Lost in Thoughts

Chapter 137: Lost in Thoughts

For having nearly died at the start of this ashen adventure, Mercury's latest couple days had been excessively boring. He'd met who Jirluc called their "crafter", a tall orc woman by the name of Larash. Back in her village she used to do just about everything; she'd started off making prosthetics, but there were only so many limbs one needed to replace, and eventually she branched out into general crafting, learning from whoever would teach her.

Apparently it wasn't too hard to learn from people in an orc tribe. Everyone was happy to have someone pick up their trade, and heck, even if you didn't want to do a whole lot, you'd get bored right quick without work anyway. A year of lazing around was made up by some time of working hard, after all, and in their youth, many orcs often lazed around or risked their neck too much.

She herself had quite the story of how she'd been impaled by a boar's tusks before snapping its neck, dragging it back to the village and collapsing. Which she'd obviously been chided for first, then celebrated second. The good times.

Surprisingly though, she didn't think her village had died when she got here. The blood eclipse was triggered when she was further out, looking for special wood to make a custom prosthetic, and had met a traveller at a campfire. A man who had most certainly not made it through the whole ordeal, she was sure. After all, she'd seen his lower body becoming uncleanly detached from his upper parts.

Larash also claimed she'd have "fixed him right up if the damned beasts didn't toss her through a rift when she wasn't paying attention!" So that was a thing.

But other than sharing stories with the other few people he was now with, not much went on. Mercury would occasionally go out hunting with Jirluc or Juno, levelling up <Stealth> and <Quiet>, and sometimes help Larash with whatever new trap she was making. His task in that case was mainly pulverizing monster parts for alchemy, and occasionally shaping them to be sharper than they'd been before.

While talking with Ruvah, he also happened to finally level up his <Language> Skill, though it didn't list any new languages in what he could understand. Maybe the system didn't recognize his conversations with them as a specific language, but more as general communication? Or maybe there was just not a proper name for what they were speaking.

Which wouldn't exactly be surprising, given that Mercury himself had no idea how he was communicating with what should have been someone without any kind of vocal chords. Maybe he'd shed some more light on it when <Language> evolved. Well, if it evolved, there was a decent chance of him dying before that, after all.

Depending on the perspective, of course. From some viewpoints, he'd actually already died once more.

Whenever night fell, or rather, the crimson sun dimmed, Mercury was back in the bog. He had spent so much time travelling there, that <Astral Body> and <Dreamwalking> each gained another level. The difference wasn't huge, but he did notice that he could run for a bit longer without getting tired, and the fog seemed to be pushed out just a bit further.

He'd gotten his final Skill level up to <Vast Mind>, after he healed from having one of the gloom stalkers give him an express ticket back to the waking world. The gangly creatures were becoming more and more common, sometimes he'd have to avoid three or even four in a single night, while the ones who saw him were much more aggressive, too.

Apparently, the dream wasn't going down without a fight, but then again, neither was Mercury. Even when he once again had one of the stygian stakes driven through his head, and spent a few days basically rolling around in agony, he healed stronger. Such was the grace of the system, after all. Every setback could be overcome.

When <Vast Mind> levelled up, Mercury could tell more than with the other Skills though. It made sense, the Skill had evolved after all. It was a weird feeling, too, like the world slowed down more when he focused, and doing multiple things at once felt less mentally taxing. Maybe there was some synergy with <Multitasking> there; he'd have to experiment with that later.

On another, very similar night to all the ones before, he woke up in the swamp. As he usually did, he first looked around, trying to see if he could make out any of the shapes or lights that were signs of the stalkers. Luckily, the air seemed clear for now.

Once he'd confirmed that, Mercury raised his head. The diamond, no, the dream's nexus was closer now. So close, he could almost make out the shadows of the chains that kept it close to the ground as he looked.

