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Nithel scooches onward, sweat slides into his eyes and burns. His sword keeps scraping along the sidewall, and he tries to move it to his back, where it just slides along the bottom stones a bit. He tries to get to Alessio, whom he assumes has stopped, still looking ahead.

His heart feels like it’s split apart, his lungs refusing to take in air. He thinks about where he is, some cursed castle, crawling through a dark tunnel leading perhaps to nowhere. With a troubled youth. Perhaps never to see his wife again. He sees her face, in his mind, her dark laughing eyes. He can remember the joy they had, how deeply she trusted him, and he her. The war. The blood. The fact his hands had had the blood of not newborn life on them, but the blood of death. People he had slain. People he had been created to save. He wanted to shout as loud as possible, and growl to the heavens which he almost believed had forsaken him. To where he almost doubted his first life’s existence. To where if he had to keep struggling, he asked the Star Breather why He didn’t just let him die years ago. Why He let Nithel come to know the people he loved, serve them, marry Avigail, father them… If only to end like this. If only to watch them be destroyed, and take part in their destruction-

Nithel bowed his head into his fists and wept again. his shoulders trembling against the walls. “I’ve failed, I’ve failed so badly, Giver of Life. Oh, Holy One…” He bites his thumb’s knuckle, groaning inside, and not caring Alessio might hear. Let him hear. Let the whole world hear. “Even the language You gave me I start to forget.” He sucked in a long breath. Feeling forsaken, as he had often before. But in this darkness… it almost seemed so. He would have wanted, he wanted to die now, but his duty was to live, if only for his family.

If he’d reached out and made one more scooch, he would’ve touched Alessio’s foot.

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