Dio - Mold (3)

“How is Brela?” he asked quietly.

Des didn’t answer right away. He stared down at the floor, eyes glistening, face pale.

“She was better. You saved her. She was whole again. Then two days ago, after we got back… she relapsed.”

“No.”

“She’s in her bed. We can’t get near her anymore. Everything rots within a foot or two of her. The wood of her bed has already fallen apart, and she lies in the remnants of her pillows and blanket. She refuses to get up. Maybe she can’t. She doesn’t want to hurt us…”

Des’s voice broke, and he buried his face in his hands, sobbing.

Mucus soon soaked into Des’s beard, though Dio hardly noticed. The words still hadn’t sunk in. Yorm only shook his head sadly.

That’s not true.

Dio stood and staggered toward the door. Outside, everyone glanced at him in silence, some fearful, most filled with grief and despair. He couldn’t tell which expression hurt more to see.

Slowly, he walked up the gravel path toward Brela’s hut. The lush garden around it still bloomed in vibrant colors, bursting with shrubs, berries, herbs, and blossoms. Yet every bright hue and every sweet scent felt like mockery now, and his face twisted in disgust.

He hesitated at her door, then entered without knocking, Des close behind. He hadn’t even realized his friend had followed him.

The air beyond the door felt heavier, almost wet, as if the rot inside had learned to breathe. Even the faint creak of the hinges sounded like a sigh of warning.

“Maybe you’ll know what to do. If anyone does, it’s you,” Des whispered.

The words made nausea surge up again.

Me? Why me? Why should I have an idea? The thought raced through Dio’s mind, but he had no time to dwell on it.

Brela was waiting.

She lay there exactly as Des had said. Her hair was matted, white mold still clinging to too many strands. Her skin was cracked, veined with gray, her milky eyes flickering as he entered. When she saw him, a faint smile crossed her lips, and for one brief, wonderful moment the warmth she had given him for hundreds of days came back. Then it faded again, just a mere flicker remaining.

“Dio, hello. I’m glad you’re back with us. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Because of me, you almost…” she began, but Dio only shook his head.

“It’s all right, Brela. It’s all right,” he forced out, his voice trembling as the world blurred behind a watery veil.

A pitiful sob escaped his throat.

“No, it’s not,” she whispered. “Because of you, I wasn’t dragged into the tree, not taken by that presence. But it’s still here, inside me. It’s closer than I ever feared it could be. It’s melted into me. It’s eating me, slowly. Dio, I don’t think I’ll be here much longer.”

There was a calmness in her words that nearly drove Dio mad.

He needed to clear his head somehow.

“How do you feel? Anything unusual?” he asked tonelessly.

“I feel distant… so alone.”

“Because people can’t come near you?”

He wiped his eyes. There had to be something he could do, something he could learn to help, to change this.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I see. Anything else? Pain, anything?”

“No… only weakness,” she breathed, looking at him with quiet worry.

He ignored it.

“Has anyone tried your salves?”

She blinked. “No, why…? No one comes…”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He rushed to the cabinet where Brela kept her remedies. She had healed wounds far worse than this before. He was sure of it.

What could be worse than an open wound? She once saved Pars with this… from waking, didn’t she? She told me that, back in the forest, back when we first…

He found her pouch and hurried back to her side. His fingers were soon coated with the thick, sticky paste, its scent soothing and familiar. Without hesitation, he strode toward her.

“No!” she screamed, trying to sit up, but immediately collapsed again, her face twisted in pain.

“So there is pain,” Dio said quietly.

He felt no fear of the rotting presence that still radiated from her. He knew how to deal with it now. Stepping closer, Dio let his blindness feed on the corruption seeping from Brela until it nearly faded away. He even smiled faintly when he realized he no longer tired the way he once had when he'd shaped the Dream before.

“Dio… no, what are you doing? You promised… don’t…” Brela stammered, her lips trembling in panic, but he had no time for such trivial things.

He had to save her.

Gently, he brushed his fingers over her face. As his skin touched her cracked, ruined flesh, he thought of the life she had once brought to others, of the healing her paste had given him long ago, of her will to restore health, which he could almost feel pulsing in his memory.