The heartbeat that seemed to shake the ground could almost be felt in the air now, faint vibration that made his hair rise up against his will. This place still made his <Astral Body> resemble his physical one much more than his own dreamscape, but by now he was used to it.

Regardless, even when his body seemed to react in a mixture of fight and flight impulses, Mercury pressed on. Watching the nexus had become something of a ritual. There was little else to base his progress on, and when he found himself plucked apart by the exhaustion as the nights passed, he anchored himself to that.

Dreamweaver's advice helped too, as it always did. Especially when he died in the dream, waking up would often be disorienting. He'd have trouble remembering where he was and why he was there, sometimes trying to just shake it off and go back to work on his day job.

Whenever it happened, he clung to his new name. To Mercury. It was a little strange, using that identity he'd crafted for himself as so much of an anchor, but who was he to judge? Chosen names meant much more than what your parents called you at birth, anyways.

To himself, he'd be Mercury, and that was what he clung to when he couldn't remember anything else. He was Mercury. He was curious. He was stubborn.

But it wasn't always so easy. After all, even when his mind was fractured, and he was hanging onto his identity as hard as he could, he would find himself back in the bog, more vulnerable than ever. Sometimes, a stalker would find him and kill him again.

It happened rarely, since he usually moved even more carefully when hurt, trying his best to stay out of trouble, but it could so easily cascade. Maybe you could handle a second death, maybe even a third before properly healing, but it could spiral too fast, way too fast. When things really got serious, he would sometimes be forced to stay awake for two days or so, since even that was better than once again dying in the dream.

What made it even more depressing was seeing it happen to the others. They'd be racked with pain and hallucinations, guilt and whatever other baggage they had on them for an entire day or two. Sometimes, when he was having a fairly normal night, he'd be woken up by someone's screams, to then have to head outside and fight off the monsters.

Mercury was just glad he had others that did the same for him.

Eventually though, Mercury had his worst spiral.

The first was a normal night, where he slept and got closer to the nexus. The stalkers were beginning to swarm, sometimes he'd see multiple of them drifting through the fog if he strained his eyes. All that happened was him getting found at an unlucky time, where one popped into sight from behind him and when he started running, he happened upon a second in front of him just a few seconds after.

That'd been that, and Mercury woke up feeling fractured and disoriented. He couldn't sleep for the rest of the night, his heart struggling to find a regular rhythm. Eventually though, when night came again, his eyes grew too heavy, and he fell asleep.

All of it was so much worse in the dream. The pain was searing, and he could tell he'd been hit more than once. With two stalkers on him, he might have been hit with two things near simultaneously. But even though the pain was bad, Mercury clung to his distant goal of the red diamond. He couldn't quite recall why it was so important, but he crawled toward it nonetheless.

Only to die again.

His second death was caused by carelessness. He'd been too focused on the nexus, tunnel visioning on something so far away, and not noticed the stalkers around him. It might have been swift, but far from painless.

The next night, he tried his hardest to stay up, but he was just too tired, his body seeming to almost shut down from it all. Once again, he was just unlucky, ending up in the bog when a stalker was already within range of him. That had never happened before, but now he knew to beware of that as well. He'd died before he knew it, almost before the pain even set in, but he also got no sleep.

Thrown back into the waking world, Mercury could hardly think. His memories all felt scrambled, and reaching out for them felt like sticking his hand into a bowl of glass shards. You might fish out some you want, but others will jab themselves into your fingers, and turn everything unpleasant.

All his memories felt so disorganised, with jumps in time to moments he'd really rather not have remembered. The day his parents had sent him to conversion therapy. The evenings he got yelled at for being a sinner in the eyes of god. How people like him were a stain on all that was good and proper.

It jumped between his first day of kindergarden, and the day his parents finally put his ass out onto the streets. Trying his hardest to focus at college, and the time he had broken down in front of a professor. How he had no money to his name, crashing at his brother's, desperately scrambling for a job with borrowed suits that didn't quite fit right.

