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The plains were calm as Mob walked across them. With the exception of a few bees and other insects buzzing around the widespread flowers, it was quiet and tranquil. The false peace lay heavy on Mob. Everything did, ever since Twixxel …
… was gone.
And Mob—he knew what happened, how it must have happened and how terrified Twixxel must have been. And yet…
… Mob was still unable to really comprehend it. The empty hut besides his own home, the unanswered calls, that would never be returned. The hole in his heart left behind by a good friend.
And worst of all, he couldn’t even really grieve Twixxel. Not without Verity acting up and all nonchalant about the entire issue of which it was the cause.
It… it…. it—
It killed him.
It killed Twixxel.
His friend.
Gone. Just… gone.
And Mob needed to breath. To be away. To be somewhere completely different then Verity was at this moment. To process everything that has happened to him lately.
What—why? How?
Why him of all people?
Mob didn’t know, and he surely wouldn’t get an answer from anyone. Certainly not Verity.
So, he went out of the house, telling Verity he would explore. He was roughly one-day-trip away, his legs and feet already aching from the hills and valleys he crossed on his path. But if he strayed for too long Verity would…
… maybe it didn’t matter anymore what Verity would do.
Who was left to care?
Not Twixxel.
And by the looks of the abandoned and empty villages he found so far, there weren’t a lot of other people around anymore to care. Mob was alone. Truly and utterly alone, left to the mercy and whims of a being he could barely comprehend and might once considered something akin to a friend.
A hungry beast.
He fell for the wolf in sheep’s clothing and all he managed to do was drag his best friend right into its waiting maw.
Mob hated this, hated himself for this… but mostly he hated Verity for this. For the lying and the deceiving and the killing and everything that stupid little yellow blob did to him and everyone else!
His mind continued to wander and twist and turn at everything and anything he could have and should have and ought to have done differently. To maybe have saved someone else besides himself.
But he was too blue-eyed for that; for a moment he had dared to hope that bringing Twixxel along might yield a solution for him, a safe way to get rid of Verity.
(Or maybe he just wanted someone else to suffer along with him. Have Verity split its attention between two best friends so it could be less obsessive with him and maybe properly start to understand companionship as it claimed it wanted so desperately.)
(And maybe, somewhere deep down, Mob thought he deserved what had happened to him. Because what kind of person does this to his best friend?)
Lost in thoughts Mob trekked on, not really paying attention to his surroundings. The plains were empty of trees and forests and any sign of civilization. It would be beautiful if Mob’s mind weren’t so preoccupied with grief and despair.
He stepped forward and was still midstep as the ground below his feet started to collapse.
One moment he was looking across a green field, the next he barely had time to draw in a breath as he plunged the blade of his sword into the grass to catch himself on the edge of the sinkhole that suddenly opened under him.
Loose and sandy earth crumbled in his hand, trying desperately to grasp for grass roots or anything else that could hold him while his other hand tightly gripped the hilt of the sword. Mob could hear how tiny stones and clumps of dirt burbled from the edge of the newly formed cliff.
He ground his teeth as he put more and more strength into his hold, his fingers digging deep into the soft soil an armlength away from where the hole had formed.
He almost managed to pull himself further up, his entire body wrought tight as a coil as his feet pushed against the earthy walls. And then—
The edge he held onto broke off.
The wall gave away.
Gravity jerked at him with all its might, his entire weight suddenly hanging from the arm clasping onto the sword hilt. Mob thought he heard something that sounded like a pop! from within his shoulder. A hot pain flared through his entire arm and engulfed him. And suddenly his finger slipped from their hold off the only thing keeping him above ground.
“No!” Mob shouted but he was already falling deeper into the hole.
Within the fraction of a second, he felt how his body slammed into the wall, his head colliding violently with dirt and stone. He felt the wall curve against his plunging body in a slope as he was battered and bruised on his way down to the bottom.
He was flung all around, impact after impact after impact on his unprotected body.
Until something hard crashed against his leg.
This time, Mob heard a CRACK!
