Rachel reached out to him. "What the hell happened down there?"
Gale couldn't reply. He tried. Couldn't even open his lips. His vision spun as he just stood there. He was barely conscious. Rachel's face was even blurry.
Annett lifted up Dmitry's limp body from Gale, dragging him to the side. She sat him up against the wall, then pressed her fingers on his neck to feel for a pulse.
"He's alive," she said.
Rachel supported Gale by the arm. Her eyes found the dripping blood on his thigh.
"Gale, you're bleeding out," Rachel said. "What did that to you?"
Gale tried to push her away. Dad taught me to be tough. It was just a flesh wound. It'll heal, he thought. His body was stronger than before, no longer normal. Just give it some time. All those cuts and bruises from the beasts before healed too.
He walked to the wall, sat down then leaned his head against the wall. At least that's what he imagined he was doing. To Rachel and Annett, he was still supported by Rachel's arms.
Rachel sat him down softly onto the floor. She ripped open the clothes on his thigh to reveal the open wound. "Brace yourself. It's going to hurt."
Gale caught on to what was happening. He imagined himself crawling away from Rachel, but his body didn't listen. Heat emanated from Rachel's hands. Slowly, she put her flaming hand onto Gale's thigh and pressed it against the deep stab opening.
All of Gale's muscles seized up. He screamed, gritting his teeth that it felt like his front teeth were about to pop off. The flesh around the wound sizzled close, and burnt skin wafted through the air as Rachel cauterized his injury.
Rachel worked fast. She targeted the parts inside his wound that may get infected, digging in with her fingers and then burning off as much of the dirt as tearing bits of flesh away from inside. Next, her left hand moved to pinch the open skin together as her right hand finally sealed off the cut as a makeshift suture.
The wounds were sealed. A red scar replaced where the wound was. Tears ran down Gale's eyes. The headache disappeared, flushed away by the pain of cauterization. He still couldn't see. Eyes too watery and no energy to wipe off the pooled tears.
"It's done," Rachel said softly. She wiped the tears off Gale's eyes, making eye contact with him from above. "Good job."
Gale imagined himself nodding, but obviously couldn't. A throbbing sensation remained where the stab wound was. He was exhausted and wanted to close his eyes. It was tempting to do so.
Do you have that luxury though?
Of course he didn't. There was something dangerous underground. They also had to worry about what was beyond the edges of the stone tower. Death could come any minute.
Gale circulated his essence all around his body. He pushed himself up to sit up straight as his breathing became ragged, not realizing he lost that much blood on the way back.
"Gale! You can just lie down and sleep to recover!" Rachel supported him from behind with her hand.
He looked at their faces. Not a clue in them that told him they knew what could be down there.
"Whatever's down there, that door seems to be holding it back," he forced the words out of his throat. "It stays closed."
"What's down there?" Annett asked.
"Something. Evil." Gale saw Anna's shoulders shake. "It's not something that can be cut or punched or shot. It drew me in…"
"What do you mean?" Rachel asked. "Like you were mind controlled?"
"That's what it felt like. I had to stab myself to snap myself out of it," Gale said. "And it felt like the darkness was alive."
Dmitry spasmed as soon as he heard his words. He stood up and scratched at his head.
"It's coming!" the old man spat. "It's coming to get us! I need to run! Dying is better than any of this!"
Gale tried to reach for his sabre. He'd seen the old man down there. It was the movements of someone possessed. Rabid. Feral. Yet his hand moved disgustingly slow toward the sabre that sat on the wall.
"The light!" Dmitry's head darted left and right. "I need it! The light! I need it! The light!"
Anna sobbed next. Her weeping mixed in with the shouts of Dmitry. She stood up, going to the corner of the room, facing the wall. Her hands clawed at the floor.
"Run away. The eyes. The eyes. They're here. Run away!" Anna wailed.
Ollie sprang onto Anna's back, holding her back from scratching at the floor. "Stop! You're going to hurt yourself."
"What's happening?!" Rachel yelled. "Anna! Dmitry! Get yourselves together!"
Dmitry sent a punch towards Rachel.
Annett blocked it. Threw him down, putting his arm onto his back in a pin. "Stay still, stop resisting. Calm down!"
"Give them light!" Gale shouted.
Rachel lifted up her hand, lighting up the room with fire on her hand. The darkness around them lifted, eating away at the darkness even in the darkest corners of the room.
