Something in the Darkness
"Screeeee—"
A shrill sound rang out, metal scraping against metal, like something sharp being dragged slowly across a chalkboard.
For a moment I shuddered at the hideous sensation that burrowed all the way into my veins—and then, accompanied by the clatter of hooves, horses reduced to bare bone appeared before my eyes.
"Priestess, ghk—Priestess, are you used to it? Mounting the body of a dead horse?"
"..."
I simply stared at him in silence for a moment. Looking embarrassed, he scratched his head, then tapped the skeletons with his staff—tap, tap.
They knelt without a word, becoming a footstool for him. Stepping on their backs and hands, he clambered onto the horse as if clinging to it, then looked down at me.
"Hurry up and get on. Do you—hic—need the skeletons' help?"
The way he kept convulsing and writhing was probably a side effect of handling too many corpses. That wheezing breath of his, too—no doubt from inhaling far too much of the stench of corpse poison.
But the two eyeballs that raked over me had nothing to do with any of that.
And that tongue slowly tracing his lips had nothing to do with it either.
Fighting through the dreadful sensations forced upon me, I carefully settled Evan onto the horse's back. The moment I sprang up to mount it myself—
"Screee!"
"Hngh?!"
It reared up on its forelegs.
As if deliberately trying to throw me off.
My body hanging in midair. The hunchback's irrepressible, grotesque smile. And Evan sliding toward the ground.
Of course.
Goodwill was never going to be found in a place like this. That much was certain.
In that instant, everything became clear.
The only thing I could believe in. The only thing I could trust.
It was Evan alone.
Not the elves who had given birth to me. Not those who had once been my kin. Not even the so-called god watching over me from the sky above.
I no longer even knew if such a thing still existed.
And the "god" this man spoke of—surely he had not been sent with any good intention either.
Yes.
Then I would have to carve my own path through this.
Even if the world kept tormenting me. Even if it laid a terrible curse upon Evan simply for being at my side—
I would protect him.
I would find my own happiness and show them all.
I caught my falling body with my legs. Perhaps that was the one advantage of a horse made of nothing but bone. I wedged my legs into the spaces between its ribs and locked myself firmly in place.
"Ghk—"
The recoil clamped down hard on my legs, but that didn't matter. Twisting my body, I seized the shroud that was sliding off him—and a hideous pain found my waist and tore into me.
The skin around my belly pulled taut, the muscles beneath it straining. Even as it felt as though my bones might slip out of place, I finally managed to haul him up and hold him.
"Ghk, hnnngh!"
I looked up and met the necromancer's eyes. His face was blank with shock, thoroughly flustered.
So he'd thought me a joke.
Well—a woman who couldn't even protect the one she loved. How easy must I have looked?
I kept finding myself sorry toward Evan, who had approached me with such expectations of a long-lived race. He, a short-lived man, had staked everything on loving me. He had cherished me enough to offer up even his life.
And I had failed to protect him. Failed even to stop him from being disgraced. Everything I had meant to give him kept being defiled by scum like this.
I would repay this humiliation. Every last bit of it—in the worst ways I was capable of.
And Evan—I would surely... I would...
What could I even do for Evan, who was already dead?
Lacking the courage to harass me any further, the necromancer quietly led me and his little army onward. He seemed well aware of how petty, cowardly, and shameless his stunt had been.
But I soon realized he hadn't been quiet at all—he had only looked that way.
"No, that's—hic! Ghk...!"
Watching him thrash his small, ruined body and spit out meaningless words in pain, I felt a flicker of awkwardness—then understood that everything around me had begun to change into something stranger still.
Far stiffer than before. As if they were merely walking forward and nothing more. The skeletal horses and zombies, which had once moved with something almost like living naturalness, now moved with an alien rigidity. All of them marched down the road in stiff formation, keeping ranks.
The situation was too unnatural to call it simple control on his part. The ones that had once held human shape still moved as if they were human. The ones I rode still moved as if they were horses—bending joints, planting legs, pushing off the ground to advance. It felt as though they were moving their bodies according to some fixed command, and the wrongness of it settled over me.
"I—I would never dare—ghhk—I'm sorry, I'm sorry...!"
How long did we move like that? And how much longer did the necromancer thrash about so noisily?
