A bout of sadness and despair would be followed by one of rage, letting him push through the weakness to strike at the unmovable slab of stone until his skin split and his knuckles cracked. Even though the pain from his wounds was excruciating, each time the anger rose again, he embraced it, letting it burn for as long as he could stretch it, because it was the only thing that took his thoughts away from his broken promise and his mother’s sorrow.
For him, that was the worst feeling in the world.
When his exhaustion built to the point where he fell unconscious, there was no darkness to offer relief, but only more nightmares.
His dreams differed only in the details. Sometimes, his mother would not speak but only cry, time speeding up as she sat at that lonely kitchen table, her hair greying and skin wrinkling as decades of sorrowful loneliness were condensed into a few minutes. Other times, she would show anger, blaming him for his decisions.
“You’ve been planning this for years,” she would shout at him. “I’ve seen the way you looked at the ceiling. You’ve always wanted to leave me behind! You’re selfish, just like them!”
Dario’s mouth would open to deny the accusations, to promise once more that he would stay with her, but no sound would come out. “I don’t want to leave! I want to stay with you!” he tried to scream. Yet even as he thought of his answers, as those unspoken words formed clearly in his mind, that feeling of tightness would return. In the dream, clouds of brown smoke would billow out in front of him to mark the lie, before streaming away up into the air.
It was those nightmares in particular that had him waking up feeling completely drained.
He lost sense of time again as that cycle continued, despair giving way to rage, leading to exhaustion and haunted dreams. Until a time came that he woke up and realized that he could barely move.
His muscles were exhausted, his body weak and pale, skin covered in old sweat and dried blood. He became aware that he was shivering with cold and that he had a splitting headache, his mouth feeling like it had been stuffed full of dry straw. A loud growl from his stomach was followed by a hollow feeling, which seemed to transform as he paid attention to it, until it felt like ravenous hunger.
When was the last time he’d eaten? Or had a sip of water?
Before he could gather the determination to push himself up, the image of his crying mother returned once again, but this time, he pushed it aside. It didn’t go away - it was still present, at once like a bright flare in his mind and a raw, convulsing wound in his stomach. But where previously the bright pain was all-encompassing, now it left some space for something else to squeeze in beside it.
A need for food and water.
With all the effort and determination he could muster, Dario forced himself up on shaking arms, then pushed himself up against the wall as he got his feet underneath him. His legs felt as faint as stalks of wheat dancing in a breeze, but still he managed to take a slow step forward, then another.
His limbs trembled and one foot was dragging along more than walking, but he didn’t stop. Despite the pain, he took the long way around to avoid the library, not ready to face Nika yet. The path to the growing room felt longer than ever and a few times he had to stop and lean against the wall, thinking he would collapse, but he managed to push through all the way to the raised beds.
All of them sat dry and cracked but for one that he had tended to. The light still shone from the artefact ring above, and to his surprise, different colored leaves sprouted up past the edge. Most were the tubers he’d planted. The rest was… Well, he wasn’t sure how random plants ended up here.
He made a beeline to the waterskin on the floor, nearly choking as he drank greedily, letting out a long sigh of relief once he was done.
Too tired to cook, he cleaned a few of the tubers with some water, letting it flow down onto the dirt before munching down. When he’d eaten and drank enough to quiet the shaking and silence the growls of hunger, he was left staring at the wall in silence.
What now?
The image of his crying mother came rushing back, his stomach twisting and turning until he thought the tubers would come back out, but again, he managed to push it aside. If previously there had been mud in his brain making it harder to think, now it felt like the mud was all that left. But the food and water brought a short moment of clarity, such as it was.
With that clarity, a simple thought came bubbling up through the mud: the longer I’m stuck here, the more she’ll cry.
The trouble was, he felt dumb as a pile of bricks right now. Too dumb to think. Too dumb to make plans. There was only just enough clarity to realize how dumb he was, like he was at that point during a night in the tavern where he still had a faint realization that the next cup would be a mistake, before downing it anyway.
Those vague thoughts of needing help had him wandering into the training room, where he’d left his pack. His eyes landed on the tablet, and he followed the intuitive sense that help could be found in the tablet.
It took him the better part of an hour to scribble a few words down with a shaky finger.
Brain bad. Dumb. Need help.
Dario? I’ll need a bit more information than that, if you want my help.
Stuck in basement. Can’t sleep. Nightmares. Need plan.
Right… I do remember you saying you were stuck in some kind of basement with no way out. So you’re having nightmares every time you go to sleep? And the lack of sleep is somehow turning you into a mindless beast?
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
It took Dario a long moment of groggily blinking at the dancing letters before he understood the message.
Confirm.
Well, I have no idea how to get you out of there, so maybe we can focus on getting your brain to work again. First, make sure you’re getting enough nutrients. The human brain needs loads of those to function well. Meat would be best, but if you can’t get meat there, some plants are good replacements. I can give you a list.
Next, there are the nightmares. I assume you don’t know what is causing them, but it would be helpful to try to locate the source. Maybe check with your traveling partner if she’s experiencing the same? She could watch over you, maybe?
If that doesn’t help, there are also some common herbs that help with sleep and are known to have dream-suppressing qualities. I’ll share descriptions, but it’s not likely for them to be growing down in a basement.
Again, it was slow reading and processing, but then he considered her words. Talking to Nika did not feel like a great option. But she might need help too. He would need to cook food. They could share. The thought of food led to an image of the tubers which reminded him of the other unknown plants, so he took some time to articulate that to Hana.
