Arc 1: Lavender
The Entrance

We remember.

The memories. Each person has a different set, shaped by perception and emotion and belief and reason. Each person bears their own opinions of the good and the bad. Each person holds different pieces of a huge, shifting mirage of a story; a story that is never right and never wrong.

There was no denying that their story had been shaped. Guided, almost. With a pull of a cord, everything had unravelled and clashed and changed them. There was no way back for any of them. None would forget.

Many considered it a sort of urban myth. Any comment about ‘that thing in the Mushroom Garden’ was now greeted with some nervous laughter and waved hands.
“Children love telling stories,” they would say. The witnesses are no longer children. They know what happened, who was responsible, how many suffered. What they don’t know is why he did it. They say he was always the odd one, most liable to break. They say many things about him. One thing is certain: the memory of his deed will never fade.

The memory of what led to it, however, hovers out of reach for many of them. Most of them do not remember. They forget their own folly in the face of another’s. For a few, the day is seared into their minds. For one in particular, that entire week has become the stuff of his nightmares.

—–

“Have fun, brother!” He thrashed, he struggled and kicked, but the hands holding him down were firm. His lips firmly clamped together, he managed to free one foot and flailed desperately. He felt his freed leg collide with something hard and winced at the sound of glass bottles shattering around them.
“Father will kill us,” one voice whispered frantically, and this renewed his resolve. He reached up, sunk his nails into one of his captors’ wrists. This resulted in nothing but laughter. He had cut his nails in preparation for the bowman testing.
“Just hold his nose or something,” another voice snapped. “It works in books.”
“He’ll bite me,” protested the first voice. A growl cut across their protests as he wriggled and nearly succeeded in freeing one wrist.
“Would you prefer a little pain, or the rest of the group disowning us? We need to silence him. Fast. Father will thank us for this.”

Fury bubbled to his tongue, but he kept his mouth shut. The purple bottle gleamed ominously in Marden’s hand, and his eyes edged away from it.
“Some time today, Mar,” snarled that third voice, and he glanced across at its owner venomously. The only response was a silent look. He knew that resentful glare; the kind of look that said, Why do you always have to ruin my plans? Why do you always have to get in the way?
This time he knew he stood no chance whatsoever at justice. Not that he stood a chance normally, but the playing field was as fair as it got. This time, he was outmatched and doomed, unless he found a way to escape this within the next few seconds.

His attention was captured briefly by Marden uncorking the bottle. A wisp of grey smoke crept out, hanging low in the air, and he swallowed. He didn’t want that – any of that – near him, let alone down his throat. Grinning uneasily, his younger brother passed it over to Deios. Someone stood up. He tensed.

Suddenly, sharp pain lanced up from his groin, and he howled. It was enough time for Deios to lean over and tip its steaming contents into his throat.

They let go of him then. Maybe. He wasn’t sure. He definitely recalled throwing up, over and over again until he was retching blood, and their panicked yelling and how they had tried to get him to sit up, to stop throwing up but he hadn’t stopped, he had kept on throwing up and throwing up despite the raging, roaring pain in his throat…he remembered the pain.

Far away, in the main street of Kerning City, someone stiffened as though he was hearing the little scenario playing out in a potion shed. For his inattention, he was whacked solidly across the jaw and sent smashing into a dumpster. With a shake of his head, he climbed back to his feet. One hand slotted black throwing stars into a claw. With his other, he steadied himself against the dumpster behind him.
“The tide’s changed, Solaris! In my favour!” yelled his opponent triumphantly, advancing. The thief dove to the side, narrowly avoiding three parallel flashes of blue light that shredded the dumpster. As he rolled, his eyes alighted on a narrow cord.

One arm flailed out; the other, the claw arm, sent a star hurtling towards its target. His opponent cackled, dodging out of the way as the awning cord was snapped and its load thudded to the ground with a sound of breaking wood.
“You missed!” shrieked the mage. “My turn!” A series of crackling energy bolts chased the thief as he ran. Once, he came close to falling into the party quest area sewers, saved only by a good sense of balance and an ungentle poke from Lakelis.

As he stopped to reload his claw, something hard slammed into the back of his skull, and he slumped forward with a moan of, “Fairen…”

—–

They were not forced together. They were not, under any circumstances, under duress to continue on. But they did.

Those who survived got together and picked up the pieces. There was one player in this game who was not involved in the incident from which it started. But he was the turning point of the entire tale; the point around which it all revolved. Not by choice, for he was surely not the type to have chosen this fate; but he shouldered it nonetheless, despite whatever misgivings he may have had, and for that he must be commended.

—–

He ran.

Blood trickled down his face and the grass lashed at his legs. He ran. At one stage, he turned to take a look at the distance he had covered between himself and what he was running from, but he only tripped and fell. He couldn’t afford to fall again.

He ran.

Desperation drove him, along with fear and hatred and an almost irrational desire to just run. The Authority had forbidden running as of late. Apparently, it showed a lack of discipline and patience. To Zakum with patience. To Zakum with that Leatty-munched, Bubbling-smeared, dead concept of discipline. Discipline was not what was practiced at the Institute. Discipline was a harsh telling-off or a slap on the hand with a ruler, not a beating that would leave scars the length of his arm.

