Tread Lightly – Among Monsters And Men

****************

Wyatt Graves

 

Stunned, I watch Virgil filled with the confidence that the bugle gives tackle the apparition to the ground. Then filled with mad fury, drunk arrogance, or pure ignorance, he neglects the Bakwa’s threat of turning him into a spirit and stabs the spirit ruthlessly with wild abandon.

The whole time the condition of his body worsens, the flickering etherealness that he was struck with growing from just his lower half to spreading to his upper body. By the end, he was switching the hands that were using his bowie knife as they kept fading and reappearing during his onslaught.

But by the time the Bakwa truly dies and his creations begin to fade or simply explode into pounds of rotten flesh and blood, I guess depending on how long they were transformed for, his condition reaches the bottom of his neck.

Dozens of seconds pass in silence as Vernon and I pant in effort in exhaustion as we try to move to Virgil’s body. Vernon reaches his older brother first, the latter phasing in and out of this realm into whatever plane the Bakwa came from.

I crawl over to the two brothers while Vernon cries over his brother. A wave of depression and loss hits me as I speed up as much as my heavily wounded frame can to reach the fading man.

While I do so, I see small bits of light come from Vernon’s hands as he places them on his brother’s body whenever it returns back to this realm. He’s trying to heal him, but even I can tell despite not being a doctor or any kind of healer, that it won’t work.

By the time I reach the two brothers, Vernon has tears streaming down his face as he erratically speaks to his brother and frantically tries to fix his spirit-like form with his dim radiance.

“You can’t die! How am I supposed to go back to Eddoline, Stella, and Henry without you?! They’ve never even known our parents, only you truly remember them, I barely do. You’ve been our guardians for almost two decades! You can’t die now!”

I look at the hysterical Vernon and see that he is now trying to heal Virgil from his face, the only part that doesn’t fade in and out of existence, but even then the flickering is still spreading from Virgil’s neck to his head.

It seems as though whatever the Bakwa tried to do to him and me previously, doesn’t go away easily, especially when it's already taken root. I look down at Virgil’s face and see his eyes. They used to be bright green like Vernon’s, but now they are a stormy gray, losing focus and glimmer.

With a shake of my head depressingly, I put my right hand on Vernon’s shoulder. Virgil is too far gone. Another one falls.

“Vernon, you need to stop before you kill yourself, you just fainted like half an hour ago from Ether exhaustion, stop before you die.”

Vernon barely looks at me as he stops struggling to save Virgil and just talks a bit with tears running down his face.

“He raised me. Our whole family in fact. The five of us were orphaned when Virgil was only twelve. Dad died of disease and mom died during giving birth to Eddoline and Stella, both within the same week. I’m almost a whole decade younger than Virgil. It’s been seventeen long years of him taking care of our whole family. I only wanted to be a Hunter to join and help him.”

Silence passes between the two of us as we watch the flicker reach the bottom of Virgil’s chin. I have no words to offer. Nothing that can lessen the pain of losing a loved one. It seems as though all I have met along my journey meet a quick end or other bad ends. Heh, even Alexos didn’t appear as jovial as usual, the psychotic bastard he is.

Maybe that’s my curse. To make others’ lives worse. Alexos’ words of my family being a plague or curse unto the world ring through my mind. I suppose he’s right. As I think this two separate whispers enter my mind, one directly that I wished didn’t and another from my ears.

“If only we could stop the spread of the curse or plague the Bakwa left. My light seems to have very little effect and as you said, I’m too tired to use a huge burst to try.”

H̶̛̩ù̷̮ǹ̵͇g̵̜̈́r̶̽͜ÿ̵̞́.̸̮͘.̷̬̄.̴͍̈́.̵̂ͅ.̸̬̌.̷̻̆.̷͓͝.̸̣̎.̶̩̀.̴̠̍.̵̖͘.̶̱͘.̶̖͒

Vernon asks for help and so does the Bloody Palm, only in their own ways, Vernon is kind and hopeful while the palm is demanding. The two separate and completely different meanings and opposite sources make an idea come to mind.

I was able to affect the Blood Palm with Daydream, right? So, could I use it on another person? Loosen their chains in exchange for my own? Maybe…

Just as I begin to think this process through though, it is shot down by a grim reality. I have no Ether to spare. Maybe a very, very small attempt could be made to test it, but beyond that, there would be no point.

Sleep is needed for me to recover and now is the best time to do so. The Bloody Palm’s whispers might be back, but they are much weaker than they were just a few hours ago. Whatever fight it had against the progenitor Bakwa left it damaged, drained, or both.

Vernon speaks up once more as he looks at me with desperation in his eyes as I ponder before his dying elder brother.

