IX

Darkness. All-encroaching, all-devouring. Endless. Void that stretches on from the beginning of time to the end of eternity. The natural conclusion of all things.

It is a bizarre sensation to be a part of that void. You feel nothing, see nothing, but you are aware of the sensation. It is strange, yet comforting at the same time. Knowing, feeling, the emptiness of it all. It is like swimming in an infinite, dark ocean. You could wander it forever and never have moved at all. You feel, maybe for the first time, a part of something much bigger than yourself. You think, perhaps, you should be scared. Perhaps you should be absolutely terrified. But you are not.

Maybe this is death? You wonder. The thought does not scare you as much as you thought it would. Why do you think that is?

You vaguely remember what it meant to be awake. The ache of a body. The pain and hopelessness of what came before. The longing and hurting and clawing: always running, always frightened, always never good enough.

With time – But what is time? Seconds become eternities in the void. Eternities pass in the blink of an eye – you come to realize that you do not miss it at all. This sinking sensation is all you care about now. Unbecoming. It is all that matters. It is all that ever was.

Then there is the speck.

A tiny light in the darkness. A star? No, just a light, playing pretend.

It disturbs the tranquillity of the void. It is an alien intrusion, come to take you back. You don’t want to go back. Your first instinct is to run, but you know this is just a daydream from when you were still a thing. There is no running. There is no body to run with.

The speck draws nearer.

It makes you uncomfortable. Is that still a sensation you can feel? It means you harm, you know this. But there is nowhere to escape to. It will always find you, here on the shores of eternity. It will always come to take you back.

No, you try and say. Leave me alone! But there are no words in the void.

The speck is upon you now, filling the darkness with white light. Ice-cold, white light. The speck begins to take form. It shifts and morphs before you. A hand reaches towards you and you recoil from it, shrivel up into the warmth of the blackness. You know it means you harm even if you do not know what it is.

The speck becomes a man. Middle-aged and bearded. You recognize this man from somewhere, but you can’t quite place where from. It is familiar to you, yet foreign at the same time.

The man’s hand reaches for you. It grabs the memory of a face. Your face. It pulls you from the embrace of the darkness, rips you from your place of comfort. You suddenly remember what it means to have a body. Small and weak and fragile. The man pulls your memory of a body out of the void and you remember what it means to feel fear. What it means to cower before this giant looming over you. It says something to you with a mouth it does not have, but you cannot hear it.

And then the giant catches fires. Slowly at first. Hair by hair, which ignites into a towering inferno, pushing the sanctuary of the emptiness far away from you. You remember fire. You remember the heat of it. It burns your small, weak memory of a body. It brings pain: the one thing you fear most of all. You can do nothing as the giant glares at you with its burning eyes. Mocking you. Hurting you. All around you, the void is ablaze. And you remember this sensation all too well. It has been haunting your dreams since it happened. The nightmare of burning.

There is no sound in the void, but you can hear the screams. Are they yours or someone else’s? You will never know. You do not want to know.

The ground under your memory of a body changes. It too catches fire. It becomes burning wood and ashes. It becomes heat and remembrance. The giant in front of you becomes a demon, roaring at you. You cannot hear the roar, but you know it is doing so.

It attacks you.

It rips your memory of a body apart with claws of cinder. You try and fight, but you do not remember how. You can only observe helplessly as it tears you apart, breaking the memory of arms off. Scratching into the memory of a stomach. You can only feel the pain. You can only scream silently.

You become aware that there are more of them. Demons all around you – watching and laughing. They spring from the smoky haze of the fire. Mocking and jeering. Revelling in your pain and destruction. They tear at other shapeless masses, pulling more and more of them from the ash and smoke. You do not know who or what these masses are but you feel a deep well of sadness, cutting through your own pain like an icy dagger. You can only watch helplessly as the demons begin devouring these masses. Little by little, tearing chunks of them off, shredding them to pieces before your eyes. And you can do nothing but watch. You can do nothing but feel the sadness and grief.

And then you hear a voice. A whisper in the darkness.

