Dillyweed | Söl / Rial

The tight tunnel slowly opened up. It was still not big enough for them to walk beside each other. It didn’t matter for Rial. There was something inside of him. It was taking his concentration, eating away at all his thoughts and wants. He now knew what he was born to be. Born to become. A feeling he had subconsciously fought against his entire life. The shadow within. This entire adventure had just been one big awakening for him and he was waking up. To think he had started this adventure thinking he had found friends. Thinking he was making something good in life. That’s not what life was about. He would soon find out what life was about. He could feel it. It wasn’t friends and happy moments. That was just a thing that kept the lower pheasants alive and kicking. No, for someone great like who he truly was there was only one thing that mattered in life. Power.
His emerald eyes laid on Senbonzakura ahead of him. They were filled with a want. A desire to follow the voice in his head. But he needed to do it correctly. He needed to wait for the moment. He didn’t know what the moment was really. He didn’t know where or when he had to act but it was getting harder to contain it. Occasionally it felt as if the shadow almost covered him on the outside. As if it leaked through his skin and encased him. The darkness inside would soon see light.

Söl had a feeling. He wasn’t sure what it was. But the feeling was slowly making itself known. It wasn’t really a bad feeling. It was an uneasy feeling of some sort. Something was getting either near them or they were getting near it. He buffed at Strohmeier's hind leg. It wasn’t really to get his attention, it was to make sure he was still there. Sure he could see him and all but he needed that physical contact just to make absolutely sure.
“It’s nothing. I just needed to make sure” He told Strohmeier, in almost a whisper, when he looked back at him. Strohmeier would understand. He always had sympathy for moments like these. There were a few moths flickering around the few torchers that dimly lit up the corridor but it was becoming harder and harder to actually see anything around the tunnel. It was as if a haze covered them. He made sure to keep his eyes on Strohmeier. He didn’t want to let his eyes off him. Not for one moment. Because that bad feeling was telling him that if he did they would lose each other. He had to fight that feeling. They couldn’t turn back. He could hear the soft sounds of the voices chanting behind them even if they were too far away from them now. The word was still fresh in his mind. Galatea. He wondered what it meant but he could also live without that info. He could live his entire life not knowing and he would be happy.

The tunnel was slowly becoming more and more hazy. It was hard to see around them. Rial didn’t tell Senbonzakura when they started to walk faster than Strohmeier and Söl. They weren’t far ahead. They could still hear their footsteps on the cave floor. It echoed in the tunnel, making it hard to tell how far they actually were from each other. Rial couldn’t see Strohmeier behind them. He felt lucky that Strohmeier hadn't called out for them. Maybe he felt some sort of confidence in that he could still hear them ahead of him. It was hard for Senbonzakura to know that they were creating distance between the other two. He probably couldn’t see past Rial thanks to the haze and he was concentrating on not walking into something. The darkness in Rials chest was chanting. He couldn’t tell what it was chanting. It had gone so fast. It had been docile for so long. It was tasting freedom. It was going to be let out. The key was so close. He could almost taste it in the air. A faint smell of iron. The anticipation was high.
So when Senbonzakura noticed that the floor started dipping, the darkness inside of Rial screamed. It was angry. They needed to get down there. The key was down there. They needed it. He could see Senbonzakura turn his head. He knew that he was going to yell out and realise that the other two were far behind. He would realise that Rial had let them become separated. He would realise that something was not right and Rial couldn’t let it happen. They locked eyes - Rial and Senbonzakura stared at each other for a bit and Rial saw the realisation in his eyes. The fear he had sensed coming from Senbonzakura. The fact that he knew that something hadn’t been right with Rial for a while now. It wasn’t fear. Senbonzakura didn’t really feel fear. It was confirmation. The darkness had reached his eyes. It was finally engulfing him. He felt alive.

