#Yol: Purgatory | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

moonlit-nightingale · 5 years

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.:Down 'til the Dark:.

Warning(s): Some dark things and blood.

Origin Date: 30 August 2019. Weekly prompt of ‘breathe’ from our FC Discord.

“Oh, 'cause they will run you down, down 'til the dark Yes and they will run you down, down 'til you fall And they will run you down, down 'til you go Yeah, so you can't crawl no more,” - “Way Down We Go” by Kaleo

When the hunter takes on more than he can handle, he plummets to what certainly must be sudden death.

(Inspiration aesthetic located here.)

————— ♦ • ♦ —————

The drum beat and he couldn’t move.

His brow knit, vision dark.

He’d been injured, underestimating the traveling party of Jhungid. The hunter had killed a good dozen with ease before their scouting party had returned without warning, pinning Shonkhor between two angry waves of the warriors. It had been even too much for him and Tuya together and he’d had to run, waving the yol off so she wouldn’t be shot down in her attempts to rescue him.

The first few arrows hadn’t been felt in his haze of bloodlust. It was the shortspear that finally made his dash falter. Then it was grass and dirt in his lungs and mouth as he’d inhaled in reflex of that sheering pain. He’d been fortunate. The magitek in his back had diverted the spear’s tip to just below it, missing vitals. Still he could feel the weight of the throwing weapon embedded into the flesh of his back as he struggled to stand.

Teeth grit, breath exhaled like a storm, heart beating in his horns like a drum.

That drum again.

He heard the sound of hoofbeats, no time to run anymore. Even with his impressive skills, a man on on foot could never outrun a steed. So Shonkhor had forced himself on to find /something/ or /somewhere/ to put between himself and the pursuit.

And he’d never seen that precarious ground in his haze of adrenaline, blood loss, pain, and hunter’s curse.

Magitek fingers had swiped at the crumbling dirt of the cliff as he fell, trying to catch a handhold. No. Even that cursed limb couldn’t save him. Loose dry soil ran through the dark metal and he was falling.

There was an odd moment of peace.

Would this be how he finally died?

How terrible...to be running prey and meet his end. That’s not how it was supposed to be. /He/ was the hawk from the sky, descending on the unworthy and twisted beings that were /his/ prey.

No, not like this.

It was quickly dark, the night sky and its stars obscured by the cliff’s falling dirt as he plummeted into the chasm.

Tuya? No. The yol couldn’t fly into a crevice this narrow.

So he’d die.

Vaguely Shonkhor heard the rushing of water fast approaching.

...wait, this was...

His lips twisted in a bloodied smirk.

This is where he’d kicked /their/ bodies back then, what felt like so long ago but was only about two years.

The irony.

Twisted amusement only lasted a heart’s beat before the breath was smacked out of him. The solid face of water pushing that spear through his chest on impact and the hunter let out a breathless cry before darkness he couldn’t fight descended in a roar of the river.

And the drum beat.

————— ♦ • ♦ —————

It beat with his heart.

He couldn’t be dead then.

Shonkhor forced his eye open and it felt like that took a world of effort. Water all about. Dark tendrils of water. Had he drowned? But his heart still thrummed.

Or was it that drum?

That distant sound that seemed to reverberate all about him, down to his core. A sound he’d heard many times of a shaman calling to the spirits. Why did it haunt him now?

Why was it so hard to keep his eye open? Was it the smothering of death upon him? Some evil guide to take his soul into the dark where it deserved to be in all it’s bloodstained mess?

The dark in the water was shifting about him. Reaching towards him. Crawling about his body, his neck, his limbs.

A hand of that darkness rested against his chest and a voice was heard. A woman’s? No, not quite. This voice reverberated in his horns, his life’s aether, everything he was.

“<Then I have nothing to fear,>” he murmured back.

Was this his judgement before being cast into the darkness for eternity? Was this...ha, was this Nhaama Herself? No. This didn’t feel like a mother’s presence was supposed to feel. Not that the hunter believed one moment in such a being.

Gods. Spirits. Deities. All worthless things mortals created to appease their trouble hearts and souls.

“<You have fear,>” She said in retort with that voice that swam about this shadow-choked water. “>I feel it even now.<”

“<You lie.>” Was he arguing with a god? That amused smirk that pulled at his lips so much these days found itself even in this purgatory. What could something dark or divine really do to torture him more than he’d already been in this husk of a life?

The depths about him stirred, the tendrils about his body choking him more. Still, Shonkhor, Sari, accepted it. Let death come.

Still he could hear the drum beat, a low slow sound that seemed to stretch more and more across this sea of sin he’d made for himself. It was funny. He always imagined whatever realm he’d end up in death would have fire, as much as he feared and hated that element. What better to torment the Xaela with?

There was still no response. Had he pissed off whatever spirit of the drum came to claim him?

Good.

Throw him back into that wretched mortal world. He had more people to kill, more souls to reap.

And then he woke.

————— ♦ • ♦ —————

Pain came back in a flood.

Breathe.

He couldn’t catch his breath, water in his throat, his lungs.

Desperate fingers clung to something and he /pulled./

Shonkhor had washed up on the shore downriver. His layers of woolen clothing were heavy. Quiver and bow somehow remained but his arrows were gone in the current as well as his mask.

All fleeting thoughts as he flopped into the mud, catching air with a near-dead man’s last heaves.

Every breath hurt.

That shortspear had snapped on his impact with the whitewater but it still had gone through and through, a dangerous injury he had to treat quickly.

But he was alive.

Whatever /thing/ had taken him unto the darkness beneath the waves had let him go. Or else he’d gotten the best of it.

No, he hadn’t feared whatever it may have brought before him.

Fear was something that curled and twisted and maimed Saranqerel. And that is why Saranqerel was dead, buried deep inside.

Shonkhor lived for the hunt, the death, the blood, the chase, the chosen end at his own whim.

And it seemed he’d chosen against his own time. Because he still drew breath.

And laying there a bloody mess in the river’s dark mud, the hunter could only laugh that he’d stared death in the face yet again and had made it retreat before him.

#short story

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