Please, Help Me

What do you do when you can’t help someone?

You remember that day well. You stepped into that cabin, people scattered about, being tended to by the town’s doctors. That kind mayor, a weary but caring expression on his face, guided you gently. Where much of his town had been bedridden in agony, he seemed perfectly stable. He asked you,

“Can you help them, miss? Our doctors haven’t been able to do a thing… our whole town has begun to fall ill, and I worry that this comes from a power beyond our command.”

You looked out over the sea of silent bodies, barely breathing under the weight of something. The room was thick with tension, black tendrils of oppressive energy coiling about your throat. With a deep breath, you centered yourself, and… looked.

Where you expected to see withered, tired souls, you instead saw black shapes. Twitching, distorted, blackened souls, leadened with hatred and despair. Streaks of a peculiar red marked each and every one of them, a unified dread that had consumed the entire town. Each one had glimmers of the souls that they once were poking through… except for him. When you looked back to his kind face, you saw nothing but depthless black, gashes of red bleeding from within.

“… No. I am sorry, I cannot help you. I cannot possibly know what affliction befalls them; it is beyond even my sight,” you said, your voice hitching. Your legs almost refused to budge as you tried to will yourself to start backing away, paralyzed with the knowledge that you were leaving these people to wither in their insular, cultivated dread. He looked at you with empty eyes, a plastic frown on his face.

“So be it, then. On to the next.”

As you backed out of the doorway, he coldly and quietly shut the door in your face.

…

You can’t do it again. Never again.

The task is clearly beyond you. A quaint little town, nestled in deep woods and forgotten there for what must have been decades given how the houses lean. Small homes cascade down the hills, likely built from the trees that must have been cut down to make the clearing it resides in. No sooner than the town’s silhouette unfolds fully into your vision do you see what blights it, what had drawn you from so far away: lurking between the homes are strange forms, bulging from magical leylines, all the exact same shape and all the same chaotic mess of colors. The land itself heaves with wild energy, all gathering into a singularity at the top of the hill under a hollow night sky.

There is a body on the overgrown trail you followed to get here. A human man, wearing the crest of the nearby township of Pale Valley, in full armor. He must have been sent to deal with this… his face is badly burned.

But there is no time to waste. You wade into the town, through nauseating power, following the overgrown main road into the town center. A church-like building looms tall over it, its shadow exaggerated as strange shapes seem to coalesce in it. Though most of the building is overgrown, the clocktower has been meticulously pruned, the vines framing a clock whose hands turn wildly. Voices echo from within the church, what sounds like tens of them, but the words are incomprehensible.

In the center of the town square is a single shrine. You recognize the shape; a delicately carved wisp of flame, surely dedicated to En. It has been split apart, its shattered fragments hanging in the air as a near-blinding pillar of wild magic billows from its basin, suspending them there.

You have to get to the source.

The overwhelming wild magic defies your very form, clawing at your limbs as if it wants to tear them apart. Each specter that catches sight of you goes eerily still, until you have an audience of totemic, vacant forms staring at you. You can hear voices among them, as if they are speaking to each other about this strange intruder in worried voices, but they are still incoherent. You cross a worn stone bridge over a gushing, honey-golden river, and are greeted with a set of stone stairs winding all the way up the hills, littered with armored bodies.

You cannot stop to attend to them. They don’t breathe, they don’t move. They are surely dead, and you cannot help them.

The climb gets more difficult with each and every step. As the house at the peak becomes more visible to you, you see every window blasting with concentrated wild magic. The chimes festooning the entire affair are almost deafening, their mournful sound growing louder and louder until they drown out all other noise. The specters are starting to drift towards you, as you drop to your hands and feet, painstakingly pushing yourself up step by step.

The shape of a man appears at the top, far more contained and clear than the rest of the specters, to the point where you can almost make out parts of his face, a sneering scowl on it. His steps have great weight, cracking the old stone beneath his feet as he starts to descend towards you, brandishing what looks like the outline of a spear.

You pull yourself back up to your feet, sucking in a deep breath through your teeth. You focus yourself as best you can, and push. You push against the wall of energy, until you find yourself springing up the steps, in a full sprint. You roar as ferociously as you can manage, causing the crowd of specters to bow away from you, throwing yourself shoulder-first into the man.

Howling in rage, he desperately attempts to contend, but finds himself being carried by the force of your legs. You just keep running, until you feel his back slam into the door, shattering it into splinters that scatter across the floor just as he does. Standing in this home, you are fighting to even exist; he disappears into the blinding light that has consumed the entire interior. You are surprised to still be able to move, even in the presence of such power.

The chimes are drowned out here. The only noise you can hear is sobbing.

The energy pulling at you urges you to leave, but you persevere. You trudge, step by step, until you are greeted with… her.

She lays, on what must have once been her bed. A deer wildkin, her antlers alight entirely with wild magic, her whole body seeming to meld into it. It is hard to know where it ends and where she begins. She is curled into herself as best she can manage, twitching and jerking and shaking like a leaf. There’s no more pulling, here. No more force to struggle with, no more pain. Just an empty void, with you, and her.

“Hello…?” you say, still without breath. It is hard to breathe; the smell of this place burns your nose, almost like the scent of a lightning strike.

Almost as soon as the word leaves your mouth, you are greeted with screaming. Her hands pull themselves into being out of the energy, clutching at her antlers. Refusing to look at you, she screams: “LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP IT! YOU’RE NOT REAL! I KNOW YOU’RE NOT REAL! LEAVE ME ALONE! JUST LET ME BE!” A wall of force strikes you all at once, desperate to drag you away, but you stand your ground.

“I-I assure you, I am real! Please, let me help you! My name is Darcy, I came to try and help you!” you attempt to reassure her, through gritted teeth. Her eyes open, finally, glowing ultramarine bulbs in the meld of white and red that the rest of her has become. She looks at you, through you, but then turns away.

“You can’t be real! You’re just another imitation! Why did he do this to me!? Why can’t I just die!? Why can’t I just forget!?”

“Please, just look at me! Look into my eyes! I promise you I’m real!”

Her eyes lock with yours. All at once, the wall relents.

“I… I don’t remember your face…” she says, her voice breaking from its panicked, enraged screaming, becoming nothing more than a pitiful squeak.

“We have never met… please, take my hand,” you say. You take a few slow steps towards her, and kneel, offering your paw to her. She reaches out slowly and suspiciously, her delicate fingers winding around your hand.

“You feel… real…” she says, looking away from you almost in shame. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

You squeeze her hand, and laugh nervously. “My name is Darcy, as I said… and… well, why do you think?”

The question provokes a laugh from her too, something that brings you relief. It’s weak, but it’s there. You kneel at her side, now fully able to witness the inscrutable mess that has become of her body. Barely any consistent form exists except for her head and the hand that now grasps you so tight, crowned with antlers that seem to be the source of all this energy.

“Please… help me…”

“I will.”