Then a burning pain shot throughout his leg, up into his spine and chest. His heart pounded in his chest. His leg throbbed as well.
Mob never felt pain like that before.
Everything went dark.
When Mob came to, he didn’t know—or even understand—where he was. The light was dimmed; the blue sky was framed by high dark edges. His nose was full with the smell of wet earth and sand and also dry dust that rained down on him. Overall, he felt like he was covered by several layers of dirt. Small and larger stones were digging into his body as he seemed to simply lay on them.
Why would he lay down on dirty stones and wet earth?
Mob blinked as the dust irritated his eyes. But it only seemed to smear his vision. He raised his arm to wipe at his face.
Mob sucked in a sharp breath. The dull pressure in his shoulder had turned into a deep and pulsing ache as he attempted to move it. “Ahh—fffuu… damn…,” he gasped has his other arm reflexively clutched at his injured arm.
His body shuddered as he drew in one deep breath after another, yet nothing felt enough. The pain kept ravishing through him. His leg had started to act up as well. A pulsating sensation wracked at it with each small shiver Mob couldn’t control.
A soft whimper escaped him, then another. It almost turned into a sob, but he bit back; his teeth digging into the soft flesh of his lower lip.
His whole body hurt.
His whole body was screaming at him.
And Mob wanted to scream along with it.
But for now, all he could do was exist in absolute misery. Just throb after pulse after burn after ache after twitch after shudder after gasp after throb after pulse after burn after ache after twitch after shudder after gasp after throb…
Mob didn’t know how long it took until his mind felt clear enough to have another sensation come to him. The shadows cast by the edges of the newly formed cliff seemed longer than before. Or maybe it was his imagination.
But the cold he felt wasn’t his imagination.
He was wet and cold. The dirt and stones he lay on weren’t dry. Not wasn’t soggy or waterlogged, but it certainly wasn’t dry. And this dampness currently soaked into his mantle and clothes.
Mob groaned. Injured, cold and damp. What an amazing combination of unfortunate statuses.
As carefully as possible, Mob tried to move into a sitting position. “Ah!” It stayed an attempt for now, just rolling onto the side of his body opposed from his injured shoulder sent spikes of agony shooting all over him again.
“Can anybody hear me?! I need help!” Mob tried to shout, but it barely managed to be a wheezing gasp he let out. His lungs hurt. It felt as if they were constricted by his own body. He couldn’t even take a deep breath without the plain flaring up in his side again. Mob was pretty sure his ribs were broken.
He panted as he waited for the pain to subside. This was bad. This was really bad.
He could barely move. He needed help. He needed someone to come find him and help him out of this literal pit.
But there was no one around, Verity had made sure of that.
Mob felt hot tears well up in his eyes. He tried to hold them back, occupying himself instead by watching the shadow of the cliff slowly wander across the opposing wall of earth. The world itself telling him that time was passing, and he was still stuck in a hole in the ground. The sky above him was still blue, but Mob was sure that this would soon change.
He was at Verity’s mercy, but would Verity even come looking for him? Mob wasn’t sure anymore what exactly Verity wanted. Was he just a toy? Something to occupy the entity until it grew bored and moved on to the next victim? Or was it really attempting to be his friend? Even if it’s perception of friendship was something so very screwed up that it regularly resulted in murder?
Mob… just wasn’t sure.
And Mob needed… something. To just do something. To not uselessly lie around and let things happen to him, like they lately did a lot.
“Okay… okay,” Mob whispered to himself. “Slow and steady, do it slow and steady.”
Again, he tried to sit up. This time he braced himself for the pain in his side and arm. He moved carefully, tiny movements bringing him more and more to his goal. First, he managed to get his head up, then most of his uninjured shoulder. Finally, his torso followed.
Carefully, Mob leaned himself against the dirt wall and panted a few short breaths. His ribs and shoulder dully throbbing to the beat of his heart. He felt sweaty. And dirty. And disgusting. But he was finally sitting.
