Chapter 74 - A Weight of Hopelessness

  Adam bared his teeth in the effort to tear his feet free, but the miserable-looking humanoids, seemingly made of greyish mud, held them in a tight grip. Although each was roughly the size of a potato, together they formed an immense weight that tried to drag him down. Moreso, they radiated a deep, all-encompassing hopelessness that seemed to bleed into him.

  Adam shook his head in an attempt to clear it and grunted as he punched and sliced the filthy creatures. They didn’t resist, carelessly letting themselves be cut or slammed away, but there were always more. From all directions, new ones crawled up from the mud, mewling their pitiful little cries.

  As he struggled, Adam looked to find a source. And there, down in the centre of the cave, was the pale, bare-chested man he’d seen before. Seemingly not an illusion but an immensely powerful Corrupted. His bloodshot eyes hazily looked straight into Adam’s, while the shadowy figure that grew out of his back stretched its clawed hands out in Adam’s direction. These mud-creeps are the shadow’s Invocation!

  As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, a Corrupted wrapped in a grey cloak stood beside the pale man. It raised a filthy, yellowish standard, showing masses of bloody lines. Among them, Adam recognized several familiar symbols: the scorched brands of Osaehin and Worhaelis on his left heart.

  When the standard bearer gave a guttural cry, its minions obeyed its command. The howling mass of warriors started climbing the rocky slopes towards Adam.

  Adam’s eyes widened in his desperate need to get out. Emily was nowhere to be seen, yet the mound of mud-creeps around him was only growing. Their high wails rang in his ears as he swatted them away from his arms, neck, and back. They crawled up and bit at his legs although he wrestled with all his might to break free.

  It felt pointless to resist. His limbs felt so heavy that all he wanted to do was to lie down. Or curl up into a ball and drift away in the merciful darkness. Adam screamed, throwing four of the whining creatures from his arm in one swing. He knew it was an Invocation of Worhaelis, yet he seemed unable to cast his own Invocations in response. To do so, he needed to connect with specific emotions of his own, but the sadness and hopelessness all around him were so encompassing, that he barely remembered what they felt like. And although Invocations out of sadness, from Worhaelis, were possible in theory, Adam had never used one before.

  As he struggled, he saw the disturbing scenes and displays of the Thuraum around the cave. Brightly coloured birds and croaking frogs desperately tried to escape one of the grey, smoky nets. As if symbolizing the last bits of joy and pleasure in life, they were trapped and dragged down into the mud, into nothing. In another scene near the walls, Caine had to smile and laugh with officials of the Starwing Order, as he saw how Penduli troops were taken down. He clearly tried to keep a straight face, to keep up his persona of being a loyal Warrior of Aves, but his eyes betrayed how he was torn from the inside.

  Adam flung another bunch of the mud-creeps away, far enough to reach the ragged Corrupted who climbed to get him. It was no use, there were too many. All of it was… pointless.

  Wait.

  Adam’s eyes widened. As this Thuraum seemed to represent Caine’s depression—or at least part of it—Adam could use his own knowledge about it. Although sadness and hopelessness formed a large part of the depression, it contained guilt, self-hatred, anxiety, and fear as well. And those emotions are all around here! He felt terrible about Eric, or for not being able to save people who died in the war…

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  Adam hastily searched the terrible scenes around the room again and found Caine and Emily standing at a burial site. The burial poles there, containing the ashes of the deceased, weren’t as glorious and covered in woodcarvings as those in Ziecherhein. No, these were the roughly shaped clay columns for war criminals. And the one Caine and Emily cried in front of had just a few words unevenly carved into its surface: ‘Adam Ahensir – The world rejoiced the day this traitor faced justice’

  It was like a cold fist had hit him in the stomach. He tore away the mud-creeps that crawled around his face and forced himself to keep looking at the terrible scene as he struggled. The Caine in the memory wiped tears from his eyes as his shaking hand clung to the clay pole. Emily’s voice echoed in Adam’s mind, from when they were hiding in a cellar after fighting Desdemona the first time. ‘We actually mourned for you. Can you even imagine how that must’ve felt?!’

  Adam closed his eyes. Repressing any thoughts of how a column containing his ashes could exist, he felt the emotions that radiated from the memory. Of Caine’s guilt behind the sadness, how Caine hadn’t been able to save his buddy.

  Adam felt it. Replacing one terrible emotion with another never was a pleasant experience, but now he was almost grateful. Guilt tore through him. How Adam had put his good friends through mourning, while he was very much alive. How he’d lived for years, while they thought he was dead. Even if his memories of living with Catherine were fake, he had never reached out to them in all that time.

  And that was unacceptable.

  Adam groaned as he felt the knife of guilt pierce him from the inside. How he wished he’d done better. How he longed to go back and change what had happened. And he funnelled all the raw emotion in the desire to be better. To right his wrongs and redeem himself.

  “Schultora,” his Left Heart whispered.

  And then it happened. Even though the creatures from the Corrupted’s Invocation swarmed over him, biting into his flesh, it was nothing compared to the pain within him. How Inner Fire surged through his veins like rivers of molten metal. How his body was damaged from the inside to extract even more Inner Fire.

  Adam roared like the very embodiment of an inferno. And his cry echoed through the cave, drowning out all the sounds of the Thuraum’s misery. Filled with renewed strength, Adam clawed and punched all around him. The creatures of mud screeched as they were hurled away by the dozen. Like an enraged bear going berserk against a swarm of mad hamsters. And finally, with a kick that flung away six of the mewling bastards, Adam tore his foot free. The last of the creatures desperately tried to cling to his feet, but Adam was already gone. Clenching his hands into fists, he prepared to face the horde of ragged Corrupted that were shambling up the rocky slopes towards him.

  A flash of movement, all the way down on the cave’s floor, caught his attention. The pale man who had cast the Invocation jumped aside to dodge three Marrow daggers that flew towards him. The standard bearer spun around. Behind it, Emily leapt up with a furious screech and drove her spear into its chest. The vile creature dropped its standard and crumbled into nothing. A tiny green sprite flew up from the dirt and bugs it left behind, which was deftly grabbed by Emily.

  “YES!” Adam roared. Although the pale man’s shadow screeched at Emily, the damage was already done: the standard was destroyed. And just like Roots and their vile Shepherds, these standards were used to send Commands to subordinates. In its absence, something seemed to change in the other Corrupted. Those who were scrambling up the slope towards Adam seemed to lose their focus. Some tried to flee to the tunnels. Others lay down in a foetal position. A few curled up like a ball and rocked back and forth, grasping their heads. Pitiful creatures, filled with nothing but the raw torment of the Thuraum.

  However, the pale man at the bottom of the cave stood as steadfast as ever. The human figure grasped a long, spiked, and rusty blade from his belt. The shadow that grew out of his back and loomed over him spread its shadowy arms that ended in clawed fingers. It opened what seemed like a stretched maw that howled in endless agony.

  Emily gathered Oquira and took on a fighting stance, as taught by the Starwing Order. Still filled with Inner Fire from Schultora’s Invocation, Adam stormed down the slope towards the pale man.