“You got an idea, Wyatt? I'm grasping for anything here, man. I’ve seen you pull off two impossible feats since I met you. You think you got another one left in you?”

I see heartache on his face and hear sorrow in his voice. Just as I go to shake my head in refusal, a recent memory comes to mind. Of my Ether saturation being reduced from using the Bloody Palm to devour, the artifact both energizing and purifying my body in preparation for its seemingly inevitable takeover of my mind.

It devoured vitality and energy from both Leonard and Earl. But who here can I devour? Vernon is far too weak to devour and I’m both unwilling to subject Dakota to it while I also think he wouldn’t provide enough with his small body.

The Bloody Palm is only interested in the living with flesh and blood, so the ghost-turned-meat piles around us from the aftermath of the Bakwa progenitor’s death won't work. I look at the horn that is placed beside Vernon’s body as I frantically look for a solution as fast as possible, the planar flickering reaching Vernon’s nose.

An idea comes to mind at the sight of it and I grab it instantly. All artifacts are parts of very recently dead things that have been overpowered and distorted by the Sigil and the last emotions of the dead. Maybe the Bloody Palm would work, I mean they can replace limbs, right? So are artifacts technically alive?

I open up to Vernon and tell him of my crazy plan, hoping his desperation will let him ignore me being Artificed with an artifact for a left hand.

“I have an idea that might work, Vernon. But you have to promise not to go crazy about it, okay?”

He nods at me emphatically as the extinguished fires of hope within his eyes are rekindled.

“Okay. So, my left hand is an artifact. And it can devour and help me in recovering from the living, this includes myself, but I also think it can include artifacts as they seem to be living. I want to use the Boa Bugle to recover and try to save Virgil.”

Shock breaches the younger brother’s face as he hears the revelation about my hand. He responds opposite to how I expect, though.

“That… Explains quite a lot. You must be one of the Hollows, right? People, who attach artifacts hoping to use their power? Few of you survive the process, but you are all granted significant power with an artifact of a lower Sigil as them. Do whatever you can, but I’d recommend using Cutting Words instead of the Boa Bugle. A 3rd Sigil will present much greater resistance in being devoured.”

Will it even work on this? This isn’t an artifact from a person, it’s out of an object… I correct him vaguely as I take the letter opener artifact, Cutting Words, that he hands me and ask if it will work.

“No, I didn’t even know that’s a thing, but I feel bad for whoever goes through that. Mine was done to save my life. And it’s two Sigils higher in rank than mine, three when I was first Artificed. You think that it will work on the letter opener.”

Vernon just looks at me with a wide open mouth at my statement as I wrap the fingers of my limp left hand around the letter opener with my right hand. He replies just about the same way that I felt when I woke up to the new hand.

“Fucking hell. I thought Virgil had a strong will.”

I nod to him in acknowledgment and continue with my attempt to devour an artifact as he is too surprised to answer quickly and time is of the essence. So, quickly, I push onto the Bloody Palm with my mind and flow a very, very small stream of Ether into it, trying to get it to feed on Cutting Words, the 1st Sigil artifact that it is.

A few moments pass in anxiety-filled waiting before the Bloody Palm reacts. Wounded the beast within may be, it is still a starving wolf, and Cutting Words is a young cub. The fact the Bloody Palm is wounded only makes it more ferocious, its main desire being survival, and the hunger only makes it more rapacious in its attack.

I see small red-black tendrils the size of individual strands of hair exit the limp left hand and enter the letter opener. Then, they pulsate like beating hearts and grow in size like a snake eating a large prey that it has to slowly devour.

As it does so, I feel large bouts of emotions, desires, and wills hit me. These feelings and senses seem to be from many different creatures and not just one. This might be the difference between an artifact that is formed from a creature’s limb or an object on them. More dying beings’ emotions can infiltrate an object and reform it with a Sigil.

I hold my mind strong against these emotions, but at first, I don’t feel any rejuvenation myself, all I see is that the Bloody Palm is becoming slightly more energetic and less limp.

The damn thing is hogging all the energy!

Pushing my mind into the hand, I am hit with a wave of rejection as I try and make it follow my will. I refuse to let this stop me though and break through the wall of darkness that prevents my mind from entering and following the trails of Ether within the palm.

When I do this, my left hand seems to come to a decision and begins sending me bits of warmth as I wanted, but alongside the warmth are deluges of memories and emotions, magnitudes stronger than earlier.

I see visions of an entire group of young men and women being killed by a creature with blades for arms, legs, and several more appendages capable of slicing through flesh and bone around its body.

