Chapter 46-
The light was blinding, but soft. It filled the space around him, it was the space around him
Gallow became aware of his existence before he became aware that he was there, or who he was. Were his eyes open? Was he asleep? Dreaming? Dead? Alive?
“You’re all of those things…” the voice called to him from somewhere, somewhere…
“Huh?” he was startled, the voice had disturbed the peaceful light he found himself floating in.
Gallow turned around, he couldn’t tell if it was left to right or upside down, but he eventually settled on a young man in a thin white robe that clung to his yellow, corpse-like skin. Around his neck, a serpent coiled, eating its tail.
“Do you think you’re alive or dead?” Roman questioned him.
“I think I’m… Gallow’s vision moved around the place they found themselves in. “I don’t know what I am… I think I’m lost…”
“Lost?” Roman cocked his eyebrow and leaned his head forward, smirking.
“The last thing I remember is…” Gallow’s eyes suddenly flickered, and he took a sharp breath in realization. “Fear! I remember I was in the mountains and your corpses killed me!”
Roman laid back in the air and looked away, stroking his chest slowly and absentmindedly.
“Kill? No, my Vocation doesn’t kill anyone, no one dies.”
“It tore a hole through me!”
Gallow was suddenly aware of his fingertips, and realized that he couldn’t feel the rest of his body.
“Let me explain what’s happening to your body right now,” Roman said in a dismissive tone of voice. “The living dead that pierced your body is bringing you into equilibrium with me.” He looked Gallow up and down. “The texture of your soul suggests that you have more love than hate in your heart, so you’ll be filled with passion until you sink down here with me.”
Roman pulled his head back, his eyelids drooped low.
“I want you to overflow with what I feel…”
---
“GALLOW!!!”
Sonsee cried out, slashing the corpse in two, and Gallow’s body fell into the snow with it. She raged against the horde, whipping and striking and slicing them apart, until her muscles ached and her lungs burned in the mountain air.
Taking a look at Gallow’s body, she realized that the hole where he’d been impaled was not a hole at all. Within it, some strange, fleshy growth writhed and bubbled; no blood ran from the wound.
“What is that?!”
From behind, she heard another cry, the pitch made it instantly recognizable.
“Janna?!”
Sonsee whipped around to see the girl barreling through the snow. After the adults had headed up the pass, she’d stood and watched patiently as their forms shrunk up the gravel path. A feeling was swelling within her that something terrible was about to happen; her heart was knotted with fear for them, but it was calm, oddly calm.
“I shouldn’t be this still when I’m so scared--”
Janna had paused.
“No, I’m not scared, I’m worrying about them. Worrying about their wellbeing is exactly what a doctor does.”
A realization came to her then, like an arrow from heaven.
“That’s the kind of person I need to be.
I… I… I act on this feeling?”
Her pulse accelerated slowly, adrenaline seeped gradually through her veins, and her fingers began twitching in response.
Then, the first gunshot.
Her legs moved before her mind did, and she bounded up the hill, her boots slamming into the gravel, kicking it up and spilling it about. The last time she had run this fast, she had watched her father die.
No thoughts raced through her head except for the knowledge that this was a situation of the utmost urgency. It didn’t occur to her that she was without weapon, help, or even a basic understanding of the situation. What mattered was that they needed help, and that was what needed attending to first and foremost, she would figure it out when she got there.
The horizon grew ever closer to her as she pounded up the trail to the pass. When she finally broke over the top, her heart was gripped by ice. Sonsee and Gallow, surrounded by horrific things.
“Corpses?”
She couldn’t be sure, but she arrived just in time to watch one tear its fist through Gallow’s abdomen.
“NO!”
Janna’s heart flared; she blew past the living dead, which seemed not to notice her at all. Gallow’s body fell to the ground, and she shrieked once more. Sonsee whipped around; the moment their eyes met, a new fear filled them, not for herself or for Gallow, but for Janna. Janna knew this, but she couldn’t accept it, her heart was a firecracker.
“I’ll save you, Gallow!” her mind roared. “You’re my horn!”
---
There had to have been a way to fight Roman. Gallow looked beyond what was in front of him, focusing inward until he felt something.
“My… lungs?”
Yes, he was breathing. He felt himself expand and fall, filled with breath. After that, he sensed the pulse of life in his chest, a steady beat and a sliver of warmth. Roman looked perfectly amused.
“Is your heart beating now?” he wondered aloud.
“My heart was always beating,” Gallow answered, confidence rising in his voice.
“Oh? Was it?”
“Shut up.” He was beginning to understand Roman’s game, he wouldn’t let him worm his way into his mind,.
“In my world, you’re only beginning to become real,” Roman tilted his head and stared at Gallow. “Your consciousness existed here long before your body, and when your whole body is here, I’ll claim you.”
Gallow froze.
“Ha! You didn’t think of that, did you?” Roman stroked his own cheek in glee. “Trying so hard to exist, you’re just owned by me, in the end…”
Roman trailed off, closing his eyes and humming a little tune.
