“We are lost.”
“We aren’t lost! I know exactly where we are going.”
“Where?”
“Well…” It looked up to the deep purple to black sky, which had remained unchanged throughout the journey. It mimicked licking a finger to test the breeze despite the fact that it had no mouth, no consistent hand shape, and that there had never been any wind to tussle Hunter’s fur in these dead lands. “It fell over there. Poor thing misfired, but at least not into the Crest.”
“What does that mean?” Hunter asked, trying as hard as he could to be nonchalant. The creature traveling with him occasionally dispensed knowledge, though it seemed the more conscious they were of remembering something, the faster their remembrance faded.
“That’s the bad place!” The thing exclaimed. “You wouldn’t have survived long if you’d ended up there. No, no, very bad. I came here from there and it didn’t turn out well for me.” Saying this, it then bent down, pried up a piece of the otherwise unbreakable, mirror-like floor, and skipped it into the distance like a flat stone on water.
“How did you do that?” Hunter asked incredulously. If the thing could throw pieces of the floor, that would at least add something to the rare fights the strange creatures here provoked. Moreso, if it could tear up the floor, could it make a space for Hunter to leave through? He’d floated up out of the now solid surface after his death, but then again he’d begun to sink back through it after initially rejecting this space. Going beneath the surface might not be the best idea.
“I don’t know. I am very sorry, again, about my head problems.”
“Fine,” Hunter growled, lowering his head as they continued moving to where that shooting star had fallen earlier. A thought struck him then, and he asked, “How long have we been walking?”
“Hmm?” the thing asked, as if it hadn’t heard him.
“How long?”
“Oh, you’re asking about time.” The formless silhouette tilted its head sideways at that as an arm phased through the front to scratch at the back of the head. “Time. I think I’m not supposed to like him, but I don’t remember why.”
Hunter quickly discarded the line of questioning since he’d gotten one of the crazier answers than normal. The thing still hadn’t been aggressive, the sole exception to what they’d come across here, but neither were they reliable. He was worried that staying here for so long would do the same to him. There was still that strange sense that he’d been here before and had forgotten things, people. Not again. Never again.
The ringcat began bounding forwards as the thing followed, not running but floating through the air as if being pulled by a hook attached to the center of its chest. The shifting limbs and blob of a head trailed behind, lengthening ever so slightly. “I don’t know if this will get us there faster.”
“Should I not run?”
“Oh, you can. I’m just saying I don’t know if this will do anything.”
Hunter would have sighed in annoyance if his body still worked like that. If he still had a body. Bad thoughts. He shook his head mid-run and continued charging to where the light was now faintly visible on the horizon. It was pure light, and perhaps white was the right color for it if it was shining in the real world. Here, it was just more brightness on the horizon than normal, the drained nature of both his senses and surroundings not providing the right context for his mind to attribute more detail.
The thing next to him wanted this and, more importantly, thought it would help Daniel. That was the only reason he wasn’t with his friend now, if only in spirit. More time passed as he charged forward, sustaining the run for longer than even his Grown and then awakened body in life could sustain. A few of the glowing enemies populated the surroundings at times, but Hunter ignored them. There was no joy in hunts now, only danger, not unless Daniel was nearby and needed him.
“Time,” the thing said after the pair had continued traveling for who knew how long. “It’s a funny thing. I don’t think it’s the right word, but it’s also the right word. I think we changed it? It doesn’t fit as much as it once did. I liked the old way better.”
“You’re still thinking about that?”
“Yes!” the thing gasped. “I have been thinking about it ever since you last asked! It is working.”
“What do you remember?”
“What do I remember?” it asked as if Hunter was supposed to know.
“About time.”
“That’s not the right word.”
“What is?”
“What is what?”
Hunter fully stopped and lay down as he got as close as he could to a headache, burying his head in his paws. He stayed like that for what he was sure was only a few moments, but when he picked his head back up the thing was gone. “Where are you?” he called out to the empty not-air.
“Here!” Hunter jumped back as the thing appeared from the ground, rising from just in front of him.
“How are you doing that!?” he asked angrily, losing all of his patience. The surface below him had been completely solid since he’d committed to remaining behind for his friends, yet this strange creature could both break it and move through it without any concerns of sinking all the way down to… something.
“I just can,” the thing shrugged, nonplussed at Hunter’s frustration. It then turned and exclaimed, “Oh! We’re here. Not first though. That’s too bad.”
