They Spin and Twirl, Edges Like Thorns

Turl. His name was Turl.

He struggled only briefly as feet that weren’t his pounded what felt like solid earth, slipping under a cold, deadly skin. Damn Drillers. His fingers were damp, sticky, wood gripped tight in his hand.

I should have asked for the contents. His thought. His own thought. It sent a spike of pain through his head, vision doubling briefly.

Every huff for breath puffed out into the cold, dark air. He slid into a crouch behind a pile of rocks, twigs crunching under his feet, the smell of blood and sweat and mud thickening the air. They were here—shadowy half-seen figures in the trees, in the undergrowth. Definitely not humanoid.

Nasty creatures, Drillers. Could appear like a person until you spotted their wrong eyes and the grin of razor sharp teeth, or the shrivelled scaly bands of coal-like skin from the neck down. None of that here. No, they were in their true forms, just like the snakes should be.

The spear balanced lightly in his fingers, he leapt over the lower rocks, every muscle moving smoothly, his steps light and quick, a soft bird-whistle reaching his ear. He’d known they’d be closing in, too. No use dallying around.

They? There were fragments of impressions and flashes he couldn’t parse—

A dark, inky form slipped through the shadowy bushes, and he lunged.

The spear-tip glinted, plunging into something solid, something with a give to it, drawing a screech. That screech seared through his ears, foliage exploding, a black blur swinging.

Leaping aside, he rolled over mulch and dirt, spear stabbing out to catch a mouth with too many teeth opening wide, point driving deep into the throat just below the chin. The spear’s haft jerked in his hands, nearly throwing him to the ground, dirt and leaf exploding under clawed feet, the monster yanking back.

Could barely hear—shouts and sounds that set hairs on end and lacerated his ears, twisting on his heel to avoid the whip-like lash of—something spiny?

What the Dark Depths are these?

Not Drillers? He couldn’t— Turl dropped— Seih dropped— Ngh.

Dirt in his mouth. He spat as he launched himself up and threw his whole weight into a lunge, catching the thing’s burning eye—

Only for its face to split open, inky tendrils shooting from the shadows pouring out of its head, stabbing into his shoulder.

He cried out, jerking back and cursing, the spear ripping back through a skull like molasses and sending the thing flailing in a puddle of shrieking shadows, fading like mist.

Seih twitched, the afterimage of a formless shadow burned into his retinas. He blinked to clear it, clenching his jaw against the sensation of his soul crawling and threw out his hand for Tozu to draw the damn experience out, fighting to keep his muscles from locking up.

A second later he could breathe again without feeling like a shouting match had lodged itself in his skull. That... hadn’t been as bad as the last one. The disorientation at the end was the worst part, but at least it ended quickly. |Thank you.|

|Can eject it yourself. Might want to try that. It’s quicker. Cleaner.|

|I’ll keep that in mind.| He took in a deep breath and let it out again through his nose, picking up the next one. |What’s this one?|

|Same impressor, but later. Ends unpleasantly.|

He studied the other’s unreadable expression for a moment and slowly set it back down again, tapping at the other one. |And this one?|

|Observation from the walls of Foresthold. Might want to take that one first.|

Mm. He rolled it into his palm. Either that, or he could take this one last, as a cleanser. Letting out a long, slow breath, he closed his eyes, feeling the ethereal weight of it in his hand. No, he’d probably be too distracted to pay attention to this one if he did that, and an observation meant an opportunity to get a better look at... whatever these were. Because that hadn’t been a Driller.

Steeling himself, he breathed it in and consigned himself to his fate.

Pallis.

Pallis?

A jolt ran through him as calloused hands set themselves against the rough stone of a low wall, the ground stretching out below. The walls of the city.

He knew Pallis. This soul felt like the man he knew, his eyes flicking across the patchy forest and rolling hills rising up towards mountains in the distance, a haze hanging over it all. Rain. A light rain, turning the mountains into dull ghosts, the peaks hidden by cloud.

“Turl.” He turned, beckoning for his cousin standing further towards the middle of the shelter. “Give me the lenses, aye?”

The man in question exhaled noisily, raising his eyes to the hidden Light and tromping up to him, slapping a pair of oculars in his waiting hand. And rubbed at his shoulder again. “Don’t bother. I saw them up close. I can already tell you they’re not Drillers. Not all of them.”

“It’s hard to get a clear understanding these days. I’d like to put this up in Soulspace, give it to the archives.” He raised the device to his eyes, coaxing it into focus with a few adjustments of the lenses and hunting for a clear view. “Maybe everyone’ll finally pick themselves up off the mud and take it all seriously. Your shoulder’s still hurting?”

“Of course it is. I’ve got the damn rot.”

“There’s another thing that’s off,” he noted, scanning over the treetops and skimming past a dark blur. There. Carefully sweeping back, he settled on an inky shadow slinking beneath a tree, not quite in focus. “Everyone touched by the things gets a blight on their skin. Like the damn shadow creatures have infected them somehow. Light scalelets seem to help. I’ve heard water from the Streams of Light is even better, but it was rare to have that even before trade cut off.”

“I’d give this arm for some of that,” Turl said as the blurs cleared and the shadow slunk out more into the open, a pure black spine that seemed to warp and twist like there was a dark mist rising off its skin appearing above bushes and long grass.

Come on, beastie. He tracked it as it passed out of view behind a twisted trunk, heading for a clearer area. Show yourself in all your ugly glory. If it didn’t, he’d have to abandon pulling this as an experience and try again later—

“Aha!”

