Aaron could hear the mist howling again, as if something was beside him, waiting.
'Did he return?' he wondered.
The chances of the mist goblin changing its target to him were not slim. He was small, he might not fill its belly, but he was still prey.
With the drudgery sword in Elizabeth's hands, he barely had a weapon of his own. And now that the system wasn't responding, it felt like a dead end.
Soon he would be hunted down if he failed to find the witch's hut.
'If I can just find the witch's hut, I might be able to make them fight each other,' he told himself.
He shaped this plan from his previous encounters with such monstrous beings. In front of them, he had always been nothing more than prey waiting to be devoured.
The howling continued. He had to stop and hide whenever it sounded too close, yet like always, he could never see anything. The only time he had seen the mist goblin was when it had been terrified by the creature that attacked Elizabeth.
Its fur was like cloudy smoke, and its pale skin trembled every second. Its nose was sharp like a bird's beak. Its stature was low, yet it carried a menacing presence. Something about its glowing yellow eyes made one feel sick, as if mere sight alone was enough to poison the blood.
Its voice is the most horrific thing about it, it is not words but whistles and grunts.
A creature that barely follows the pattern of living being, it's more like natural calamity taken shape of something alive.
A bare minimum imitation.
Aaron shuddered as he recall the feature of the goblin.
Suddenly, the mist curled around his tail. He jerked back in shock and lost his balance, nearly tripping, but his nimble body recovered in the very same second.
He glanced over his shoulder. Nothing. Just the mist whistling softly as it parted around him.
'What is it trying to do?!' Aaron thought. He regained his footing and burst into a sprint, vanishing into the haze.
Behind him, the mist gathered once more, struggling to form a substantial shape. Perhaps humanoid, perhaps not. Aaron's mind was going wild after that near fall.
Aaron kept running, but the pounding of his footsteps faded beneath the sound inside his head. The mist was no longer the thing chasing him. It was his own memory.
For a single desperate second, he wished someone would grab him, pull him away from the mist, drag him to safety. Someone strong. Someone who cared enough.
Someone like Elizabeth.
The thought struck him so violently that his legs almost locked mid-stride. His breath caught in his throat. The image rushed back without mercy. Elizabeth pulling him towards her as he ran frantically from the monstrous knight, his hands shaking, his chin down, he screamed inside for he was to run while that unidentified monster towered over her.
And he did run.
He left her...
'Damn IT!!'
"DAMN IT!!"
"DAMN IT!!"
The mist seemed to press closer, as if feeding on the guilt spreading across his skin like frost. He swallowed hard, but the bitterness stayed.
Why did she pull him away. Why did she save him. Why did she have to care. If she had not called him through the mist even endangering herself, maybe he wouldn't still be standing...
Maybe she would not be alone, if not for him.
He felt sick.
His pace refused to slow, yet it felt like he was sinking deeper with every step. The mist curled around him again, but this time it did not need to touch him. It had already found a grip, inside him.
'A coward.'
'A traitor.'
'She saved you, and you abandoned her.'
No whisper came from the mist, yet the accusation echoed clearer than any voice.
Aaron blinked rapidly, his eyes stinging, from the coldness of the mist and from the realization he had been avoiding when he chose...to abandon her. Even if he escaped this cursed haze, even if he survived whatever hunted him, the worst monster was already inside him, tearing his conscience apart.
And for the first time since he started running, he was no longer sure what he deserved more.
To escape.
Or to be caught...
He slowed to a walk. Not because his body failed him. His breath was steady, muscles ready to sprint again. But there was no point anymore. Running suddenly felt meaningless.
The mist curled around him in gentle spirals, no longer striking, no longer trying to trip him. Almost as if it understood the change inside him and no longer needed force. He had surrendered before it ever caught him.
Aaron lowered his head and let his arms fall uselessly at his sides. His voice came out small, quiet enough to be mistaken for a breath.
"Kill me."
The mist changed.
It felt alive now, shuddering and writhing, almost dancing as if it had finally achieved something it wanted.
A shape began to form within it. Limbs first, then a crooked spine. The fog thickened around a body that hunched forward as though it had grown wrong. When the face surfaced from the grey, its skin was a pristine, porcelain white, stretched too tightly over sharp bones. Its eyes opened last, glowing a sickly yellow that stared straight at Aaron with a hunger no man can ever have.
It was laughing, sounds escaping its lips and forming high-pitched whistles, irritating to the ear, capable of breaking the eardrums of any unlucky passerby.
Dragging itself out of the mist, it slowly came closer. Aaron's head was down, his eyes fixed on the ground.
The creature towered over him. The rat seemed to shrink even more as the creature came into view, the curling mist dripping onto the rat's head and sending a shiver down its spine.
It slowly extended its claws toward his head.
But instead of retreating, Aaron smiled on the inside.
As the hand drew closer, he opened his jaw. His mouth shimmered with a thick yellow poison, bubbling over his fangs like golden rice in flaring sunlight of the dawn.
Blight.