Chapter 13: 11 : The Blister of Insanity

Tsuki did her best to ignore her surroundings and if it wasn’t for her being guided by a warm wind, she would have surely run headfirst at a tree. She passed by many untold horrors who all tried to take her apart but were stopped by the powerful vines Yassil had created. Alas, Yassil lost focus when he first died in his fight with the being above and the vines were weakening. This wasn’t something Tsuki ever realized as she was already out of the encirclement when it happened.

The wind pushing her died and she fell to the ground exhausted. Her vision was getting dark with many points popping here and there. She needed to keep moving but her tired body drenched in sweat was against it. The ribbon that had danced lazily as she ran was the source of the wind that pushed her for this long. It now heavily clung to Tsuki’s hair as it had fully drained its power.

But when Tsuki wanted her body to move again, this time, a glacial wind began to dance around her as she was lifted on her two feet. For the burning and tired girl, this strange wind felt nice as it cooled her down. Her limbs began to move on their own as she was pushed by the cold wind that wasn’t powered by the blue ribbon.

The place she had left was quickly swarmed by a group of large ants with too many mandibles sprouting from their body like fur. They were tracking the girl. But when they came to the spot she had fallen, they all stopped moving and began to look around in confusion. They acted as if they had suddenly forgotten what they were doing.

❀

 

Tsuki woke up with no bearing on her surroundings. She tried to recall the recent event and the last thing that came to her mind was of running in a maze of whipping vines that protected her. After this, it was all blank.

At the moment, she was sitting by the side of a river with her back on a willow tree. She noticed that the awful sky was still replaced by the strange abomination with its many expressive mouths. There wasn’t much she could do about it.

She saw that there were a few changes in the sky such as strange spines that managed to reach the ground, but she didn’t care much about this change and the others. Her mind was set on following the river as the kind bear told her.

She left the comfort of the tree and followed the flowing water while ignoring the sky and the metallic sound it was producing. If it couldn’t even light her path, it wasn’t even deserving her notice. She did worry about the possible danger it could bring her, but her current belief was that she was too far away from it to be in any real danger.

It was only when the phoenix came and began to set the new sky ablaze that she felt danger. After all, her skin was sensitive to light, and this flaming bird who was able to yield a burning power like a sun was causing her skin to hurt.

She hid in a cavity that was possibly made from a time when the river was higher than what it currently was. It did protect her from the blazing bird, but she was grumpy at the phoenix - who was actually doing something helpful for Tsuki - as it forced her to stay in place for an unknown time.

She tried to close her eyes for the time being as she could only wait for the war in the sky to end. A heavy mist covered her like a blanket as something else joined the fray. She didn’t care, didn’t look. Put her hands over her ears and tried to sleep. She simply couldn’t understand what was happening and closed her mind from trying to comprehend. She was only a weak girl wanting to save the only person she was close to. Some strange cosmic monsters fighting one another above her head wasn’t something she wanted to worry about. In her mind, they weren’t as different as the sun and the moon in the sky. If the moon was to one day fall on her, she would be as helpless as she currently was with those monsters fighting. She had no way to escape fast enough even if she tried.

And thus slept the girl while all other life who saw the fight were terrorized. After a few hours of confrontation, the aberration was forced to flee back toward the mountains it had once come from. As it had come so did it leave, and the sky returned to its usual blue, but its colors shall thereupon be tainted by the memories of what had happened. No bard shall sing as clear as the sky once was, no painting shall use the purest blue for the sky, and no more storytellers shall revel in the divine beauty above head.

❀

 

As for the girl who slept in the chaos, she awoke when the night began to reclaim the sky. With its stars in abundance, it cast a calming image over the land that was turned to chaos just a few moments ago, and to sleep, the world went. Hiding in a world of dreams where more untold chaos might happen.

Tsuki left the hole she had found while feeling refreshed. The first thing she did was to do some light stretches. She did try to make it a habit even if there were a few days she had skipped. She did notice the sky had returned to normal, but it made her wonder if the starry sky she was looking at was real or a simple fabrication of some kind. After all, it had been changed into a monstrosity just a moment ago. The stars, so far away that they might have died long before their light ever did reach her. She always believed that the night sky was filled with lies of ghostly stars with her imagination standing above rationalization. Was she really allowed to claim the night sky as a normal occurrence when there were so many things she could never understand? The abomination did change the way she saw the world, her frailty at the core of this change.

Tsuki followed the stream after drinking some of its cold water. She saw some dark objects swimming which couldn’t be identified because it was night. A shame that her broom-spear was broken. She needed another spear to feast on small fish otherwise, her next meal would need to be small berries or a warm but disgusting soup.

