"Trux... you... how did you enter? You... were not in the cathedral... you were not burned... you did not flee... flee from the destiny of a warrior..." Vionnier spoke in fractured gasps, each breath a grueling labor. From the moment she pried her eyes open to gaze upon the sky—a void stripped of clouds, mist, or even the mercy of smoke—she had drifted in and out of a shallow darkness. An inquisitor, an errant knight who had failed her kin and the battlefield that was their only home. Trux could do nothing but listen, standing like a hollowed effigy, his voice slow and heavy as a mountain tortoise.
"The oil... it draws near. You were always slow, Trux. Just as you were when you spoke to us amidst the circles of ale... you abandoned us... you left us behind..." Trux's pace quickened, his boots churning through the muck. Her accusations stung like salt in an open wound, yet his own memories were warped, a kaleidoscope of distorted grief. The Longsword Knight, though burdened by the woman in black plate—heavy as a monolith—did not falter. He fled from the encroaching tides of crude black bile that meandered through the crevices of leafless, withered trees. In this realm, vitality was a forgotten myth; there was no verdancy, only the stark monochrome of the atmosphere clashing against his rusted silver plate and the crimson veins bulging beneath her pallid skin.
The stumps of the forest rose like jagged skeletal remains, their roots protruding as thorns as long as a forearm, hard and unyielding as stone. Every inch of this earth had been consigned to the past, charred by a conflagration that had raged for a millennium. The feet of the knight—the one who failed his brothers, the one who forsook the fray, the one who understood his own soul no better than the wretches crawling upon this world—pressed on.
"You abandoned us at the city gates... I... I remember... didn't you, Trux? You cast us into the rear... and you fled from the inescapable truth of the warrior." The knight remained silent for an eternity of heartbeats. His soul was tethered solely to the act of running. Despite the crushing weight of his harness, his speed did not diminish for a single second. His body screamed with the agony of the Triple-Flame that manifested beneath the sepulchers of the undying dead. At first, it was a dull ache, but the longer they lingered, the more the scent of the crude oil acted as a catalyst, turning the pain into a wildfire consuming his nerves.
"I never understood a thing, did I, Trux? Myself... I never understood... anything at all!" Vionnier cried out, her voice a fragile thread. She clutched his armor with desperate strength, her white skin traced by prominent, throbbing veins. Her madness had ebbed, replaced by a physical frailty as her body rejected this cursed soil. She was tormented by the visions she had witnessed: the abyssal dark beneath the desecrated experimental coffins, the revolting squelch of flesh against wood, the sickening laughter of creatures born of human hands—monstrosities that reveled in their terror as they lay entombed.
"What have I become? Did I ever truly know? This body... this power I wield... the litanies I crave... the Cleansing Prayer... I... I cannot bear it. My body, it wants to rupture." She gripped the knight's harness tighter. The metal, unwashed for ages, was a jagged mess of rust and sharp edges that sliced into her palms, drawing lines of blood. Yet, the usual thirst for gore did not return. They were both being hunted by a black past—this enigmatic crude oil. They knew, deep in their marrow, that it had always been with them.
"Rest now... Vionn. I know what you see. The black oil... it corrodes your flesh, your mind, your very subconscious. I must deliver us from this." Trux's voice was unexpectedly tender, a jarring contrast to the desolation around them. Vionnier, hearing this, let out a faint, hollow rasp of a laugh.
"Living in that cathedral... it must have done something strange to your mind, Trux... Heh..." she murmured sorrowfully. Her hand, which had been clutching the rusted plate, slipped away like a falling leaf. Exhaustion claimed her, yet her eyes remained slightly ajar. She seemed terrified of slipping back into the silence of the dark. Was she afraid of the void? Or was she afraid of what she was?
"Perhaps you speak the truth. My mind is no longer that of a warrior like you..." Memories sprouted like toxic fungi once more. The images were so distorted that his mind struggled to process them. Yet, in the deepest strata of his subconscious, he saw them: hundreds of ancient wars. They rose, they fought, they died, and they repeated the cycle in a loop without end.
"War is home... Hmph... Home is war..." Trux glanced back at the encroaching mass of black oil. It was thickening, a viscous tide of crude that followed with a rhythmic, pulsing pace, mirroring his own footsteps. This black sludge was the manifestation of a darkened subconscious. It was the detonator, the revealer of things forgotten due to the world's erosion. Things they thought had vanished but were present in every action, every fiber of their current being. They fled from the oil, and whether one called it 'fear' or, more accurately, 'the fundamental misunderstanding of one's own existence,' it pursued them nonetheless.
"What is it that we flee? If we were truly ourselves, we would have the answer. But now... we are... not us. We are nothing. Merely hollow entities." Vionnier spoke through a haze of pain and confusion. Her strength had evaporated, leaving her indifferent to the approaching oil. She did not pray as a servant of the Divine should, even as her body screamed for a litany to wash away her stains.
"You rave, Vionn. Your wounds are grave," Trux said, his voice surprisingly steady despite the days of ceaseless running. There was no sun to find, no clouds, no mist—only an expanse of white void above. But the longer one stared into that white, the deeper one looked, the more it revealed itself as an optical illusion, a mask for a darkness that had been there all along. The only things marking their path were the stagnant stench of crude oil and the thorn-choked thickets.
"We are always deceived into following... into journeying... yet we obey the lie nonetheless," she whispered in utter despair, as if her entire life and soul were but a grotesque monument to shame. She curled into herself within the arms of the Gatekeeper Knight.
"We do this for the King... so that He might—" His thought flickered out, as did hers. Images of the past were warped—visions of a battlefield amidst the sea, the silhouette of their own realm. The details were sharp yet unattainable, like a dream fading upon waking. The King of the Kingdom of Santhay-Nakron... the Realm of the Forgotten... or perhaps, those who chose to be forgotten.
When the Gatekeeper and the Bloodthirsty Maiden could no longer grasp their own identities, there was only the path forward, through the mire... Mud?
"Mud... Where are we going?" The black oil no longer pursued them. It began to seep into the roots of the scorched trees. As they broke through the chaotic weave of charred, blooming, and mangled timber, the landscape shifted. Was the mud meant to lead them astray? No. It was a guide, leading them toward an exit that offered no freedom, no stability—only giant stumps and thorns that raked the heavens. Trux tightened his hold on her, releasing one hand to draw his longsword. The sound of footsteps echoing around them was no longer just his own.
The tectonic tremors of a beast drew near—a loathsome, nauseating thing lurking behind mounds of corpses that blotted out the horizon, casting shadows over oil-slicked stones. Trux moved to cover her eyes.
"I am fine now." She slipped from the large, calloused hands of the knight who had failed his kin. She stood, staring into the gloom, searching for the source of those retching footsteps. It appeared: a monstrosity with dozens of corpses stuffed into a maw centered in its belly, entrails spilling out in a ceaseless, rotting flow. The stench was an affront to existence. Vionnier's eyes shifted, her pupils transforming into the deep, dark crimson of a Dahlia in bloom.
"I will kill... I will kill!" At the sight of blood, of rended flesh, and of death, her hunger returned.
"Warriors such as us... can never escape the cycle of the hunt, the slaughter, and the blade... until the day we die... and return," Trux remarked with a weary, cynical tone. He sank into the mire of mud, blood, and putrid filth. Whether they would truly escape this purgatory of a testing ground remained unknown. No one was left to save them. Even those who had broken their chains were never truly free.