Summary: Marmaros’ experience just before the encounter with the Hope Devourer, when his hope, stability, and will to live are waning.
Half of my giveaway prize for @goodbye-susan! Hope you enjoy, and the second half is well underway!
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56, 57, 58…
Marmaros eased a dagger from his belt - made of the metal he had named ‘gorgonite’ for its rough, stony texture - and began to carve another notch into the hilt of his sword.
59.
One floor shy of sixty.
How far beneath the surface they were, beneath the rest of the Fremennik explorers that he and his brother had forged ahead of, Marmaros had no idea. This place, these last few floors they had braved, toyed with his mind, scrambling his memory and perception.
It wasn’t so much the stench of undeath or the stuffy air or the ever-present feeling of being watched. He was used to all that by now.
It was the voice.
Barely more than a whisper and the occasional vision - premonition? - plaguing his dreams, it had nagged at him since the dungeon walls became stained with some strange, purple miasma, growing ever stronger as the miasma turned red and lava-like.
Eyes everywhere.
You’ll fail.
Rotting flesh.
Give up.
Maggots. Maggots crawling, feasting, on a lone corpse.
Your corpse.
Bryll, always so tough and optimistic, reduced to alleyway begging and thievery just to survive.
You’ll lose everything.
Thok, his strength and creative madness stripped of him as he lay prone, body festering and being feasted upon by...ferrets?
Skeletal, undead ferrets, he’d say if Thok asked. It’d make for a better story.
Just leave him.
His own body, torn nearly to shreds, at the mercy of some hulking, stone-skinned beast, tongue forced to the back of his throat and lungs choking on the boiling air.
You’ll die, you know.
“Thok,” he began, trying to drown out that voice with his own. “Thok, what do you think is up ahead? In the next room?”
Thok grunted, barely turning his attention from his wound-dressing in-progress.
You’ll die.
Marmaros pinched the bridge of his nose furiously and continued.
“Well, whatever it is, it doesn’t feel right. I can’t...I can’t move, Thok.”
Give up.
His eyes slammed shut, the words now falling from his mouth.
“I don’t want to move.”
End it all. End it here.
The air seemed colder, life-draining - everything was just hopeless. His sword glinted tantalizingly in his lap - perhaps, if he could just draw the blade across his neck…
His hand reached down, fingers closing around the scored hilt.
Yes...
“I just want to...not be anymore, and-”
“MARM!”
Hands slammed down onto his shoulders, jolting the whisper, as well as his own voice, out of existence. Before he could react, he was yanked upright by his furs and held face-to-face with Thok.
“Marm, you listen to Thok, aye?” Thok growled as Marmaros’ sword clanged against the stone below, eyes blazing some odd mix of annoyance and concern. “AYE? YOU LISTEN TO THOK!”
Marmaros nodded, gulping, and Thok finally released his shoulders, letting him stand on his own again.
“Thok does not care what is up ahead, Marm. Monster? Pah. Evil wizard? We see worse every day. Demon? Easy. A stinking Dagger-Moth?!? HA!” Thok thumped his chest, laughter echoing. “Not scary at all. We could eat that for breakfast tomorrow!”
“We couldn’t, though,” Marmaros mumbled, now shaking his head. “Daggermouth meat is poisonous unless cooked right, you know that.”
Thok’s laughter died down, and he stared for a moment. Soon enough, however, his smile - and oh, how Marmaros had missed that silly, carefree, proud smile his brother had always worn before they had ventured this deep into the dungeons - was back, and he clapped a hand on Marmaros’ shoulder.
“Maybe to littul Marm, but not to Thok the Magnificent! To Thok, it is merely spicy like cured yakmeat!”
Marmaros couldn’t laugh - he didn’t even remotely feel like laughing.Yet, he still felt the corners of his mouth quirk into something akin to a smile.
“Marm, write to littul sister.” Thok released Marmaros’ shoulder and rifled through his nearby pack for a moment - a sheaf of leather-wrapped paper emerged, which Thok pressed firmly into Marmaros’ hands. “Write to Bryll. That always brings you back. You write to Bryll, my Marm comes back, and then we’ll go through that door and crush whatever is on the other side, aye?”
Marmaros regarded the sheaf for a moment before looking up at Thok again, nodding.
“Good.” With that, Thok returned to his side of the camp, leaving Marmaros alone.
Alone. You’ll end up alone, and you’ll die.
Mostly alone. That damned whisper was back.
Sighing, Marmaros sat, picked up his charcoal pencil, and began to write.
Thok was right. Sort of, anyway. The scratching of charcoal on paper was cathartic, and, despite the grimness of the words he wrote, he felt himself coming around bit by bit, just as Thok had predicted.
And, though the voice still whispered and the darkness still loomed, he felt, perhaps, the tiniest bit of...something.
Whatever it was, be it the tiniest sliver of hope imaginable, the determination to push forward and prove the whisper wrong, or just Thok’s confidence rubbing off on him, he would try to hold onto it.
No matter how much he wanted to say goodbye, he would hold on for just another room, another hallway, another floor longer.
