Hunting Party

Another failure. But you're used to it, aren't you?

It's hard to even summon the sorrow, anymore. Where once a well of depthless pain resided, there is now only the silt of an upturned grave, or at least so you think to yourself as you round the circus of failure that is your laboratory. And what a silly thought that is, you continue! To focus on yourself, on the aching numbness of your undead heart, while standing atop a graveyard that stretches beyond your memory. Tracts of sickly supernal ink seep from deep within the walls around you, as you struggle against the impulse to commit all of your work to darkness in a bleary, drunken haze.

Perhaps it's not so hard to summon the sorrow anymore after all. Maybe it just doesn't feel the same now that all of the shock has worn away. Before, you could shrug off a failure and tell yourself that the next time would be it--but you're a smart woman, and you can no longer stomach your own lies, can you?

You stop, staring at your feet as ichor wells about them, feeling... something. Distant, like a moment of deja vu, and fittingly familiar. You shut your eyes, and open another pair.

A deep breath, of cool breeze. It always takes just a moment.

You lift your undead servant's head, hanging limp as it usually is, and peer about the gnarled wasteland that surrounds your labyrinth. At least the dead trees and flat scrubland offer as little in the way of cover as they do in comfort; you spot figures, winding through the treeline ahead. One much, much larger than the others, ahead of the rest.

Flexing your faintly rotting fingers as you sink further into this form as well as several others, you draw a shortsword from its scabbard at your hip, as does the servant on the other side of the door. It's... Naaji?

His immense, shadowy form finally comes clear of the treeline, though his silhouette better resembles some sort of massive, upright porcupine. Ten, twelve, fifteen arrows hang from his back as he drools blood as much as he breathes, frantically thundering your way. Three people relentlessly pursue him, even as he staggers and thuds to his knees at the foreboding gate of your labyrinth; two men and a woman, all in the sort of leather and mail trappings that adventurers frequently travel in. Two hang behind with a bow and a crossbow as the other advances brandishing a spear.

"Enough of this!" shouts the spearman, as he watches the wounded Naaji fall. "Your end has come, vile beast! I--whuh!?" The other servant sprints past Naaji and barrels into him with surprising speed and force for its otherwise practically collapsing body, slamming the shortsword into his helmet with enough force to make it, and likely his ears, ring. Your primary servant, still surveying the battlefield, locks eyes with the woman in the back with a crossbow--and bolts out onto the field, shortsword high!

She blows your head clean off with the crossbow. In an instant, the servant's vision is dark.

Your eyes open.

The spearman turns, ramming his spear into your gut and tearing it out with such force that you stumble forward. He slams the spear into your back as you pass by him, throwing you onto the floor. Your body twists on the ground, forcefully enough that it snaps in half at the waist, snarling incoherently as it furiously flails its shortsword at the spearman. A smirk appears on his face, for a moment, before his spear punches between your eyes.

Deep, deep below, the spearman is brought to a curious halt by the sound of a scream. Not... one of fear, but of rage.

The labyrinth's gate swings wide. Disgorging a deluge of ichor, gargantuan tendrils of darkness splay out, washing over Naaji and casting a long and harsh shadow across the battlefield. One quickly comes hurtling down beside the spearman, who barely ducks out of the way and begins to back off, his face like a deer in headlights as the tentacle looms over him, blotting out the sun.

It seems he's just quick enough to turn tail, as the next thud nearly throws him off of his feet as he gets just beyond its reach, vanishing into the tangle of dead wood with his compatriots almost as quickly as he'd arrived. Even still, as he turns to confirm that whatever he'd awoken isn't following him, he witnesses a vast cloud of dust rise over the horizon as your tendrils furiously sweep and shred at the land around, ostensibly in a desperate search for any other adventurers...

When you finally recover your senses, your consciousness recedes from the labyrinth and back into your body, just in time. The stuffy, faintly acrid air of the labyrinth washes back into your awareness... as does a massive mound of shifting ichor, gently depositing a brutally wounded but partially stabilized Naaji onto the floor before you as it sinks back into the stone.

You throw yourself over him, the frenzy subsiding into an unbearable rush of emotions all clashing into each other, leaving you too stunned to do anything but sob into his faintly shifting chest before you can even assess him. Sniffling as you pick yourself up, you begin to brush over his fur in a search for mats of blood as you look him over. A clean slice claimed much of his right arm, and a gouge in his gut affords glimpses of his bowels.

Ichorous healing isn't as easy as other kinds. You trace your fingers across his wounds, feeling the heat of his blood. You've killed a hundred times before, but so rarely grazed the mortality of a lover. You almost hesitate to touch his stomach, trembling as you drift across what should be his insides, strings of ichor webbing into his wounds and oozing into his stomach, drawing him shut and winding him back together from within.

"Please... please, wake up, please..." you mutter to yourself, all but insensible, as silent tears roll off your face; you've no precision to spare for being wracked with sobs.

Feeling him twitch, watching him gurgle through crimson, a thought creeps over the rest. Another of your failures. More pointless suffering, sown into the world for nothing. Yet, for all of your waxing about empty graves and drained wells, it is so much easier than ever to summon that sorrow. Gods, you wish you could banish it, to go back to that numbness, where you were the only one alive to suffer from your constant error.

You draw circles of ink around the stump that was once his arm, beginning to delicately weave a new one into place. All the while, your other hand refuses to budge from his chest, needing to feel its rise and fall however subtle and strained.

"What happened to you...? Please, come back to me... I'm so---so sorry, Naaji..." you almost whimper, finding the terror ever harder to stave off the less there is to be done. "I--I shouldn't have let you go... I'm--hh--so sorry, Naaji... Gods, please..."

As the last of the starry tar forms about him, you simply splay yourself across his chest, finally giving yourself to that sorrow you so dearly missed as you squeeze him tight against you and mutter pleas into his tear-stained shoulder. This time, though, there is no rage, no desire to tear it all down--merely a stinging emptiness.

Shaking, you whisper one of your deepest regrets into his red-blotched forest of fur: "I'm s-sorry that I hh--haven't... heard your voice, dear Naaji... that I haven't worked to---to give you what you deserve... please.."

For all your pleas, though, there is nothing to do now but wait. You settle in beside him, clinging to him and the life that he still has with desperation, and sob into his neck until you're hollowed of tears and thoughts alike. You can take no more of the spiraling, the arguing with yourself--you can barely bear to hear your own thoughts.

A touch.

You jolt, feeling a hand brush across your back. You sit up, looking over him anxiously, but immediately throw yourself back into him as you see him begin to stir. You squish him tighter against you than you ever have before, a fresh round of shocked but elated sobs hitting you as the somewhat confused Naaji shakes off the chill of death's reach. You can't even speak to welcome him back to reality for a moment, but he doesn't seem to mind, simply looking down at you with a shadow of his trademark grin. Coursing your hand over one of his ears and down his head, you sigh heavily, finally managing to work out a few words.

"...I love you, Naaji. I--hh--w-we're going to talk about--when and how you're allowed to go out, from now on, okay? *Okay?*" you insist, gently shaking him, as he tilts his head and nods. Leaning his head forward, he presses his nose against yours, and you lock eyes for a moment... and just laugh with pure relief, pulling him hard into you.

Perhaps not all of your endeavors have been failure, and perhaps not all that you sow is suffering.