20th day of Spring, 511 AV
Falyndar. it was probably the harshest environment in the whole sundered continent of Mizahar. Yet as hostile as the jungle already was, it seemed to particularly relish the desire to make itself a deadly, inhospitable host for the huge blue alien walking along its dangerous paths. However, much like everything else in Mizahar, it still had much more to offer than simply hiding away its rich resources from weary travelers stricken with hunger, thirst and the malady of depression. Soon, the wetness of its environment was a picture of fury; the trees were being blown back and forth in swings, and the rain felt more brutal altogether. Within a few hours, without notice, the heat had turned into a thrashing storm, whipping Sorian’s back mercilessly.
He started to run, his tired legs sipping on adrenalin, urging him to escape the wrath of nature. The rain fell torrentially, more like a waterfall than a drizzle, and sight was whittling down quickly. Fortunately for the Akalak, he was accustomed to harsh weather-though granted, Cyphrus and Syliras were nowhere near as bad as Falyndar-and he could still see through the pounding waters.
The makings of a small cave started to appear before him, and it made his quest a whole lot easier. It was not much of a shelter; its mouth was exposed to the elements, and his entire length would not possibly fit inside it. But it was much better than being fully tormented by such an abysmal rain. At the least, his head would be given some measure of protection, and he’d be able to wipe away the leaves and branches that had been lashed to his body by the howling winds.
It was made of solid granite, a clump of heavy rocks that looked like they had been sitting that way for thousands of years. The form of it –piled up and leaning against each other, to be exact- reminded him of that cave in the Cobalt mountains, the one where he had met that haunting Konti by the name of Satu. He remembered that incident very well, for it was one which he barely escaped with his life. But the memories of those distant days mattered not at the moment; his mind was dimming and so was his strength. He hadn’t eaten in two days, and sleep was minimal due to the constant threat of wild animals and men. Without further ado, he stretched and huddled inside the little cave as easily as possible, and fell into a deep sleep.
His tired mind was soon conjuring images of all sorts, and he fell into a more mystical world.
---------
I was walking. I was sure I was. I could feel my feet touching grass, but where it led to, I didn’t know. Everywhere around me was a sheet of glassy scenes that were too hazy to figure out. But there were figures walking around behind them, for behind the blurred, solid veil, mysterious shadows moved back and forth.
Was it a dream? My lips moved in unison with my whispered thoughts, but only mist started to spew out, a cold breath that made the dull colors around me even shadier. There was no voice within my lungs. I touched my throat and began rubbing it, for it was feeling quite tight and somewhat hot.
I kept walking, but as I continued scanning my pathways, my throat began to hound me. I clutched my hands around it, and to my surprise, my entire hand was able to grip it fully! It felt much thinner, much scrawnier than it had been a moment ago, but I didn’t know how it was happening.
Soon I could hear muffled sounds in the distance, of a man’s covered mouth trying to say something. I was beginning to feel queasy; my breaths started to fall into slower paces, more haggard repetitions. The path was winding down, and soon, everything went black.
My eyes have always been good at night, but there was absolutely no light where I was. As such, everything was completely dark. My hands scourged the air, looking for something to hold on to, but they could only catch air. As I kept walking blindly, I tripped on something along the way.
---------
The Akalak tossed in his sleep, his leg kicking into the thorny bushes that grew by his feet. For a split second his senses jolted awake, the skin licking the sharp protrusions in the plant. But the fatigue was too much, the stress was too high. He needed to sleep, and subconsciously he continued to do so without knowing that he needed to wake up even more.
---------
I sprawled on the floor, feeling an icy cold wrap my body. Cursing under my breath, I cast a furious look at what it was that tripped me, only to get a bolt of disbelief in return.
“Navis?” I asked, feeling the dryness of my throat, not quite sure if what I was looking at was him. There was no sign of that brash cockiness he has always paraded, that fiendish smile was missing from those cold, blue lips. There was no answer to meet my inquiry at all. All I could see was a wrecked and ravished mass of blue, punctured with fresh scars and bruises. His neck seemed a bit longer and less stocky than usual; it appeared to be broken. The muscles were loose and the veins were popped. There was no pulse. Lining it were tiny black prints, sticking out from his pale, blue skin.
His face was a mass of deathly sorrow and pain, like he had been tortured, melting away in emotional distress before he was murdered. He thus, remained quiet in his open scream, hands raised slightly. He seemed more like a grotesque statue than a corpse.
I stared at the broken body with disbelieving eyes. My other half, my other soul, lying before my eyes, lifeless and conquered! Did this mean that I too, was dead? Am I a spirit? I touched myself, feeling if I was made of air and gas. I wasn’t. The beat inside my chest was very alive, and my skin felt warm, chiseled with scars, just as it has always been.
I looked at my hands, trying to discern from afar if the prints around his neck measured to the size of my fingers; our fingers. They didn’t seem to; strangely they looked like they were done by lithe, delicate and slender hands, like those of a child. I didn’t have the courage to touch him. It was all so surreal, and I felt like fainting, like gagging. But the darkness seemed to condense around me, hemming in from every side, electrocuting my sagging mind. It felt airless where I was, and I lost my breath. Something was forcefully stopping my heart.
