#1 Agony I
‘Na Rohg is not a place, but an origin of all the other dark places where the soul resides.’
Unknown
~~~
[Record#01]: ‘I wake up to the silence of the world. But the world has changed. It is no longer the world I know of or remember. My memory is vague. I look at my hands and don’t see them as mine. I find a puddle of dark water on the ground and look into it and the reflection is not mine. Who am I…?’ [end of Record]
Somewhere...
‘Mavis, what are you— ’
‘Frey…’
‘MAVIS!!!’
Mavis flung eyes open wide and stared. The air around her was moving upwards. No, she was falling down. She was looking at the sky above. It was rust-colored and foggy. And overshadowed by falling objects. The debris from the broken clock tower. The clock tower that got sucked together with her into the dark portal. She sought said portal and with horror saw it closing a couple of meters above her already. Mavis turned head to the ground as there should be ground anywhere beneath. There was. She saw land – greenery and a run-down-looking building with a high tower, which didn’t have a roof. Beyond, she caught a glimpse of something black all around, which looked like scorched fields.
A piece of the tower passed on her right, heading for the ground, creating a small vortex, which threw her to the right and off the path of another falling piece. And with the debris, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure also falling.
’Kratse…Nih?’
He seemed to be unconscious, pieces of the tower and other tiles passing him by and throwing him off the falling trajectory. The ground was near. Mavis turned into the air, facing the coming towards her building.
’I can manage. The sky is not a problem for me. I’ll spread my wings and— ’
She spread her wings and flew. And that was it. She couldn’t hold herself into the air. Mavis panicked. Nothing like this ever happened to her before, or to any of her sisters for that matter, when any of them attempted to fly. It was as if some unknown force was pushing her wings down. Mavis flapped and flapped but she wasn’t going up and instead she was falling down faster and faster. Now she really panicked. If she couldn’t fly, then she would smash somewhere below and die.
The debris hit the side of the building and some crashed into the tower and destroyed half of its left upper side. Kratse’s body flew uncontrollably down, spinning on all sides like a string doll, smashed into the tower’s inner edge, leaving a big black blood stain and disappeared somewhere inside. That wouldn’t probably kill him since he had his corruption but that didn’t apply for Mavis. Her fear reached her whole flying down body and she wanted to cry.
Then she saw flying next to her debris, which was the roof of the tower, which gave her an idea. A crazy but, safe to say, probably the only idea that she could survive with. So she used her wings as small parachutes to slow down her own movement, flipped and clung to the piece, getting on top of it. She was hoping it hit the tower and shatter and let her land safely onto it.
’Brace yourself, Mavis!’
It hit the tower and smashed just as she had hoped, rattling her up greatly in the process, but that shake was enough to throw her up first and then down into the hole of the tower.
’No! No! NOOO!!!’ she screamed at last, falling down, going through dust and more falling debris and not knowing what she would hit on the way and when she would die, splattered.
Her leg hit something, which made her spin, then her back smashed into a rock on the way, then she felt sharp pain in her right arm and the last she saw before hitting her head was ground and then Mavis lost consciousness.
She had fallen into the tower, around seven meters down, hitting various rocks in the process and getting cushioned by a sandy ground. A few clock-tower pieces followed her down, burying her underneath. Then all went quiet.
Mavis woke up in a startle a couple of minutes or maybe hours later and stared up at debris around her and a glimpse of the rusty sky above. She tried moving. Her body hurt as she shifted left and right. There was no way to know for sure what she had damaged and what not. She inspected her arms, seeing the right sleeve of her clothing to be torn and bloody. She couldn’t feel that same arm much. It seemed as if detached from the rest of her body, it was as if not hers, heavy and limp. She tried moving her legs. Right one felt alright but as she moved her left, piercing pain made her exclaim. It was stuck somewhere. Something was crushing it underneath. And the more she moved, the more it hurt.
Mavis bit back her tears as she tried lifting the debris over her with only her left hand and right foot. She pushed and shoved and then attempted even pulling to either left and right but the heavy pieces weren’t budging. Mavis was completely stuck under them. Her half-dragon’s strength amounted to nothing. She didn’t die against Ulag Rakh even though she knew she was no match for a monster like him. Then she was saved. Now she was going to die under a pile of rubble, alone and away from her loved ones. The tears she was suppressing streamed down her cheeks, cold and unforgiving.
‘Aniki…Frey…’ she sobbed, her left hand still desperately trying to push the clock tower piece off her lower body. ‘Someone…help…’
From her right, a leg kicked some rocks along with parts of the building.
‘Fucking damn it!!!’
Mavis was in too much of a horrified state and in a shock to remember she hadn’t fallen alone in the tower. He came out of the rubble, his corruption in unsteady shape, falling from his clothes in big black beads, his right arm crunched in a few places and definitely broken and his face splashed by blood. He looked around, standing above the rubble, blood dripping from his nose and chin and he seemed quite out of it for a beat.
‘Where the heck…is this?’ he mumbled, swung to the left, almost losing balance and then he saw Mavis. Two pairs of yellow eyes stared at each other. ‘Ah?’
Mavis jerked horrified, as if she had anywhere to move to. She wasn’t going to die the normal way with Kratse Nih and that terrified her. And what terrified her even more was the stretched grin over his lips. Mavis desperately tried freeing her stuck leg but only caused more pain without any result of her attempts.
‘Seems like…’ he said, turning at her ‘it’s just…you and me here in this— ’
And he took a step forward maybe to slide down the rubble but he simply fell, head into the sand. Now he was on only five steps away from where Mavis was. She heard him grumbling as he lifted himself up, blood trickling from his clothes. Mavis widened eyes at the piece of some kind of metal sticking from his left stomach side.
‘What the…’ he muttered, looking at it with surprise and grabbed it to remove it.
And then his body jerked and wriggled and he produced a painful cry as the corruption wasn’t healing and restoring his body as it was supposed to do but was splashing around in the form of black blood. He let go of the metal but the corruption continued splattering around and hurting him even more. Some of it even went on Mavis’ face.
She knew from what Heisel had briefly explained to her about corruption and how it was supposed to protect its bearer by restoring damaged flesh, bones and even clothes. But now this corruption wasn’t restoring anything. It was torturing and maybe trying to kill its bearer with all it had for some reason.
’Connection…my connection to him…is…’ he mumbled and shouted again, the corruption twisting itself from his clothing like water.
‘Connection?’ Mavis whispered. Another thing that she had heard from Heisel. About the connection between the worshippers and the Imaginerium. The connection they had was with shared black blood and a name. A name.
He went on arms and legs, howling and wriggling as the corruption pierced him from the back, turning him into a hedgehog. Then it burst like a water bubble and Mavis exclaimed when it rained down on her and on the ground. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then he sat up, the black blood completely gone from his face but with it, his whole appearance was different. Messy black hair in big locks over his forehead, amber eyes with the left one with a vertical scar and his clothes were in tatters and his body was in cuts, bruises and blood.
The piece of metal was still sticking from his side and making a blood puddle under him. Mavis was looking at a different person. But even with that, she wasn’t still safe from harm. But she couldn’t do anything, being trapped under the rubble.
