Found and Lost

Whatever horrid monster pursued me, it could not fit through the narrow doorframe which guarded my exit. I dragged the cocoon behind me, thudding up the stairs. For some reason, I knew it was Toomi, hoped it was Toomi; I’m not sure why. Her abrasive personality is comforting, a step outside the ordinary. Not to mention, her prowess would give us the best chance of leaving this crypt alive.
 
When I pried open the webbing, however, I was not met with the face of Toomi, but the delicate features of Krisa. Whose presence, as a mage, would have been a great boon had she been conscious, or even close to it. But she was trapped deep within a coma beyond what I could treat, and I was not ready to spend my Nilwort on an uncertain outcome.
 
Nowhere to go but up. I tread carefully. Most of my dealings have been with the sentient variety of creatures—I talk my way close to people much sooner than creep about. My footsteps seemed to echo in the forlorn temple. With them, though, came another sound, the sound of combat ahead of me. I rushed forward; it would not do to lose another ally.
 
In a room adjoining a great mosaiced hall, Toomi confronted two spiders. She was weary, bloodied, but a fire burned in her eyes. Seeing this, I did something I seldom do; I made a point of announcing my presence. My shout alarmed the demons, and Toomi seized the opportunity, burying her dagger in one. My first shot went wide in the clamor, but we eviscerated them in short order.
 
As I tended our wounds, I told Toomi of Oswald’s fate. She… was not pleased. Her primal display gave breath to much of what I felt in the loss of Asa, but had never spoken. I suppose I’ve never seen much point of shouting into the void—ringing against the vastness of time, they only serve to demonstrate how insignificant the outbursts are. When I first saw her, heard her, I thought… well, she’ll learn. Her heart will make room in time. Such is the risk of attachment. As I’ve learned.
 
We took a moment to examine the intricate patterns upon the wall. The art depicted some vast conflict between a figure in blue and a figure in red, the man in blue saving his people with a legion of spiders and turning his new tribe against the woman in red. They are both worshipped as gods, incite new mutual violence, slaughter each other in droves, and so on and so on. The path of the wheel of time is a muddy one. There were some new elements to this mythos I had not seen before, though, as well as one detail which felt particularly pertinent: the demons the blue figure had initially saved his people from were apparently the same ones whose skulls lined the wall. Were we in a temple to these primordial devils? Or a monument to their destruction?
 
I don’t often occupy myself with the history of the elves. I prefer to let my own experiences shape my understanding of my world. Still, it was a strange sight, to see the vast mythos, the seeds for present discontent, reduced to a mural, however grandiose. The world is a world of people, not paintings, and when they come into conflict it is blood which is spilled, not ink.
 
We continued up. As we went, I learned how I’d ended up in the coffin in the first place: Toomi had left me there to keep me safe when I was incapacitated by my visions. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful she’d thought to keep me safe in such a way, or aghast I’d been left alone in such a place; then again, it was certainly better than ending up in a cocoon. Or dead.
 
We reached a sort of crossroads, a room with four crumbling pillars and a parched fountain. The bones of this grotto. It felt we were close to escaping, had it not been for one thing—the sounds of battle above us. The very walls themselves shuddered as some dire horde fell upon the upper levels. A shout from above told me everything I needed to know.
 
The Imperium had returned.
 
Had we ventured upstairs, Toomi and I would have been torn apart by drake riders and their ravenous mounts. It seemed the logical and safe option, then, that we hole up below and wait for the storm to pass. Logic, it would seem, was not to be the guiding force of the day, as the monster from earlier skittered out from between a crack in the wall. Before we could respond, a spattering of its thick webs had sealed our way out.
 
There wasn’t much to do but to fight. As Toomi threw herself at the door to remove the webbing, I stood my ground and confronted the demon.
 
Drow folklore—what portions I am familiar with—speaks of acolytes of the Spider Queen who failed in their initiation rites and were cursed to wander the depths as twisted hybrids. The horrid form of this creature seemed to mirror such a monstrosity, chattering mandibles rending both its arachnid body and its humanoid features open as it hissed at us.
 
I felt a fury in me that was not entirely mine, looking at this profane creature. It is a sensation which has… kept me company in moments where I felt my fragile body pushed beyond its boundaries. When the memories of my lost love were not fuel enough for my furnace. The faintest whisper at the back of my head, a tiny voice above even the loudest din. It may be how I have survived my many years alone after losing Asa; even on my most desolate journeys into the farthest reaches of the world, I have never truly been alone.
 
I have my monster, too.
 
My shot found its mark—the fight I begin is the fight I am most liable to end, and I had the Machine God guiding my lead. There was no quick resolution to be found, though; its witch-marked thorax mangled, it made directly for me.
 
I gave ground quickly. There was little hope for me to survive a melee with such a creature. It’s an uphill battle, that which I don’t fight on my own terms. Its mandibles tore into me and I found my head spinning, poison creeping through my veins.
 
Every moment that passed, I found my fascination with spiders dwindling.
 
Toomi’s progress on the door was agonizingly slow, to the point where eventually she abandoned it and joined the fray; she couldn’t have joined soon enough, as I was pinned by webs and woozy with poison.
She was an inspiring figure, diving into combat against this monster; she hardly even hesitated before she was clambering up its back, tearing deep wounds in it with her knives as she went. I dazzled it with the magic of my heritage before redoubling my assault. My arm barreled towards it on its own accord, missing the beast and smiting a pillar instead—I felt the ceiling begin to shake even more, trapped in the throes of a battle beneath and a battle above.
 