The effects were immediate. Anna's wails subsided, and Dmitry stopped resisting. Both of their eyes were fixed on the bright hand of Rachel.
Annett let go of Dmitry, and immediately the older man walked toward the light. He reached out with his hand, almost touching the flames. The skin on his finger sizzled and then charred, filling the air once more with an unwanted scent.
Again, this forced Annett to act, suppressing the older man back to stop him from burning himself.
On the other hand, Anna watched silently, just staring at the flames dancing on Rachel's hand.
"What the fuck is happening?" Ollie let go of Anna.
"I think whatever was down there, it went after their minds," Rachel said.
"Let's use this tower to rest. They need to recover from whatever happened down there," Gale said.
Ollie's eyes widened.
"Rest? How the hell are we supposed to rest with... with this?" Ollie yelled.
"Figure it out," Gale said.
Ollie took a step towards Gale, "That's a nice fucking suggestion. Figure out how to unfuck their minds, I guess?"
"Stop arguing, Ollie." Rachel sighed. "We might as well rest. Gale is injured too. He needs to recover."
"She's right. We can't really do much with our biggest firepower needing to recover anyways," Annett said.
"Fine," Ollie sighed. "Alex, you there outside?"
"Yup, still here, what'd you need?" Alex asked.
"Nothing. Just making sure you're not dead," Ollie said. "I'll watch outside."
"We take shifts," Rachel said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "One person watch Dmitry and Anna. If they do something, call out to the rest of the team. The other person keep watch outside just in case. Ollie, you take watch outside first."
"Already going," Ollie grumbled.
"I'll take first watch on these two," Annett sat Dmitry down.
Gale retreated to a corner of the tower. He slid down the wall. His body ached from any slight movement. A dull burning could still be felt on his thigh.
Rachel had already made a firepit inside the tower. The smoke went out of the windows and up to the second floor. Its fire was a soft glow that reminded Gale of the time he'd slept outside of the camp when his parents and he were far away from home base. They had slept in open tents, allowing them to see the campfire while he fell asleep. The crackles of the fire felt comforting enough to make his eyes droop, then close.
He allowed himself to rest.
The sound of the door opening and footsteps snapped Gale's eyes wide open. His hand went onto the sabre beside him, ready to strike until Annett's familiar silhouette appeared in the dim, dying campfire's light.
"Why aren't you watching Dmitry?" Gale's voice, gravelly from sleep, came out more serious than he intended.
Annett forced a smile. "He's better now. A few hours in the light did the trick."
Gale rubbed his eyes then looked around the room. The campfire's fire had dwindled into just kindling. Anna huddled in the corner, her shoulder still shaking with a sob every now and then. At least she stopped clawing at the floor.
Then he saw Rachel at the other side of the wall, turned away from him. Her breathing was steady. Sleeping. His eyes lingered on her for a moment until, at the corner of his eyes, he saw the small amount of fruit they had left for their supplies.
Gale pushed himself up, body was mostly recovered. He rolled his arms and did three quick squats. His thigh was still slightly sore, but it wouldn't really interrupt his movements in a fight. As long as there was nothing as strong as the first forest predator he had encountered, he was confident he could take on any normal beasts.
"I'm going to hunt," Gale said to Annet, quietly as to not wake up Rachel.
Annett nodded, not questioning him.
Gale pushed the door open and saw Ollie sitting by the door with his pistol resting on his lap.
"Something's weird about this place," Ollie fidgeted with his pistol. "Forest beasts won't come near it."
Gale remembered the oppressive pressure he felt in the basement. Maybe that could be what the beasts were avoiding. Not that it mattered. As long as that thing stayed down there, then they could use whatever this is as a resting area.
"I'm going hunting," Gale said again, already moving towards the treeline.
"We've still got plenty of fruit," Ollie said.
"It's not enough."
The forest swallowed him as he let out Breath of the Void, spreading the tendrils of his senses everywhere. Gale moved. No hesitation with each step to find the nearest beast.
A small beast thrashed in one of the snares he'd set up before the basement debacle. This one looked more normal than any of the other beasts he'd seen. Its skin wasn't a frankenstein of a patch. It looked like an ordinary horse mixed with a lion. Actually kind of cute if it didn't have fangs the size of his forearms.
Gale's hand moved to his spear instead of the sabre. He willed alter into it, making the spear fluidly shorten. His breathing slowed. Aimed his hands. Launch. Release the skill. The spear whistled through the air, aimed directly at the beast's skull.