Old dirt, put only tuber. Why plants?
…What?
Dario grunted with frustration, then gave it a bit more effort.
Put water in old dirt. Random plants come.
Oh! You found some old dirt there? Seeds can survive for ages in terrible conditions. A bit of water and light could be enough to bring them back to life. But unless people used to live there, I’m guessing you won’t get more than weeds.
Dario blinked at the wall for a few moments as he tried to verbalize his thoughts, such as they were. It was hard to think in words, but there were still images and feelings. First there was food. More food was good. Then there were unknown plants. That one was linked to a feeling of confusion, but when the image changed to one of growing plants, it felt good again. That was linked to food as well, so a primitive goal formed in his addled mind: grow plants, cook food.
With his mind preoccupied, the thought of his mother and the accompanying pain had been gone for a while, so when it all came back as he put the tablet away and pushed himself up, it hit him like a rampaging ox.
She’s still up there, crying. He folded over with one hand on the wall and another on his stomach, groaning as he blinked away tears. It took a while to gather himself and push the thoughts aside. His red-eyed gaze was hollow as he shuffled through the room like a walking corpse, pushing himself to keep moving. Food first. More food would help.
He kept moving, thoughts focused on his goals which were, luckily, simple and easy to accomplish. First, grow plants.
He took some time to fill up the water skin before spreading the water over a good share of the raised beds. Then, he fed light Ki into the ring-shaped artefacts above. Some of them didn’t take the energy, but most still worked, so soon the beds were bathed in light. He then went from box to box, spreading a layer of verdant plant Ki over the old soil.
In less than an hour, a wide variety of plants sprouted from the beds. Herbs with thin, green stems and fine leaves; flowers in shades of purple and yellow and a good number of ordinary vegetables, some of which he recognized.
With arms full of vegetables and herbs, he shuffled over to the kitchen and set to preparing a stew. He’d done it often enough that he moved through the motions automatically, cutting things up and throwing them in a pot. Remembering that meat was good, he dug up the last of his dried trogmeat and threw that in as well.
All the while, the pain and sadness were like a fly buzzing right next to his ear. Every time there was a pause where he only had to wait, it would come flashing back in force and he’d have to gather enough shreds of willpower to push it to the side again.
Eventually he shuffled into the library with two steaming bowls of stew. There was no plan for how to strike up a conversation, nor any thoughts of what to say. Even for awkwardness there was no space; his mind was filled with the gnawing pain of his broken promise and the thought of completing his tasks.
Any other time he would have felt relief at finding Nika asleep, but now he just blinked at her, wondering where to put the bowl down. But as he stood there, something else poked its way through the mud that was filling his skull. Nika was tossing and turning, moaning in her sleep, and from her chest there rose a thin line of brown smoke. His eyes locked onto it and followed it up to the ceiling, where it flowed into a barely visible crack.
“Huh,” he breathed, a frown beginning to form on his otherwise blank face. “That’s not… Wait.”
The frown deepened, then his brows rose. “Oh. Oh no. This is… Bad.”
He sat the bowls down on a nearby desk then called out to Nika, waking her from her dream.
“Dario?” she said weakly, blinking in confusion for a moment before pushing herself up and giving him an angry look.
“What…”
“Sleeping bad. Eat,” he grunted, shoving a bowl of stew into her hands.
He saw how her anger slowly gave way to confusion and faintly wondered if she felt as dumb as he did. She definitely didn’t look good, her skin was pale, her tunic soaked with cold sweat and dried blood. It was clear from the way she moved that her wounds still needed time to heal.
They ate in silence, each bite of hot food seeming to clear his murky thoughts a bit.
“I have a plan,” he said in between mouthfuls of hot food. “Or… I had a plan. I think. I don’t remember… Oh, right. Herbs. There might be herbs, to… stop the dreams? Yes. Maybe.”
There was a pause as both of them chewed, Nika gaping at him as she processed what he’d said.
“Herbs? Where?”
“Gwowth woom,” Dario mumbled through a mouth full of stew, launching bits of chewed vegetable onto the old desk before swallowing. “Lots of seeds in the old dirt.”
Nika just grunted in acknowledgement as she ate and silence returned.
Something caught Dario’s eye and it was interesting enough to make him stop chewing, waking a part of his exhausted mind. It was a bit of light, but in a color and pattern that looked exactly like the light Ki that JeeJee used. It shone briefly from underneath one of the old desks, only long enough for him to see and then it was gone.
He put away his bowl and went to investigate. The rotten old desk crumbled when he tried to shove it aside, and as he kicked the debris away, he caught something hard that clattered on the floor.
It was another memory crystal. He held it up in his hand, inspecting it briefly, then looked over at Nika who was looking at him with a faintly confused expression as she chewed her food. Dario shrugged and placed it in the projecting artefact.
The light flashed and there were more crackling and scraping sounds than normal, but eventually a shaky image formed on the wall. Saigo looked at his own reflection with those dark, sunken eyes.
“...long to notice, but there was not much we could do. A dying elder eventually found that Valerian Balm helped stave off the worst, but it was only a temporary measure-”
The image cut away for a moment, the sound distorting before it came back on.
“... succumbed to the insomnia, either collapsing from pure exhaustion, or by taking their own lives in a fit of mad rage. By the time I found the solution, it was far too late. But for anyone watching this, if there is any sign of living parasites, mark my next words carefully.
Our sacrifice has not been idle, for through our pain and suffering we have learned two things: what the parasites want, and how to fight them.”