"Divine presence... I sense a divine presence. I sense a god."
Mitchel's own words forced him into a retching fit at the thought, almost toppling over as he leaned down. Thyra's eyes danced shakily as well, as Mitchel had spoken, her eyelids peeled wide open like she had witnessed the world's birth.
Nott's face blanked confusedly. He was just told that some gods gift humans with power to fight. Now he was witnessing the same people who echoed those words freeze in fear at the thought and mention of seeing one in person.
"What's wrong with that?"
Agnes seemed to feel the same way, dittoing his thoughts. "Yeah, I don't get why you're acting that way. They're our frien—"
"NO! No.. they're not." Mitchel growled at her words. "The stories only suggest some are friendly, and those are the ones with nothing better to do."
His brows dug into his skin toward each other. "What do you think happens when a god gets stuck in the waking realm? When they have more to lose?"
"The Dead Gods." Thyra murmured, drawing all three heads to look at her. "Horrors far worse than Dreads."
Nott drew a confused look. "So let's get out of here. If Mitchel can sense where it is, lets go the other way." This solution was the most obvious.
"No, it's too late. The fog... Mitchel's sense of a primordial being..." Thyra's eyes grew lifeless with the lack of options. "It's already here. It's watching us."
Like an answer to a call, the fog drew tighter, wrapping around limbs and muscles like unseen hands, holding them in place.
Something cold ran down Nott's back, his eyes widened, and his heart dropped. Because in that moment, he thought he felt it—a predator's wicked and watchful eyes.
A hawk is stalking its prey.
'It's watching us? What kind of situation is this?'
He looked around shyly, but his eyes couldn't pierce the veil of fog—no, the prison of fog.
"Then what about the caravan? Where are they? Shouldn't they be here?" Agnes' voice cracked, holding her arms together around her chest.
She made a good point. If the gods were as ruthless and nasty as they were saying, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that it would have targeted the whole caravan, rather than a single wagon.
"Probably d-dead." Mitchel shuddered through his words..
A foreboding silence followed and stayed longer than it was welcome to. It was as heavy as the fog, pressing their heads down to hang in it like a macabre gallows exhibit.
Nott was the first to break the silence. At first, he hesitated to say anything, thoughts and words caught in his throat. Then he spoke slowly, carefully. As if trying not to wake a sleeping beast whose den he broke into.
"So what do you know about them? The gods."
The other three looked at him confusedly. And as he spoke, his pace picked up and grew into logistical precision rather than a search for clues.
"You two clearly know something- no, some things—about these gods. You speak of them with experience. So, what do you know?" He continued, pointing at Mitchel and Thyra.
Both of them jolted up, shocked by their listless and lazy comrade's sudden surgical approach, even sparing each other a glance, exchanging silent words and questions.
"I-I can sense divinity. It's a trait of the Fenrir inherited during the war between gods and giants, like a survival instinct, I guess.. That's all." Mitchel stuttered, raising a hand like a student in class.
Next was Thyra, joining Mitchel by raising her hand. "My village was attacked by one before I joined this caravan..."
No one asked her anything further. Because everything had already been said, her words and tone told the whole story.
"So what? We just wait and die here, gambling on being left alive?" Agnes spat in denial and rolled her eyes. Her long hair was still loose and messy from the sudden wake-up and less-than-comfortable sleep.
"Yes." Thyra blunted her lofty attitude, turning stern.
As if taking the bleak acceptance as an invitation, the fog began to stir, drawing in even closer and wrapping around everything.
'Shit.'
At first it was the wagon, and then... Then it was each other.
The fog grew deeper and wrapped itself around the four, reaching their feet and crawling up them in a blink.
Nott stepped back, but the fog slipped below him and pushed against his footwraps, an invisible force holding up his heel. "Only forward." A cynical whisper slipped into his ear.
In front of him, the world was warped and broken. Where there should have been only a small gap between him and his peers, there was now a large and ever-growing distance, like they were being dragged away from each other without actually moving.
In the distance, Thyra stood completely still, her eyes closed and her posture embracing.
Mitchel was in a brace position, somewhat crouched and prepared for what was to come. He looked like a strong party leader, ready for a fierce fight.
Agnes... Her playful face was nowhere to be found. Only horror and fear were smeared across it in streams of tears as she ran toward her friends.
And Reidnott? He was almost frozen. Almost. He listened to the whisper and stepped forward, but not of his own free will.
Once. Twice. Three times.
He walked. Then he jogged.
'It's controlling me?!'
And finally, he broke into a full sprint.
Whips of fog fell past him, different layers of whites and grays crumbled and smudged in his vision.
"sssssSTOP." The fog's cynical whisper whipped back into his ear, its command ripped into Reidnott's muscles and tore them to shreds, making sure his entire body listened, bringing him to its desired halt.
"Gooood boy."
The world he left behind caught up with his vision, and the fog shot past him, all of it, at once. It's force almost toppled Reidnott over.
Reidnott's hair danced with the racing fog, threads and locks stained in dried blood ripped in front, blinding him in their chaotic dance.
Intangible scales slithered past him in uniform patterns. The fog acted like one enormous body for a serpent whose size and power would crush any sense of normalcy.
And that serpent was moving directly ahead of him, where he had seen his companions disappear as the world had grown away.
Reidnott's body trembled and tried to fall after having all of its muscles torn. But he couldn't move.. the whispers control was too strong.
He stood there. He stood there feeling nothing but numbness throughout his body. He stood there for what felt like an eternity as his legs turned purple and dark red from the torn muscles beneath their skin.
Slowly, the world around him could be made into a clear picture. The world around him ever so slowly returned to normal as it crawled away, except for one part. He wasn't by the wagon. Nor was he on the caravan's trail.
His mind was already racing through halls of questions and thoughts. Denial, acceptance, confusion. They were all fighting a bloodied war within him, each conclusion just as useless as the last. Not a single one would help him out of this rush of events, let alone explain it.
He could only sit there blinking as the fog walked away.
And after that eternity finally came to its end, and the whispers finally left. His legs buckled and sent him crumpling to the ground, without a scream or grunt. Just a soft exhale.
A raspy breath let air surge into his lungs and fill them like an empty stomach.
'What the hell is this world I've woken up in?'
He coughed, raising his body up. A sore wave slowly rolled over him, through every muscle, almost making him collapse again.
His eyes broke past the haze caused by the pain and revealed an image that made his heart skip several beats.
Several meters ahead of him stood a tall stone statue. It had no facial features, no sign of love from its sculptor, just a blank canvas as it posed in a terrified position, one arm reaching for the gods and another gripping its head in a mental fight.
The statue was dressed in dainty fashions of vine and flowers, and decorated by the morbid visage of Thyra, who hung lifelessly, one of the statue's vines wrapped around her neck.
Reidnott's vision pulsed with his skipping heart as he noticed the collapsed image of Agnes.
The last thing he saw was her chest rising and falling. She was breathing.
Then he collapsed.
And everything turned to void.