“Yeah, I’m the best, you see,” Mob joked, mostly for himself. Another weak chuckle escaped him.
He remembered how he constantly would mock around with Twixxel, pranking each other and playfully throwing harmless insults at each other. When others overheard them, they would usually roll their eyes at their childish behavior or tell them to stop. But that would only drive Mob and Twixxel to further antics. They rarely gave it a break.
“Well Mob, that’s what friends are for, right?”
Mob stopped breathing.
“Twix—?” he turned around, but there was no one beside him in the hole. Only loosened clumps of dirt and rocks and small pebbles strewn around.
But didn’t he just hear…
His head hurt.
Mob’s entire body was hurting, he already knew that. But now that he was sitting up, Mob was finally noticing the dull pressure in the back of his skull. Carefully, he reached inside his hood and felt the backside of his heart.
He gasped sharply as he touched the center where the pain came flooding from. Withdrawing his fingers, he noticed they were wet and sticky.
“Crap.” Mob muttered as he looked at the blood from the wound.
“You better start fixing this,” Twixxel’s disembodied voice whispered into his ear, this time from behind him. “If you don’t patch yourself up, chances of you getting out of here are even lower.”
“Huh?”
The hole was still empty, except for him.
“That’s so fucked up,” Mob muttered, as he started to rummage through his pockets, looking for anything he could use in an attempt to apply first aid to himself. He managed to find a few pieces of cloth, which he hastily stuffed in the back of his hood, attempting to stop the bleeding.
His shoulder still ached and throbbed with each half-hearted movement Mob accidently put on it. He was still able to move his fingers, but his hand was of little use to him when he couldn’t move his entire arm without a painful reminder that this was a bad idea.
His leg…
… looked better than he had expected, at least judging from the crack and the pain he remembered. It wasn’t askew, and when he carefully touched the limb, looking for any sign of blood or wetness or numb spots or anything else, he couldn’t find any. His toes wriggled when he tried that, even if it hurt.
He wasn’t completely messed up. But he was still stuck in this darn hole.
“Silver linings, right Mob?” came the disembodied voice of Twixxel from nowhere and everywhere.
“Yeah,” Mob agreed. “Silver linings…”
Above him, the sky slowly turned orange. The shadow of the cliff was nearly gone, having reached the edge of the ground and merging itself with the ripped turf at the top.
“What now?” the voice asked.
“I don’t know,” Mob answered to nobody. “Can’t really climb out, can I?”
There wasn’t a response. Mob wasn’t sure if he really had expected one. Was his mind really that messed up from one bad fall?
“Surely seems like it, right? I mean, you never hallucinated your friends before now, have you?”
Mob shook his head and immediately regretted the action. His vision swam, things appearing and disappearing in the long shadows. Twixxel’s face was among them. He thought he saw it clearly, only to vanish in the next second.
“I’m so messed up,” Mob moaned. Letting his head fall back, he gave another attempt to catch the attention of anyone who might be out in the plane field.
“Hey! Is someone there?!” It hurt his chest something fiercely, and Mob had to pause between breaths before he dared to open his eyes. Colorful spots danced before them.
His shout remained unanswered.
Mob panted, the little energy he had already used up by moving and patching himself up. He felt weak and feeble. A shiver ran through his body and it was only due to a spreading numbness that it didn’t hurt as much as it could.
The sky had turned into a reddish-purple. There wasn’t a single cloud in sight. The night would be cold. He needed light, the darkness of the shadows already creeping closer and closer to him.
“You’re gonna freeze like that,” Twixxel’s voice chimed from an especially dark patch in the hole. If Mob squinted, he was sure he could make out Twixxel’s shape inside it. But just when Mob was sure he could see it properly, it vanished. Because there was nobody else in this hole except for Mob.
With another groan, Mob continued to pat his pockets for his torch and his flint and steel. When he eventually managed to find both items, he was dismayed to discover that the shaft of his torch had broken, leaving him with only half it’s former length.