It says your name.

It says, Come to me… in a voice like the rasping of old parchment. It is a voice you have never heard, one that has never been used. It is a voice like the slithering of snake, dry and crackling.

You look around and you see it, through the smoke. A brilliant vermillion light, shining like a sun amidst the carnage all around you. It is a warmth and radiance that the fire can only aspire to be. A gemstone, twinkling and glittering in the memory of flames. It is calling to you. It wants you. It wants to be whole.

You reach out with the memory of a hand…

*

‘—ha?’

Come to me…

‘—roha?’

Come to me.

‘Aroha!’

Come to me!

Aroha became aware of sudden, coursing pain in the back of her head. A throbbing pain, like a needle being driven into her skull. She opened her eyes slowly, her vision swimming in a sea of haze and sleep. She could vaguely make out a figure staring down at her in the dim light of the room but she couldn’t make out the features. She closed her eyes again, screwed them tight to try and rid herself of the pressing headache she was experiencing. She became aware of a ringing noise, somewhere far off in the distance, persistent and endless. She didn’t know what was making the noise, but it didn’t help her headache at all.

‘Aroha?’ the person over her repeated, softer this time. ‘Can you hear me?’

She opened her eyes again. She lifted her hand to wipe her eyes and clear her vision and felt a strange sensation of weightlessness. It felt like her hand didn’t even belong to her. Like she was controlling a puppet on a string, not her own body. She wiped her face, realizing for the first time that there was a coarse linen material wrapped across her forehead. She felt it, but at the same time, she did not. Her hand told her it was there, but her face did not feel it at all. She tried to sit up, but her head felt far too heavy. Just the act of trying made it spin. She felt as if she were melting into the ground, the world around her turning on its own accord.

‘Don’t try and sit up,’ the person said.

They laid one hand on her forehead and another on her chest. It felt good, like an anchor holding her in place while the world around her went crazy. She tried to grab the hand on her chest but her arms wouldn’t cooperate.

‘Was— wha— happening?’ she mumbled.

‘You’ve had an accident,’ the person answered. ‘Just relax.’ She was starting to recognize the voice, but the name and face still escaped her.

She saw them look up at something behind her and make a “come here” motion to it. She wanted to see what was going on, but she knew she was just going to make the room turn more if she did. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes. The spinning was starting to make her nauseous.

‘Aroha? Hey, stay with me!’ the voice said. She could hear the urgency in it, but she didn’t feel like opening her eyes right at that moment.

‘Mmmm still… here,’ she muttered blearily to try and calm the person down. ‘Room just making me… sick.’

A second voice joined the first. This one was unmistakably female. It asked, ‘Did she wake up? Aroha?’

‘Hmmm,’ Aroha answered in response to her name.

The first voice whispered, ‘She was having some kind of nightmare. Twitching and moaning. It was awful. I don’t know what to do… She was here for a second, but she seems out of it. What can we do?’ They were trying to not let Aroha hear them, but she did.

‘Aroha? Honey? Can you sit up?’ the second voice asked her. She felt a hand brush her cheek lightly.

Someone lifted her arm up, wriggled a hand underneath her and lifted her slowly up into a sitting position. Her head still felt heavy and floppy and she couldn’t lift it up properly.

‘Open your eyes, honey,’ the second voice commanded.

She obeyed, but she still couldn’t make out the people staring at her or the dim room in general. She was leaning on one of them, their hand placed firmly in the small of her back to support her. The other was gazing directly at her, on their knees in front of her.

‘Do you know where you are? Do you remember what happened?’ the person in front of her asked.

Aroha thought about this for a while. The hand on her back was anchoring her in place so the room had stopped spinning, but the incessant needling of the headache made it hard for her concentrate. Eventually, she responded with, ‘Treasure?’

The person in front her nodded. ‘Yes, good. You were searching for treasure. Do you remember anything else?’

‘Can’t… see,’ Aroha murmured. She felt suddenly very tired. She tried to lie back down, but the hand on her back kept her up. She furrowed her brow, ‘Mmmm tired. Let me sleep.’