I looked behind me, and saw an oddly familiar view. The moon was full and lingered high above the dreary clouds, illuminating the great black expanse that spread out from beneath it. The water shimmered with tiny dots of light, reflecting the countless stars that protruded its surface. It seemed hazy, but when I peered down from the window, all I could see a great void that seemed to go forever. It was never-ending.
“Sorian...” The deep, melodious voice of a woman rang out from behind me, sending chills down my naked spine. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, as the voice was one that gnawed at the back of my mind. It almost sent me to a crushing sensation, for my legs began to feel weak, like I’m being beaten with rods of air. It stabbed at the nape of my skull, making everything feel heavy, sending a flush of blood running through my system, as if the words had life, had meaning. I shuddered and craned over the windowsill in confusion and terror; I didn’t wish to turn around and greet whoever was behind me.
I raised my eyes at the scenery before me. The moon went blank, the stars were gone. The sea had evaporated into nothing. Yet I could not shake the sensation tingling me inside, wracking every nerve in my body. My urinary tract felt like exploding from sheer excitement and anxiousness, but there was nowhere I could relieve it from.
I could feel my head spinning slowly, floating away from my very neck, from my very body. It was going in a circle, as If it was doing a grindingly slow somersault on its own. I closed my eyes and whimpered; the words in my mind couldn’t even scream. Then, my view stopped in its tracks when it had a perfect view of what was behind me. I was suspended in air, staring at the scene which I had turned away from. But my entire world spindled around a loom in repetitive shocks when my eyes beheld the origin of the voice that called my name so lovingly. What it was that I righteously didn’t wish to see was right behind me.
Navis was still there, his gross, twisted position earlier retaining its form. But it was no longer mere familiarity that drove stakes into my quick-throbbing heart, which I could feel far below my floating vantage point. He was lying on a sheet-draped bed that appeared to be the scene of a struggle, and everywhere there were splatters of blood; on the sheets, across the walls, on the floor, on my feet. Navis’ head had splinters of wood, huge blood clots and even some nails imbedded into his skull.
It all assaulted me at once. It was too much to take! I tried to move, I tried to flail and close my eyes, but it was as if my eyelids had been removed. I wanted to scream, but my tongue remained tied to the bottom of my gaping mouth. I could only move my full stare from one corner of the room to another, darting to every nook and cranny, all of which seemed to begin crawling closer and closer to me. It was all familiar; it was a sinful scene which I had never wanted to see again. Every side of the room was awash with the stench of eleven decades’ worth of regret and hate.
Then, with my helplessness rapidly escalating into madness, something caught my roving eye and sent my irises scampering towards to the ceiling in utter terror and shock. She wasn’t there before, but then, beside Navis’ lifeless body, was the blood-covered form of my wife. She was staring at Navis, staring at the scene she had created. Her hands were caked in Navis’ blood, caked in my blood, our blood! From the corner of my eye I could see her face; it remained as human, as radiant, and as beautiful as she had been when she was alive. But they were washed with wrath, contorted with a fury I have never seen in her before. It was filled with a sadistic glee that turned my insides and pulled them out; it was mired in a dog-like lust that struck me with horror, as she started to cackle devilishly and desecrated the corpse with her hands of filth.
She touched his body –my body, our body, ruefully, without a dint of care. The woman whom I cherished, loved and adored as a saint of beauty and kindness was right before me, mangling the body that was mine! Gleefully, she started to hum a strange tune as she cruelly tore out chunks of my blue flesh like they were made of cotton, flipping them over her head casually around the room. Navis’ intestines started to seep out of his abdomen like caved snakes when her vicious hands overcame the sturdy flesh.
When did she possess such diabolical strength? When was she this evil? What has gotten into her? Why was Navis dead? How did she kill him? How was she able to, in the first place?! How could she kill me and do this to me?! How?! The questions were dancing in my head, taking her form in different hues. They all spat at my eyes, my unblinking eyes with horrific colors that I cannot place into words. But as they dissipated, the same scene presented itself. Navis had, by then a mere pile of bones, and Karnelia had become… A faded and ghostly version of herself. Her hair had grayed into a dirty, wiry mass; her hands were bony, shriveled, and still fuming with dried blood; her clothes were tattered, missing in places where they should be. She smelled of rotten flesh and male orgasms, as if she just had her fill of my body's limp organ, and walked in a hunch that taunted me with its mimicry of my own manner of movement.
She appeared as if she had simply risen from beyond her grave.
Finally, I felt like my voice had returned, in a gargled, watery way. Every time I breathed through my nostrils, they seemed to drip with something thick, something that drowned me. It had the bitter and reeking taste of blood. It was my blood. But I could scream then, and scream I did. “Karnelia! KARNELIA!! Why?! Why did you do this?!”
She had concluded her business with my savaged body, and now her eyes gleamed with horrifying intentions. Her cracked, purple lips broke into a grin spoke with two tones, one high and one low. She didn’t seem human at all, for even lowly humans never aged so badly. Her hand raised itself before my eyes, the long nails apparently looking to gouge them out, only to cup my chin and shoot her wide, bloodshot eyes into mine. She laughed hysterically and replied to me in a mocking, sing-song manner. “Sorian. Sorian. Why? Why did you do this?”
