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month record rogue 3 2 2
She counts the cracks on her hand. It was a dark dream.
Step by step she stumbles forward, as if the cold wind on the icefield could blow her over at any moment. Barren whiteness and the vast void flash alternately across her eyes. At times she feels like she is being thrown into darkness, surrounded by stars, with the familiar past and the unfamiliar future drifting down like snowflakes. She can no longer tell day from night, nor how far she has walked, but she continues to count. She raises her hand, and counts every tiny little wound on it.
She keeps blinking and tells herself not to think that she cannot see clearly, for she would truly lose her vision if she did. She knows her foe well.
Thirty-nine. Forty. Then?
She loses consciousness for a moment, from both fatigue and hypothermia, but immediately restarts the count. One, two, three... any mistake would cause her perception of numbers to become distorted, and she'd lose understanding of the most basic knowledge.
The boundary between the icefield and Sami still seems so far away. The sun seems to have risen and set again. The distance to the dark mountains faintly visible in the distance has not changed. She knows there is a path to avoid the warriors in the north, and she must go there, or the intolerant mountainfolk will kill her once they see her corrupted appearance. Her legs look blue and gray. It takes all her effort to bend her knees, stretch them, lift them, and put them down. Is she supposed to put them down when walking? She savors the sensation of her boots stepping on ice, even if this itself is likely part of her imagination. The wound penetrating her calf has not healed, nor has the bleeding stopped in the cold. The leg below it has turned black. Typhon tells herself that it is only necrosis due to frostbite, but she keeps going.
Her quiver is empty, with only the heavy bow still on her back. She no longer has the strength to draw it. Her arms are stiff from maintaining the same position in front of her chest. In her bosom she holds a small box.
I won't lose to you, she thinks. I won't throw this bow away. From the first day we met, I told you, I won't be afraid of you. I won't lose.
She will bring this box back to Sami. Through the forests, to the southernmost point. She can still walk.
Until she sees a familiar figure on the unchanging icefield.
Arges gazes at her, and she remembers everything. The box in her bosom holds a flower that they found together. Arges asked her to bring it back to a Columbian in Čappat, while she went to find a group of explorers who lost their way on the icefields.
'Looks like you never found them... but at least... the flower... I...'
Right then, the order of language collapsed, followed by all thought and consciousness.
On the icefields, a body begins to lose its form. The parts not yet covered by shadow fall towards the ground under the influence of gravity, but the rest stay in place, holding the whole up.
The shadow covers more and more bodies, connecting segments of space. It slowly restores the data, resembling a human form standing on the land.
Cyclops Arts fight the demon over the remaining biological tissue, preventing it from fully becoming nourishment for the latter. A black, empty face sits opposite the Cyclops's face.
The box falls to the ground. Typhon wakes from the dream.
Just another dream of being hunted by shadow, she thinks, as she slings her weapon over her shoulder.
The hunter that belongs to the shadow has always been by her side. The day will come, eventually, when she is no longer a hunter, when she is no longer in command of her weapon.
But whatever my fate may be, for now, I am a hunter.