But it had to be enough for now. He draped a bit more of the shredded rags he had used to stop the bleeding on the back of his head on the top of the torch, giving it more fuel to catch fire and burn longer.
Then he grabbed the flint with the hand on his injured arm while he positioned the single piece of steel in the other. A dry piece of cotton sitting readily on the flint. Slowly, Mob breathed in and out. In order to create a spark, he had to work quickly and efficiently.
Swiftly, he slammed the metal against the stone in precise movements. Little sparks sprang forward, while Mob gritted his teeth, trying his best to ignore the growing pain in his shoulder.
Soon, a tiny pocket of ember started to form on the cotton and Mob wrapped it into the cloth of the torch, softly blowing onto it, feeding it air. Within the moment, the dry kindling caught onto it and the torch started to burn more properly.
Still close to Mob’s face, he could already feel the heat the tiny flame produced and offered to him. It cast flickering shadows all around him, catching and dancing among the big and small crevices of the walls around him.
For a moment, it seemed that Twixxel’s face looked straight at him from the other side of the hole.
“Well done, Mob.”
Then it was gone again.
Mob’s head was starting to hurt again. “I’m really messed up right now.” He quietly whispered to the solitude around him.
With the fire taken care of, Mob had once again nothing more to do than to listen to the issues of his body. And there were many issues his body wanted him to know about.
His legs were cold and starting to become somewhat numb, same for his hands, even though he now could position them closer to the warmth of the torch. The pulsating of his ribs and shoulder and leg was back as well. It felt as if it throbbed deep within him along with his heartbeat.
His mouth was dry and sticky, he really wanted a swig of water more than anything right now. And yet, his clothes were damp and smelly. Mob would love to simply submerge himself in a pond or a river and afterwards dry himself in the sun, making both problems disappear.
The things one wishes for at the bottom of a hole.
His gaze wandered up. The sky had shifted towards a deep blueish-purple, stars already visible in the encroaching night. It seemed as if the cliff had grown even steeper and taller around him. But maybe it was just an illusion brought on by the shadows and his concussion.
Mob’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten for hours.
Usually, he hunted and foraged for food along his journeys and expeditions. But this time he had been so occupied by everything that had happened with Twixxel and Verity that he hadn’t done this. He didn’t need to check his pockets, Mob knew he had nothing edible on him.
His stomach grumbled again, slightly louder this time. Mob sighed. The night was going to be long and uncomfortable. And the day wasn’t anything to look forward to, either.
“If only you had a friend who occasionally sneaked you food,” whispered Twixxel’s voice from a shifting shadow.
Mob smiled, fondly remembering. Twixxel used to have a habit of secretly putting snacks into Mob’s pockets and pouches. Small stuff. Nuts and dried berries, fruit, sometimes even jerky. Mob would only discover it by accident when he rummaged through another pocket of his, searching for something.
Without really expecting anything, Mob started to feel inside one of the many bags inside of his mantle. Until he felt something small and roundish in one of them. He pulled it out and let out pleased huff. Sometime ago, Twixxel must have snuck an apple into his pocket. It was on the smaller side, already a little bit wrinkled and the fall had squished it a bit. But Mob didn’t care. He bit into it with the hunger of a starving man.
“Thank you,” Mob mumbled between bites to nobody in particular.
“You’re welcome.” Replied no one from the darkness surrounding him.
Time passed slowly, just as tardy as Mob’s mind continued to spin and wander. One moment, he was reliving a past adventure he had with Twixxel and other friends, the next, he was back in the hole observing how the stars crawled across the dark sky.
“Do you think someone will miss me?” Mob asked into the emptiness around him. He waited for a few baited breaths, but there was no response.
“Yeah,” he sighed eventually. “I wouldn’t miss me either.”
“I would.” Twixxel’s quiet voice replied after a few beats from the darkness.
“You don’t count anymore,” Mob replied. “Because you’re dead.” He whispered mostly to himself. The hot tears were back and Mob hated how he felt them running down his cheeks. A muffled sob escaped him, before he managed to calm himself down. The crying was painful to his injured ribs. The pity party would have to wait, postponed indefinitely.
