crow," the doe said. All the while, neither of the two animals ever broke their gaze with Sylas'. "His own.”

“Our story is not like all stories, dear doe.”

“We do not have a story, dear crow.”

“What do we have?”

“Their stories.”

“Tell me their story, dear doe.”

“Their story is one of a long, heavy road," the doe said, turning around and slowly strutting away, unhurried, the light and darkness following its footsteps. "With winds and bends and tears. Their story is of pain, yet hope. Of dread, yet wonder. Of fire that kills, yet births. Of hate, yet forgiveness. Anger, yet tranquility.”

“Their story hurts, dear doe.”

“How does the hurt feel, dear crow?” what snapped Sylas out of his stupor was the realization that it was the first time that the doe asked a question.

“Like a loss not my own, dear doe,” the crow replied. “For even if all my feathers were to fall, seeing you hurt would hurt me more.”

“You love your feathers, dear crow.”

“I love you more, dearest doe.”

Sylas gasped like a drowned man surfaced once more. He began to breathe swiftly and heavily, realizing he was doused in sweat. The scenery... had returned to normal. The corpse was still there. The fire crackled. The wind howled. The snow fell. It was as though everything he experienced... was a strange, fever dream. But it wasn't. He knew it wasn't. It couldn't have been.

Looking about, the wisps, the tiny motes of beautiful light shaped like seahorses were also gone. He was back in reality. His reality, anyhow. As for where he had gone to for that brief period of time... he could only wonder. Thinking back, he realized another anomaly--he felt... blissful. For that brief period of time where he was stationary, barely uttering a single sentence, despite the confusion and the fear he felt on the surface, deep down... he was calm. It was as though for the duration of his stay, that world purged his anger, his hate, the unquenchable madness that burned inside his veins like a fire that could not be put out.

He stumbled back and fell, all strength disappearing from his legs. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t process what he had experienced. Despite all the strange things he had seen, and all the myriad of ways those things made him feel, nothing he’d seen or experienced quite measured up--not his immortality, not the chained corpse hanging from the sky, not the child-hidden-in-the-Thrall, not the Prince’s eyes, not even that one time Ryne blew up the entire castle. Not even the shadows, the one thing that remained affirmed inside his mind despite the fact that they had been gone for so long... nothing measured up.

Without realizing it immediately, he'd begun to shake--after all, sweating like mad in the frosted winds of winter this cold wasn’t a recipe for good health. Rather than trying to recover and heal through the potential frostbite, he elected to end his life instead, deciding to return here once more. He wanted to meet the doe and the crow once again. In fact, he had a strange longing to meet them, one that ran from the depths of his soul. That longing seemed to be the solitary thing capable of drowning out his pain and self-hate and the seas of anger within.

You have died.

Save Point ‘Death’ has been initialized.

"AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!!!!" Ryne's painful scream woke him to reality. He had to live through it all again. No matter how many times he'd seen it by now... it still hurt. It still burned like putting a hand directly into the fire. There was no cure for it, he knew. He'd hurt and burn each and every time he loaded up this save. But... he had to feel it. All of it.

Hurrying once again and helping as many people as possible, organizing the rescue efforts alongside Derrek, he settled back inside his and Valen’s room, looking out through the window at the falling night. He couldn’t get them out of his head--he had to see them. Immediately.

Dropping everything and sneaking out during the dead of the night, he sprinted through the forest as quickly as he could, barely taking a break. What confused him, however, was that he never ran into the hooded man. Not after the first day. Or the second. Or midway through the third when he came upon the same place he found him the last loop. He... wasn’t there. Nor was the campfire. Nor were any signs of anyone being here.

“Did... did I accidentally pass him?” Sylas mused aloud, deciding to hang around for a few days in case he did, in fact, pass him accidentally in his hurry.

The fourth day came and passed, fifth, sixth... it was on the tenth day that Sylas gave up. He knew that the hooded man wouldn't be coming. It's happened again--the loop has changed. The first time it happened, he didn't question it--largely because he couldn't. In fact, he simply attributed it to the 'system' doing something behind the scenes since the two shadows far eclipsed what he could handle at the time.

This, however... was different. The doe and the crow did something to the man--that light that blinded him, Sylas recalled. Whatever they did... the man was gone.

“I’ll check again just to play it safe,” he mumbled. “Playing through the loop as closely as I can to the first time. But first...” he added, looking further north and beyond the trees.

The doe and the crow he knew, whatever they may be, were so far beyond his comprehension it was pointless to tangle. What wasn’t, however, at least compared to them, was the Well and what was happening beyond the forest.

Rather than sneaking through, he casually strolled through the last part of the forest and landed back inside the valley that stretched between the two mountains. He immediately paused at the very brink, realizing something he hadn’t noticed before--there was a tiny, barely-visible veneer extending as far as his eyes could see to his left and his right. While outside the ‘curtain’, the valley appeared barren and lifeless, like the first time they came here. In fact, he couldn’t even see the cabin.

However, as soon as he stepped through the 'curtain', the world whistled free, expanding. Buildings emerged, all made out of blackstone, an entire city with towers and spires and howling, circular gates with seemingly hundreds of mechanisms and gears built into their frame floating in the sky, and sailor's ships that were flying, their rotted wood bleeding liquid amber, with some anchored by thick, ebony chains to the ground.

At the center of it all, an obelisk extending some two-three thousand feet into the sky shimmered and shone in dark crimson, its gravitas seemingly pulling the entire world toward it.

Sylas' lisp parted into a gap, his eyes widening in shock, their attention slowly going past the obelisk and further into the sky where Sylas saw yet another scene that nearly broke him: there, suspended in the sky, was a throne made of bones, the lancet arch shaped like a series of chains, extending some hundred feet, bending into a winged crest rail. Sitting upon the throne was the very same figure that Sylas saw hanging from the sky--the chains were still there, seemingly trying to wrestle him back into the void. It was there that Sylas realized what he had stumbled upon, as well as they realized he'd stumbled upon them.

“I’m so fucking done with this world, man...” he cried out lowly, hearing the howling roars of the dead and the rapidly approaching shadows swell from within the city.