David could breathe.
Glorious, glorious breath.
Still, David was quite startled. He jolted up, breathing heavily and with a heart racing what felt like a million beats a second.
David was in some room made mostly of dark wood that had trash scattered everywhere.
Bits of shattered glass, rotten fruit, splintered wood, paper, moldy bread, etc.
David could see the room quite clearly from his place on a modest wooden table. He assumed at least some of the food and wood were from him being hurriedly thrown onto said table.
After taking a moment to calm his heart, he saw Ralph, sitting in a wooden armchair not too far way, with its back to a door. He looked at David tiredly before speaking.
"Finally awake?"
"How long was I asleep?"
David's voice sounded foreign to his mind. The vibrations in his esophagus reverberated abnormally enough for him to feel off. Ralph snickered wearily at the sound of his voice.
"Few hours. Thought you'd be out for longer if I'm being honest. Crushed windpipe and a few cracked ribs. I did my best but obviously some things are 'off'. We'll get someone to set you right when we make it back smolderstone. Then you can give me my clothes back, and I'll never have to see your poorly shaven mug again. And don't worry about the clothes."
David paused a moment before speaking himself.
"You're not too well memory either, I hate to break it to you."
"Ha! It's a part of my rustic charm don't you think?"
'No. It's not. But that doesn't mean I should say anything about it.
"You just look like a woman who doesn't shave."
'Gods damnit.'
Ralph threw a rotten orange from the floor that stuck sorrily to David's grey stained shirt. All David could help himself to do was sigh while he flicked gross fruit off of himself.
An awkward few moments went by before David tried to speak again.
"So you think we'll make it back then?"
"Who knows. She's not doing to hot at the moment, I'm exhausted, and you sound funny. Together the three of us might be able to fend off an aggressive possum."
Ralp gestured vaguely to his right at his allusion to Eleanora. Not too far away, pressed against some boards pressed against a windo, a rather lush green couch was home to an Eleanora who looked rather worse for wear.
Her already white skin looked even more devoid of color, if at all possible, and grey veins protruded from her arms and neck. There were probably more, other places that David couldn't help but ponder briefly, but those were the parts that weren't covered.
To his surprise, she went through a wardrobe change in the time since he was last conscious.a brown tunic, leather pants, and matching shoes were all that she was wearing.
He silently cursed himself for not being conscious the last few hours, and also couldn't help but notice scratch marks leading from the door to the legs of the couch.
He pondered briefly a humorous scene of Ralph dragging an unconscious version of himself, and a barely conscious version of Eleanora into some dining room, and hurriedly dragging a couch into the room after them before boarding windows and barring doors. Not that the reinforcements would do anything, but it felt safer. And that's all that mattered.
'Speaking of, what happened…'
His thought was barely finished before Ralph spoke up again.
"We're still in town, by the way. After Eleanora made that smoke screen, I moved my ass fast as I could and left the cart behind. Dragged you both in some nearby house, she was barely aware enough to steal some clothes from one of the rooms before collapsing on the couch."
He gestured towards her again. He continued.
"She's… awake. Probably. Barely. I try to make sure she doesn't burn, but that took a lot out of her. Especially after trying to burn a few of the puppets. She's not used to that kinda thing."
Ralph looked pitifully at Eleanora.
David couldn't help but feel concerned himself.
"Will she be-"
"She'll be fine. It's just not in her to use that much energy."
David just stared at him blankly.
"What do you mean?"
Ralph looked back a little incredulously.
"Like… godly energy and stuff?"
"I thought all the gods were dead?"
Ralph stared at him blankly for a while again before responding.
"Did you get some brain damage in you're oxygen deprived state?"
"Ah no… it's.. nothing never mind. What do we know so far anyway?"
Hesitantly, Ralph continued the conversation.
"Not much, honestly. We can't kill any of those things, and I can't really think of a way out, honestly. Maybe don't count on your throat being fixed after all."
"See, call me crazy, but I don't really feel this is fair."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, for stsrters, I haven't seen you even do anything. And while I saw Eleanora burn some dude, it did nothing, somehow. I don't feel like this is a fair match. Two people who can't do anything and a girl who passes out when making a smoke bomb and can glow sometimes."
"Hey wait I can do things it's just I haven't… glowing?"
"Yeah?"
"She doesn't glow, though?"
"I saw her do it both in the tavern and briefly before I passed out."
"… no… I'd know if she could glow."
"Weird."
There were a few more minutes of awkward silence before he heard a familiar voice in his head, but faintly. As if heard through several layers static."
[ dreams—— desires——- manifest—— grab— souls—-]
'Fantastic. I can tell what that means. Why not.'
Ralph sighed before speaking again.
