Tread Lightly

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Wyatt "Wendigo" Graves

I awake, freezing with a splitting headache. It must be the Ether saturation. I look around and find it is unlit, seemingly just before morning. With a considerable force of will, I sit up and heave my pack to me.

I am absolutely starving. The wounds on my chest have healed a decent bit, and the parts where I could see through to my internals are slightly less noticeable. Still, I notice, even through the dark, that I am discernibly skinnier. I was never a big guy, yet I always had a good amount of muscle with a bit of fat. And now, when I look at myself, it seems like the fat is all gone, along with the extra bit of skin in some places, just leaving muscle.

And along with this realization is grumbling in my stomach as ravenous hunger descends. I tear through my pack and find food. The remainder of Edmund and my rations. Jerky, hardtack, a few fruits, a single piece of broccoli. I shovel them down my mouth as fast as possible until nothing remains besides the hunger left with me in this solitary forest.

This isn't good. There is no more food, and I am not feeling up to going hunting either with a rapier. Maybe without my injuries, I could take something like a mountain lion or perhaps even a small bear, but as it is? I'd get killed by either; the sickness from overusing Ether is too disabling.

No bow or gun either to make an easy hunt. I could try to find one. Maybe the Hunters left something over where we fought.

And so, I shakily stand up from the spot beside Edmund's grave I fell asleep near. Then, I stumble to where the battle occurred, careful not to move too fast or trip to worsen the fever that replaced the cold.

Eventually, after a few minutes, I reach the area with the stump I almost died in like what? Two days ago now? Maybe more. Who knows how long I was unconscious after the fight in the dirt? All I know is that it was not long enough for me to starve or die from dehydration.

I search for a few minutes in the grass and the surroundings with my eyes. Then, just before I give up from being unable to find anything, a little gleam catches my eye, and I hobble over to it. Two serpentine silver daggers with ivory handles sit in the grass, wet from morning dew. The ones the woman used.

The ones that stabbed me so many times.

I picked them up. They are definitely better than my rapier. Just the blood loss they cause makes me sure of that. I go to check the Sigil within them but quickly stop myself. Because if just holding a piece of my own Ether hurts me, I can't imagine what would happen should I encounter Ether that is foreign.

The two daggers are fastened onto my belt through the little hoops at the end of each handle. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to keep the blades in, so I go back to the pack and tear off some fabric from my pair of socks I recently changed out of due to their blood-soaked state.

I create a little makeshift scabbard for each of the daggers. All the sheaths do is stop the knives from scratching me as I walk. They have almost zero actual protection for the silver steel they are made of, but it'll do for now.

After I make the scabbards, the sun begins to rise. And along with the sun's radiance, so too does my hunger. I quickly pull out my pocket watch and check the time. It's 7 AM. Time to go. Best get out of these woods before I damn starve to death.

I begin to hobble away from the part of the woods I've spent the past few days in. Luckily it hasn't rained, but the blood I've spilled has wet the ground enough that rest was never too comfortable. Before I leave, though, something on Edmund's grave catches my eye. The hat that rests on top of the wooden post that marks his grave pulls my pupils, unwilling to let them go.

Taking several minutes, I move to the grave and put my hand on the hat. Should I take it with me? Like I did with the Loperd's emotions? I think I will. Better that than letting it slowly get destroyed by the elements or a stray wildfire.

I pick up the felt-crafted white cowboy hat and place it on my head. I feel a bit silly doing so, but it fits. Quite well, actually. Makes my head and ears slightly warmer from the cool air.

Taking one last look at the grave, I speak to it, hoping the old man will hear me pour my heart out to him somehow despite his residence now in the Underworld.

"Thank you… For the kindness you showed me, Edmund. It may not have been for long or much, but.. you showed me what a good man is. And I won't forget your lessons, especially the beatdown about not getting myself killed. Despite being alive right now, I'd say I failed that test. But I won't next time. I promise."

Then after saying my personal kind of goodbye, I limp away, still suffering from the severe oversaturation of Ether.

Edmund was a good man. He should not have died that way. I should not have killed him. But I did. And I got to make up for it. Somehow. To do so, though, I got to survive. Which means I need to get out of this damned forest that took him.