A spindly, vaguely twisted arm stretched out from behind the trunk, long, claw-like fingers flexing out and settling on a knobby root. Never failed to give him the crawls, his hands staying steady even as the tip of a snout devoid of light or colour followed the limb, almost skull-like. Wisps of black mist rose and dripped from between its jaws, a glowing pinprick of an ember for an eye in a hole of a socket almost seeming to lock on to the oculars.

It didn’t see him, though. If it had, it would have paused instead of oozing out the rest of the way, an odd, too-long skeletal ribcage stretching up to the knobs of its spine, razor sharp quills forming a ridge. The spiny tail stretched out long, the whole thing so thin its legs almost looked more human than animal.

“There it is. Never seen a Driller with four legs. And not legs that long and spindly, either.”

“They don’t walk when they can drill, anyways. Damn worms. If we didn’t have stone under us they’d be bursting through the ground like they did in Two Bridges,” Turn growled.

“Aye.” He watched it for a moment longer, lingering on the way it moved like oil, flowing across the ground, before it disappeared into a thicket, the knife-like tip of its tail the last thing to flick out of sight. “And if you’ve never seen a Driller in its truest form, it’s got legs—”

“I’d call them feelers. Dozens of tiny little creepers sticking out along its body. Gives you the crawls.”

“In any case, not even close to this. None of these. There’s a lot of different kinds.” He pulled the oculars away from his face, folding them and handing them back to Turl.

The other man scowled out at the rain, grey eyes as stormy as the sky. “I’d call them Haunts like they’ve got down south, but I’ve never heard of them banding up like these ones do.”

“They’re all smaller than that, too. Thing was twice the size of a man.” He patted the other’s good shoulder, directing them both to the blocky, stone stairs on the other side. “You should get back to somewhere warm. I’ll leave the experience here.”

And Seih blinked back to the table, the feeling of a fragment of Pallis’s soul sitting more quietly under his skin than the others had. He focused on that, drawing it through to his hand and forming it in his palm, similar to how he’d draw an experience out of his own memories.

|Better one?|

|I knew the impressor.| He held it in his hand for a moment, rolling it gently with his thumb. |Do you know what day this was?|

|Couple weeks back.|

His stomach tightened slightly. |Do you know what happened to him?|

He sensed more than saw the other’s shrug. |Not sure. That one there, the last one, that was three days ago.|

It inadvertently dragged his eyes over, like screaming faces haunting the edges of barely lit shadows. The last one, from Turl. Half a suspicion of why Tozu had described it the way he had was brewing in the back of his head, and he didn’t like the route it took his thoughts down.

There were things mentioned in the report Aphox had made. More than just strange beings that might or might not be Haunts.

He could only hope Pallis had made it.

Picking it up, he squeezed it in his hand, forced down the crawling prickle creeping along his arms, and breathed it in.

He burned.

A gasping breath shuddered in his lungs, rattling, his hand clawing at the blankets beneath him. Darkness take him and sift mud for his bed, would the pain never end?

There were sounds. There were always sounds. He could always hear someone talking, someone muttering. Laughter and snarling and this constant clanging that never stopped, all jumbled up like a smith’s shop.

He tossed and turned and could never find anywhere comfortable. Black veins ran down to his hands, his fingers seized up in a rictus, his joints locked. Was Marla there? She shouldn’t be. Damn kid. He didn’t care if she was his favourite niece, she shouldn’t see him like this, on his deathbed, rasping out husky curses to the room and all its oozing shadows.

Her mother was out there somewhere. His sister shouldn’t have to see this either.

Pallis was always off somewhere, always off.... “Where... where....”

“It’s alright, unc. We’re all here.”

Something cold and wet pressed against his forehead, and he hissed. “Where is he?”

Dark shadows oozed in the corners, brushing his lips with skeletal fingers, and he choked, a gurgle rattling in his lungs. “Where isssss he?”

“Unc?”

Blackened claws reached for a young, pure face with wide eyes, her pure soul pulsing to every hard beat of her heart—her heartbeat pounding in his ears.

A crash, a clatter. A scream.

No. Oh Reyahn no.

Gurgling rattled in his lungs, like rocks gargled at the back of his throat, rolling into a throaty click that matched every shudder of his spine, and he— no no please— Someone was shouting, no, sobbing. And he convulsed, shuddering, thrashing at strangling blankets and rasping for breath he couldn’t drag in— he couldn’t pull away he couldn’t pull back—

A black mist rose in front of his eyes— he yanked back, shoving at it— a soft hissing rattle shook him from head to toe. Wide, horrified eyes.

NO!

“Sssseihhhhh....”

A black tide rose from under his skin, pouring from his throat, encasing him in an endless, black night.

Icy fangs buried in the back of his neck, and he screamed—

Shoving back from the table in a soul-tearing lunge, yanking the experience from his soul and hurling it with all the wild strength of pure desperation, he gasped in a ragged breath that ended its life in a jagged, dry gag, the edge of a shelf gripped in a white-knuckled hand.

Seih pressed back against it, feeling it dig into his spine, into the back of his head, his chest heaving. His body refused to stop shaking, a clammy sweat sticking to his skin.

He clenched his eyes shut and his jaw tight against the urge to heave again. His body in the real world might follow suit, if it hadn’t already. If Voice heard. If anyone had heard, if he’d made a sound....

He dug the heel of his hand into his forehead, wishing he could expel the last dregs of the experience.

Reyahn. Oh Reyahn.

It hadn’t called his name. It couldn’t have called his name. That was just Turl’s delirium mixing with his own soul to create a nightmarish fever dream, as something beyond horrific happened to him. Something straight from the Dark Depths.

This is more... this is more than just a Driller invasion.

His eyes opened, only half-seeing the columns and shelves spiralling up towards a pinprick of distant, red light.

This is Darkness.