But here it was, a long spear made from moonlight standing proudly in a flower bed just behind a small burrow she walked past. It shined brilliantly as she glanced at it, an alluring light for the girl. She walked forward, her left hand aimed for the shining weapon while being entranced by it. It felt nostalgic as if it was a part of herself, a part of what she was looking for. She touched it, her finger slowly gliding over the warm surface. She closed her hand over the starry handle, her sight drowned in how profound it was. An infinite depth of stars ever-changing, ever-forming, ever-dying, all in the palm of her hand.

She tugged at the spear to lift it from the ground but something else pulled her hand in return. It was a hand, white and sick, the same as hers. It was warm and calming and Tsuki let herself be pulled while locking fingers with this other hand.

She fell and fell into a dark crevice in the ground. She couldn’t see anything around her as it was pure darkness. She only knew that she was falling because she was still feeling the hand pulling her down. But no, when she looked at the hand to see its owner, it was gone. Tsuki panicked at this, she believed that she was holding Alice’s hand just a moment ago and couldn’t understand why it would suddenly be gone, of all things.

Tsuki flailed her arms around while screaming Alice’s name. She felt as if she had been just by her side, at the tip of her fingers. The girl tried to swim in this darkness now that the hand wasn’t pulling her anymore. And so, she swam until her hands came in contact with a cold and hard surface. It felt like a large sheet of glass either so clear or so dark that it was invisible to her vision. Tsuki struck it with her right hand and when she did, she suddenly saw Alice strike with her left hand on the other side as if she was a late reflection. They looked at one another with their hands only separated by the glass wall. The one on the other side began to fall, her hand separating from the glass, and she disappeared into the darkness after her small lips could only pronounce three small words which lacked any sound.

Tsuki tried to break the glass but her every attempt was worthless. Binding around her left wrist was the strange brown cloth which seemed to be calling her. It was a different feeling she had with the strange spear. As the starry spear felt like her home, the knife was like a goal she wanted to reach. She pulled on the cloth, revealing the blade with its wonderful patterns and she used it to shatter the glass.

With the glass breaking, she felt gravity pull her down toward the darkness Alice fell. The broken glass changed into brilliant small stars, and she found herself falling in the void of space. It was as if she was inside the strange spear she had touched and was now falling down its long shaft until she could reach the tip that was planted in the grass. She fell for what felt like both an eternity and an instant as her eyes drowned in the many dying and reforming stars around her. Clouds of dust slowly forming galaxies and dying stars transforming into all-consuming black holes were everywhere. But suddenly, all she could see was the ground getting closer.

She fell into a castle made of dark stone and all the way down to its basement. It was dark but she was used to darkness at this point. She was sitting in a feet-deep liquid that was warm and thick. Although she couldn’t see what it was, the strong iron smell was too familiar for Tsuki. Something long and with many legs brushed past her side, something all too familiar. She did her best to not move, the thing which touched her was a long centipede, a brood of Okumadeka, a gigantic centipede she was forced to take care of when she was still under the control of her mistress. There were so many before her who died after hurting one of her children.

Light suddenly came to lift the darkness of the room in the form of floating eyeballs capable of emitting a bright light. They were the same thing she had to avoid during her escape with Alice. Only this time, they weren’t looking for her and agglomerated around a dark spot in the bloodied liquid. The strange thing that was under the liquid slowly lifted itself and it ended up being Alice who held in her hand a small centipede. She took it at both extremities as it squirmed to free itself. As she did so, Alice looked toward Tsuki, her facial features almost melting and being moved around, and then, she pulled on both sides of the insect in pain.

“NOOOOOO!” Screamed Tsuki as she began to crawl toward Alice in a way that couldn’t damage any of the small insects.

But she was too slow. Both ends were separated, and so came Okumadeka as it moved like a train taking Alice in its sharp mandibles and left in the darkness. Only the left hand of the girl was left in the red liquid.

Silence returned once more as Tsuki kept staring at this hand floating towards her. It moved slowly while bobbing up and down with its finger bent in strange ways. It stopped beyond her arm’s reach by getting stuck into something.

Tsuki walked without lifting her feet toward the hand. There was some resistance as the liquid was coagulating but she managed to reach the hand by avoiding the many centipedes crawling in the liquid. When she tried to take the hand, it grasped her and tried to pull her down but this time, Tsuki didn’t let herself be pulled and stood her ground. She managed to remove it from whatever it was stuck in, and it caused the liquid to drain. The draining stopped quickly as coagulated chunks of red managed to block the draining hole.

Tsuki tried to unclog the hole by foolishly putting her small foot inside but luckily, there wasn’t any hole anymore. It was then that she looked at the hand expecting it to be gone again but it wasn’t. She held it by its wrist with her left hand and it also held her by her wrist. She looked lovingly at the severed hand caked in blood.

“OY! What’s going on in here!” Said an unknown girlish voice that came from behind Tsuki.