He stopped for a minute to lean against a tree, panting. Sweat stained his clothes, mixing with the scabbed wounds on his stomach and back. Damn the old Authority for dying, damn the new Authority for living. It had started with a few glances and smiles, but now…

Something shrieked not too far off, a gurgling sound mingled with the cry of a dying monster. The Institute creatures were coming.

He ran.

Just as he had reached the outskirts of the rainforest, he was about to make for the safety of Ellinian lands when something slammed into his legs and sent him sprawling. Automatically, he fumbled for his knife. It wasn’t there. Panicked, he rolled over to meet the crazed eyes of a Ribbon Pig with blood dripping from its flank. He definitely couldn’t take the thing with his bare hands, and he didn’t want to risk…

The sound of bushes being trod roughly underfoot reached his ears, along with that familiar mocking shriek. Still eyeing the pig, he backed away slightly, shuffling on backside and hands and feet, trying to remember how it had happened the last time.
“Protect. Change. Distract. Remove. Escape.” Nothing. He bit his lip, trying to remember the right word. He needed a distraction, something that would go for the pig or at least divert its attentions from him, and leave him alone.

The Ribbon Pig charged. He cried out as it slammed into him, kicking him, trampling him. It stomped on his hand as he tried to shield himself, and he heard the bones of his fingers crack.
“Ahriman!” he swore, gasping with pain. Insane with its own injury, the monster was on the verge of kicking his face in when the moon’s light abruptly faded.
Too abruptly. A sudden, sick feeling rising in his stomach, the boy looked up just in time for the pig to hit a glancing blow just above his right eye with a hoof. He cried out again. The Institute creatures yowled again, too close for his liking, only to be silenced when a harsh, guttural growl shook rainforest.

The pig suddenly seemed to heed it, and it turned away and ran for the trees. Seconds later, he heard the sound of crashing trees and a squealing pig.
No. No. Time, Death, Life, Fire, save me. Shakily, he climbed to his feet and looked for the Hill. The sound now was a definite heavy stomping. A predator’s stomping with the strange swaying gait. There was also the swish of wings; trees being uprooted; and overlaying it all a strange, musky smell like rotting meat, accompanied by a horrible snickering grunting.

A face from a child’s horror story became evident from between the trees. His eyes flicked from it to the Hill; should he run? What was the point? He would be killed more quickly if he went into the open…

An Institute creature abruptly launched itself at the nightmare, snapping jaws and striking claws. He could make out three- no, four of the things, dogging and hounding the demon. Distracting it from him, just as it was distracting them. He didn’t stop to think about it any further; he ran for the Hill, for Ellinia, for wherever he could get to.

He ran.

He ran and ran until he was nearly dead of exhaustion; he ran until the rainforest seemed out of sight along with the thing he had somehow…brought; he ran until he found the small house, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, innocuously perched near a low thicket of trees on the Hill. At this point, he was past caring about who might live there, or if they had any relationship to the Institute. He just collapsed against the door, hammered on it a few times, and slumped onto the doorstep in a dead faint.

—–

“Need light.” There was the sound of a match being struck, and the area around was flooded with the warm yellow light of the torch. Two people were standing at the entrance to the dark wood, one of them – garbed similarly to the other, but in red instead of his partner’s blue – holding up a torch.
“Hate Sleepywood,” said the one who had spoken, taking the torch. “Gloomy, damp and rotting. Can smell the dead.” There was a flash of a grin from the other, and his hands moved quickly, slipping over one another in seemingly meaningless movements. The torch-bearer snorted. “Took one just then, thank you. Spent more time in hot baths than you.” The hand movements again. This drew a stare from the torch-bearer, who shrugged eventually and continued walking.

Leaping across to a hovering platform in midair, he continued, “Dominica might not be there. Break down the door if she hasn’t left key.” No comment from his partner. The speaker seemed used to this, for, as he made his way over to another series of platforms, he added, “Could pick the lock.” He turned to face his companion, and was greeted by a flurry of hand motions. As the motions continued, the torch-bearer’s expression seemed to grow even stonier. By the time they were finished, his face could have been mistaken for the Wisdom Stone in mourning.

The expression suddenly cracked, changing to a hesitant smile. His partner smiled back and extended one hand for the torch. There was a moment of confusion where neither of them was holding the torch and it nearly suffered the unfortunate fate of being extinguished.

The remainder of the journey out of the Dungeon was uneventful, apart from a few stops to shoot overly aggressive Stumps with flaming arrows. One slime was nearly boiled alive from inside out when one of the flaming arrows just missed it and went out on the soggy turf. As they both emerged into the fresh air, the one in blue yawned and took a breath, looking around.
“Luke vanished as usual,” he said, stretching. He stopped mid-stretch to stare into the distance; so did his partner. Abruptly, the current carrier of the torch shoved it into a torch-holder around the entrance to the dungeon, and both of them set off at a run westwards.

Against a horizon which the sun was creeping up, Henesys was in flames.

——-

I got bitten by a new plotbunny a while ago. I was planning to start this once I finished Sin…but I work best when multitasking. I’ll finish Sin soon. It’s nearly done. :3

Hmmm. This chapter didn’t really accomplish much. Oh well. Tell me what you think.

[Edit]: Thanks to readers for the frontpage. I’m glad you like it.