The Longest Road – Ch. 6 – 8: The Wasteland

• Posted by Kyrielle Atrinati March 19, 2013 - 557 views

  

  In a grove of trees lay a decadent scroll surrounded by butterflies of every color and size.  When I read the scroll, I saw only a mirror reflecting the trees behind me, which shifted into a dark, dank boneyard where voices wailed in despair.  A shadow was coming for me, trailing those voices behind it, reaching for me with its long-fingered hand.  I held the scroll away from me, but the hand penetrated the mirror and groped empty air.  In terror, I let the scroll snap closed, and the hand was lopped off.  It skittered on the ground like a black spider, crawling up my legs.

  I woke screaming.

  As I struggled to my feet, I knew what to do.  Derkeethus could not be saved.  Not now.  I needed to intercept Serana, wherever she was, and retrieve the scroll.  There could only be one kind of scroll that possessed a power like that, and I was certain the one Serana had been carrying was meant for this purpose.  Why else would I be here?  How else could the events leading to this epiphany have happened?

  My head swam unpleasantly, and I noted the fire creeping up my leg.  As I walked, the world seemed to move in a strange series of afterimages, and my brain felt as if it was sticking to the sides of my skull.  Squinting, I peered at the violently pitching horizon.  When I found the wall, I turned and slurred in the opposite direction.

  "Serana!" I called, hoping I'd find the wayward vampire.

  I searched the ground for her prints, but couldn't see any signs.  I spun around to look at my own and watched the imprint fill in with sand of its own accord.  It was as if I had never been there.  How do I find my way back?

  Suddenly, I heard bats flapping around my head, their shrill cries sending spikes of pain arching behind my eyes.  I waved my sword in an attempt to swat them away.  With a shriek, I fell to the ground, clutching at my hair, trying to pull away giant insects now crawling on my skull.  Thrashing, I felt their legs digging into my scalp and down the rest of my body.  For some reason, nothing I did seemed to brush them away.

  "Poor, Henny.  Crawling around in a bush."

  "Who's there?"

  No answer.  Holding my head, I eased my way out of the tangle of insect legs, which turned into a motionless skeletal shrub, and cast about for the source of the voice.  I stood alone.

  "Serana?  Was that you?"

  "How could it be?  Do you see anyone there?"  Somehow, that voice sounded horribly familiar.  "Oh, catching on, but not catching up!  Really.  What were you thinking when you came down here?"

  "I--"

  "Ah-ah.  I know exactly what you were thinking.  I always know what you're thinking."

  "Get out of my head!"  I bolted into a wobbly, limping sprint.

  "You can't run, Henny.  I go wherever you do."

  I skidded to a stop and dodged around a dead woman that shimmered out of thin air; she had the head of a ram and feet that melted into the ground.  Trees grasped after me with sharp claws.  Every moment, more appeared, the trunks surrounded by monstrous people who gawked at me emptily.  Never in my life had I gotten lost in the woods, yet this forest of horrors shifted with every turn of my head.

  

  "Y'ffre, guide me.  I have to get out of here!"

  "Why would he guide you?  Think of where you are!  And what you did to get here..."

  "He hasn't abandoned me!  How dare you suggest otherwise!  The spriggan led me here.  It was fate!"

  "All you ever do is imagine things.  Be realistic for once.  What makes you so certain this is all 'fate'?"

  "The dream...it was--"

  "Just a dream.  You're losing your grip on reality.  After all, why are you wandering around these wastes, holding conversations with yourself?"

  The air froze into a crystalline silence.  Abruptly, the clawing forest evaporated, and I stood in a puddle of mist near a small mausoleum.  The stairs leading back to the portal were in sight.  With a clink, my foot nudged something on the ground.  It rolled a little way with a hiss, flickering gold in the violet light.  Curious, I reached down and groped in the sand.  My fingers brushed against a cold hand.  Someone dead.  Recently dead!

  Frantically, I waved away the mist, though it rolled over itself as easily as water fills a basin.  I knelt and felt around for the hand, following the limb up the arm until I touched a metal brooch in the shape of a wagon wheel.  "Serana!"  Her body was heavy as a stone slab as I pulled her form out of the mist and into my lap.  In the strange light of the turbulent sky, her face seemed alive and distant, as if she were merely staring into space in thought.  Yet her skin was cold and stiff as ice, and she didn't respond.  A golden glimmer caught my eye, and reaching forward, I plucked the Elder Scroll from the sand and set it to the side.  What happened to you?

  There was no sign of any struggle or being other than the two of us.  For all I knew, we had been the only two creatures that still possessed physical forms to traverse this land.  Whatever had killed the vampire had been terribly strong and interested in something other than Elder Scrolls and material wealth.  I recalled the horrible shadow from my dream and suppressed a shiver.  It was time to leave.

  Just as I got to my feet, that same shadow passed over us.  It laughed, then, from everywhere at once a voice boomed loud enough for me to clap my hands over my ears.  

  "I will not suffer any mortal to pass."  

  Something grabbed my clothes, and I looked down to see Serana suddenly awake.  She clung desperately, her mouth working but producing no sound.

  "Get out of here.  Go.  Now!" she struggled at last.  Her grasp was tight enough that my tunic tore as I scrambled to get away from her.  For a moment, I was torn between wanting to help her and wanting to run, awkwardly dancing in place in panic.  Suddenly, her body disintegrated into a fine ash not unlike the sand she had been laying on.  A faint, flickering light escaped into the atmosphere toward that undulating laughter.

  It's bodies.  The ground is made of crumbled bodies.  With that realization, I ran pell-mell up the steps, doing my best to ignore their nauseating, floating bob under my feet.  I glanced up into the portal, wondering if Valindor was still there waiting for me.  To my everlasting relief, he was.  The Bosmer sat at the edge of the balcony, clutching a glowing soulgem as if it were a life raft.  His eyes bore holes into the portal, never glancing aside.

  At last, with my head swimming and innards lurching, I crawled over the top most step, emerging back into Nirn.  My fingernails were ragged and broken from my panicked climb, and I sucked in air greedily, savoring even the unsavory scents of decay and death.    A flask of water appeared from above, and I guzzled its contents without a second thought.  Panting, as I remembered to breathe, I collapsed against the balcony railing.

  "You were right, Val.  That was a terrible place."

  He stared at me with an unreadable, but intense expression, holding out the soulgem to me.  I curled his fingers back around its strange, opalescent glow and shook my head.  "Keep it.  You're obviously better at taking care of my soul than I."  My lips tugged at the corners at the irony of that statement, but it was true.  

  When he still managed to stay uncharacteristically silent, I finally met his gaze.  Suddenly, arms were wrapped tightly around my neck, the soulgem digging its hard edges into my shoulder.  "I swear to the gods if you do that again, I'm sending Hircine after you."  My friend looked me over carefully, resting a frown on the scroll clutched in my hands.  "How did you get the Elder Scroll?  Where's Serana?  Didn't she go in with you?"

  "She's gone."  

  A wave of relief washed over his face and he smiled thinly.  "Good.  Then, let's get out of here."