The slosh of liquid filled their ears, then vanished, leaving only the silence of a void. Their bodies hung suspended, neither rising nor falling, adrift in an endless abyss where movement itself had no meaning.
Burtu gasped, each breath a ragged tear in the silence. His grip on Caes's lifeless form was a desperate anchor. His eyes, wide and unfocused, darted through the nothingness, the tracks of tears still glistening on his cheeks.
Marichi, too, floated in that same expanse, yet saw no one. Jorel was gone, swallowed by the void, leaving him utterly alone, his body stretched to its breaking point.
"Not this place again!" he choked, flailing his arms, clawing for balance where none could exist, his nose desperate for air that wasn't there.
This must be his doing.
Marichi's eyelids drooped, a futile attempt to calm the storm raging within. Behind the cage of his ribs, his heart hammered, a frantic drumbeat yearning for release. Then, thoughts that were not his own pierced his skull, seeping in through every crack and crevice of his mind.
{Marichi! I am so disappointed.}
A female voice, laced with sorrow, wept in his thoughts.
{Using a fellow human like that… it is… I…}
The voice fractured, shifting.
{I didn't train you like that…}
{We didn't train you like that.}
A male voice joined, cold and resonant.
Yes… I know.
But I had no choice!
"I would've died if I didn't act fast!" Marichi's voice, startlingly, regressed to the thin, reedy sound of his youth.
"None of this is real… It doesn't matter…" He whispered to himself, a desperate mantra.
{How dare you say that we're not real?! Your own parents!}
The male and female voices struck as one, a chilling, synchronized indictment.
"W-what?" Marichi's mind fractured, caught between stark disbelief and the creeping shadow of regret.
{What is our dear boy becoming?}
{Are you not becoming what you despise… our son…}
The male and female voices began to intertwine, a slow, viscous cacophony, merging into a singular, unsettling entity.
Then, a blinding white shattered the emptiness. The concept of objects began to coalesce, streaking past Marichi's eyes in a dizzying blur. He blinked, and when his eyelids fluttered open, the transformation was complete.
He stood in a hall of breathtaking grandeur, clad in formal attire, a crisp shirt bearing the symbol of two twin snakes, their heads facing opposite directions, their coiled bodies forming a perfect circle in the void between them.
"No!"
"What am I doing back here?!" Marichi cried out, his gaze sweeping the ornate hall, then dropping to the symbol on his shirt. A cold sweat prickled his skin.
A tall man materialized before him, his face obscured by a blinding halo of light from a distant window. His mere presence was a suffocating weight, stealing Marichi's breath, turning his legs to cooked spaghetti.
"I've heard so much about you." The man's voice resonated.
"Can't believe that you saved that soldier." Another voice, sharp and cutting, ripped from behind. Marichi spun around to see a second man, taller than himself, though not as imposing as the first. His face, too, was a blank canvas of white light.
"Such promise, in such a young boy," the tall man remarked, a hint of pride softening his tone.
"Thank you very much, sir." Marichi's mouth moved independently, a puppet's obedience. He clamped his jaw shut, feeling his body compelled into a bow before the figure.
I remember this…
His mind steadied, recognizing the threads of this vivid memory.
{Wearing their clothes…}
{Eating their food…}
{Sleeping in their bed!}
The conjoined voices echoed with searing disappointment.
{After everything?}
{Such a disgrace.}
The voices dismissed him, their judgment a cold wind.
Mom… Dad.
It isn't what you think…
Marichi pleaded silently as an unseen force yanked his body backward, the opulent hall dissolving into blackness, the memory consumed by rapid motion. He plunged back into the abyss, airless, his mind frozen in suspended animation.
Meanwhile, Burtu's mind was a frantic symphony of thoughts as he huffed, staring down at Caes's body in his hands. Then, in an instant, everything compressed to a tiny black dot on an endless white canvas.
The black dot swirled, expanding, corrupting the pristine expanse with Burtu's shattered thoughts. Soon, the landscape was smeared with blood, jagged splinters of wood littering the ground. Far off, a lone figure stood, cradling its own severed head in its arms.