"Anyway, what are your thoughts? Any clue what kind of Godscorned were dealing with? Because whatever it is, it's a real pain."
"Godscorned?"
"That's the colloquial term. I guess that's just the term, actually, no one calls them anything different no matter what language they speak. Are you alright?"
"Well… truthfully I'm not remembering a whole lot"
"My god… you do have brain damage."
"No! Yes…? Maybe. That's not the point. I guess I gave them up or something… my names not David. Probably. Might as well be I guess, but I made some deal with the god of dreams and-"
"God of dreams? There isn't one. Or if there was, they're dead now."
"About that…"
David told him everything he knew. He figured keeping him in the dark about how in the dark he was himself would only lead to complications.
Ralph scratched his chin. The bags under his eyes seemed to have grown significantly in the last few minutes alone, still, it was the most awake he'd seen Ralph since he woke up.
"Interesting… and you're not like, insane?"
"I might be a little but why does that matter?"
"There have been rumors of a 4the god recently… but nothing about dreams…"
Ralph continued to mutter to himself for a few minutes.
"So, you don't know what you are?"
"No… what am I?"
Ralph left his place in the chair and paced back and forth.
"Well, if you really don't know anything… there are Godscorned, and god blessed. I won't give you a history lesson, but three gods helped humanity overthrow the other gods, and now there are clans centered around those three gods. Occasionally, a god will bless someone or their lineage and in exchange for service they get to use the gods magical energy. They are godblessed. That doesn't mean other people can't do magic though. The dead gods wills and concepts still exist, and so does their energy. Only, for normal people, not in a clan, there's a risk they go to far. Those people are ones who tapped too far into one of the dead god's energy, and are touched by the god's fractured mind. They are Godscorned."
"That seems… really easy to accidentally do"
"It is. A lot of people stay away from magic completely. Some use it in small ways, like making sparks shoot from their hands as a party trick. Still, the more abstract a concept a god represents the greater the chance of accidentally knocking on that mental barrier a little too hard and opening the door for the god's mind to invade yours as well."
"Why would literally anyone use magic then?"
"Why wouldn't they? It makes life easier. You could sweep your floor, or you could make your brooms do it themselves. It's a matter of convenience. And, it's not too hard to avoid making huge blunders like trying to reanimate a family member. Still… cases have been rising steadily. This is one of an increasing number of similar cases. Of course, this one is particularly nasty, but far from the nastiest."
Daniel sighed and looked around.
"How much time do you think we have?"
"Until…?"
"I don't know… we're found out? We run out of food? Were rescued?"
Ralph scoffed after the last one.
"Ha! Rescued… good one. But fortunately it seems the mindless horde is pretty, well, mindless. They probably forgot about us by now. Maybe not our faces, but I don't think we're in any immediate danger or we'd have been found an hour ago at least."
"So what do we do?"
"Well… we can try fighting, but, that'd lead to pretty a quick and gruesome death probably… We could run, say we failed, and probably be excommunicated, or, we can maybe we can't take a bet on finding the hives queen."
"Think that'd work?"
"Why not? Someone's controlling the people. Something, really. Once they're far enough to gone…"
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
David understood fine what he meant. "They stop being people, they become things, animals, conduits for the forces of nature, anything. You can call them anything. Except for human.
David sighed.
"How do you suggest we do that?"
"Eleanora can't glow."
"You said this already."
"Yeah, but, that means it's something's that's a part of you instead. Have you noticed anything else? Anything that can be useful at all?"
"Well… not really. I mean… I got this weird feeling I guess… like a shiver, almost. That when we were being chased by the town there was something… in there."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know just a gut feeling I guess? It was probably nothing."
Ralph stopped pacing and sat down. He looked at David pensively.
"Dreams huh… would you say that when you saw her glowing, was she particularly determined?"
"I guess? I mean, as determined as one can be when fighting for their life I suppose."
Ralph sighed and leaned back.
"Well… desires, dreams, determination, all similar enough I suppose. Maybe that's it? That you can sense particular strong desires…"
"Maybe…"
David wasn't convinced, but it was certainly good for thought. He continued.
"I don't have any better explanation I guess. I don't know how that'd help anyway."
"Don't be a dunce yes you do."
That was, true. David figured it would be to sense the fractured desire of the Godscorned, but to be honest he was too scared to guess if in fear of looking like an idiot. In the past few minutes he had grown rather fond of Ralph. Not any particularly strong kind of fond, but it'd be a shame to watch him die, and that was good enough.
They spent a while going over rough plans about how to locate the center of the towns mind, but before long, they both grew exausted.
Against their better judgement they both decided to sleep.
The peace lasted a few hours before it was interrupted but and unceremonious "crash!"