The bladed aberration storms through the group and I watch in fragments from each person's view as they're killed and then the fragment shifts onto the next to be cut down. I feel the surprise, anger, and something else that I can’t quite place.

Eventually, it ends with a final young woman who raises her arm and screams to not die as a blade goes through her arm, into her neck, and straight diagonally down through her body leaving her torso by her ribs without any resistance. She falls to the ground and sputters up blood as her body struggles to stay alive.

Then, the monstrosity of blades just walks away into the distance before more screams echo into the woman’s ear. Before she eventually dies, though, she tries to write a note, possibly for a family member or loved one, but only gets far enough to put her hand in her bag that goes motionless on the letter opener within.

Seemingly endless regret filled with ambition blasts into my mind as I try to hold on and keep my mind intact. Waves push past me over and over again before I near collapse, my mind has been both tempered and corrupted by the Bloody Palm, allowing me to withstand this assault.

Eventually, I feel the internal pressure on my mind lighten and fade a bit, a sign of the warmth of the palm’s devouring aiding my body in removing the built-up Ether. Abruptly though, the emotions and waves of memories end and the warmth stops flowing into me.

I open my eyes, which I just now I even closed, and see where the letter opener used to be. In the place where Cutting Words used to be now lies a shimmering Sigil, shifting and inscrutable in its ways.

It quickly sprinkles and turns to floating, glimmering, gold dust into the night sky. The artifact fading and being broken forever. The loss of the emotions and memories within makes the Sigil lose its medium to stay before me, so it fractures and fades away into the night, likely returning to wherever Sigils come from. Another question that I’d like to be answered.

But I ignore my curiosity and quickly turn to Virgil with my body that has expelled a bit of the Ether within it. Then, I place my hand on the only location on his body that is not yet flickering phantasma. His forehead.

I delve deep into my mind and coalesce the largest stream of Ether I can without breaking my limit once more. The stream of Ether that I command into the center of my dark pupils. It’s the middle of the night, but a Daydream is needed. A Daydreamer is needed.

I imagine a world where the curse that is placed on Virgil recedes and goes away entirely. One where he is alive. Not dead.

Resistance is felt when I imagine this like it’s not something that my Sigil is meant to do like it’s meant only for me. But I neglect this hint entirely and bare the full force of my mind onto the feeling even with the Bloody Palm’s reemerging dark murmurs.

A moment passes. Then two. I keep pressuring the skill as time passes and the ephemeral clock ticks. Just as Virgil’s forehead begins to flicker, I feel a release, like a lock being broken, but not on my side, on his. A brief feeling of an executioner’s blade approaching the wooden stump of execution arrives then vanishes just as fast as it came.

Surprised at all that is happening, but not willing to miss this chance, I funnel as much Ether as I can into loosening his chains and saving him. And it begins to work.

I see chains loosen on the man, around his eyes and brain for some reason. I’m not sure why that is the location that is strengthened for this dream. Following the restraints being weakened, the flickering stops spreading at the top of his head.

The heavy breathing of Vernon is felt beside me, the younger brother desperate and full of waning hope for his elder brother. I do all that I can to not let his hope crash as my whole body is tightened and weighed down, the price of Daydream.

Normally, I don’t use the skill too strongly because the cost adds up quickly. A simple use here or there for a small boost is enough and keeping it as a wall against the Bloody Palm is an essential piece for my survival.

But now that there is nothing else for me to do but save this man, I push the skill as far as I possibly can with the limited Ether I have. This makes my entire body feel as though it weighs thrice as much and it becomes even hard to fill my lungs with air, the weakening so powerful.

All things have a corresponding equal effect though, the manuals speak true. While I am severely weakened to the point of being crippled, the phantasma on Virgil not only halts but begins to recede.

Something that does concern me, however, is the black veins that run along my hand that touches him. It feels like the Bloody Palm is doing something and I don’t have the energy to stop it. The action from the Bloody Palm feels kind of like a reciprocation for me feeding it.

Apparently while mad and ravenous, the palm still understands give and take. Or take take take take take take and give a little bit back. It’s intriguing just how in-depth these artifacts are, well at least the Bloody Palm. I haven’t spent enough time with other ones attached to me.

I hold onto this Daydream with the help of the black veins from the artifact for as long as I can while watching the flicker recede down to his nose, but by the time it lowers to his chin, I start to run out of fuel once more. The coal is almost out in my furnace as the body is unable to remove the waste in time and provide me room for more Ether.

I assume that Vernon notices my struggle as he hands me the horn he just recently acquired, something he was so excited to test, use, and name.

Taking the Boa Bugle in hand, I let the Bloody Palm devour once more as I split my attention in two, one to keep my friend alive and another to get the energy to do so.