“No, that’s not possible!” Gallow’s heart began beating faster. “This is a bluff! Stop-- stop beating! Stop beating so loud!”
Roman stopped humming.
“Do you think you existed before you were born?”
“W-what-?”
“Do you think you were ‘here’ at all? The real world, I mean. Maybe that your consciousness, or your spirit, existed in some way without your body? You’d have no way of knowing, right? No way to know who you were before you were born… I think that’s what ghosts are, personally, just the unborn. I mean, look at you, you look pretty ghostly to me right now. If this world is like yours, you were born into a slavery of the flesh, and now, you’re being reborn again! Into what? What do you think you’re being born into?”
“I’m not being born into anything,” Gallow gritted his teeth.
“I can feel my teeth…”
“Wrong!”
“If I was reborn into anything, it would be freedom!”
“You contrarian!” Roman cackled wildly. “It’s the same thing, you dumbass! You’ll be a slave to my freedom!”
He brought his face down so that shadows painted his features.
“Even if you go back, which you aren’t, it’s the same way. You live in cities and towns and the wild, and you each think you’re free in some way, but you’re all slaves to someone else. You could be a slave to yourself.”
Suddenly, Gallow didn’t feel like yelling back.
“A slave to myself?” He had never considered anything like this before.
“If I’m going anywhere, it’s back.”
“You say that like you know it.”
Gallow looked upwards into the white void.
“I don’t know, my friends aren’t quitters.”
It was a weak resolve, but it was the most he could do.
---
Janna nearly tripped and spilled into the snow when she made it to Gallow’s body.
“Janna!” Sonsee yelled. “What are you doing?!”
The girl laid her hands on Gallow’s face.
“He’s not dead!”
Sonsee took in a sharp breath in astonishment.
“What?”
“He isn’t dead!” Janna cried once more. She closed her eyes and felt his throat.
“I can see your soul, Gallow!”
There was something she could do, she knew it. If she could see his spirit, she must be able to… to do…
“I must be able to do something!” Janna laid her hands on his chest and steadied her breathing, her chest was pounding from the sprint.
“Focus… Please!”
As her breathing and heart fell into step, she was able to tune out the sounds of Sonsee’s spear digging and slashing through the undead. All that was necessary right now was helping Gallow survive.
In her mind’s eye, she saw his spirit in a new form, now. It glowed its typical cold blue, but slowly, from the wound outward a rusty brown virus ate away at his natural color. It wasn’t really a disease, nor was it the same as Eroh’s Disintegration. She placed her hand over it and reeled back in shock.
It jolted her heart with a raging heat, an anger. At once, she understood what this wound was doing to him, filling his spirit with this same hateful energy.
“What do I do?” She was lost, she could identify the illness and its symptoms, but not the cure.
“No, I… I’m thinking about this all wrong… This isn’t a true wound to his body, it won’t be fixed by the body. This is a parasite to his soul, and it can only be cured by the soul!”
Janna focused once again on his condition. The rusty hatred had reached his chest, and the color was swallowed up.
“His soul isn’t all here… Right there, by his chest, his spirit body is being covered up, like it’s a layer of mud… How do I stop it? Can I… Can I?”
At once, she let go of her anxiety. With one breath, she expelled it, and her body was filled with the familiar calmness.
“Of course,” she realized. “If I’m going to help a tortured soul, I need to help my own torture…”
It was time to suspend her worry. Her shoulders relaxed, and she let her feelings flow out from her.
“[ARUARIAN DANCE]...”
In a moment, a curtain of wondrous light fell upon the valley. Like ribbons, green and gold, rich pink and blue, all of them performed a dance in the air.
Sonsee had raised her spear to pierce another corpse, but suddenly paused. The chaos spewing around her seemed to vanish, like a deflated balloon. She turned around in the warm embrace of the lights, and found that she felt no anger or fear anymore, she had no desire to fight, there was no need.
Janna knelt over Gallow’s body, her hands placed solidly on his chest, ribbons of light swirling around her.
“Janna…” Sonsee was at a loss for words. The corpses had ceased their attack, some fell over, others simply stood like statues.
Janna breathed softly. The rusty brown color of hate was slowly disappearing from Gallow’s body. In every direction around her, her mind’s eye watched golden colors dance, every spirit body was filled with their light, and a warm, comfortable peace descended upon them.
In a moment, Gallow’s eyelids shook, and then opened steadily. His eyes were dazed and unfocused, but he was, in fact, alive. The first thing he saw were the ribbons of light dancing through the air, which seemed to make the rest of the world darker, like they were sucking up the surrounding brightness of the sun. The second thing he could make out was Janna’s smile.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked meekly.
Gallow’s expression didn’t change when he answered.
“Are you?”
Janna looked up excitedly at Sonsee.
“He’s good as new!”
Sonsee was as confused as he was, and took a few steps closer to inspect his wound. The fleshy material which had filled the hole was now fused into his body, settling into a dark, purplish color.
“Can you sit up?”
“I can try.”
He was able to raise himself up, but felt like he’d been whacked over the head as soon as he did.