Soon I could see a formation drawn upon the ground. The skeletons scratching something into the earth stood out most of all. Unlike those unnatural movements, they were smoothly inscribing characters across the floor. Spreading outward in a great circle, they kept their sticks busy—then at last stepped back a pace and fixed their gaze on the hunchback.
"...I—I understand. Never again... Yes! I swear it, ghk—I do. Leave it to me. Yes!"
The horses and his forces still stood utterly motionless. And the skeletons that had been drawing the formation now watched him in perfect attention, as if at attention.
"O merciful guardian who cradles us in the darkness—
hff, ghk—
I beseech you, veil us in the darkness you command. Lend us your vast body that stretches across the world, and guide me to the place I desire!"
Before them he kept bowing, lowering his clasped hands toward the earth. Then dark liquid began to well up slowly from the circular formation before us. Spurting and surging from many points, it soaked the ground in a thin film—and soon became a vast pool whose end could not be seen.
"C-come, hff, ghk—this way..."
Nearly flinging himself down, he landed with the help of his soldiers, carefully took the skeletal horse's reins, and beckoned. As if to set an example, he dragged along the elves poisoned by corpse toxin as well, and slowly submerged himself into that black water.
The pool that swallowed the party like a swamp left only small ripples behind—as if nothing had ever been there at all.
Then the zombies, the skeleton soldiers, and the horse I rode began to follow them in. I hurriedly turned and clutched Evan hard against my chest. Watching some of them tumble into the pool so haphazardly they even dropped their swords, my unease only grew.
A coldness climbed slowly up my legs. Feeling it, I lifted my chin—then hugged the sack tightly once more.
"Evan, you have to stay... by my side. Stay with me. Please..."
Darkness gradually veiled my sight, and the viscous liquid swallowed me whole. Feeling terror at that deep black color, I kept holding fast to the body still felt in my arms.
Evan's flesh—the only thing in this place I could lean on.
At last, feeling the skeletal horse thrash beneath my legs, I kicked free of it and wrapped my legs around his body instead. As if submerged and adrift, I felt as though I were being swept by some rough wave.
"Hff, hff, hff—Evan? You're here, aren't you? In my arms, beside me?"
No answer would come.
He was dead, after all.
The fact of his absence felt even more terrible in this darkness, and tears began to rise.
"If you can't speak—please, anything. Just some small sign that you're at my side. Please..."
Of course there was no answer. No answer returned from within this dark.
So I opened my eyes.
If reality would not change either way, then at least I would carve into my bones how cruel this solitary darkness was. If there was no way to bring him back, then at least I would remember every humiliation I had suffered and every agony he had endured.
But in the darkness—
Beyond the black curtains drifting past—
I saw something empty.
To call it black would be wrong. It was... slightly bright. Violet, perhaps, would be the right word. Brighter than the darkness I had seen that dawn when my ear was cut away—and yet far too murky to call blue.
That color was there.
It was writhing. Surging.
It felt as though I had seen something I should never have seen. And yet I could neither close my eyes nor refuse it. That presence seemed to be searching for me—for me. That was why it was slowly approaching, tearing through the dark.
A brief stillness tried to wrap around me—and then I finally, inevitably, perceived the violet that had come right before my eyes.
A fragment of an endless violet world unfolded before me. It was as if I had, by chance, looked past the layered veils someone had drawn so that no one would see.
No—
It was making me look at it.
And it, too, was looking at me.
At me, clutching his cold corpse. At me, left alone and forsaken in the world.
Light stretched forth. Violet light came toward me—like threads, no, thicker than that, like the tentacles of some living creature. With those tips it was stirring the space around me.
Invading the black void, it disordered the color and devoured it. Pitch-black was being dyed violet. And that strange warmth, too, was swallowing the cold that had lingered nearby.
It seemed to be comforting me. Trying to make me forget the pain I felt. And as if claiming to understand me, it was trying to enfold me.
That strange sensation reaching to hold me—
I could not allow it.
At once, eyes closed, I turned my back so that the light would not take him from me. The violet world still shimmered before my eyes, but I refused it.
I hated the thing that had made me forget him even for an instant. I felt revulsion toward the thing that had tried to pull me away from Evan. Toward the thing that had pretended to understand me while seeking to deceive me, I finally cut off all interest.
But it seemed already to have remembered me.
Darkness slowly enfolded me once more—yet the violet light that had looked like darkness still shone brightly against my back.
As if it would come find me again.