[THE DAY MY DREAM DIED]

26 - Body

- 26 -

Body

//\\

Lise pushes herself up, groaning at the aches, grunting at the pains. Her back is stiff as a board, legs creaking like an old woman's. She can't see anything in the pitch-dark room. Feeling about, she finds the door and opens it. The dim glow of a single wall sconce is all that is left to light the empty sanctuary. Legs shaking as she stands, she leans heavily on the staff. Where's that medicine gone... Gone.

She breathes, wishing she could just separate herself from the pain, lose herself in... Shaking her head, Stop thinking that way. Defying her frailty, she steps forward and remains present to the pain in spite. They're not dead. They're not dead. I can save them. I will save them.

New pain preys on her the moment she set foot outside. Fiends... There must be some that hadn't followed her out. It isn't so many that she can't survive it-her mind is too resilient for a couple of these small ones to corrupt quickly, but if she leaves herself exposed long enough they can chew away at her will until she's just as dead as the weakest willed would be. With that in mind, she knows where she must go first.

The last time she'd set foot outside this sanctuary, it had been to hide the children's bodies from Fiiso. This time, as she pushes open the door, the moon-peeking through thick rolling clouds-lights the path, and the corpses surrounding it. Near a thousand of them, all arrayed in a half-circle around the front of the structure. Old and young adults-the entirety of the remaining villagers lay completely still before her. Dead as their children.

Lise looks up at the moon, hating it for what it shows her. Glaring down, condemning. Failure's ugly face is reflected back at her. She turns her face, unable to look long in so revealing a mirror. As fast as she can manage she moves past the dead.

"When death is imminent, self-abasement is a detriment," she reminds herself. And ever more it feels inadequate. She can't even look upon their faces, for fear of the condemnation that is surely there-potent in a way that her self-degradation would never be.

She keeps her eyes on her destination. Death. The tower is hope's last bastion.

When the smell of them is only a memory she lets out her held breath. To move numbly past so many dead, too many to recall, is surreal. Once, the sight of a single body would have made her blue in the face and left unseen scars to remember it by. Even the details of that first death, writ permanent red on the mind, is rendered illegible now under the blood staining her.

"One foot in front of the first."

As she walks, her aches soothe, pains sharpen. She has to stop several times, for succumbing to the pain of each breath is leaving her short of it. If they still breathe I will bless the land with my tears. For my own power has led only to death. Even if they live it is no success of mine, simply fortune that my failure has not killed them. It is the most profoundly grim thought she's had in a while. In moonlight the things which skulk behind night's veil cast shadows, given shape, revealed. Failure is inherent to this path... No, this path is failure-drawn along, diffused.

All this is merely a show, the appearance of responsibility taken, to distract herself from... what I am responsible for. She is terribly self-aware, and all the more a failure for it. I despise myself.

The tower leans over her, listening closer with each step. Where minutes before hope was preserved, Lise can feel only dread. For the first time in reality, she sets foot inside Dejed's lonely tower.

It is different than she'd imagined. The mosaic floor-even in the dark she can tell-has no discernible pattern. A high ceiling remains unseen, only the walls stretching into shadow indicate anything but darkness exists there. The dusty altar itself is craggy, cracked and filled in silver, covered in odd trinkets, scrolled notes tied off in an assortment of colors, outgrown child-cloaks-even one adult-sized. A clearing in the dust, roughly the length of her forearm, and beside it, a blood-crusted talon.

Lise lifts it with two fingers, knocking a scroll off the altar in the process. She scrapes away her old blood from the tip and slips it under her bandages. Leaning down-awkward with her splinted knee-she plucks the note from the ground. The note is without a bow to close it, already half-unfurled. A glimpse of the manic script hidden within draws her curiosity.

The paper is old, but the ink fresh. A hole is burnt in the center, leaving only fragments of legible glyphs. In truth, the hole is hardly necessary, for the writing is so crooked and all-over-the-place that it would've been nigh impossible to read as it was anyway.

Scanning it with her eyes, she struggles to pick out even one full sentence, 'kill... hate h... disown the fiend-touched... son of fie... father... kill... finall...' She tried until she reached the bottom, but found all of it to be the ramblings of a poor fool under the fiends' influence. Ascuszeo Masan. Mouthful of a name. A little guilty that she pried, she takes care to roll it tightly and sets it back in place.

Reminded of where she is, she shakes her head. If she isn't careful those fiends will convince her to forget their presence. Not the time for messing about. She strides, stumbles, then continues at a hobble around the altar and into the spiraling hall.

A lonely candle remains hanging on the wall; for a diminishing wick, a flame dances its last.

The walls are made from latticed wood pressed on either side of a single sheet of thick, rough paper. On the paper is an array of simple markings, broad strokes of ink, but she can't pick out what they are as she walks past.

As the light of the candle is left behind, she feels something wet under her bare foot. Her breath quickens-she dares not stop, dares not know. The door just ahead, her dread rises to her throat, choking. Until she looks, all her hopes are as real as her fears. Reaching out, hand trembling, she opens to the ethereal glow of the tower's central room. Red taints the blue tide. Blood.