Dio - Mold (2)

“Yeah, might be dangerous to get too close. There’s only one way to find out, I guess,” Des replied, picking up a branch that lay nearby in the grass.

Carefully, he held it out toward the edge of the decayed zone. In his thoughts, Dio could sense the branch sinking into something invisible even before it touched the ground. The tip began to crackle, turning brittle. Des yanked it back in alarm, yet the branch was already rotting away, white mold spreading rapidly across its surface. Even the air seemed to suffer from it. It started reeking more strongly, leaving behind a foul stench in Dio’s nose.

With a startled cry, Des flung the stick into the brown grass around Brela, where it quickly disintegrated and vanished beneath a cluster of foul yellow fungi.

“Not good,” Dio said dryly.

His thoughts raced, his mind flooded with half-formed impressions that struck like shards of pain and shattered his focus. The stench pressed in on him, and Brela’s sudden rasping moan tore from her dry throat, making him feel even more sick. With every moment that the corruption spread nearby, it fed the blindness within him, and the unease in his chest began to twist into panic again.

The forest appeared to bend around the spreading decay, colors draining from the leaves, sounds muffled as if swallowed by something vast and unseen. Something that wanted nothing but destruction, nothing but even the faintest memories of happiness and togetherness to wither and perish.

Sweat gathered on Dio’s forehead, and he wiped it away quickly. His heart pounded so hard it ached in his chest, and his legs suddenly felt like jelly.

I can’t hold it back too… this vile blindness. I can’t. It’s too much… The panic is too distracting. I can’t fight it any longer…

The thoughts struck through his mind, and he gagged.

Des was suddenly beside him, fear in his eyes.

“Dio, what’s… what’s happening?” he asked.

“I can’t… it’s fine,” Dio forced out.

Yet it wasn’t. It was far from fine. Everything started to tower around him, about to smother him: His fear, his worries, and among all of that, the empty void that now gaped beneath his thoughts, preparing to swallow him whole.

I can’t help Brela. I have to fight the hollow feeling, this horrid… but I need to save her. How? How? Everything rots… everything around her…

His knees gave out, and he sank trembling to the ground, the sweat on his forehead and back turning cold.

The fresh soil and humid grass pulsed faintly beneath his palms, as though the Dream itself was writhing beneath him, feverish. Sick.

I’ve kept it calm for so long. Why now? Why now of all times? Why? WHY?

WHY? WHY? WHY?

The thought pounded through his head now, only this single word, terrible and mocking. Once it had driven him onward, had helped him fend off the blindness, had taught him skills and earned him warm words and stories from his friends, from the people he loved… now it was only the amalgamation of all the powerlessness in his limbs and mind.

“You… you’re here…” Brela whispered suddenly.

Her eyes, now clouded and pale gray, darted weakly as she searched for them.

“Brela, yes, we’re here. We’re with you,” Dio gasped.

“We went for you the moment we felt your Light fade,” Des added, his breath wheezing irregularly yet his eyes full of determination and his posture strong and upright, not frail but full of life.

“We’re all here! Everyone! You are one of us, you are one of Daw! And we will get you out of there somehow! We are here for you!” Yorm shouted, his gaze flicking between her and Dio, filled with worry and helplessness but a sliver of hope.

“I… you can’t come closer. You’d wake up… like I soon will… There’s something holding me here, away from you. I’ll stay alone here, in the end. Alone…” she sobbed, and milky tears streamed down her face in quiet anguish.

Her voice trembled like a thread ready to snap, carrying a sorrow so deep that it became indistinguishable from Dio’s own sorrow for a moment—until the blindness ate it, feasted on it like the hungry abomination it was.

Her words continued to echo through Dio’s mind, mocking him. They reminded him of his helplessness. He could do nothing; he couldn’t even stand anymore. Something was rising inside him, something born from his mind yet stretching down endlessly deep, and the fear nearly broke his sanity.

Ray, what should I do? What would you have done? he asked the emptiness, but there was no answer.

