( 4 )
C H E L L
In the depths of her consciousness, Chell dreamed about the night of the dead's disappearance. Or no... perhaps it was not a dream. Rather, it seemed more of a visit of a recent memory than a recollection, one still freshly engraved in her mind.
When it happened, there had been nothing to give her any signs or warnings. It had happened so suddenly that Chell was left clueless on what the meaning behind their vanishing entailed, or the fact that she had no idea what she would go through because of it. After all, they were the only ones who had always been there with her since her waking two years ago, the only ones who she could speak to and would answer in return.
Dead, they were often called by many. Ghosts.
Spirits. They were the remnants of the deceased. Fragments of their souls that were left from their past mortal lives.
Their disappearance had happened only a mere three days ago, well before dawn, in an unnamed forest miles and miles away from the kingdom of Uldard. Chell recalled it vividly through the dream, the details filled with both life and realism. It was almost as if she had gone back in time.
The continent had still been engulfed in the night's darkness, except for a few streaks of red and violet cutting across the sky on the distant horizon, signifying the gradual ascent of the sun. Chell had been asleep at the base of an old withering tree, leaning on its trunk and using its roots to settle herself in a comfortable position. With her breathing so quiet, any person who would pass at that moment could easily mistake her for a part of the undergrowth if not for her gleaming white hair that stood out from the darkness, basking her figure in a dim glow. The forest was eerily quiet at that time, most of its inhabitants still in the realm of slumber. That was the reason how it was easy for Chell to hear the dead at the moment they whispered a single word faintly into her ear.
"Snow."
She stirred immediately from her sleep the moment Chell heard them call for her. Still on the boundary of awake and asleep, she opened her eyes and listened to them as they spoke their next words.
"G—o—ri—nce—w—bl—d—"
Chell frowned slightly, sitting up from her position. She cleared her mind, shaking away the drowsiness from her head. The dead had a unique way of communicating. They often spoke not as a single voice, but rather, as a chorus of many. Whenever they made a conversation, dozens of different voices, pitches, accents, and diction combined together to form a single sentence. This was the reason why understanding the dead was hard for most people, even for those who had the talent of hearing them. However, that was not the case for Chell. Since she had their blessing, she had long been used to listening to them speak since her childhood days. She could easily understand what they wished to say at any given moment.
But not this time.
"—ri—oe—a—d,"
There was something wrong. At first notice, their voices seemed strained. Agitated. Too many of them were whispering different things at the same time, unlike the way they normally spoke. As a result, their words merged into an indecipherable noise that she could not understand. Chell strained her ears to hear their voices in clarity. Again, the dead spoke to her, but their words were blurred and distant, like a hundred people speaking from a far room. All she could make out were broken words. "Snow—chil—h—ri—rd."
"... I do not... understand you," she whispered aloud to the shadows, where she knew they were staying, hidden from her sight. "Please... make your words clearer."
"—Sn—un—n—c,"
Chell could hear the unmistakable sound of tension in their voices. Something was causing them to become unsettled. Her expression changed slightly, worried at their unusual state. They had never showed this kind of behavior before. Something serious was clearly happening if it dismayed the dead to this extent.
"B—ro—ld—s—sn—"
She closed her eyes again, trying to focus on listening to only one voice among chorus, but it was useless. The others clouded her hearing and filled her mind, loud and confusing. It was like listening to a single person softly speaking in a chattering crowd. She shook her head.
"What... are you trying to say...?"
Silence settled. No one replied.
Their sudden quietness startled her. Chell snapped her eyes open, having the strange sense that something was about to happen. She looked around, feeling their presence all around her, hiding in the darkness. She sat up properly, blinking her sleep-deprived eyes.
"... Are you still there..?" Her words echoed in the dark, to no one.
Silence still.
Then, a gentle night's breeze passed through the glade without warning, hissing like a quiet snake making its way through the grass and at the same time bringing with it the last of the voices Chell would ever hear from the dead. She could clearly make out their three final words, loud in her ears.
"—go to Uldard."
And then... like that, they simply vanished.
There had been no visible signs, and neither was there any sound to be heard. Nothing indicated that something had happened. The dead were merely there one second, hidden in the darkness, then gone the next. Chell simply knew about it because all traces of their presence had vanished into nothing. For the first time in her life, she was left all alone in the dim forest without anyone with her, living or the dead.
Fearful and panicked, she looked around and waited, expecting them to come back. But they never did. Not even when morning arrived and another day ended. Confused, she remembered about their last advice.
