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The castle is quiet. Sans for the creaking of the floorboards and the skittering of large rats, of course. It was cold, chillingly so. Somehow, it was colder in here than out there in the snow. Garroth could feel Laurance shiver beside him.
Garroth’s fingers curled around the hilt of his sword. Laurance froze for a moment.
Garroth blinked. “What is it?”
“I hear them.”
“What–?”
But Laurance was gone before Garroth could finish his thought.
The darkness around him morphed into empty, gaping halls. Mirrors covered every corner. Wherever Garroth looked, a new shining silver mirror would appear. Reflections cracked under the weight of his steps.
And so Garroth shut his eyes and kept walking.
They were taunting him, he knew. Jeering. Laughing. The shadows crept and crawled, grabbing at his ankles and wrists, prying his eyes open.
In front of him, as expected, stood a mirror.
But his reflection wasn’t his own
Garte stared back at him, as bedridden and cruel as Garroth remembered him. His eyes were sunken and dead. Garte was, after all, a dead man walking. Garroth stumbled backwards, a mirror cracking under his heels.
Beneath him, Zane grinned at him, murderous. He seemed to reach out, trying to drag Garroth down with him. His eye, the one covered by hair– the one he couldn’t save— was cracked, splitting Zane’s reflection as if it were a prism.
“Go to the nether,” Garroth spat, kicking Zane’s hand away from him. Zane merely cackled.
To his right, Mother looked away disapprovingly. She was just as beautiful, just as avoidant, as always. Garroth didn’t want to look away from her. If he looked away, he would only see something worse.
His body did not let him. To his left, Zenix stood, bleeding from everywhere and nowhere at once. His hair was matted, and he was so, so young. His boy. His wonderful, horrible, unforgivable boy.
Garroth choked back a sob. This was cruel. This was so very cruel. Hands wrapped around Garroth’s quivering shoulders.
Garroth was afraid to look back.
But he would have to, wouldn’t he?
After all, they were his hands.
Green eyes stared at him, lifeless and dead and childlike. His mouth was ever so slightly agape, blood dripping aimlessly. There was a knife through his back.
With trembling hands, Garroth slammed his fist into the mirror. Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the reflective ground.
There was blood everywhere.
There was blood under his nails, caking his palm, splattered across his face.
Laurance was practically drowning in it.
It was thick like molasses, and the iron taste coated his tongue.
There was nothing to grab onto to heave himself out other than blood itself.
It was warm, unbearably so.
Barren, dead, and blistering hot.
Fuck.
Laurance inhaled sharply. Instead of crisp tundra air, smoke filled his lungs. Laurance coughed and hacked, tears blurring his red-stained eyesight.
His blood-caked fingers dug into the sinking soul sand, the screams of the damned achingly familiar.
What?
There were screams and voices coming from all around him. Chirrups and roars. They were muffled, as if buried deep in the ground. They were ringing in his ears.
Laurance looked up, ginger hair framing his face.
Ungrth’s void-burned body stared back at him. The wyvern’s head tilted slightly, pointing to the lava pool behind him.
Laurance flinched violently. There was no lava.
Instead, it was filled to the brim with bodies. Bleeding, burning, soulless bodies.
He flipped over one body, already knowing what he would see. His lord’s wide eyes stared back at him. Her lively cheeks were sunken in, her body bobbing aimlessly in bubbling magma.
Laurance tried to wrap his arms around her, tried to cradle her close. If he could just feel her. Feel her kindness, her stubbornness, her life one more time.
She melted away in his hold like sand, reforming beneath.
Laurance screamed.
It was raw, his voice hoarse. There were no words. Merely rage.
He pulled himself onto his feet, his breathing ragged. He stepped over her dead body, the blood from his hands dripping down.
Had he done this?
Was this his fault?
It had to be.
He hadn’t been there to save them. He hadn’t been there to save Joh. He hadn’t been there to save Sasha.
Garroth’s helmet floated by, a bloody handprint staining its right side. Laurance knew those fingerprints and palm lines were his own.
There was a crunch beneath him, just underneath his food. Bile rose in his throat, overpowering the taste of blood.
Long orange and yellow hair, as bright as her personality. “Cadz.” Laurance gasped. He took a step back. His foot landed on something squishy. Skin. There was a bristlely brown beard in Laurance’s peripheral vision that Laurance could vividly remember kissing his forehead whenever he woke up from a nightmare as a child.
Laurance collapsed onto the shore, the netherrack scraping his bloodied knees.
He did this.
HE DID THIS.
Laurance sobbed, his tears evaporating the moment they fell from his eyes. The steam drifted lazily away.
Footsteps. Laurance drew his sword.
Gene gave Laurance a twisted grin, beckoning Laurance to dare.
Laurance charged without a second thought.