802. Wolny i okrutny, 1
(Temee)
I’m camping in the same building where Ran and her aging father used to. In this city otherwise utterly abandoned. They knew places good to rest, like caves in the wilderness.
In this city, no one stays for winter. Ran knows where are the places where travellers pass by and sometimes stockpile supplies.
She’s getting a small ship ready, that was kept around but aging without much use. We’re not borrowing the main ship left here by the people usually passing around here. The smaller one will suffice by far.
For the same reason, even though we’re settling in someone else’s house while they’re away, we’re not pillaging their resources. Ran prepares the vessel and gives me lists of supplies to gather. Then I venture through the city to find them in other stockpiles to avoid just depleting the one here from the same people we’re taking also the boat from.
T - You will know how to bring back the ship to them afterward?
R - I think so.
We know all too well return journeys are not that simple.
But for the time being and days passing by there, I venture through the city looking for the materials we require to equip and repair that ship so it will last a reasonable while.
Although we’ll surely need to stop and resupply at times later down the stream. In the less dangerous areas and not too steep for the flow.
That being said...
My trust in Ran becomes stained with the shadow of a doubt, as the days go by.
I can also tell easily that as I have regrets and guilt over my past barbaric successes, she has also some traumas she doesn’t wish to share. She still is of nice company. A bit teasing at times, but a well of science as well.
Even though Ran reassures me easily, I don’t know at all what could be happening higher in the mountain, and further East. It concerns me. And my fear of being caught back by a threat or another is growing stronger every night we’re spending on this same place.
My unease grows still every day that rises, until it breaks.
~
I see the thing, fluid, dark, devouring everything, shapeless and multiple.
It’s coming to devour me like it gnawed upon Glasgow’s body.
I wake up in a spasm and old sweat, scared for my life.
The crawling shades are pulsating like a cardiac impulse around me.
Ran has woken up and has a weird look over her face. As if she shared my fear but without understand it.
T - We have to leave now! The thing pursuing me is arriving!
The sweat covering me is either the symptom of something dire like a disease, or the reaction to a real perception.
I’m scared. And I can feel some intolerable emotions beginning to rise from my belly.
Ran eventually nods. We load the ship with the last supplies from this place in the end. And we’ll make do without the last missing tools.
I tidy up my belongings while leaving Ran head first to the ship.
My bag back on my shoulders, I make one step.
And my heart suddenly hurts.
I make another step, fast, and a nausea takes me. I stop my movement. I feel like I’ve just been punched in the guts and over the head, heavily.
Something is whispering to me an icy doubt. The shiver is painful along my back.
G - You’re being lied to.
I begin to panic, without understanding at first.
But mechanically, I end up reopening my bag to check back my things.
The precious fragment is still there. I would have been surprised for Ran to steal it now of all times...
But the hair of Glasgow has changed.
My breathing shuts. The stupor bring silence around me. Followed by more burning sensations.
Under my fingers, the fake head falls over the ground along with the rest of the bag.
I’m running after her, weapon in hands.
~
The boat is still on the river, waiting for either of us.
And in the opposite direction, the sky is becoming dark from storm approaching. It’s all but natural looking.
I looked at the boat, and then at the city and ominous sky. I can tell there is not much time.
I rush through the streets that I know rather well by now, after Ran.
~
Humans were barely daring to study her.
I didn’t discuss into sufficient depth the fate of my sister with Ran. That’s most likely where my mistake has been.
I should have asked her.
I should have talked about it.
To better understand.
Because I’ve had time to understand quite well what I could represent, for humanity.
But not her. Aside her poison living through her veins, I did not know.
What could be made of her, I still ignore.
And I should have taken the time to think about it before arriving here!
T - Ran!
In the middle of a morning street, fenced by rubbles and trees, there is a peculiar obscurity looming.
There’s not far away now, a flowing thing, fluid and vaporous like fumes, gaseous or liquid, absorbing most things.
It’s moving onto itself, looking for a shape to assume.
Everything is flow, and smells.
The walls are coloured differently as it approaches, as some exhaled fumes are scattered.
The thing is still boiling, changing its environment along its path.
In front of this ominous lump of shades, a hallucinating Ran is holding Glasgow’s head between her arms as preciously as if it was a new born child.
The wings covering Ran are all restless. Her gaze is locked elsewhere.
I’m running toward her, my eyes tinted, but I’m ready to crush her arms so she’ll release my deceased sister.
My heart aches. I thought it. And I still don’t want to give up.
Not to that. Not like that.
The horror is condensing, and taking shape slowly. A body with colourless flesh is appearing rather clearly.
A silhouette hesitating in its defined boundaries but roughly our height is demarking itself from the further amounts of darkness and putrid fumes that build it.
More dangerous than a monster or savage animal she said.
The hands it raises slowly toward Ran and the gift she’s trying to make leave me enough time to intercept them.
With all the panicked violence I can muster, I strike them.
I just heard her whisper a few words, as I reached and struck them.
R - Libères moi...
The arms of the demon are slashed off and liquefy as soon as they hit the ground.
One of Ran’s hand burst and her other arm is broken.
I barely contained myself from also striking her head too.
In my pain and sadness, I still want to understand. Why did she betray me? What did she hope to accomplish here?
Now the monster hesitates, and Ran is crying on the ground, trying to hold her bleeding wounds.
I’m picking up first the head that rolled miserably over the ground.
It pains me just as if she had suffered the pain of that fall.
And unfortunately I don’t have the time to interrogate Ran.
As I turn back toward her, the monster is already devouring her spilled blood over the ground, and rapidly crawling toward the source of these rivers.
The horror devours Ran from the inside and the outside at the same time, letting her disappear in the sudden volume of darkness in a loud scream of pain and agony. It’s rapidly muffled.
I’m stepping back, terrified.
The monster is bubbling all over then, digesting its meal, or sacrifice.
But rapidly, the overall thing rotates slightly, bringing its attention toward me...
Or maybe in reality toward the strange thing I myself hold between my arms...
The thing reassumes a rough human silhouette in front of itself, toward me as I continue to step back in fear.
A human shape is about to attempt speaking to me.
I begin running away.
The entire thing throws itself at my pursuit with its usual violence.
~
The shapeless thing crashes against the front of a building while I’m rushing through its hall.
The roars behind are hurting my ears.
But now I hear a little more clearly it’s not just me it wants to eat.
And I’m quite conflicted whether I want to know why...
I throw my picked up bag onto the boat after the rolling head and untie the rope.
I take the river.
~
