The Hammer Unfalls

4.74 Certes Frigid

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Just give up, his mind urged him.

Glim stumbled as he ran. His legs no longer wanted to respond. They wanted to crumple beneath him, become still, and never move again.

Nothing matters. Nothing.

Everything Glim had ever hoped or believed in became small, like a beetle crawling, insignificant, on the forest floor in search of scraps. The world loomed above him, a massive foot descending. He’d be crushed any moment.

It was all for nothing. Everything I’ve ever done.

Glim tried to perform the restoration ritual as he staggered forward, but he could not remember the words. Much less any happy memories. They’d all been lies. His triumph in swordplay, growing peas, the sweet taste of snowcrab… none of them had been significant compared to the immense dispassion of the heavens. Mere sparks against a flint that would never catch fire.

This place has doomed you. You will never be what you were. Not ever again.

His mind would not relent. It refused all happiness or warmth, determined to spiral downward into the frozen depths that had become Glim’s spirit. Despondency drew him like a magnet pulling steel. His mind reeled in agony as headache racked his brain.

When it ended, Glim lay huddled on the ground and knew something else: they were all going to die. Not only the people of Wohn-Grab, but all people everywhere. Phyria. Algidonia to the south. Even Æolicia across the Sanguinolent Sea, all doomed. Continuing to breathe was futile. What little future Æronthrall had left would be marked by agony and destruction.

The darkness of his thoughts paralyzed Glim. Perhaps this place had doomed him after all.

This place? another part of him wondered. A part he’d nearly forgotten. The foolish Glim who’d once had hopes.

That tiny shred of will scrambled for a foothold. The essentiæ of these caves had been strange from the moment he walked in. Glim remembered the euphoria, like some forgotten song he could no longer remember the words to. Or a book with ink so faded he could no longer read the words.

Words. Why did his mind keep drifting towards words?

Words are meaningless.

The shred of sanity he had left began to panic. Say something, it urged.

Glim tried to speak, but the effort overwhelmed him. Recalling the intricacies of language no longer interested him, and his mind tossed the notion aside. Why speak? What would be the point?

With dwindling resolve, Glim walked slowly towards the cave with the painting that had invigorated him so much the day before. Had it only been a day?

Time means nothing. Merely moments that pass as you await the inevitable.

Though words had failed him, memory had not. Glim thought of Gyda’s lips pressing softly against his own, the scent of her hair and her warmth invoking his desire. But her hair became brittle and fell to the ground. Her skin withered away, until his lips were pressed against nothing but dry bone. Glim looked at Gyda, but she’d become a grinning skull attached to a skeleton. He released her and the bones fell into a jumble at his feet.

Glim blinked his eyes and saw the cave once more. He rounded the corner where the tunnel split, staggered into the orchard chamber, and collapsed onto the floor.

Look at it, his failing will urged him stubbornly.

Colors danced in his vision, much blander than he remembered. The muted palette of colored mud formed a face. Some long forgotten, long dead soul who would never speak again.

What had compelled him about this painting so much? Crude scribblings on a rock.

Glim dropped to the ground, fighting his lethargy. He sat in a stupor, staring at the portrait, attempting to form a coherent thought. But only one thought came to mind.

Just give up.

Giving up was the only option that made sense anymore. Actions and words were as useless as seeking warmth from a skull’s kiss. Only death offered real truth. Only silence would make his mind whole again.

He heard the cry of the hawk again, and saw a blur of white streak past. It cried again, rousing something deep within him, and came to rest on an apple tree branch next to the wall.

The portrait caught his eye. More specifically, the black trickle of grime in the cracks of the rocks it had been painted onto, which seemed to pulse with life. Once again, a hint of color appeared, though less bright than before. Watching it gave Glim hope, in the same way a warm wind on his face signaled arrival of Wohn-Grab’s brief span of summer, which brought traders and trinket seekers to Apricity Peak. The more he looked, the more warmth suffused him.

Perhaps some things still matter. Perhaps I can still save the people I love. Spare them my fate.

The hawk nodded to him, its scintillating eyes confirming the wisdom of his thoughts.

Yes. It might work. The hopeful part of himself found another foothold, enough to rise and push some of the dark thoughts away. Glim rose with it, and latched onto one idea: protect Wohn-Grab. As a guard, and as an act of defiance against this darkness that submerged his mind in its depths. Challenging Certe just as the hawk had done.

Retracing his path, Glim reached the shuttle which had begrudgingly carried him to the bottom of the shaft. He hoped it would carry him back.

If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter anyway, the darkness murmured.

Ignoring that voice, Glim entered the shuttle and pressed the button.

--------------- ~~~ *** ~~~ ---------------

Deep within the caves once known as Buried Flame, a tendril of vine lay curled around an apple tree. Of every place in the world, this place moved her most. Here she regained snippets of memory. Tiny shreds of a whole mind denied her.

Like watching movement through a raindrop’s lens, images wavered in her mind, unsteady and warped. She remembered small creatures with intelligent eyes and glossy fur coiled together in slumber. Heard beating drums. A calamity of water and lava. Her mothers, roaming a vibrant forest with fierce joy on their faces and wind in their manes. They, above all, filled her with joy and sorrow. The dark mother, her black fur blending into the shadows, the white of her fangs showing a ready smile. Her light mother, auburn and tawny, always fussing with wrinkled brow at some worry or another. Together they’d embraced the wind that ruffled their fur and pricked their long ears. Before the wind had turned against the world. Before the betrayal. Before those vain wind daughters had… what had they done? She couldn’t recall. They’d lied. They’d brought the darkness.

And that’s what she remembered most of all: darkness. Enduring darkness, and within that darkness… a plan.

She existed to do her part, here in these caves where the essentiæ writhed strangely around each other.

The imagery she recalled filled her tender consciousness with emotions so powerful they threatened to break her apart. Pride. Love. Fear. Then more fear, and even more. Fear of failure. Fear for others. Fear of others.

Others. Others were why she’d come here. But why?

She’d come here to wait. Yes. She’d told herself to wait here.

And so she had. For generations upon generations, each new tendril sprouting from the withered brown leaves of the old. With each emergence, her purpose became murkier. Less defined. She remembered that she’d once remembered. She had the memory of memory.

Pride. Love. Fear. She liked this tree the most because it gave her some sense of pride. Whatever had happened here—and given the absolutely bizarre, foreign essentiæ that permeated these rocks, it must have been monumental—she’d been part of it. Not she, the tendril, of course, but whatever she’d once been connected to. This very tree perhaps.

Though silent, these rocks spoke to her. They set her on edge, restless and wary. Danger and love fused into one. Which brought her back to fear.

Yet at least this place had pride and love to offer. Not like the other place. The cold place, where essentiæ slumbered. Essentiæ she understood just as poorly as those traces lingering in the crevasses of this cave. When she prodded it, she sensed only abject nothingness. A void that terrified her as much as the darkness she’d climbed free of long ago. Because that darkness was part of her as well.

The tendril grew weaker as night fell and her cycle drew to a close. In a few hours the sun would rise, and with it her descendant would be born. Perhaps it would glean what she had not been able to.

With half-remembered emotions and snippets of thought decaying, she embraced the wither that had come to claim her.