‘No, no, not yet,’ the person in front of her said. She turned to someone off to the side and said, ‘Bring some water.’

A third figure entered Aroha’s field of vision. They crept in from the side, seeming awkward and hesitant. They noticed Aroha looking at them and said softly, ‘Hey Aroha… Are ye okay?’

‘Mmmm okay…’ she answered drowsily, then repeated nonchalantly, ‘Can’t see.’

‘Let me fix that for ye,’ the person said.

They looked at the person in front of her and the person next to her, almost as if looking for confirmation to proceed. The person in front of Aroha shifted over to allow the new figure to kneel down in front of her. Aroha saw the new person pour some liquid in one hand, which they gently splashed on her face. She closed her eyes and felt the rough hand try its best to wash her face with the cool liquid. She felt them pinch the bridge of her nose, pulling the sleep from the corners of her eyes. It was actually refreshing and helped the pounding in her head and sleepiness in her body recede just a little.

‘Is that better?’ they asked.

Aroha opened her eyes and couldn’t immediately tell the difference. It took a little while, but her vision eventually did slowly start to sink back into place and she was no longer swimming in a pool of murky dimness.

She could clearly make out the people in front of her now. There was Damien, kneeling with a concerned, timid look on his face, his hands dripping wet with water. There was Penelope on the side, still on her knees and watching Aroha’s face intently. She turned to look at the person holding her up and saw it was Rylan, his face grim and worried. She let her head flop down on his familiar, comforting shoulder.

‘Can you see? Is it better?’ he asked her in a whisper.

‘Hmmm… yes,’ she replied softly. ‘Much better.’

Penelope scuttled back over on her hands and knees, pushing Damien out of the way so that she could look Aroha in the eyes. She seemed to examine her whole face meticulously, dissecting Aroha’s features. Aroha followed her movements with interest.

‘How are you feeling, honey?’ she asked after her examination was over.

‘Mmmm, still sleepy. Headache…’ Aroha responded. She found she couldn’t lift her head from Rylan’s shoulder. It was too comfortable.

‘Anything else?’

Aroha thought about this for a moment. ‘Room’s not spinning anymore.’

‘Can you move? Can you sit up on your own? Could you stand?’

‘No,’ Aroha said, furrowing her brow at Penelope. ‘Don’t want to.’

‘Why not?’ Penelope asked, a quizzical look on her face.

‘Body feels weird. Hmmm… Can’t lift my head. Can’t move my arms…’

‘Okay… okay, that’s fine. Just take it easy.’ Even as she said these words, Aroha could see that Penelope did not believe them. She was obviously very worried about what she was hearing.

‘Tell me,’ Penelope continued, ‘what do you remember? Everything. Every little detail.’

‘We were…’ Aroha began before trailing off. She fell into silence and had to take some time to think about it properly before continuing, ‘looking for treasure? Damien and me. There was a library… And a hidden room… And gold everywhere. There was something… wrong. I remember…’ she scowled at the ground as she tried to recall exactly what had bothered her about the room.

‘There was something… wrong,’ she repeated. ‘Then it was black. Then I woke up. What happened?’

‘Um…’ Penelope hesitated. She turned to Damien. ‘Do you want to tell her?’

Damien nodded solemnly. He looked at Aroha with sadness in his eyes and she didn’t like it. ‘It was all me own fault, Aroha. Ye have no idea how sorry I am ye got hurt. I didn’t mean for anythin’ like this to happen. There was a gemstone, on an altar… an’ I got greedy… But it was trapped or somethin’. There was an explosion an’— an’ ye hit ye head. Pretty bad. Ye’ve been unconscious now for almost a week now, Aroha. Do ye understand?’

Aroha thought about this new information for a while. The migraine made it incredibly hard to concentrate, but she felt like she was starting to remember bits and pieces of what happened. She remembered Damien at the altar. She remembered screaming something at him as he reached out his hand. She couldn’t picture the gem he was talking about at all though. It was just a blank space in her mind. She knew she had seen it, but she couldn’t recall anything about it.