Rial put his entire weight into Senbonzakura. He never stood a chance. The ground was slippery and they had hooves. There were no claws to grab the side of the wall with. They fell. Nothing else. They slid down the muddy, slimy slide. The sides of the slide were hard and a couple of roots tried to grab at them as they hung down. But it didn’t matter for Rial. This was fun. This was exciting. He let out a bellowing laugh as they slid down. He was alive. He had been alive before. But now he was alive. Truly. He could feel the wind. The terror. And it felt good. He couldn’t tell if it was Senbonzakura or himself that yelled out. He couldn’t tell what was yelled out.
They hit the ground hard. Rial tumbled over Senbonzakura. He couldn’t tell if Senbonzakura hit something. But there was a moment when he was the only one rising up. He threw his head around, the small room they landed in was nothing against the vast space of the room behind him. It was enormous and it looked as if it had been carved out for something important. He could hear Strohmeier and Söl yell from the top of the slide. He had to act fast. He needed to get everything done. The key was here somewhere. His eyes fell on the arcane symbols on the ground. He understood what he needed to do. This was the key. Senbonzakura was the key. Why? He didn’t know. He didn’t care either. It wasn’t as if Senbonzakura actually meant anything to him now. Maybe a couple of days ago he would have felt something stick in his heart if he had been told about this. But now he was clear minded. He was selfish. Only thinking about himself. If Senbonzakura had to be sacrificed, at least it was he would be doing the sacrificing. But he needed to get Senbonzakura into the circle. Afterwards, he was sure that everything would become obvious, that everything would click into place. He started to drag Senbonzakura backwards. He didn’t care that Senbonzakura didn’t fight back. He knew he was alive. He could feel it. And that was all he needed to know. He didn’t care if Senbonzakura didn’t see what would happen. He needed to get it done before the other two got brave enough to take the slide down to meet them. He needed to get to the point where he could not be stopped regardless of how much they tried to stop him. He was sure they could. They were both clouded by love. They couldn’t see what was happening. They would try to stop him. And they would not be sacrificed yet.

1313 words

AberrantKapro | Strohmeier / Senbonzakura

While the tunnel is no longer so cramped that they can just barely fit, it’s still too narrow for them to properly group up. Senbonzakura sighs a little, these tunnels always feel so never ending. Especially now that vision was slowly starting to get limited by a thick, dark haze. Without being conscious about it, Senbonzakura started to speed up, to get out as soon as possible, but he didn’t think about the fact that maybe the others wouldn’t be able to keep up. He still heard their hooves clop behind him, so nothing really felt off, other than this lingering uneasiness he had felt for a while now. He didn’t know the reason for it, and hence chose to ignore it. If you can’t see it it can’t harm you, he thought to himself.
He noticed that Kinka and Micke were no longer by him, but figured that they had just walked back to Strohmeier, as they often did. Everything was as it usually was, yet something felt.. Different. He didn’t know how, or why it felt different, but it did. He looked back a bit, all he could see through the haze was Rial’s muzzle, but seeing as he was still behind him, he assumed the others were right behind him as well. It was hard to determine exactly how close or far away considering the echoes in these narrow tunnels.

As Strohmeier was walking between Rial and Söl, Söl had reached out to gently touch him, causing him to halt and look back. Söl had apologised to him, but he smiled gently.
“No need to say sorry, Söl. I fully understand  the need for some safety and assurance. If it makes you feel better you can grab my tail to ensure I don’t disappear.” he assured his newly established partner. “I promise I don’t mind.”
Still with a gentle smile, he turned back and looked down, Kinka was to his left and Micke to his right, they were both placed as close to him as they could without getting into the risk of accidentally getting a hoof bonking into them. Strohmeier chuckled lightly before he started to walk again. By now, there was a bit of distance between them and the other two, but Strohmeier was sure they would wait if anything required their attention, or call out to them in case of an emergency. Senbonzakura always made sure to warn them of any dangers, so they had no reason to feel unsafe and yet, Strohmeier felt a hard lump of anxiety in his throat. He wished he knew why, but he played strong, for Söl, for his whole team. It was the only way he knew how to press on. He had to stay strong.