The skill wore off just as it touched the skull. On hit, a loud crunching explosion spread along the trees. The beast dropped immediately, its body went limp with a thud.
It was over in just less than five seconds.
Gale pounced on the carcass, bone knife already in hand. He cut the front two legs and two rear legs, tied them up all together and hoisted them onto his shoulder to carry back to the camp.
He set to work immediately, building a smoker. It was a perfect spot to recover their supply now that he knew this was a forest beast-free zone.
The enemy of the enemy's enemy's friends is my friend. That's how it goes, right? Gale thought.
He gathered the sturdy sticks, the leaves, the vines, and the thinner sticks for the smoker. He made more of the smokers. There was no chance it would be sniped by a beast as there was a repellent behind him.
Once the smokers were finished, he quickly sliced off slices of meat from the kill. The four smokers devoured all of the slices of meat from the beast, though this one wasn't as big as other beasts. But it was still bigger than anything he had faced on Earth.
Gale smiled at the feeling of abundance. They wouldn't have to worry about food for a while. The fire would also make charcoal for them to purify their water.
Now time to hunt again. Dad always said that you can never have enough, even though mom would yell at him for hunting too much.
He found one quickly. This one was slightly larger than the beast he'd just killed. Though clearly, this one had been going to the gym. It had more muscle mass, bulging onto its glistening leathery skin. It looked like a jacked up kangaroo, except meaner looking and fuglier. And instead of a kangaroo, it looked like a lion with no skin had a kid with a hyena with no skin.
Gale struck it again with the same spear throw technique he used earlier. More meat joined the first batch after he made a couple more smokers. Now the whole stone tower area smelled like smoked meat.
It wasn't just for the meat he hunted for. It was also for the bones. The team had broken their equipment. They were amateurs who didn't know how to block or use their equipment properly. Ollie's hand guards were broken, so were Rachel's. All of them also had their spears cracked in weak spots, mostly in the middle. One more bad hit would've broken the spear.
A murmur coming from inside the tower broke his concentration. It was Dmitry's voice, louder than usual. He wiped his hands on his pants and moved toward the entrance. As soon as he stepped inside, the group's conversation stalled.
Dmitry sat in the centre. The man's eyes stared at him.
"Gale, Dmitry was just about to tell us what happened down there," Rachel pointed at the door leading to the basement.
Gale leaned on the cobblestone wall, arms crossed. He nodded, signalling Dmitry to continue.
Dmitry looked away from Gale and stared at the fire. "I saw... I saw a world at war. Not like anything we've known. The people here, they were fighting something... something I can't even describe."
Gale gulped. War? Would that explain the weird descriptions of the forest beasts and predators he had killed? It was obvious the flavour text of those had something to do with this world.
"And then there were the whispers," Dmitry whispered. "Like what Anna heard. I couldn't understand them, but they... they wanted me to go somewhere. Everything was dark, so dark. And cold. Not just around me, but inside, in my bones."
Anna whimpered.
Dmitry's eyes glazed over, lost in the memory. "Then I saw it. A shape, like a person, but... it was wrong. As I got closer, my head started to hurt. It was... it was made of flesh, writhing and moving. Millions of eyes and mouths, all over it. The whispers came from there."
"I tried to fight it," Dmitry's voice cracked. "My spear... it just bounced off. Like hitting metal. And it kept telling me, over and over, to go to the light."
Dmitry's body shook, his eyes fixed unblinking on the campfire in the centre. "The light... the light... the light… the light…"
The older man's eyes snapped to Gale. "You... you were there. In the darkness. You were part of it. You were part of it. You…"
Gale stepped back from the wall. Everyone had turned his way. Eyes looking at him. Just like the orphanage. Their stares looked at him as if he were a monster.
But no. He wasn't going to run from it.
"What else do you remember?" Gale said.
Dmitry's brow furrowed, concentration etched on his face. "There was... something else. Behind the flesh-thing. Something bigger, older. I couldn't see it, but I felt it. Like it was watching me. Judging me. So many eyes."
Gale also remembered being watched the whole time. Apparitions that took on the form of eyes and mouths. It could be what Dmitry experienced.
"Did it speak to you?" Annett asked, leaning forward.
Dmitry shook his head. "Not with words. But I felt... I felt like it wanted something from me. It wanted something from you."
The graying man's eyes locked onto Gale.