He remembered the days he was a good student and the day the family dog died, a breakup with his highschool sweetheart, and a crush on a colleague from work. He remembered how he dreaded any calls from his boss, how he worked overtime to try and keep up with student loans he had taken out in the hopes of finding something that suited him, before quitting.

The memories of his past seemed to weigh him down, like the fractures on his mind were placed in order to remind him of so much more bad than good. But in a bowl of glass shards, there were some pretty ones, too.

A christmas party he got to share with the few family members who still wanted something to do with him. Happy evening spent with people he considered good friends, even though they grew distant eventually. Shows and books he enjoyed, and the few games he played as well.

Sometimes it felt like he was drowning in it all, but he still remembered who he was now, how far he'd come. He could do magic now, things that he could never even have considered back as Steve. There were so many new people who cared about him, who didn't care that he was gay, or even that he was a fricking cat.

All those memories washed over him, in an up and down, where he would cry, then smile, then curl up in pain as it all ended up mixed. He'd drown, then get burnt, then choke on fry and crack his head open, and eventually he fell asleep.

It all led back to the bog. To a muddy ground, staining his already bloodied fur, with a red diamond in the sky that he had to reach for reasons he couldn't remember. All he could do was bear the pain that wracked every bit on his body, and crawl forward, unrelenting.

Only to die again.

This time, one of the stalkers had found him, weakened and near death, and even toyed with Mercury. It had chased him, made him crawl as fast as he could, dragging a trail of red through the swamp, and when he felt like his lungs were about to collapse, the thing summoned an abyssal spike, much thicker than usual, before firing its flat back-end at the cat, crushing it.

Somehow, being killed so sadistically made waking up even worse. Mercury could hardly even breathe, the feeling of his entire body being crushed into itself clinging onto his mind for a few more agonizing moment before being replaced with the regular throes of pain and misery. Desperately, he tried to get some order in his scrambled thoughts, something to cling to.

And he found it. A memory so short it was barely a footnote, of someone he considered a dear teacher showing him how to breathe. He remembered, in and out. His body that had been seizing up, going against his control now moved, ever so slowly, and he remembered who he was. Mercury.

It was something he held onto, as hard as he could. An anchor to keep him sane. The shard of his mind slowly began reforming around it, one by one slotting into place.

But it was slow, and the bog called. He saw the red diamond hang in the distant fog, and it made Mercury grimace. Gritting his teeth, he limped forward. His mind had put itself together enough to limp. Not enough to escape the twisted servant that came after him, but somehow, he managed to chase it off.

He had imagined hitting it in the face with a hammer, and somehow, his fractured self had responded. The shards of his mind grouped up into a crude ball, hardly a hammer at all, and crashed against the stalker's dark shape. Whatever he had done, it worked.

The thing screeched as though a thousand jagged edges of glass had dug themselves into its skin, and scampered off. Perhaps that screen served as a warning, because no more of the things came after him that night, and his journey continued.

After another day of repairing his mind, Mercury felt his identity finally becoming stable again. It still hurt, and sometimes there were gaps and jumps in his head, trails of thoughts that would simply disappear, and other ones that emerged from seemingly nowhere. There were still memories surfacing at random times, and stings of pain, but he was recovering.

Enough, at least, to avoid the stalkers for one more night, and patch himself mostly back up. Somehow, he had barely survived dying four whole times in the swamp. He could probably consider himself lucky his Willpower had been over 100, and that a good couple of his Skills made his mind stronger.

"Most people don't survive the second time," Jirluc told him afterwards. "Some die from shock, some kill themselves in the delirium, walking into the traps outside. Still beats getting torn apart by beasts," he shrugged.

Mercury had once again proven he wasn't most people. And the system acknowledged that.

Willpower 108 -> 113

These days he didn't get many improvements to his stats from regular actions anymore, but apparently, this had been deemed worthwhile for a whole five points. Well, who was he to decline it? Now all he had to do was make it the last stretch to the nexus.