I am alone too, away from her…

For a moment it was as if Brela spoke those words within him, but once more they were swallowed by the abyssal eternity at the core of his being, now slowly expanding.

Ray… what would she have done? WHAT? Oh, Ray, I miss you so much. If you’d just stayed… could you have helped? Vanquished this shadow?

Back then, when he had been the one suffering, when the people attacked him… she had acted without thinking. She had thrown herself into danger.

Because we belong together.

Brela whimpered weakly, then screamed in agony as the thorns dug deeper into her flesh and began pulling her back toward the willow, a dirty malice gathering around her. The tree had rotted into a brittle gray trunk, poisoning the morning air.

“Alone…” she breathed, and her eyes closed.

Inside Dio’s mind, her warmth began to fade. This time, it didn’t flare again.

Ray, what… Brela… you are my best friend… I will not let it end here… I will… I…

The blindness paralyzed him.

Brela was dragged away, and Des sank beside him, eyes empty. Screams tore through the air, yet no one dared move forward. Dio thought of Ray and her smile, hoping it would give him a way out, and he decided to do as she had done. Let his instincts take over. No thinking. Only the ocean below the surface of his thoughts.

And then…

The blindness… it was around Brela too, around her and inside her.

Dio felt it everywhere now, only for an instant, yet the Dream itself suddenly seemed alien, as if it were hiding some terrible Truth.

“What are you doing?” Des shouted faintly behind him.

Dio no longer saw him.

There was nothing left within him except the thought of Brela, fading slowly. Only his inner world remained, filled with the blindness curling around the stars inside him, curling around Brela’s Light. It was like a coat now, clinging to every inch of his skin, like a second breath filling his lungs and a different kind of blood running through his veins.

Then Dio saw a darkness around her, clear as day, the veil separating her from him, from all of them. Like a cruel shroud, it wrapped around Brela. He reached for it, and in his hand, now flooded with blindness, the darkness dissolved. He swatted it away like a swarm of insects, swept it aside, and left only the Light behind. The void started to eat, feasted and gorged.

Only the Light… the Light he left untouched.

The blindness rejoiced, devoured the darkness, became one with it.

Finally, it grew still.

The stillness lingered, vast and soundless, until even thought almost dissolved. Almost. Then, from somewhere beyond that silence, a faint warmth broke through. It flooded his shoulder, and he felt someone shaking him gently.

He blinked. The blindness had fallen back into slumber, and within him Brela’s Light shone once more, just as it had the first time he’d felt connected to her. The other Lights around him sparkled as well. Daw was still there.

A ceiling of dark wood now covered the sky above, and a cushion pressed softly against his back. Dio blinked again, gathering his thoughts.

He was back in his hut.

“You came back out of it… thank the Dream. Dio, you’ve been withdrawn for more than eight days. It must’ve taken so much out of you,” Des murmured beside him.

Des…

“Brela…!”

He shot up at once, his limbs heavy and slow. Her warmth was fading again. Des caught him by the shoulder.

“Calm down. We brought her back. And you,” said Yorm from a chair in the corner.

Dio swallowed hard. “Brought her back? How? What about… the mold, the rot?”

Des looked at him. He seemed to search for words, as he often did, although this time it took much longer. Dio had to restrain himself from snapping at him, from urging him to speak up quicker. That impatience was new… and he didn’t like it.

“You don’t remember? Maybe that’s for the best. It was eerie. You simply stood up, there on the meadow, and walked to her,” Des said at last, his eyes fixed on Dio with quiet intensity.

“I… what? How? The stick...! You saw what it did to it...”

“Calm down,” Yorm cut in. “We don’t know how. You just went to her. Everything around you was dead, and she was on the brink of waking, I think. The vines had her trapped, and you reached for them. They dissolved until nothing of them was left, not even dust, just memories. And even those are slowly fading in my mind. And with them, the power vanished too—that strange presence that was killing everything. Ogan built a cart, and we brought you both back.”

Dio shook his head in disbelief. “I… walked to her? Into that area? Where everything decayed? What…?”

Then he fell silent.

What have I done?