As the spider-thing charged me again, I darted beneath it and managed to find myself out of easy reach of its thrashing legs and mandibles. When that freak let loose its earsplitting screech again, that which had previously driven me mad, I rammed my arm in its maw and answered its shriek with my family pistol’s roar.
 
The battle went on as rocks began to fall. I considered aiming for the pillars to trap the beast, but we ran just as much risk if the ceiling were to collapse on ourselves and the helpless Krisa. The mage’s aid certainly would have been handy. For most of the fight, I managed to barely keep out of the way of the hybrid’s attacks, but eventually found myself webbed to the very door we intended to escape through. My centuries have held their share of ironies.
 
Toomi waited for this moment to pull a magnificent artifact from her belt, a dagger which crackled with flame as she hurled it—at me. I was relieved when it burnt away the webs binding me instead of splitting my skull open. She meant to free me, and she did so at the expense of pressing her own attack.
 
I could not waste such an opportunity. The creature was pocketed with weeping bullet wounds, blood seeping from brutal lacerations dealt by Toomi and the impact of fallen rocks. Toomi’s dazzling attacks with her knife had opened a golden opportunity. And I was barely hanging on. There was but a short window to finish the fight.
 
Perhaps I should have attempted to keep my distance and aim for the head. Perhaps I should have waited for a falling rock to crush the thing while I hunkered down in safety. Perhaps I should have wheeled about and destroyed the door which barred our path. But my arm burned, from within and without. Whatever force I harness to compel the thing to my desires was bursting within me now. Moving faster than the rest of my body could reckon, my mechanical arm crashed into the demon with the force of a steam engine and broke its body beneath my fist. Screeching, in its death throes, the beast careened into the last support pillar, and the darkness above came crashing down upon us.
 
And everything went black.
 
When I came to, I found myself staring into the face of the stranger who had blocked my path just days before. He was… a machine, I saw now. I had no time to ponder this development. There Toomi was, trapped beneath the rubble. My arm would have made short work of such a situation, had it not been so precarious. But… fate had other plans for us. As I reached for her, she halted me—any more movement and the chamber would collapse, perhaps the whole temple. Not a situation she could resolve. Even if she were to toss her dagger and blink to it, as I had seen her do earlier, where would that leave her? Still inside a collapsing temple.
 
Days ago, Toomi had mocked the pride of two humorless guards and gave them a thrashing when they attempted to retaliate. Hours ago, she had fought off a wave of Imperium wyverns and plunged into a temple for a cause she thought was noble enough to give everything to. Moments ago, she had leapt, knives flashing, on the back of a monstrous witch-spider to save my life and that of her companion.
 
Now, she lay underneath a pile of rubble, and there was nothing I could do.
 
The wheel of history, clattering its way through the mud. Every spoke which rises will find its way again to the bottom.
 
She spoke softly to me for the first time, then. No longer was I sugra, coward, but now tursk, warrior, and goro—friend. And never before had I felt less worthy of the title. Toomi left me with her fiery dagger, and instructions to find her people,and tell them… they would know, she said. They’ll know. She called me something else, too, which I never learned the meaning of—achim.
 
I have lost pets before, an inevitability. I have seen people fade, killed a score myself. I have destroyed defective projects, I’ve made mistakes so pathetic they’ve cost my mother her fingers.
 
The loss of Asa was the only time I’ve felt as miserable as I did when I pulled the trigger on Toomi. Another grief I can only dream I will forget. It came unexpected. I had almost remembered what it was like to have a friend.
 
No time to mourn. No time to question the appearance of this mechanical stranger. We hoisted Krisa and set out in the only direction we could: the cavern the witch-spider had first appeared from. At its terminus was a reflecting pool as clear as glass. A brilliant mirror lay at its bottom. And an ominous dragging emerged from behind us.
 
The damned thing was still crawling. The next few seconds were a fuge I hardly remember—I only have eight missing rounds to show for it. The thing had no intentions toward us anymore. It only made its way with single-minded purpose towards the waters as we blew it apart with our guns. When it reached the bottom… it disappeared.
 
It turned out to be our guide. The entire cavern was collapsing, and there was nowhere to go but to follow the witch-spider. And so we plunged in after it.
 
The water rippled about me like air. As we sank, my vision was filled with incandescent motes of light. And then, we were somewhere else entirely.
 
We found ourselves in a grey world like an echo of the past. The laughter of children, fey and bright, faded into the mist. It was an old elven town.
 
At its center was a strange, grotesque figure, features pried wide by cruel hooks. It grinned a wild grin at us because it could do nothing else. It told us in a haunting voice that it had been expecting us. Its name is Zadrin, “the wanderer,” and it, like us, has been trapped here, despite its apparent control over the place’s inhabitants—it restored Krisa to consciousness with a thought and stole back her waking just as quickly. Now, to escape, we are to help it… or suffer whatever consequences we may if we do not. I’m hardly in any position to refuse. My body is frail, and I still shake the effects of the poison from my mind. It’s time to see what my new companion of circumstance is capable of—time for me to unearth the truth at the center of the mysteries which swirl around me. And time for me to see if I can continue to drag myself along, my burdens always behind me.
 
One way to find out.