Chapter Text
Darkness fell over the fog-cloaked landscape, the tall jagged trees illuminated only by the red gleam of a campfire. Intermittent pops and crackles from the fire were the only sounds. The three survivors had gone silent as they waited for their fourth to emerge from the Trial. The other two needed some time to recover from the ordeal of their horrific deaths, and they huddled together for comfort. Vittorio Toscano required no such care. He’d been killed and brutalized in every possible way; it took very little to rattle him now. No, he was not shaken, he asserted, eyes fixed on the misty opening in the trees. He was angry.
Eventually the last of their group emerged, his face obscured by fog and the hood of his robes until he was close enough to be confirmed as Talbot Grimes. The deep-set features, dark hair and attire even unusual for his time was not quite familiar, but Vittorio knew it would grow to be in time.
“I’m back,” he sounded. Then, not receiving a response, the man let out a small huff and made his way over to a seat by Vittorio’s side.
Vittorio placed his arm over the spot on the log, giving Talbot a hard glare. “I didn’t see you once throughout the entire Trial. You didn’t do any to help, and we all died as a result.”
Talbot’s face grew stony. He crossed his thin arms over his chest as he replied. “I’m only doing what I must to survive.” He always spoke with a cadence of cool detachment. It irked Vittorio to no end, and he was certainly not in the mood for such an attitude now.
He stood up violently, startling his companions. “By hiding until the rest of us were dead?”
“I wasn’t hiding. And, if I may. If the three of you cannot survive together, it seems remiss to blame me for it.”
Vittorio bristled. “That isn’t how we do things.”
“It will have to be,” Talbot said plainly. “I have more useful things to do than stay with you until I get killed.”
“Like hiding?”
Talbot’s aloof demeanor broke as his face twisted with anger. “I wasn’t hiding,” he spat out. He turned around and situated himself some distance away without another word.
Vittorio himself was at a loss. After a moment he sat himself back down to think. Vittorio quickly became frustrated with fellow survivors who stayed cowering in a locker until they could escape through the hatch themselves, and he had thought that this strange, reserved man had done the same. Was he wrong? Did Talbot have another reason to stay away from generators?
That was the thing. For all the people he had encountered here, Vittorio had never met someone quite like Talbot Grimes. There was something off about that Scotsman in a way the veteran survivor couldn’t place. He was very set apart from the kinds of survivors Vittorio had grown used to. That could end up being a blessing…
Or it could get us all killed, like it did today. Or worse.
Vittorio knew, although he was lost on specifics, that there was a point of no return. After so many deaths, a person would disappear, never to be seen again. It happened to survivors young and old, sometimes after only a few Trials. Vittorio had been through thousands of them, dying and escaping in almost equal numbers. So much violence. He wasn’t certain why he had stayed around for so long. In his previous life, he would have wanted to investigate, to study the phenomenon closely and discover the reason for himself. It was a lot harder to do such things when survival was always the only priority. He had learned much in his time here, but a part of him still longed to be back in his manor, carrying out his research on the deepest secrets of the world. He wished there was more to discover and to create in this hell.
It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Talbot was doing the same thing.
He stood up and walked past the fire where the other survivor was hunched over, facing away from the rest of the group. Vittorio placed his hand on Talbot’s shoulder, causing the latter to tense but getting his attention.
“Hey,” Vittorio said in a low voice. “I apologize for my curtness earlier.”
Talbot turned to face him, his expression blank. “No need to apologize. Your response was entirely expected. I know you’re always looking out for the group.” He said it as if simply stating a fact.
“It’s very…human of you. But we both know it does little to increase our chances of survival. What will truly give us an advantage is innovation. That arcane trick you do with the machines is one. I think we can do more.”
“Is that what you were doing?” Vittorio asked. “Developing an innovation that can help us?”
The other man nodded and retrieved an object from his cloak. Even freed from its roots, the flower gave off an eerie glow that illuminated Talbot’s face in orange light. It seemed, too, that the man lit up on a more internal level. His normally dead eyes glittered with anticipation, and his mouth was almost turned up into a smile. The effect as a whole was a bit unnerving, as it seemed to make Talbot into a completely different person.
“Have you seen this before?”
Vittorio nodded, his eyebrows furrowing. Sometimes he caught glimpses of these otherworldly flowers in the corners of the arenas they found themselves in. They had always given him an odd feeling, as if they came with a presence attached. He usually tried to avoid touching them, as it was good form to avoid anything that harbored such an uneasy omen. Yet here it was, a mere few inches from his face, as Talbot presented it with a sort of reverence.
“I’ve been working with these for a while,” he explained, his voice more animated than Vittorio had ever heard. “I believe I have–I have a usable dose for it.” The man then produced a small needle, and using the device pricked the flower and extracted glowing nectar from its center. The plant withered away and dropped to the ground, forgotten.
Vittorio couldn’t help but recoil. “How do you know it’s usable?”
Talbot looked at him intently. “I’ve tested it, of course.”
“On what?”
He shrugged. “Whatever I can. Rats, crows. I’ve used it myself a few times as well.” He then flashed a real smile, one that glinted deviously. “I’ve even tested it on the ones who would try to hunt us.”
At this Vittorio could only sit in disbelief. The prospect of Talbot experimenting on the killers themselves was horrifying, but there was something darkly cathartic about it. In that moment, he could feel the same devious thrill as his fellow.
“Truly, I want the same thing you do. I want us to be able to escape,” Talbot continued. "It's fantastically potent. If we use it, it will help us survive more than anything else.”
“I don’t know,” Vittorio muttered. “I wouldn’t trust anything that comes from this place.” He knew many things from his time in this realm, and one of them was to approach everything the Fog offered with skepticism. The only magics he made use of were the ones that originated from himself and his own knowledge. Anything else was at best unreliable, and at worst…
Talbot responded emphatically. “I understand your concern, but there’s so much potential in this compound. It’s true that these flowers come from this realm. That means they are incredibly powerful in their effects. Should we not utilize the resources we have?” He waited for a response to receive none. He sighed.
“In any case, I plan to use this formula at our next Trial. Perhaps once you see its use, you’ll change your mind.”
“Hm. Perhaps.” Vittorio made his way back to the campfire to sit with the others. The interaction, the compound, and the offer swam in his mind for a while after. Indeed, Talbot’s work was completely apart from anything else he had encountered. Something so brazen as creating a serum through any and all means he could had the potential to be incredibly dangerous. At the same time, didn’t it also have the potential to give them a great advantage? He couldn’t help but be pulled both ways as the experiment horrified and fascinated him in equal measure.
He would see for himself at the next Trial. Any moment now it would begin again, only this time Vittorio would be able to witness his fellow survivor’s new innovation.