RTYY 117 - Darkness and Light

With his heart beating hard against his chest, Snow didn't allow himself to think about what to do any longer. He also couldn't care about things like cost or prices to pay. Trying his best to focus, even though he knew he was probably about to be shredded to pieces, he slammed his foot down on the ground and raised array after array, quickly picturing a dome like the one he had been looking up at, night after night.

An intense golden light surrounded them, covering them, and Snow prayed that it would be enough to protect them from advancing wave of darkness threatening to swallow them. Cleanse, purify, heal, restore, revive, were the words echoing in his head, the songs mixing in his mind as he poured all he had onto those five arrays.

The agonizing shattering sound that filled his ears was followed by a blasting force so strong that it sent him flying across the air as if he too were just another withering leaf. Forced to expel all the air in his chest, Snow was forced to gasp for air, even though he knew that breathing in that tainted air would most likely kill him.

His tumbling body crashed into something, probably a tree, he thought, pain shooting across his back. And he immediately braced himself, expecting to hit the ground next, at any moment. But that moment never came.

Something warm and firm was suddenly wrapped around him, holding him, doing its best to shield him from the fetid blast of wind caused by the dark explosion.

Still confused, Snow looked up, but all he could see was more darkness, flowing in dark waves around him, covering his entire body. And yet he was strangely familiar with that darkness, he realized, unwillingly relaxing. He only noticed they had be floating midair when his feet gently touched the ground. And then, as to prove what he'd already guessed, those cold blue eyes were looking down at him.

"Close your eyes," the monster's voice told him, the blue eyes turning to look ahead, and Snow followed his gaze, refusing to obey his command.

The black mass of destruction was right in front of them, red markings covering its huge, deformed body. It was nothing like any animal he knew, nothing like any living creature walking the earth, but, somehow, Snow knew that hundreds of lives had been devoured by it, their agony echoing inside his head, the pungent stench of death leaving him dizzy. The only thing firm and real in the distorted dark world that now surrounded him were those arms around his waist and the warmth that was already seeping through his clothes. And so he held on to those, using them as his anchor.

Out of nowhere, not one, but several long, dark swords appeared all around them, turning at the same time towards the increasing mass of destruction and flying across the air even faster than MenTar's arrows. Like before, the deformed creature caused a massive explosion, trying to blow them back, and, in the next instant, Snow finally understood why ZaiWin had told him to close his eyes.

Blinking and trying to hold his stomach down, he first thought that they were disappearing and appearing from place to place. But then, even though he couldn't see anything, he could always feel the wind on his face and hair, his clothes flapping against his legs and neck. It was almost as if they were flying. But if that was true, they were flying so fast that he couldn't catch a single glimpse of the world around him.

Suddenly he was on the ground, then he was standing on a tree branch, next his feet touched a rock and he was across the stream in the next instant. The rules of space, form or weight didn't apply at all, he concluded, keeping his eyes wide open, trying to understand what was happening. And so he couldn't help taking a sharp breath when he suddenly found himself hanging upside-down, the blood rushing to his head as he gripped the arms around him with extra strength.

More dark swords were conjured and ZaiWin sent them flying across the air. This time, however, instead of an explosion of darkness, the creature counter-attacked by launching a long mass of darkness, that was quickly shot at them. Looking very much like a huge, deformed arm, it tried to reach them, quickly slithering around the trees on its path and killing everything it touched.

The next instant they weren't there anymore, back to firm ground, leaving Snow dizzy for a moment. A circle of dark, purplish markings appeared around his feet, and he couldn't help shivering. If there was something horrible wrong with that creature, there was also something fundamentally distorted about those markings. But then they were spreading across the darkened earth beneath his feet, and the arms that had held him released him, a pair of hands covering his ears as he was pulled down, forced to kneel on the ground, his head pressed against his knees.

Even with his ears covered, the screeching sound the creature emitted made him want to scream as well, and he firmly bit down his lower lip, making sure he didn't utter a single sound. His back was burning as if a hot iron had been pressed against his skin, a feeling that wasn't entirely new to him, with the difference that it wasn't limited to a single place. And the ground bellow his knees shook, and moaned, lamenting the defiling darkness that had permeated deep into the land.

He didn't know exactly when everything was over, only that the hands glued to his ears lost their strength, sliding down his face. And then the whole weight that had been pressing him down slowly released him, falling with a loud thud at his side.

Still shaken, Snow turned his head to look at him and his heart almost stopped. The dark monster had gone back to being a man, and he just lay there, completely motionless. His face was deadly pale, his long dark hair unusually disheveled, spread around his head, covering the equally darkened land.

His arms shaking, Snow crawled on his hands and knees until he was close enough to touch him. His face was cold, he felt with two trembling fingers, and his pale lips were smeared with blood. But he didn't seem to have any other injuries, even though he couldn't be sure, since he was always dressed in black.