Hunter turned his head and blinked as he saw a disruption to the calm reflective surface under him approaching in the distance despite him not moving. As soon as he realized this the distant crater stopped, though the thing continued moving towards it for a short distance before coming back. “You don’t want to go anymore?” It sounded disappointed.
“I was moving without moving?”
“Yes! That’s what I wanted to say earlier. You didn’t need to run. Things don’t work here like other places.” It moved one of its hands to its featureless face as if blocking the sun from its eyes, peering at the broken depression in the ground. “We got here faster than I thought. You wanted to help me. Thank you!”
Hunter would have taken longer to figure out what the thing meant if there wasn’t a small part of Daniel always inside of him, mulling things over and using complicated words like mulling while Hunter focused on killing things. If their personalities hadn’t mixed slightly from the Empathic Link, he might have never had the patience for the thing. “Desire is speed,” Hunter ventured.
“Probably?” it said this with a frown in the voice, if not the face, still ‘looking’ ahead. “That wanted to get here faster, though. Poor thing. We can still save it, though.”
“Is it dangerous?” Hunter asked. He wasn’t one to back down from fights, and he’d been superior to everything he’d fought here thus far, but a part of him was urging caution as he still didn’t know everything about his surroundings. I am strong, but not the strongest.
“Oh, yes! And no.” It was an answer at least, considering the thing had barely commented on the wolves. “It is, hmm. Not like the things in the Crest, but more than empty. Less than us. Does that make sense?”
“No.”
“Sorry.” The thing sat down, though at the same time it began moving slowly to the hole. “Let me think. It only has one or two? You have six, which is surprising, for some reason. I didn’t help you do that, did I?”
Hunter just stared at the thing uncomprehendingly as he followed. He still couldn’t connect how his speed adjusted to how much he wanted to move since normally that was what his legs were for. “You aren’t talking about the light, are you?”
“Oh? Oh, no, that has three. Very good. I can see why the other wants it. It misfired too, but too long ago for me to help.”
“What did?”
“A spirit.” The thing turned in place, still moving forward, and said it like it was obvious, only to then turn self-reflective. “Yes, I’m sure about that. Something’s changing. It’s helping me. You’re helping me, but something else is too. It’s like this place is becoming more real. Reconnected. Hmm.”
It stopped again, now only what Hunter would say was 60 meters from the hole if he was back in the real world. The crater that the light’s landing had caused broke the infinite reflective ground, and where it shattered there were chunks of completely translucent reflective crystal sticking out of the sides of the hole and scattered around the bottom. The floor was slowly repairing itself, these shards sinking back and smoothing out.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Inside the hole were two things. The first was the phantom light Hunter had been seeing ever since it had fallen, now appearing as a shimmering orb. Something else was attacking it with a single limb, grasping just under the surface and trying to push deeper in. The orb itself was half of Hunter’s size, while the monster attacking it was twice his, roughly. He’d seen monsters and had been one for most of his life, but this was, well, more monstrous. The thing beside him gave Hunter a better to call it as it spoke almost breathlessly.
“A horror. We aren’t far from the Crest. It’s destroying itself to come here, but that spirit is worth it.”
Hunter looked at the assemblage of various limbs and body parts rolled into a vague ball shape, all colored deep purple and black. Unlike the sky, there was no gradient but a chaotic mix of colors. “Can I kill it?”
“It is easier for you to here than elsewhere.”
“Can you kill it?”
The thing picked at the ground, leveraging up another piece before dropping it. The section faded back into the ground and quickly smoothed over. “No. I shouldn’t. It’s not right.”
The short answer told Hunter it wouldn’t say anything else on the matter. “How do I kill it?”
“Just use your things! You have more.”
“My powers don’t work here.”
“No, your…” It searched for the word but couldn’t find it. “You used one before. Hunt. You have others, but I won’t know which ones until you use them.”
“Ok.” It’s not going to help me more on that. “Can this kill me?”
“No. But it can break your six, and you don’t want that to happen.”
“And this will help them, if we get the light?” The thing nodded and Hunter clenched his jaw, his long fangs pressing up against his lower lips in that way that always reminded him of the moment just before he’d pounce on unsuspecting prey. For my friends, he thought, moving quickly towards the lip of the crater.