So, I walk. I walk for a few hours before my hunger degenerates even further as I feel it directly gnawing at me. Eating parts of me to fuel the recovery. While resting with my hand on a tree's trunk, I remember a phrase from the recent notes I read about artifacts.

"Commonly, and unfortunately, they resemble the limbs of those who lost them while at the same time having disastrous side effects."

Could this hunger be a side effect of the Bloody Palm? It would make some sense. Because where would the nutrients and energy come from besides Ether or myself? And if this healing was fueled by my or the artifact's Ether right now, something tells me I would be having a much more miserable time.

I am also healing much slower than I did during the fight against the Hunter squad. So maybe the artifact has two states, like a passive effect and one that can be fueled or channeled with Ether. The passive might be increased healing in exchange for extreme, almost unbearable hunger, making you eat yourself from the inside out.

While the one that needs to be activated with Ether is a considerable boost to regeneration instantly that can help keep one alive from mortal wounds by using an immense amount of blood. Previously when I healed during the fight, it must have been fueled by some Ether, and it wasn't my own, so it must've been Edmund who charged it up before he gave it to me.

Sounds pretty plausible to me. I'm not sure, though, if artifacts even work like that. Haven't had the chance to actually use one knowingly.

Another spike of pain breaks me from my rest and train of thought as the freezing cold strikes my body again with its piercing headache. It would be fine as I'm slowly getting used to the switch between the cold and hot from AES, but sometimes the pain from the oversaturation of Ether lines with a hunger pang. The two together are too much for me to even think.

With my concentration broken, I persist in walking with leaves and sticks crunching underfoot.

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

Hours pass until it's nighttime again. I've had to take several breaks to rest throughout my walk, but I still haven't found my way out of the forest. I blame that on how I'm pretty sure I walked in circles for over an hour before I realized I needed to be heading north.

West would make the breach and let loose monsters kill me, while East would get me killed by Hunters. And I don't know which I would prefer to be honest. Both are equitably brutal.

So, I spent most of the day heading north toward the Bonedune Territory. Currently, I am in the Tornridge Territory. Spent my whole life in it, in fact. And from what I learned from Edmund, it seems as though Tornridge will soon no longer belong to us humans because of my father's confirmed disappearance. Instead, the higher rank demons and monsters will swarm in and make it their new territory after the breach of the weaker ones ends.

I'm sure someone like Alexos will have a field day with that.

Before I lay down and go to sleep at the end of the day, I perform another bout of treatment for my acute Ether saturation. Unfortunately, this time is just as bad, if not worse. This time, however, I make my piece of Ether move more than an inch inside my head before I lose hold of it and become paralyzed by the pain.

And so, while seizing and shaking from pain and the cold night, I fall asleep again.

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

The next day the cycle repeats. This time though, the hunger gets so much worse. I begin to hallucinate and dream even while walking. I see shadows and small little things move at the corners of my vision. It feels like I'm constantly being watched despite no one being around me. And so, with my body eating me from within, I continue.

Like the two nights before, I again attempted treatment for my condition. Once again, I fall asleep, shivering and seizing.

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

This process repeats for what I believe is two more days. I am not entirely sure, though, as my memory is clouded and weakened both by the delirium and the AES.

This last day of delirium is the worst. The hunger feels as though it is an animal inside of me. Scratching, clawing, and biting me from the inside out. Unable to stop it. I look down at myself, and even through the haze of my vision, I can clearly see every bone in my body.

The skin is barely pulled over each cartilage piece and hard tissue. As a result, my veins pop out, and my heartbeat slows.

I walk still. One foot after the other. And as I walk even through this fog of pain and misery, I begin to hear things. And to truly see things.

Voices whisper to me, just quiet enough not to understand, but they sound oh-so-familiar. I turn and look around crazily. Nothing. No one is around me.

When I look down, what I see is my true self. A wasting, dying abomination of a human, just like Alexos said. Wrapped so thickly in chains he can barely walk forwards. In my madness, I scratch at myself only to realize that my body already ate my nails for nutrients. Only the nail beds remain. Thin and bony, just like the rest of me.

And so, instead of scratching myself to try and somehow force a change, I just numbly abrade my sides and arms while I walk. I feel a little bit of warmth leave me even as I continue. Completely ignoring the blood that leaves me in tiny drops despite seeing it occur.