And then this thought sprang up in her head. Something pressing, like a worm eating away at the back of her mind: Come to me…

‘Trap?’ she asked, trying to make sense of everything. ‘There was… an explosion?’

‘Aye,’ Damien said softly. ‘I’m terribly sorry Aroha. I should’ve knew better, should’ve done better. It’s my fault ye got hurt so bad.’

Aroha sighed. ‘’s not your fault, Damien. You couldn’t have known…’

‘Aye, but I still should’ve done better. I’m sorry…’

‘’s okay, Damien.’

Silence fell on the party as nobody knew quite what to say or do next. Aroha wanted to go back to sleep but Rylan still would not let her lie back down.

‘Do you want something to eat? Something to drink? We’ve been trying to feed you while you were out, but you haven’t taken much in,’ Penelope piped up.

Upon hearing these words, Aroha realized that she was actually starving and quite parched. ‘Yes,’ she said.

Penelope disappeared from her vision for a while. Damien smiled at her awkwardly, but she noticed his eyes darted over in Rylan’s direction quite often. She tilted her head back to look up at Rylan’s face.

He glanced down at her and smiled weakly, ‘Everything okay? Are you comfortable?’

She tried to nod, but she didn’t know if she actually did it or not, so she answered with, ‘Very comfortable. You have good shoulders.’

He smiled at this. A genuine smile this time. ‘Thank you,’ he chuckled.

‘Can you stop that ringing? ‘s starting to get a little much.’

The smile faded almost immediately. ‘What ringing?’

‘That ringing,’ Aroha said, pausing for emphasis. ‘You hear it? Somewhere far off. ‘s been going for a while now.’

She saw him glance up at Damien. She followed his gaze and noticed Damien motion towards his ears. Damien saw her stare and stopped immediately. He donned his awkward grin once again and said, ‘Let me go look into that for ye.’

He too got up and disappeared somewhere behind her. She heard some frantic whispers from behind but couldn’t make out what was being said. She reasoned Damien must be talking with Penelope.

‘Hey Rylan?’ she asked, more wanting someone to talk to her so she didn’t fall asleep than anything else.

‘Yes?’

‘Have I really been sleeping for a week?’

She felt him sigh. ‘Yes. It was quite worrying actually.’

‘Mmm sorry… That’s a long time…’

‘Yes, it was… I’m glad you’re finally awake.’

‘I must be pretty smelly, huh?’ she said. She wanted to sniff to make sure, but she couldn’t. ‘Sorry ‘bout that.’

She felt him shift uncomfortably next to her. She could hear the hesitation in his voice as he replied, ‘No, you’re not. Uh, me and Penelope have been bathing you. Cleaning you up and all that. Redressing your bandages. Everything is fine.’

‘You?’

He cleared his throat, ‘Hmmm, yes. And Penelope.’

‘You saw me? Naked?’ she asked, feigning shock. She knew it would make him uncomfortable and it brought her a small sense of joy to do so. She couldn’t keep a smirk from her face.

Another shift. She knew he must be beet-red right about now. She tried to look up at him, but he averted his face. He couldn’t hide the redness on his cheeks and ears from her, however. ‘Yes. I mean, a little. I mean—’

‘And?’

‘And what?’ he said stiffly.

‘How was it?’

He cleared his throat again, shifting around more and more. ‘Um… Uh… I mean— I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She chuckled and closed her eyes. He seemed to settle down a little, becoming less rigid and uncomfortable. She felt like she could melt into him at that moment. The drowsiness was starting to creep back into her body. It made her head pound less and her limbs feel less peculiar in their unresponsiveness.

It was just soothing and calming and safe.

She could just drift off for a few minutes…

‘Aroha!’ she heard a voice scream at her.

She opened her eyes to see Penelope once again on her knees in front of her. ‘Don’t close your eyes just yet, okay,’ she continued tenderly. ‘Let’s have you eat something first.’