The horror continued to be transfixed by the spirit it was trying to grasp until Hunter put a paw into the crater. He could faintly sense the jagged ends of the broken floor, but they didn’t feel like something that could hurt him. As he ruled out the shards as a weapon, the horror’s collection of appendages rotated towards him, the black and purple arm from some kind of lizard sickeningly distending to keep its grasp. It bellowed, but though the various mouths on it opened, he didn’t hear it come from any of them. It was like a mana burst from a strong power, an emanation of guarded hostility from the horror.
Good, Hunter thought. If he understood anything the thing behind him said, it was that he had more of these numbers than the spirit. Despite this, the horror was being protective of the prey it had caught as he approached, like it had come across another predator in the act of its devouring that it wasn’t sure it could take. This horror didn’t run, so it did have some confidence in itself.
Rip and tear, Hunter thought as he sized the horror up. He knew the weaknesses of Khare and instinctively compared the two. The fur on the back of his neck began to rise, though as always since coming here the buildup of Lion Charge didn’t start as he committed himself to the hunt. The horror sensed this and tried to drag the spirit with it as it approached, but the orb remained fixed in place at the center of the crater.
With another ghastly shriek, the horror abandoned the spirit to posture aggressively toward Hunter with its many limbs. One, a lanky arm that ended in an orifice rather than a hand or foot, shot a mostly purple, viscous ball at him that wasn’t able to go the full forty meters between them. Ranged attack. Will need to be careful.
He’d been injured before during the fights here, the wounds manifesting on his body without any pain, just a faint dulling of his mind and a slight weight that tried to drag him under. If he’d actually ‘died’ here, Hunter expected he’d lose himself and go wherever the bottom of the reflective surface led. For some reason, the look of that attack made him think it would do something worse.
That limb would be his first target. The horror was keeping it extended out from the main mass to continue firing it, while its other ones seemed either integral to its nature or meant for closer combat. His movements felt more natural now that he was hunting. He hadn’t noticed how odd traveling was here before since there was nothing to judge distance by, but as he approached the horror the thrumming of his legs moved him as they should.
Another globule shot at him when he’d covered most of the distance, and Hunter quickly jumped to the side to avoid it. The horror’s many eyes tracked him, the pupils, monstrous and mortal, widening as he evaded the attack. It fired two more in rapid succession, the arm generating less of the dangerous substance each time, but Hunter was able to weave around them even as the horror tried to lead its third shot.
Hunter pounced on the black and purple arm, sinking his fangs into it while piercing the flesh with his foreclaws. He began to swing his weight to twist and break the arm, but as he did so something inside the arm dribbled into his mouth, and the taste… Blood was something Hunter had never had a problem with. If anything, the taste of it from inflicting a grievous bite wound spurned him onwards to finish his prey. This, this was…
Part of him recoiled from what was transmitted into his mind by the contact of whatever substance this was, but to Hunter’s terror, not all of it did. The taste was memory, life, what he’d been denied ever since coming here. It wasn’t just taste either, but sights, scents, and other things twisted to infect his mind through his tongue.
One of the strongest impulses was an entire scene that played in his mind over seconds. He was something else in this memory, a tall two-legged creature with long hair and pointed ears watching children play from a hill above them. One of them, hers, fell and rolled an ankle, and Hunter rushed down to-
The ringcat tore himself out of the intrusive vision as his body moved in response to the threat his mind had come under. The other limbs had been attacking him while he’d been in reverie, doing relatively little to his form but worsening the infestation of foreign impulses. If it had engulfed him that might have been it, but he’d broken free. He’d even destroyed that ranged limb, although as he quickly backed up he was forced to reassess his chances.
Hunter didn’t remember the time he’d been under the control of the lake monster that had come out of the dragon, but he hated knowing what had happened to him, what he’d done while under control, regardless. He was a person. He was not a beast or a pet, he was Hunter. The place that conviction came from had been what saved him from whatever the horror had tried to do, but he wasn’t entirely immune to the effect either.
“Freedom!” the thing called from outside the crater, having watched the initial exchange. “That is a very nice one!”
Hunter growled softly as he bared his fangs, though he felt a resonance within himself from that word. He had freed himself from the horror, but it was more than that. He would never be controlled again. He was free. There was a strange confidence that built from the realization. Hunter knew this horror couldn’t fully take him over with whatever magic it was using, but that fluid inside of it still posed a threat. Areas on his body had been stained black-purple where it had clawed him and were taking longer to heal than they should.