The girl was frightened by the sudden voice and turned to look at the intruder, crushing a bug in the process. Her heart stopped for a moment and began again at a rushed pace as dark hands entered her vision and tried to grapple her. She tried to protect herself, but the hands avoided her wild movement and forced her to the ground. She almost drank a mouthful of warm blood before she could slightly shift her position.

You are reading story Forgotten Sky at novel35.com

“Unhand me fool!” said Tsuki toward the unknown voice.

“I just got here, didn’t even do anything to you.”

“Let me go! I’m sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that. It was an accident. Waaa---aa. I don’t want to die! ‘sniff’.” The girl had become a mess, scared to die she cried warm tears.

“…” The other person was silent for some time at a loss for words. “Alright listen to me, I’m coming closer but I’m not going to hurt you. I came here to help you. Is it fine if I come closer?”

“No! Don’t get any closer. Just let me GO!”

“Ok. I won’t get closer, but I can’t just leave. I’m simply here to help. If you don’t believe me, I can move around you so that you can see me. Like that you will know if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable. I promise I won’t hurt you. Is it fine if I move? I’ll keep the same distance from you.”

Tsuki didn’t respond and only grunted as she tried to free herself from the hands.

“I’ll take this as a yes then…” said the stranger as her slow steps resounded over the wet floor.

Someone with long red hair came into Tsuki’s vision. This unknown girl sat on her knee when Tsuki could clearly see her, and she then placed her forehead over the wet floor in a non-threatening manner. On her forehead were two long flowery horns and behind her was a strange tail made from red sparks. From those two anomalies, it was possible that the girl wasn’t human.

“See, I won’t hurt you. Can we talk a bit? Is it fine with you?”

“Remove those hands first! It hurt!”

“I’m sorry but I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“Those hands! I can’t move because of them. Please don’t joke with me.”

“I…,” said the other girl. She was troubled with what to say as it wasn’t how she expected things to go. “I’ll… Ok. I’ll say it as easily as I can. Whatever you are seeing right now is different from what I am seeing. I do not see any hands. You need to calm down first of all.”

“ARE YOU KIDIng…me?” Tsuki, angry, lifted herself up as she truly believed that the intruder was simply there to mock her, but she lifted herself unperturbed by the hands. They were gone as if they had never existed.

“This place, it’s made from your imagination…I think. I-”

“Where am I?! Where’s Alice?!” said Tsuki, cutting the other person.

“Please calm down first so we can talk. You have questions and so do I. We won’t get far if you can’t calm down first. I’m here to help. For where you are…I don’t really know. It might even be my fault that things are like that. So, it’s fine if we try to figure things out. Right?”

“Wh-What did you do to me!!? Leave me ALONE! I don’t have anything!! I didn’t do anything wrong! So why me!?”

“I beg of you to ca—ouch”

Tsuki had run toward the girl and started to hit her. Although Tsuki was weak, the stranger still tried to protect her head from the beating. She didn’t act violently in return and simply begged Tsuki to calm down.

It was only after she was tired that Tsuki stopped her beating. She crumbled on her back while heaving and puffing.

“Ca-can we talk now?” said the stranger with a small voice.

“Explain what’s going on first. You better not lie to me, or I’ll get angry again!”

“Before that. Please promise me that you will calm down and won’t try to hurt me again…I won’t be able to say much otherwise…Also, you don’t have to worry about me lying. It’s not even something that I’m freely able to do. I envy your kind.”

“Are you taking me for a fool?”

The stranger lifted herself, her long hair shifting around until Tsuki could see her face. “I do.” She said while biting in pain at her lips and showing her sharp teeth.

Upon her saying this, dark runes appeared like shackles under the stranger’s white skin and tighten bringing her pain. Her fingers twisted in pain and Tsuki could see interesting tattoos of falling leaves and snow crystals over her left arm. But what disturbed Tsuki the most was the bloodied tears of the girl. Tears falling from equally red eyes. A pair of eyes she had seen too many times after coming to this world…

“See?” Said the girl in pain. “I lied…”

Tsuki didn’t care about this little show. As far as she knew it, it might have been a make-believe to tell her a lie later. But for some reason, Tsuki knew who this girl was. During her first few days in this world, she had a dream which she wrote slowly in a book she found in the red bag. The dream was really strange as it showed Alice having an adventure at sea and by the end, she came across a girl with red eyes and hair who helped her.

“Your name, it’s Yuu, right?”

“…” The stranger hardened her sight on Tsuki after drying her red tears. “How do you know this, I don’t know. It’s something I’ll have to ask later but for now, I have some explaining to do…”

You can find story with these keywords: Forgotten Sky, Read Forgotten Sky, Forgotten Sky novel, Forgotten Sky book, Forgotten Sky story, Forgotten Sky full, Forgotten Sky Latest Chapter