‘Okay,’ Aroha muttered. ‘Then sleep?’

‘Then we can see about sleep,’ was the reply. Penelope presented a bowl of stew to her. ‘Do you think you can hold it?’

Aroha tried to move her alien limbs. They still felt detached and foreign to her. She took the bowl in her hands. She could vaguely feel the heat from it but it felt far-off, like she was experiencing the sensation from someone else’s point of view, not as herself. She lifted a spoonful of the stew to her mouth and swallowed it, chewing the meat slowly. She became aware that the stew was too hot as it burnt the roof of her mouth and tongue, but again, it didn’t feel like her sensation.

‘’oo hot,’ she said to Penelope, who had been watching her every movement with great concern and interest. Her tongue felt thick and strange in her own mouth.

‘Oh no, honey,’ Penelope cooed. ‘Give it here, I’ll feed it to you.’

Penelope fed her the stew slowly, blowing on every spoonful carefully before giving it to her. She made sure Aroha swallowed every last bit of it. It did make her feel much better. She could feel the strength returning to her limbs now, like she was properly returning to her own body. She could move her head properly, finally being able to lift it off Rylan’s shoulder and support it on her own. Even the migraine subsided considerably until it was nothing more than a dull ache in the back of her head. With the headache receding, her thoughts also started to fall back into place more easily.

‘It is good?’ Penelope asked, smiling as she watched the strength returning to her friend.

‘Very. You made it?’

‘No, it was actually Damien’s turn to cook today. I was just as surprised as you.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she heard him say indignantly from somewhere behind her.

She was finally able to turn around and see the rest of the campsite. They were still in the foyer of the fort and it looked like they had been for a while. A week, I suppose, Aroha reasoned.

‘Have you explored the rest of the ruins?’ she asked between mouthfuls of stew.

Rylan shook his head and sighed, ‘No, we decided not to. We’re just going to move on, but we’ll wait until you’re healed up properly.’

‘What? Why?’

Rylan looked at her, his eyes serious and sad. She could see how bloodshot they were now that she could look at him properly. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. ‘Aroha, you have no idea how scary it was to see you like that. We were all so worried. We just want to get out of this place. I don’t want you to get hurt like that again…’

Aroha nodded, somewhat dejected despite herself. ‘Was the treasure we found in the library enough then?’

Rylan looked at Penelope. He wiped his face. ‘Penelope and Damien can fill you in on that if you want. I think I’m going to get some sleep.’ He embraced Aroha in a warm hug. She was still too tired and weak to return it. ‘I’m glad you’re awake. Don’t ever scare me like that again.’

He stood up and wandered off behind Aroha. She turned to Penelope, who watched Rylan walk off to his bed and collapse in it.

‘What happened?’ Aroha asked, accepting a last spoonful of stew.

Penelope sighed. ‘Well, you’ve been asleep for a week and he hasn’t slept in a week. He’s been watching over you this whole time. Refused to rest until he knew you were going to be okay.’

‘Really?’

Penelope wiped some rogue stew from Aroha’s chin and the side of her lips and licked it off her finger absentmindedly. ‘Really.’

‘As for what happened with the treasure…’ she continued vaguely.

She looked over Aroha’s shoulder and waved to Damien to come back over. The man returned and sat cross-legged next to her. The pair told Aroha the full tale of what had occurred after she had been knocked unconscious, sparing no detail. After they had brought her up to speed on the last week of the group’s adventure, Penelope decided that Aroha was fine to go back to sleep for a little while.

She got into the bedroll next to Aroha and snuggled her from behind. Aroha watched Damien go back over to the fire and poke at it idly. He caught her looking his way and smiled at her, motioning for her to go to sleep. She looked over at Rylan’s bedroll and listened to him snoring lightly for a while, his blanket rising and falling rhythmically. She closed her eyes and let the drowsiness take her once again. She drifted off back into dreams, cradled in the warmth of Penelope’s body and the sweet, familiar scent of her friend mixed with the smokiness of burning wood. This was enough to keep the nightmares at bay, at least for now.