I can’t use my fangs, he thought, grimacing internally at the resolution. His claws were sharp enough to cut into the horror, but they lacked the power of his crushing jaws. Hunter stalked to the side and the horror shifted, not quite circling with him as it stayed close to the spirit. “Can you move that?” he asked, eyeing the spirit. Hunter wanted to destroy this thing for what it had tried to do, but the smarter side of him remembered that wasn’t why he was here.
“Maybe? I’ll need time, and the horror won’t like what I’m going to do.”
“Fine, I’ll kill it,” Hunter murmured, pleased at the conclusion. Experimentally, he took a few bounding leaps like the alpha ringcat that had almost killed Daniel, watching how the eyes moved. The chain ended as he double-feinted, making it look like he redirected at the last moment before continuing where he originally intended. Several grasping arms, one looking uncomfortably like his own, reached out for where he would have been as Hunter tore into the side of the horror before quickly backing off. Neither the ranged attack arm nor the wound he’d just inflicted showed any signs of healing, encouraging him.
Even with the confusing collection of body parts and the terrible mind-altering substance contained within, this enemy didn’t seem intelligent or complex. Perhaps that’s what the thing had meant by it only having ‘one or two’, compared to his ‘six’. Hunter would have to find out what his other four were, but he didn’t need them to kill this thing.
Fortunately, Hunter didn’t need to completely unravel the tangle of body parts in front of him to kill it. The wounds he dealt eventually started bleeding the purple substance, and there had been a few times it had briefly incapacitated him when some spurted out to catch him. Freedom, whatever it was, kept him safe and the horror was whittled down, unable to keep pace with him or predict his ability to move due to Hunt.
In the end, his prey collapsed. Instead of fully sinking through the floor, a light shone from inside while the main body of the horror turned to dust and swirled upwards into the sky. The light was initially as discolored as the horror, but that faded as the main body did, making it a smaller twin of the orb still in the center of the slowly flattening crater.
Hunter looked sharply at the thing as the horror’s now pure light began to sink through the floor. It shook its head in what had to be a sad way. “It’s too far gone.”
“The other one?”
“Yes!” With the horror now gone, the thing entered the crater, pausing as it joined Hunter. “It is good you destroyed that. Someone else had taken care of its physical form earlier, weakening it, but what you did is the only way to put it to rest forever. If it had taken that spirit, it might have come back.”
“What was the number it had?”
“What?”
“The, thing. Like my hunt. Do others here have it?”
“Oh, corruption.” The thing turned the front of its head to where the horror’s light was now almost fully below the reflective surface. “Some do. Only the horrors. I try to stay away from them, but I can’t go too far from where I…”
“What?”
“I can’t remember. It’s important!” One of the thing’s hands formed a ball shape and slammed it into its other palm. “It’s, I need to remember! I… I can’t.” It clutched at its head and Hunter backed up, worried the area might have been contaminated by the horror. The thing’s turmoil subsided, however, and it settled back into its passive posture. “Sorry. I’ve spent so long just existing. All of this returning is hard, but having someone to talk to helps. I’m starting to feel what I’m missing. It’s so much.”
“I am sorry,” Hunter replied, pity rising in him. “I do want to help you. Daniel and Tak are my friends, and we have become stronger for it. Could we be friends?”
The thing pondered this for a second before shaking its head. “No. Thank you, but I can’t form another bond.”
“Another?”
He had the feeling the thing would have given him an embarrassed smile if it had a face. “Another part of me I’ve lost, but like you it’s still there in some ways.” It began walking towards the light, making a hushing sound. “It’s ok, little one. The horror is gone. We’ll bring you to someone who can help. Don’t be afraid, Grave is here.” The thing cradled the small light, not trying to pierce it like the horror had. The light didn’t immediately react, just as it hadn’t resisted the horror, though eventually it flowed into the thing’s hands and disappeared. “I’m glad we saved it, but we need to bring it to your friend to incorporate it.”
“Grave?” Hunter asked, picking up on what it had said.
“Yes?”
“You said grave,” Hunter clarified.
“I did?” There was another moment of confusion, but whether it was absorbing the spirit or its continued improvement, the thing had a breakthrough. “I did! It’s, it’s my name!” The thing held out both arms in front of it, voice full of elation. “My name is Grave!”