“Is something wrong?” Janna asked as he held his forehead.
“Yeah, it’s just-- ooo!,” he moaned, shaking his head. “I got a headrush.”
The little bit of worry that had sprung up in her was relieved.
“But,” she continued. “Is your stomach okay?”
Gallow gazed down at his sealed wound, which he hadn’t realized he was grasping.
“It looks like you have a huge scar,” Sonsee noted.
“Do you think that’ll be attractive?” he smirked, not looking anywhere in particular.
“G-Gallow!” Sonsee had a scolding tone. “You’ve just been impaled, do you think you could take it a little more seriously? I mean, you could have some serious damage!”
Janna nodded.
“I agree, there’s a lot of important organs in that area of the body, the stomach, for one, but also the intestines, the gall bladder, the liver--”
Gallow listened on with a disappointed face, disappointment in nobody appreciating his joke.
“You know,” he cut her anatomy lesson off. “This is why I never hung out with girls when I lived in Pettma.”
Janna and Sonsee shared an expression of disbelief.
“Gallow!” they cried in unison.
“Yeah, yeah, just help me up…” he raised his arms for them to take hold of. “I’m your patient, so you have to be nice to me.”
“Hmph,” Janna humbugged, grabbing his arm and bringing him to his feet. The motion caused the light ribbons to dissipate, and the area returned to its natural brightness.
From behind, they heard a rustling in the snow. At once, the casual feeling they’d made was gone, and they whipped around to see what was happening.
“Please, no!”
Disael was cowering on the ground in front of a corpse that loomed in front of him. This one was different, however, because it was actually moving.
“What--?” Sonsee snapped her vision around, watching the rest of the undead slowly jerking to life again.
“They’re moving again!” she cried, and Gallow reached for his gun, which had fallen to the snow.
“Wait!” Janna cautioned them. “Let me try it again!”
“Try it…?” Sonsee didn’t quite understand what had happened before, and didn’t even know if it could be replicated.
Janna breathed deeply, and closed her eyes. Surrounding them, her mind’s eye saw each of the corpses in the same ugly, rusty color that had touched Gallow. She clasped her hands together, and spake…
“The [ARUARIAN DANCE]...”
The light began from around her hands and chest, where she had focused her being into. From it, the ribbons sprang forth, multitudes that danced in the air just as before, and again the rest of the world was made dark in comparison. The corpses stopped in their tracks once more; Disael watched the one before him freeze and seemingly lose the perverse form of life it had possessed.
Gallow walked over to their guide. The sound of his footsteps crunching in the snow caused Disael to turn fearfully in his direction, but he was equally relieved and terrified to see that it was Gallow.
“So,” the gunslinger nearly smirked. “How many days travel until we’re out of the range?”
Disael was barely able to do anything but stutter his reply.
“We-- we’re-- it’ll be--...”
“Okay,” Gallow interjected, turning back to his companions. “Let’s get going, alright?”
Janna and Sonsee nodded and approached.
“Hey,” Gallow looked back at the corpse which had threatened Disael, still only a few feet away. “I know it’s frozen, but…”
He reached for his pistol and loaded a few shots into it, lifting the barrel to point-blank range.
“Hm?”
He couldn’t pull the trigger.
“Why can’t I…?”
Gallow looked around at the ribbons of light.
“Are these preventing me from attacking, just like the corpses?”
It was the nature of Janna’s ability to subdue all aggression and stress to their lowest amounts; and it was for this reason that the corpses, which had no souls but hate, had been made completely devoid of life.
“Well then…” Gallow considered a workaround.
His arms crackled with the pale blue light of Navigator. As Janna and Sonsee met up with him, they watched one of his spirit body’s arms be displaced from his physical one ever-so-subtly.
“Alright now…” he intensified his focus. “And…”
His spirit body tugged along at his real arm; just as when he made himself faster using its heightened abilities, he was moving his body like a puppeteer. He pulled the trigger, hearing the click of the chamber right before a bullet flew between the eyes of the corpse.
As it fell backwards, head split in two, he released Navigator and looked at his companions for approval, beaming with pride.
“Pretty clever, huh?”
Sonsee examined the brains of the corpse, before nonchalantly continuing on the way.
“That was cool!” Gallow insisted, following them. “You’re just not laughing because you don’t want me to feel good!”
Disael led them out of the valley, and by sundown, they were merely a few hours to Pettma.
A pair of eyes watched their departure. From the Valley of Bones, Roman surveyed them one last time. He would have liked to have taken Disael’s life that day, but didn’t fret about it. He would get his chance eventually, or perhaps he would find his soul in the afterlife. What he was really torn up about was being unable to claim Gallow for himself.
Roman held a skeleton closer to himself.
“This isn’t enough…” he muttered to himself, grabbing another and draping its arm over his shoulder.
“Still not enough… God, it’s only when I almost get it that I remember I’m in need of it…”
He sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing the back of the nearest skeleton’s skull.
“You would have made a fetching corpse…”
He rambled on to nobody in particular, and long after they were gone, Roman Radcliffe Remained.