With a second thought, Snow raised his head and looked around, at the dark devastation that surrounded them, afraid that the creature might be lurking close by, ready to attack them again. But all he could see were dead trees, and dead plants, and dead everything, the air he breathed slowly poisoning him, slowly poisoning them both.

Was he even breathing? The instant the thought crossed his mind Snow immediately glued his ear to ZaiWin's chest. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. He was breathing, Snow concluded, his heart was still beating.

Raising his head, he looked down at him again. The sight of blood, the smell of it, always made him feel faint and sick. And so, even though he knew that he could probably make him better if kissed him, looking down at his bloody lips he couldn't really bring himself to do it.

Taking a deep breath, Snow closed his eyes and focused. There was no point trying to heal him anyway, if the air and the ground around them were slowly poisoning them at the same time. And so he raised the same arrays he'd used before, cleansing a small area around them, making the air breathable again, and forming a golden dome over their heads that would prevent the contaminated air outside from entering that small space again.

Now that he could once more breathe with ease, Snow didn't feel as sick and light-headed as before. Even ZaiWin's pale face looked a bit healthier, touched by the golden light. But he still felt abnormally cold, Snow concluded, lightly touching his cheek. Maybe he could help him another way, Snow thought, placing a hand over his chest. He had felt it before, when he'd laid his head on his chest. Somehow part of that unnatural darkness had entered his body, filling his chest, wrapping itself around his heart.

Focusing again, Snow allowed a new melody to take over his thoughts and permeated the golden energy with purpose and shape. Snowflakes, he instinctively chose, small snowflakes that slowly floated over ZaiWin, descending over his unconscious body, gently passing through his clothes, through his skin, through his bones and flesh, like drops of light chasing the darkness away.

Nox ZaiWin frowned, pain shooting through his entire body, and opened his eyes. As to be expected, his mouth tasted like blood, and he felt as if every single bone in his body had been shattered. What he hadn't expect, however, was to see the beautiful shimmering curtain of gold spread over his head, keeping the darkness at bay.

The instant he had raised that dark array he had known what would follow, and he had readied himself to have to drag his weakened body in any way possible, away from that place of death and back to camp. He knew that none of the others would be able to enter the now contaminated area. And so he knew he couldn't count on their help, even if it was for such a simple task as to retrieve him. ZenTar had tried to do so on a few occasions, back when he was younger, and had almost died every single time.

On the other hand, for some reason he was yet to understand, even though he always felt like shit and ended up being sick for several days to come, ZaiWin had never actually died from it, always managing to survive somehow. Well, it would be pretty ironic, him dying from the consequences of his own markings. And so he had come to accept the whole painful process as a given.

Still, even though he had never died from it, he knew, like ZenTar knew, that repeatedly using such dark array would eventually damage his body beyond repair. And so, since he didn't particularly enjoyed the shattering pain that followed anyway, he had made a point to use it as rarely as possible.

Looking at the golden shimmers floating above his head, he was finally able to reorganize his thoughts. Even though he had expected the damaging rebound, he hadn't known what would happen to the damn brat he had been dragging around all over the place. All he had been able to do was hope that, somehow, his Celestial blood would keep him miraculously safe.

Looking down at his own body, ZaiWin saw dozens of small, bright snowflakes dancing in the air, slowly diving into his chest. So that's why he felt warm, he concluded. Why he could breathe normally. Why the pain was slowly fading away, when he was sure he would have been cringing from pain every time he moved, for the next several days.

With his eyes closed and his pale hand pressed against his chest, the brat was kneeling right next to him, the golden lights granting him that inhuman, holy glow, making him look like exactly what he was.

Taking a deep breath, ZaiWin tried to move and, even though his chest still hurt, he miraculously managed to prop himself on his elbows and finally sat up. If he didn't stop him soon, the one lying on a bed for the next few days would be him.

Grabbing his hand, he tugged him gently.

"Hey! Brat! Open your eyes!"

Blinking at the unexpected light that was actually his doing, Snow finally obeyed, his pale eyes looking gold for once. The instant he saw him sitting there, awake again, the small snowflakes immediately turned into flickers of light and disappeared.

"You're … not hurt anymore?" Snow asked with a doubtful whisper, and ZaiWin took a hand to his own chest, massaging it gently.

So he had noticed too, he concluded by the strange way Snow kept staring at him, as if he were trying to put a name on something he was not really sure of what it was.

He was much better than he was supposed to be, ZaiWin realized by the way he could freely breathe. But, even though he wasn't actually hurt, he'd never be completely unhurt either.

"I'm fine," he simply replied and looked up at the golden dome above their heads, hoping to change the subject.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

At least tell him thank you, baka ZaiWin! 😠