Brela gasped, then suddenly relaxed. Her hair began to regain its familiar luster, her skin turned smooth and clean again, deep brown and vibrant with life.

Dio stepped back and started to laugh.

“I knew it would work!” he shouted, spinning toward Des, who stood there frozen, eyes wide, unable to move or speak.

“I fixed her! I knew I could. I can restore her body, I—”

“Dio…” Brela gasped, sorrow thick in her voice, pain carved across her face.

Gradually, the white mold crept back. Her skin cracked once more, the decay returning.

“No! No, no, no!” Dio roared, plunging his hand back into the pouch and scooping up more of the paste.

It was slick and warm to the touch, comforting. It would heal her, just as Brela had healed everyone before.

Once more her appearance changed, this time before he even touched her, but as before, it soon returned to the rotting state he tried to fight off.

"NO! ONCE MORE"

He reached into the pouch again, felt...

“Stop! Dio, stop! Please!”

Her voice was laced with fear, and it froze him mid-movement. He looked into her weary face, saw the tremor running through her body.

“Stop,” she repeated softly, her brow furrowing in thought.

“I… you can’t change it, Dio. No one can,” she whispered and closed her eyes, exhausted.

“But I’m healing you. I healed you. Why isn’t it working? I HEALED YOU!” he choked out.

Everything inside him strained to hold back tears.

He had to find another way. There had to be something. What were the facts? She could not be healed by any medicine they knew. There had been shadow around her; shadow was fought with Light.

“A Sage. We need to find a Sage. That will help…”

“Dio.”

He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Des’s face, drawn and tired, as if it mirrored Brela’s.

“Dio, you’re making it worse for her.”

The silence that followed was unbearable. Dio could hear nothing but the faint rasp of Brela’s breath, the sound of decay working somewhere in the walls like invisible insects.

When he finally looked back into Brela’s eyes, after she stopped avoiding his gaze, he saw that Des was right.

His vision blurred with tears and ragged sobs. Still, he could not stop staring at her.

“Dio, how do you feel?” Brela asked quietly.

Her voice was gentle, and the pity in her eyes cut into his chest like a knife.

He hesitated, struggling to find the words.

“I don’t know why this is happening, but I hate it. Brela, Des, I hate it. I hate it, and it makes me furious and sad, and at the same time there’s this emptiness dulling everything inside me. The world around me, this Dream, feels so hollow right now, like it’s merely made of facts. Facts that are true but meaningless. And then I see you there, Brela, hurting, withering, and that abyss opens so deep and terrible that I just want to disappear into my thoughts forever. To find a way to save you, to make this sickness inside you stop...”

She nodded and answered softly, her voice slow and deliberate. “But you can’t. I’ll wake up soon soon. That truth has been with me since the moment I lay on the cart Ogan built. I’ve had time to think about it, Dio. I will awaken, and you will stay. You’ll still be here after me. And it’s not even important that I’ll awaken soon; What matters is that you keep me with you, just as Des will hopefully keep me with him. That’s what’s important to me.”

Dio stepped back and glanced at Des. Yet Des’s eyes were fixed only on Brela, as if he no longer realized anyone else was there.

Dio shook his head fiercely. “I would never forget you, Brela. Even if I wake one day, you’ll still be there, within. We’re connected, just as I’m connected to Ray and Des, and to everyone in Daw. Still, nothing changes what’s inside me now, this helplessness that robs me of nearly all my senses.”

He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, trying to steady himself somehow. The room was spinning, barely visible through his tears that were wet all over his face.

“Do you remember our walk? So long ago?” Brela suddenly asked softly, her voice distant.

“Yes.”

“It was beautiful…”

"It was."

"Forests, green and full of life. Animals no one had ever seen before. Streams and shimmering emerald chalices resting near a troop of lazapes. All of it brimming with life. Please, remember me like that."

Dio couldn’t hold back the sorrow anymore. He didn’t blink as more tears streamed down his face. He didn’t sob; he only surrendered to the terrible truth before him.

Brela would wake up.

Unless I find a solution.

And hadn’t he always found one before?

The Sages. Yes. I have to wait until a Sage comes, or someone who can tell me where to find a Lucid! I won’t give up, Brela, he thought, slipping out of the room and leaving Des with Brela.

The old man surely knew better what to say than he did.