- - - - - -

Zyl woke up.

At first, he felt strange. Disoriented and groggy, almost like he was a stranger in his own body. He couldn't quite parse where he was, his mind sluggish. His entire body seemed to ache a little, not too terribly, but it felt like he'd overstretched all of his muscles.

Then the cold set in.

One moment to another, he felt like he was plunged into a bath of ice. Every inch of his skin and blood was freezing, and his eyes ripped open as he searched for a way out, flopping like a fish on land. He couldn't see. Even after opening his eyes he couldn't see, what was going on?!

"Lord Zyl? Did you finally awaken?" Leon's voice cut through the darkness, and relief washed through Zyl's body.

"Yes, I'm up. Leon, what's going on, I can't see anything, what happened to my eyes?" he asked, a hint of panic still clinging to his tone.

"... Your face is covered by a blanket," the old butler replied, a hint of mirth in his voice. "Should I perhaps take it off?"

Zyl felt another shiver run through him, as he closed his eyes again. "No, leave it on," he said, voice muffled through the fabric. "How come it's so cold in here?"

"The room temperature is currently quite close to the boiling point of water, actually," Leon answered, sounding a bit bitter. "It has already helped reduce your fever, but we cannot really raise it any further without severely complicating the act of getting you to drink something."

"What?" Zyl replied, incredulous. No way it was that hot. He felt like he was stranded on the mountaintops in Koriel with how cold he felt. Another shiver wracked his body, but Zyl tried to keep still and simply pulled the blankets closer.

"Zyl, what do you remember?" Leon asked again, sending the dragon's thoughts into motion.

"Well, I went out to help Lucia because there seemed to be some trouble, but by the time I got there, it was all resolved already. Then she, Iris and Mercury came to visit. Otto was here as well. We had a good deal of fun together, though lady Pelaren wasn't very happy to see me house someone like Mercury. Luckily, things went smoothly enough, and eventually, they all left again. After that..." Zyl felt things coming back to his memory.

Berthorn.

Very rapidly, the cold in Zyl's blood disappeared, replaced by anger, then disbelief, then sadness.

"Alright, it's all back," he said through gritted teeth. "I gave that snake a spark, and he didn't uphold his side of the deal. Now, Mercury is dead because of me."

Leon was silent for a few moments, letting his friend calm down a bit. "Zyl, it's not your fault."

"Of course it is!" the dragon yelled. He wanted to rage and tear things apart, but as he even tried to sit up, his muscles simply declined in agony, and he fell back down onto the mattress. "Aaargh!" He didn't know if he snarled in anger or pain.

"Please, Zyl. You have to rest some more. And things went different from what Berthorn thought. There were no bodies, yet all of his assassins died. Mercury called down a blood eclipse."

Zyl's face distorted even more at that. "And you're sure of that?"

Leon nodded. "More than sure. It was confirmed by Mercury's blacksmithing teacher, Yasashiku Ryuutesai. Apparently, before calling down the eclipse, Mercury pushed him out of its radius."

It took a few seconds for Zyl to recognize the name, but after a quick gaze at the leaderboard and a search for his name there, the picture clicked into place. Not that it gave him any more confidence. "So he died to that, then. What does it matter?"

"Little, I suppose," Leon sighed. "Still, I thought it might be some solace that he went down fighting. He wouldn't have blamed you, Zyl, and neither would anyone else. This is what Berthon wants. A teacher of mine once told me to 'focus on the battles yet to fight, rather than the ones already lost'. I think that perhaps it would be better for you to look forward."

Zyl bit his lip at that. Leon was right, as usual. He took a deep breath, fighting down a shiver. "Fine," he finally said, "I'll focus on recovering. Could you tell Maclroy I'm awake?"

"Of course, Zyl. Rest well. I'll bring you a meal once I'm back."

With that, the dragon was alone again, left to think on what he should do next.