The Thanaton Syndrome

Chapter Twenty Six: Pt. 1

Though he felt terrible about leaving so many back, Seth's first emotion to feeling, seeing, and simply sucking in every last bit of sun was utter bliss. The sun would probably set in about an hour, from what he could tell. For one moment, only the wonderful sunlight and fresh, real air (not the stale choking air from the tunnels) took up every ounce of his senses.

Once he got over it, he heard the shouts of the questers around him, less terrified than before but still there. No one sounded nearly as joyful as Seth felt.

Then he tried to take a step, and realized the difficulty in moving his legs. Looking down, he saw they still stood in torso high mud. The mud looked like a small lake of some sort, and all the questers were caught in it, in the middle of the woods.

Looking closer, and suddenly feeling the slow sinking feeling, he realized they hadn't just gotten themselves into a regular pile of mud like the stuff in the tunnel. Somewhere, the mud had mixed and changed so that now they all sat in a bunch of quicksand.

Seth gasped, struggling to get his legs out. They wouldn't move. In fact the more he pulled and yanked, the more the quicksand held on. The more he struggled, the deeper he sunk in.

"Stop moving!" Spencer shouted to everyone, already sunk to his neck. "The more you move, the more you sink."

Everyone stopped, but they still couldn't go anywhere. In a way, Seth thought this was just as bad as the tunnels. How on earth could they get out of this stuff? He felt as though he'd snap in half if anyone tried to pull him out. At least before, he could move. Now, he felt increasingly more uncomfortable as the mud engulfed him, seeming to cling tighter and tighter as time went on.

Looking around, Seth noticed everyone looked panicked, the hysteria just barely managing to remain below the surface.

"Just... stay calm," Spencer said. Seth didn't need to reach out and use his special power thing to tell that Spencer was most certainly not calm. "We'll get out of this— don't worry."

"How on earth will we get out of this?" Lena shrieked, embodying everyone else's faces.

Spencer glanced at Christian, as Seth had now often seen him do. All Christian could do, however, was manage to stay above the surface of the quicksand. It was true, when you stopped moving, you hardly sunk at all. However, not moving did nothing to get them out.

Seth took an opportunity to find Peter. If anyone knew what to do, he thought Peter ought to.

The old man leaned against the side of the bank, stuck to his torso, just as well as any of the rest of them.

When Spencer didn't reply immediately to Lena, the tensions grew. People started getting nervous. Some couldn't stand it anymore, and started thrashing around in the quicksand, making it worse. Everyone else started arguing. Seth thought everyone had lost their minds. Although, he thought he may also be on the verge of it.

Very few tried to think of ways to get out. For the most part, they'd never dealt with quicksand before, and they had no idea how to get out.

Spencer tried to stop the arguments, but seeing him almost to his chin in quicksand only set them off more.

The sun had just begun to set when Seth heard a familiar noise above him. He looked up to see an arrow pointed at him.

"Silence!" The voice wielding the arrow spoke. Seth almost didn't even feel surprised— Oh, another arrow pointing to his head? No big deal, happens all the time.

Slowly, the questers began to look up and see the young man pointing the arrow at Seth. At first, he thought the man was one of the blue-cloaked archers who'd followed them around. This man didn't wear blue, though. He wore animal skins, and at the same time, didn't look entirely human. His ears were slightly pointed, and his eyes slightly slanted. He also had a smaller frame than most people, almost the size of a child, but clearly not a child.

Following the warning came silence, except from Spencer.

"Who are you?" He said.

"None of your concern," the man said, his voice soft and silky.

"What do you want?" Spencer said.

"Again, none of your concern." The strange man looked questioningly at Spencer. "Shall I put an arrow through your outlander, or will you stop talking? Believe me, I think you'll find yourself in want of him fairly soon."

Seth had a hard time believing this man would actually kill him, but he still didn't feel particularly keen on the idea of having an arrow pointed at him. He looked at Spencer, silently pleading with him to do what the man wanted.

Spencer obliged, falling silent.

The man surveyed them all carefully, finally letting his eyes rest on Seth. Seth couldn't help shivering as the man looked at him. Those eyes looked electric, and pierced through everything they met. They were deep and ancient, and he got the feeling this man had seen a good many things.

Out of curiosity, Seth reached out to feel this man's consciousness, but met only a silvery sheet. The man made a strange face when Seth touched the sheet and he quickly recoiled. Who on earth was this guy?

The man whistled, and about ten more similar people swung down from the trees around them. "Help them out," he said. A second later, he knelt next to Seth.

"Imagine you are in a lake," he said. "Slowly ease up and try to float on your back."

Seth felt confused, but did as the man asked. He found that he could slowly lift his legs higher if he imagined doing the back float.

"Lie down, Outlander. You will not sink."

Slowly, he let himself lean back all the way into the quicksand. He felt the man's hand beneath his head, gently holding him up. He now lay almost all the way on top of the quicksand, with his legs just slightly under the surface.

"Now, gently work your way to the edge."

With the man's guidance, Seth sort of back floated his way to the edge of the pool. He eased out of the quicksand bit by bit, until soon, he lay exhausted on dry ground. When he caught his breath, he smiled and almost laughed with relief. Simply lying freely outside on the ground, no longer in any dank tunnel, or any pool of mud, felt incredible.

After a short time, he sat up to find most of the questers helped out by a dozen or so more of these strange people.

"The sun evades us," the one who'd helped Seth said. "Let us hurry home."