Senbonzakura just barely noticed that the ground in front of him was starting to slope down, so he stopped and turned around to warn the others of the coming slide down if they wished to proceed, but as he turned around he froze in place as he saw the dark, hungry urge in Rial’s eyes. It felt both as if he himself and time had frozen, yet Rial remained in motion. The menacing pthalo perl leopard made the proud madder champagne feel smaller and more vulnerable than he had ever felt before.
He felt almost as if dread was weighing him down, swirling around his body like invisible tentacles that slowly clenched him harder. He couldn’t move, and he could barely breathe. His lungs felt stiff, heavy, as if they couldn’t expand at all. He swallowed hard. He knew there was no good intent in those eyes, that there was no way he would get away safe from Rial.
He felt hurt, betrayed, that someone who he had deemed a close companion would turn against him, but he knew there was nothing he could do. He had no way out, nowhere to run. Whatever Rial had been plotting against him, he had to accept. His thoughts were all over the place. He tried to think of when Rial had changed, should he have noticed? Could he have helped?
Before he could snap out of it and back to reality to call out to his partners, Rial lunged at him to stop him, and being unable to brace himself as he fell down the slide, he let out a quiet yelp. Rial slid down after him, laughing like a crazed maniac. It was beyond unnerving to both hear and see.
Senbonzakura had no way to slow himself down to prevent the impact of falling down, he had to hope that he would land in something that would soften his fall, but he had no such luck.
As he finally hit the ground after what felt like a neverending slide with anxiety and dread building up more and more, he was unfortunate enough to land badly on his right front leg and with a loud snap in his knee he let out a loud scream of pain before Rial tumbled over him, causing his head to know down hard against the stone floor. He quickly lost his vision due to the impact and passed out.

A sudden sound, almost like a scream, caught Strohmeier’s attention. He hastily looked back at Söl before rushing forward with the bay dun in tow. The other two were nowhere to be found, dread and horror washed over the black Courser as he just barely had time to stop before the slimy slope that he assumed had taken them both down by surprise. But something felt wrong. Why had they not tried to warn them? What was that uneasy sound they had just heard?
“Senbonzakura! Rial! Are you two okay!?” Strohmeier yelled down, trying his best to keep his emotions controlled, but deep inside he was frantically panicking. He didn't know what to do.
Strohmeier almost broke down in a panic attack before Söl’s yelling snapped him back to reality. But they got no response. They had no choice but to try and get down safely, but how? Should they just slide down and hope for the best? They took a look at each other before nodding. They had no time to try and find another way down. They had to take the risk.

As Senbonzakura eventually regained consciousness, he could hear distant yelling. Was it Strohmeier? Söl? Were they calling out to him? He had no idea. He could feel his sore body being dragged along the floor, he tried to see what was happening, but all he could make out was a mostly white, blurry shape pulling him by his back leg. He couldn’t move to get loose no matter how much he wanted to, his body wouldn’t respond. Through his blurry vision he could make out a hole in the domed ceiling, revealing the night sky with a blood red harvest moon. The red light lit up the whole room that he was being pulled into.
Senbonzakura’s mind started to drift away, disassociating from whatever the reality he was currently suffering through. He started to think about the tales from his kingdom, where the blood moon was seen as both a curse and a blessing. His bloodline was said to have been blessed by the harvester, hence their marking on the forehead that had passed down for generations. But rumours were that someone had coursed them rather than that they had been blessed. He had never cared one way or another, but this caused him to wonder which it was. Was he indeed cursed, and destined to die down here? Betrayed by his own friend? Or was he perhaps blessed, and would somehow get saved from his impending doom?
Who was he kidding.. There was no way out for him. He took one last look at the moon, eyes filled with tears. He was devastated that he’d never get to build a family with Strohmeier and Söl, that he’d never get to see them grow old. He was devastated that they would have to live on without him, that he’d leave them behind.
With tears overflowing his eyes and his body shaking from holding them in as best as he could, he closed his eyes, accepting that there was nothing he could do to be saved, accepting that this would be his last day alive.

1390 words