This continues for quite a while through the day until the sun begins to set. At this point, my hallucinations shift. I see the world around me pivoting and waving until I hear a voice in my head of my mother's. A quiet and slow voice like I'm used to, but the content is way more indecipherable in a language I do not know. All that I can tell is that the words sound guttural and rough.

Slowly, the words shift as my surroundings do as well. And out of nowhere, through my haze of consciousness, I arrive home. Lying in my bed. With Ma sitting on the edge of it. It reminds me of the time I had Influenza and was bedridden. She'd sing me to sleep every night to help ease the pain.

At this moment, my mind clears fully for the first time in a long time. The now habitual humming hunger hacking at me is no longer present. The fatiguing frost and harrowing headache. The furious fever and acidic aches. None of it is present.

Instead, Ma looks at me worriedly. Looking as though she cares while guttural and unnatural sounds leave her mouth. Her face morphs and distorts the whole time as if she's not even here with me. The words shift and turn until, eventually, I can understand them, but only a phrase is heard before the delirious memory shatters, triggering via an unsettling smile from my Ma that sends a lightning bolt blazing down my spine.

"Death will not take you. She is afraid. Afraid you'll resist."

The last thing I feel is her hand on my cheek, the soft caress of her backhand, hurtling back into suffering. But, unfortunately, his short rest without suffering lasted only a minute or so. Immediately I'm back in the forest. Face down in the fallen leaves that smell of recent rain. I only have a moment before the duet of pangs of hunger and debilitating sickness strikes me again to think.

What was that language? If there is a demonic or Hellish language, I'd guess that's it. But why was Ma speaking it? The last dream I could try and blame on Alexos somehow, but this one has to be all me. He is nowhere to be seen. I doubt he could keep himself hidden from me for over a day. Not because he isn't good enough, but because he seems to crave my attention.

I force my mind to go onto other things, though. More pressing things. Like the wet ground, I lay on. And the cold that's slowly creeping in. This cold is unlike the internal one. I don't think this one will go away and turn warm on its own.

It had not been raining previously. I need to get up. As I try to move my body, it feels weak. So weak. I realize my vision is blurry as I look at my arms to see what's wrong. My heart sinks as I see just how gaunt I have become.

Even worse than before, my skin now appears to be stretched by two separate wires to cover my body. So thin and unprotecting. And the abrasions I gave myself in my madness only made my skin look even worse, like ground-up meat that was stretched.

There is only one silver lining to this. Most of my deadly wounds are healed. Only about a dozen or so patches of see-through flesh remain. The only one that lets me see an organ is the fleshy window to my heart. So far, for all intents and purposes, technically, I have been healed. And that sounds like the type of harmful side effect that something called the Bloody Palm would give.

But, at least this hunger did something. Even if it's slowly killing me.

This positive thought reaches me just as the anguish returns. I shudder in pain. My mind, body, and soul shake under the weight of myself. Yet, I hold onto one thing to keep my focus even if I cannot understand or comprehend its meaning. To keep me moving even through the torment.

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."

I repeat this again, trying to move. And with every repetition, I move just a little closer to standing.

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."

I rest on both knees, taking a deep breath before I continue.

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."

I rest on one knee with the other leg's foot planted onto the slippery floor to force myself up.

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."

I pull myself up using the tree beside me as leverage and my legs as the levers. But, unfortunately, the first attempt to pull me up fails as I fall onto my scrawny ass because of the wet ground. And yet, I try again.

By the tenth repetition, I stand again, looking at the night sky. The duo of moons that float above all. Olijee and Muha. The first twins, brother and sister, respectively. While repeating the mantra that keeps me intact, I watch them move in their otherworldly ways.

Watching them makes me wish I had a brother or sister. Someone that could not follow me but instead walk beside me. This makes my raw mind think of Edmund, of the things we could have done if not for his death.

If not for me killing him.

A tear falls from my eyes and lands on my boot as I shake my head and look back down. The teardrop is red, complimenting my torn arms from my self-made abrasions.

I ignore these things and push forward for Edmund and myself. I force my legs to move under the machinations of my withering body. I can feel my bones grinding against each other, desperately trying to fulfill my unreasonable demands. Still, I repeat the phrase granted in the dream, unwilling to lose grasp on the words for even a moment.

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."

"Death will not take me. She is afraid. Afraid I'll resist."