Loss

It was impossible. Utterly, completely, impossibly impossible for Sorken to fight off that swarm, to break through that living wall of teeth and claws and fury, to reach Kesta, to pull him free. He knew it, felt it with a chilling certainty that went beyond reason, beyond hope, beyond despair. But he couldn't just leave him. Couldn't just abandon him to that unspeakable fate. He had to try. He had to. Even if it meant his own death. Even if it was utterly, hopelessly, pointlessly futile.

"Ahhh… Help me…" Kesta's voice, weak, broken, fading, reached him through the chaos, a desperate, dying whisper in the storm of shrieks and snarls and tearing flesh. "Please… save me… please…" It was a child's cry, a plea for help from a place beyond hope, a sound that tore at Sorken's heart, that ripped through his soul, that shattered the last vestiges of his resolve.

Sorken ran towards him anyway, his legs pumping, his heart hammering, his mind blank, his body moving on pure instinct, driven by a desperate, futile, utterly irrational need to do something, anything. He reached the edge of the swarm, the writhing mass of beasts that obscured Kesta from view, and in a final, desperate, utterly hopeless bid to save his friend from his terrible, agonizing fate, he reached out, his hand grasping for anything, anything at all that he could grab, to pull, to drag, to save. And his fingers closed around something. Something small. Something limp. Something… cold. He pulled. 

With all his remaining strength, all his desperate, futile hope, he pulled. Hauling with every fiber of his being, straining muscles that were already screaming in protest, ignoring the searing pain in his back, the bone-chilling fear that threatened to paralyze him completely. 

He pulled Kesta, or what was left of Kesta, towards the narrow, shadowed mouth of the tunnel, towards the darkness, towards the unknown, towards their only, desperate chance of survival.

As he jumped, lunging for the tunnel entrance, dragging Kesta's limp body with him, he felt something slipping from his grasp. His fingers, slick with blood and sweat and something else, something cold and greasy and sickeningly wrong, lost their hold. His grip broke. And Kesta… Kesta was gone. 

Slipping from his grasp, sliding back into the writhing mass of beasts, disappearing beneath the swarm, swallowed whole by the living nightmare, lost forever to the mauling, devouring horrors of the ruin.

"No!" Sorken screamed, a raw, agonized cry torn from his throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated grief and despair that echoed in the darkness, a sound that was lost, swallowed, consumed by the shrieks of the beasts, the echoing silence of the ruin, and the cold, uncaring indifference of the ancient stones. 

"Kesta!" He had lost him. He had failed. He had tried, and he had failed. And Kesta… Kesta was gone. Gone forever. Lost to the darkness, lost to the monsters, lost to the endless, uncaring depths of this forsaken, godless place. 

And Sorken knew, with a chilling certainty that settled deep in his soul, that a part of him, a part of his heart, a part of his very being, had died there too, in that blood-soaked chamber, in that writhing mass of monstrous, devouring beasts, lost forever along with Kesta, swallowed whole by the darkness, leaving behind only emptiness, only silence, only the cold, gnawing weight of grief and guilt and despair. 

"Kesta…" he whispered again, his voice broken, barely audible, a final, heartbroken farewell to a friend he had failed to save, a friend he had left behind to die a death too terrible to imagine, a death that would haunt his every waking moment, a death that would echo in his nightmares for the rest of his days, a death that would forever stain his soul with the indelible mark of failure, of helplessness, of utter, inconsolable loss.