Requiem for an Aberrant Chapter 20: Chapter 20?- Between Steps

Read chapter 20 of Requiem for an Aberrant by TheJestersGambit on NovelPedia.

Cole had flung up in the middle of the night, even though no sound had awoken him. More like an indescribable absence, a gap where there should not have been. For a while, he listened and found silence. Even in the Gorge’s calmest moments, it always whispered beyond the edges of his perception. Now, there was nothing. Aegis sat where he had fallen asleep, his back against the entrance of the cave wall, head lulled. His arms rested loosely at his sides, a lot thinner than usual, as the rest of his body was. Ariana lay not too far away, though there was no rise or fall to her breathing. Filoa and Faith were further in the cave’s maw, the accumulation of their stench still finding its way outside. Cole’s mind nudged him towards the truth, softly. “Wake up,” he murmured under his breath. He kicked Aegis with his foot, hard enough to provoke a response. The body tipped sideways anyway, collapsing from its half-upright position. He stepped over them. The cave floor guided him further outside, the faint moonlight beyond absorbed by the towering walls. His movement required no thought as he followed the narrow path carved into the stone. The stream came into view gradually, the black water also flowing in silence. Cole slowed as he approached it. Creatures slithered just out of sight, distortions underneath the black waiting for him to finally take notice. He tried to follow one of them as it moved, but the longer he looked, the less certain he became that anything had been there at all. “…Not important.” The path eventually opened into a shallow clearing carved into the rock, the ground dipping inward toward something that did not seem to belong to the Gorge. Even from a distance, he could see the difference, the way the dark water became lost to something else entirely. A silver molten-like surface. It carried his body, and he found himself moving across it, searching for his reflection, and whilst he was distracted there was a shift. The silver lifted upward, waiting for the moment he chose to look. First came the height, far too tall for anything he had seen before. Next, the mass of green tendrils, concealing more than they ever revealed. Cole tried to smack his legs to return to the cave, yet he could only stare at the halo above it. Each vertex glowed with a bright light. Even when some parts of the creature had corroded, that halo remained untouched, if only for now. His thoughts scattered in every direction at once, collapsing under a weight they could not contain. A suffocating pressure stole the air from his lungs as his body gave up, his knees striking the floor. A sound tore itself from his throat— Cole walked back toward the cave. He didn’t look at the water this time. He didn’t look anywhere. By the time he reached the cave, his breathing had steadied, detached from whatever part of him had been left behind on that silver surface. The darkness welcomed him back, the faint outline of the others exactly where he had left them. Aegis’s head hung too far forward. Ariana’s arm lay limp against the stone. Filoa’s hand still rested against Faith’s shoulder, but the grip had no strength in it, her fingers locked in place. Faith’s eyes were half-open, staring at him. “…Oh,” he whispered, understanding the reason for that terrible stench. He lowered himself to the ground anyway, his eyes glued to the ceiling as though nothing had changed at all. “…everything’s fine… it’s fine… it’s—everything’s fine…” As his eyes finally closed, his voice faded, leaving nothing behind but the stillness of the cave and the bodies surrounding him.