'—go to Uldard', they had said.
And so three days later, she did.
When Chell awoke, her entire body hurt.
The pain was directed more towards the right side of her ribs. Every time she breathed, a painful stab pinched at her lungs. It was the ache of broken bones and bruises, she realized. She was certain she had felt this kind of pain before, and more than once, even. However, knowing that fact that did nothing to soothe the pain.
Enduring the throbbing, she opened her eyes hesitantly to look up at an unfamiliar shadowed ceiling. She focused her vision, noticing that it was made of hardened moist soil, traces of water trickling down its walls and dripping down the cold floor. Flickering with an orange light from nearby was a torch, casting vertical shadows on the damp walls. Her sight blurred for a moment before focusing once again. She was somewhere she didn't recognize.
Chell tilted her head slowly around to survey the surroundings. The vertical shadows, she found out, came from the iron bars located close by her feet that caged her in. With a quick realization, she was suddenly aware that she was in a small, damp, and dim-lit cell. The humid smell of the earth indicated that she was somewhere underground. Around the walls, empty chains and cuffs were nailed, most of them rusted and broken. A dim rectangle of light spilled from the top corner at the opposite side of the wall, revealing a small opening that showed the outside of an alley, further confirming her doubts that she was, indeed, somewhere beneath soil.
She blinked. Chell tried her best to recall the last thing that happened which had led her to that unknown place. Everything in her mind was still hazy.
"Oh. You're awake."
If her body hadn't hurt from moving, Chell would have jolted up in surprise. Someone else was there together with her. Carefully, she turned her head to look at the source of the voice from the other end of the cell, right underneath the small rectangular opening. She focused her eyes on the humanoid figure that blended with the tendrils of darkness, trying to discern the person who was sitting there. Legs crossed, dressed in a gray and tattered long-sleeved shirt, a blood-red scarf, midnight cotton pants, gray leather boots, and an annoyed expression on his face, was none other than the sly thief who had robbed her satchel earlier. Noct.
"... You." Chell managed to whisper weakly.
Noct kept quiet, studying her with an unmistakable look of resentment on his face. He seemed tired, though, from the way his shoulder sagged. His clothes were filthy. She noticed that there was a large bruise on his left cheek. Then, a moment later, he sighed sarcastically.
"Well," he said, "As much as I want to stab you right now, unfortunately, they've stripped me of all my daggers. And also, from what I can see, I think your wounds are going to kill you long before I get the chance to."
When he pointed this out, she was reminded again of how surprised she had been when she had realized that the kind, helpful person who had offered to help her earlier was, in truth, far from the sort. Chell had been wrong to place her trust in him. He had turned out to be the complete opposite of the person she had thought him to be.
Chell kept her silence, still not moving as she stared back at him. It was true, what he had said. If it weren't for her being a witch, Chell would have been dead by now, although she probably was close to it either way. Still, the Blessing of the Dead she received at her birth made her heal faster than most normal humans, even among the Witchfolk.
After seconds of complete silence, she decided to ask quietly, "Where... are we?"
She had not expected him to answer her when she had asked. This was the reason why she was startled when, after a brief pause, he released a deep, long sigh. Then, Noct finally spoke, traces of malice still evident in his tone.
"Well, we're in a cell, obviously. Probably underneath one of the kingdom's guard houses. Whatever. Don't tell me—-not only are you mute, are you perhaps blind too, little miss?"
A tense atmosphere sparked between them in the stillness.
"What are... they going... to do to... us?" Chell pressed in a whisper, training her eyesight above at the ceiling once again. Her mind was clouded with questions, and the only one who she could ask and hope would answer was none other than Noct. Once again, she slowly moved her head to look at him, noticing how his pale eyes seemed to stand out even in the darkness of the cell. He blinked.
Then suddenly, Noct burst into mad laughter, as if the question had been a joke. His cries rang out, loudly echoing across the cell and further down the darkened halls. This was the same kind of sudden laugh, Chell noticed, that he had made back at the alley. The kind of laugh that often came from someone who was insane, or somewhere close to it. She watched and waited until he was done moments after. As he opened his mouth to answer her, Noct's tone was cold and mocking.
"Oh... you didn't know yet? This afternoon, we're going to be publicly executed."
He allowed a few seconds of silence to hang in the air, just so Chell could realize the weight of his words. Then, continuing with a hint of dry humor in his voice and a strained grin on his face, he added, "By the way, it's death by burning."
----> thank you for reading!
Q:
What do you think were the dead trying to say before they disappeared?