I could feel myself crying, for my cheeks felt damp. Guilt, revulsion and fear balled in my mouth, but again my tongue failed me. All I know is that I was in a nightmare. It could be nothing else.
She leaned her withered face towards me in a roaming carnival of fear. Was she going to kiss me? Kill me? For some reason I didn't want either as a choice. When was I going to wake up? When would the show end? I tried to roll my eyes away, hoping her ghastly image would disappear, that my memories of a kinder, less sinister Karnelia would return. But she remained unmoved, unmoving, boring into my very soul with the wickedness of a monster.
"You did this, Sorian, not me," she hissed, pointing at Navis' bones, now clean and bleached white. Within seconds she was shrieking, a piercing cry that would put any Zith to shame. "You had this scum murder me. I loved you! You allowed him to kill ME! Why, Sorian? WHY?!"
The hundred years of solitude and conscience-breaking started to burn into my head, summoning images that I would never have cared to see again. We had happier times. We were happy. And judging by the screaming banshee that she was then, she had not forgiven me for the years that were wasted.
'I'm sorry, Karnelia! I'm sorry! Forgive me! I did not know... Oh gods!" I helplessly tried to turn my face away from hers, feeling every scar from those hundred years tingling with pain. It was enough to drive one mad with agony. But her stare never dissipated, her anger didn't seem to forgive. There was nothing to forgive.
I was nothing to her.
"Save your breath, you bastard," she replied in a sickeningly-sweet manner, dripping with a barely-concealed venom and disdain. "You and I... We will see each other in hell. Soon enough! But not before we meet again in this life! Oh yes, my sweet husband, my love and savior! I have savored this moment for a hundred and ten years. You and I... We'll finally be together, always!"
Then, without me noticing how, or why, everything fell apart. She disappeared while marking my ears with another bout of her macabre laughter, floating away and shattering into a thousand broken pieces. I lost consciousness. I felt like I was falling.
---------
The Akalak woke with a start, feeling his tense and strained heartbeat. Everywhere was as quiet as can be in the wilderness, with only the distinct hooting of strange birds breaking the silence. The rains in the jungle had stopped, with only a light shower remaining, giving a sparkle to the lush greenery.
He felt unsure of how he should feel, of how he did feel. Fear gripped his heart, looming over him like a giant tidal wave. He couldn't move for awhile, paralyzed by the idleness of his thoughts. A hundred years ago, he had thought along the same, morbid lines. Beads of sweat formed in his forehead, heraldingthe resurrection of a long-buried worry.
Was there ever going to be forgiveness for the heinous crime he had unwittingly, and unwillingly committed?
Regaining his wits about him, his shaking hands scanned the landscape of his body again, wanting to make sure nothing was missing. Despite the quakes that rumbled through his entirety, he was thankfully intact from head to toe.
"Navis?" his voice asked in a whisper again, the words echoing into the recesses of his mind. His other half had been so dead, pitiful, and alarmingly violated in his sleep. Even though they loathed each other for various reasons, he worried that there wouldn't be an answer to his call.
"What?" answered a gruff voice, obviously annoyed by the very mention of his name from such a pathetic source. Sorian breathed heavily, feeling relieved yet bothered at the same time. Navis could smell the essence of his fear, and with the way he was acting, he didn't need to ask how his other half was feeling. Navis can feint ignorance, but they knew each other better than anyone else. He was deliberately choosing to ignore the anxiety that rocked Sorian.
"What is it, fool? Come on, don't be shy..." Navis repeated with a sneer, wishing to egg him on towards further embarrassing himself. He was not biting it. "As if... You actually want to know," Sorian thought bitterly, followed by a mental laugh from the other half.
The older side of the Akalak could only squint perplexedly, his eyes running along the grass that tickled his toes. It was obvious that the dark one didn't witness the same nightmare, didn't see the same horrors that had crashed into Sorian's memory. He remembered every bit of it, and it was strange to him that Navis didn't see it.
Sorian shook his head absent-mindedly. "Nothing... Nevermind. We need to get... Home. To Sanctuary." It was the only place in the world where he could sleep in peace. Perhaps Kavala's healing, soothing presence could ease the renewed weight on his glass shard of a soul.
Navis snorted with annoyance. Thankfully he couldn't eject mucus from inside the sub-conscious. "Damn it, fool! You don't need to repeat! How many times do I have to tell you? Mao is going to have my hide if we don't get back within the season! Damn it!"
As Sorian exited the tiny shelter, he frowned wearily. Navis was cussing and swearing in his usual way, pretending to be angry when he was actually trying to push out the notion that Sorian's concerns actually concerned him. Somehow the lighter side was thankful for it. No matter how much it bothered him, he knew that sharing the details nightmare to his other half would be a stupid venture, one that would be dismissed by forced laughs and gritting teeth. But he knew he had to sometime soon. They had to be prepared for what may come.
The nightmare seemed too real to forget. And Karnelia's ominous words continued ringing.