Why is all this happening?!
Why did we suddenly go up to the ceiling again?!
Why did that black place suddenly change to this?!
Sections of the environment began to twist upward, contorting into impossible angles, reaching for a sky that seemed solid. A cacophony of voices, replacing the very air itself, chattered around him. Only Burtu seemed to vaguely grasp their meaning.
Suddenly, Burtu found himself back in the carriage, his body moving on its own. His hand pointed to the familiar map they'd used, the same one Jorel had seen. On it, the shortcut he'd chosen glowed, a half-lit zone. He saw Caes's spectral form, trying to talk him out of it.
{You killed Caes.}
A chilling fusion of Lezschill and Marichi's voices echoed in his ears. Burtu was yanked back to the ground.
{See where your ignorance led you…}
{And after I warned you, repeatedly.} Caes materialized before Burtu, draped in a long, black cloth woven entirely from Burtu's own black blood.
Burtu was speechless, his tear ducts dry. He reached desperately for Caes, his fingers brushing the flowing black cloth. Images erupted, piercing his eyes, scorching his optic nerves.
The first was Lezschill's hand punching through Burtu's chest, then it overlapped with countless visions of his own death, replaying endlessly. He was thrust back into the false reality, Caes now behind him, the black blood-cloth encompassing Burtu as he struggled to process his fractured mind.
"I-I don't understand." He shook his head violently, then squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a raw, wounded scream as he thrashed like a cornered beast.
Wait…
Where's Caes?
His mind clicked, and he slowly opened his eyes, scanning the empty space. No one. Fear, sharp and immediate, pierced his already fragile thoughts.
"Caes!" He screamed.
{Why are you shouting?}
The Lezschill-Marichi voice mocked him.
{Don't you know?}
The voice began to fade.
{That you killed me.}
Caes's voice, though still faint, took over.
"I didn't know!" Burtu yelled, his legs suddenly giving out. He glanced behind him to see his calves riddled with hand-shaped holes, creeping higher. His heartbeat sputtered, weakening. He looked up. Caes, now inhabiting Lezschill's body, loomed before him.
"You didn't know?" Caes, with Marichi's voice, knelt closer to Burtu.
"You were the one who pointed out the shortcut on the map." He held a blood-soaked version of the map directly in front of Burtu's face.
"I warned against it, but you said nooo," he taunted, dripping with sarcasm.
Burtu couldn't reply, his certainty shattered. He simply wheezed on the ground, unable to even look up.
"P-Please stop…" He whispered.
"I-I don't want to experience this anymore…"
"Please stop…" he begged, his body jerking upward.
"How do I make it up to you? I'll do anything," he wheezed.
"Just make it stop."
{Don't worry.}
Caes's distorted voice was eerily calm.
"It'll all soon end." Caes forcibly gripped Burtu's face, turning it toward the limited sky, which had become a blur of lines streaking upward.
{And you want to make it up to me?}
{I think you already know what you have to do for that.}
{The one that started it all in the first place.}
The voice morphed into Jorel's condescending tone.
The surroundings dissolved back into the black abyss. Burtu felt himself violently ejected from the ground, leaving behind an earth-like claw formation trying to grasp him. The damaged carriage hurtled into the air, visible from a great distance, before plummeting back to earth.
Marichi and Jorel's unconscious body followed, flying out from the earth, as another grasping, claw-like formation surged from the ground to reach for them. Marichi gasped as the wind finally struck his nose, desperate for air as his body slammed violently into the ground, Jorel's body landing hard beside him.
He groaned, his body screaming in protest. Slowly, he opened his eyes to the vast night sky. He turned his head to Jorel, panic seizing him as he saw the boy unmoving. A wave of worry washed over him, his mind racing through possibilities, all leading to death. Then, a faint wheezing sound reached him, followed by the slow rise and fall of Jorel's chest.
Marichi's worry evaporated, replaced by a profound sigh of relief as his muscles tried to relax through the searing pain. His mind then raced with a single, hammering realization: he saw the sky.
"We're back outside?!"
---The end of chapter 41---