[ From the first steps he takes into the cave, he knows something's wrong.
If he were in his right mind, his whole mind, maybe he'd be better prepared, or maybe he'd turn around and try to find another way, but as it is, he comes slowly back to himself with every echoing step, looking down when his foot splashes to find that it's not a pool of water he's stepped into, but blood.
And the bodies...
They're everywhere. Petrified corpses, stiff as marble statues, twisted into paroxysms of pain and despair. He sees armbands from year after year after year, handfuls of them. Dozens. And then... hundreds.
The cave opens up gradually before him, leading him along the gruesome path of the dead until suddenly he's stepping out of the close-walled tunnel and into an enormous arching space, the size of a cathedral, stone walls arcing gracefully to a ceiling that's lost in darkness. And it's... it's a massacre. Bodies are littered everywhere, fallen or thrown with no particular care, broken and twisted and only just barely recognizable as human. It's... wrong, seeing them like this, corrupted and cold. Nowhere is there a drift of petals and ash. This is the true weight of the Gommage, bodies that have fallen and died and have simply been left here among the silent company of their brethren.
He comes forward, glance raking up to follow a strange structure, almost like a tree; it grows like vines coming together, towering over the center of this horrible space, tendrils stabbed here and there into bodies. They gleam dark crimson, wet. There's something weirdly alive about it. And beneath the horrible shadow of a tree... a pile, a hill of fallen Expeditioners. Maybe hundreds of them, tossed carelessly onto one another and left, their bodies forming a small hill of cloth and stone. No breeze tugs at the armbands they wear; there's no peace to be found on any of their faces.
Catherine is there, in the center, at the edge, facing the path he takes. She sits, slumped, far more still than he's ever seen her, her eyes open and glazed in death, a long terrible lance protruding deep into her stomach. Do you want to talk about it? she'd asked him, only a little while ago. She never pushed him. Never looked at him with pity, only with understanding. He hadn't seen her be taken, and now she's dead, like Alan, Lucien, Margot, Sciel, Lune... all the rest of them. All of them gone. The expedition wiped out before it could even begin to fight.
Somewhere in his slow walk through the cave, a little of his mind had returned to him, enough for him to know despair, now, not just shock and terror. What good is one man against everything this continent can throw at them? They're all dead. He's dead, too. And Maelle was only sixteen, she had time left, but he'd let her come and now she's gone, too, everyone is gone. He's simply lagging a little behind.
When he comes next to Catherine and sinks down to sit next to her still, cold body, it's not just exhaustion. It's deliberate, and so is this: lifting his right hand, watching as the pistol coalesces. He knows this shape so well, intimately. He knows its power. It'll be over in an instant.
His arm is slow when he lifts it to nudge the muzzle of the pistol against his temple, carefully moving aside a few curls of his hair, but it's no longer the dull listlessness of shock. He's just taking his time, his breath coming a little faster, a little lighter. He closes his eyes and touches the curve of the trigger with the tip of his finger.
Just another moment, and he'll join them in oblivion. What else is there to do? ]
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If he were in his right mind, his whole mind, maybe he'd be better prepared, or maybe he'd turn around and try to find another way, but as it is, he comes slowly back to himself with every echoing step, looking down when his foot splashes to find that it's not a pool of water he's stepped into, but blood.
And the bodies...
They're everywhere. Petrified corpses, stiff as marble statues, twisted into paroxysms of pain and despair. He sees armbands from year after year after year, handfuls of them. Dozens. And then... hundreds.
The cave opens up gradually before him, leading him along the gruesome path of the dead until suddenly he's stepping out of the close-walled tunnel and into an enormous arching space, the size of a cathedral, stone walls arcing gracefully to a ceiling that's lost in darkness. And it's... it's a massacre. Bodies are littered everywhere, fallen or thrown with no particular care, broken and twisted and only just barely recognizable as human. It's... wrong, seeing them like this, corrupted and cold. Nowhere is there a drift of petals and ash. This is the true weight of the Gommage, bodies that have fallen and died and have simply been left here among the silent company of their brethren.
He comes forward, glance raking up to follow a strange structure, almost like a tree; it grows like vines coming together, towering over the center of this horrible space, tendrils stabbed here and there into bodies. They gleam dark crimson, wet. There's something weirdly alive about it. And beneath the horrible shadow of a tree... a pile, a hill of fallen Expeditioners. Maybe hundreds of them, tossed carelessly onto one another and left, their bodies forming a small hill of cloth and stone. No breeze tugs at the armbands they wear; there's no peace to be found on any of their faces.
Catherine is there, in the center, at the edge, facing the path he takes. She sits, slumped, far more still than he's ever seen her, her eyes open and glazed in death, a long terrible lance protruding deep into her stomach. Do you want to talk about it? she'd asked him, only a little while ago. She never pushed him. Never looked at him with pity, only with understanding. He hadn't seen her be taken, and now she's dead, like Alan, Lucien, Margot, Sciel, Lune... all the rest of them. All of them gone. The expedition wiped out before it could even begin to fight.
Somewhere in his slow walk through the cave, a little of his mind had returned to him, enough for him to know despair, now, not just shock and terror. What good is one man against everything this continent can throw at them? They're all dead. He's dead, too. And Maelle was only sixteen, she had time left, but he'd let her come and now she's gone, too, everyone is gone. He's simply lagging a little behind.
When he comes next to Catherine and sinks down to sit next to her still, cold body, it's not just exhaustion. It's deliberate, and so is this: lifting his right hand, watching as the pistol coalesces. He knows this shape so well, intimately. He knows its power. It'll be over in an instant.
His arm is slow when he lifts it to nudge the muzzle of the pistol against his temple, carefully moving aside a few curls of his hair, but it's no longer the dull listlessness of shock. He's just taking his time, his breath coming a little faster, a little lighter. He closes his eyes and touches the curve of the trigger with the tip of his finger.
Just another moment, and he'll join them in oblivion. What else is there to do? ]