Mob’s body was mostly numb by now; the cold of the night having creeped through every crevice straight to his core. The torch had burned down, smoke still rising from the left-over embers. It slowly drifted up and away and with it, the last of the feeble heat it had provided.
His head hurt, along with his throat and the stark reminder that he was still thirsty. The apple did little to stop his previous hunger and quench his thirst. His tongue felt thick and disgusting in his mouth. Mob wondered what would be the thing that eventually managed to kill him. The thirst, his injuries or the exposure?
Whatever it would be, Mob hoped that it would do him in quickly.
The darkness around him became oppressive, an almost tangible thing that he was sure he’d be able to touch if he could move. Inside of it he was sure to see people move around, ignoring him and his plight. Twixxel was among them, only watching him, but doing nothing to help him alleviate his situation.
“Well, you didn’t really help me either when Verity attacked me.”
Mob could only choke down a sob. “I wasn’t around when it happened. I would have done something, I swear.”
“Too late for that now, isn’t it?”
And then Twixxel’s face vanished back into the darkness.
The tears were back, and Mob was too tired to stop them this time.
Mob wasn’t sure how much time passed in the end. Was it still the same night? The next day? Did the sky turn bright blue, only to end up dark again? Did he see the sun cross above him? Mob couldn’t remember as his body lay numb and cold and hurting.
“Mob.”
The shadows kept dancing around him, Twixxel and others, friends and acquaintances he met through the years, unknown villagers and faces he’d never seen before. They all blended together, churning into a formless, yellow mass, that kept shouting his name.
“Mob!”
Mob didn’t react because there was nothing to react to. Nothing was real. Mob himself wasn’t real. And if you’re not real, nothing can hurt you, can it?
Aimlessly, his eyes roamed towards the cliff above him.
“Mob!”
The sky was black and Verity’s form a stark yellow contrast against it. Mob didn’t know if he was truly seeing it—or whether he was hallucinating it. There was a vibrating THUD! next to him and Mob flinched as it sent painful flares through his injured body.
There were hands on him, around him, feeling him up and down, pulling and pushing him back and forwards. His mind swam. The yellow mass in front of him was too blurred for his eyes to make any details out. He only gasped a few breaths whenever his shoulder or leg were shifted to harshly. The world around him tilted and the darkness of the hole threatened to swallow him.
When the world finally shifted back into focus, Mob saw the plane field he’d crossed hours or maybe even days before.
“Huh? Verity?” he asked unintelligently.
“Yes Mob, I came looking for you,” replied it. When Mob slowly turned his head, he found himself being carried by Verity in an almost too tight grip. The yellow face had its usual smiley grin. Quietly, Mob wondered if Verity was mocking him and his injuries.
“I was so worried when you didn’t come home, Mob,” Verity hummed. The arm around and supporting Mob’s shoulders kept rubbing circles into his bruised back.
“You really have to be more careful. Whatever should I do to keep you even more safe?”
Mob didn’t answer, to tired to really reply. He didn’t even know what he could say. Should he let out his anger of Twixxel’s death even more? Should he plead for Verity’s goodwill, if that even existed? Should he attempt to fight back, even if that was futile, now more than before given his injuries. Mob huffed instead.
His eyes drifted close, as Verity started the walk back towards their home base. Each step Verity took seemed to sway him more and more into an embrace of wrongful safety.
“You can sleep; I’ll take care of everything.” Verity promised him softly.
“It’s lying,” Twixxel’s voice whispered into Mob’s ears.
“You don’t ever have to worry, Mob. I’m here for you.” Verity hummed.
“It’s lying.”
“I’ll take care of you forever.” Verity whispered so close to his ear.
“You’re lying.” Mob breathed out, his eyes now closed, sleep encroaching him fast.
The soft rubbing on his back stopped, along with the steps Verity took. Only a moment, then it was on the move again. Mob asleep in its arms.
Verity had all the time in the world to show Mob how much it cared for him.