July 17, 2016, 05:17 AM
He slept for two days, and when he woke, it was a miracle even to him. The mountain was no longer beneath him, but above, and looming like some great epitaph. Lazarus was in pieces. He felt pain in every inch, and drifted in and out of wakefulness, until the two days had passed. As night sank its teeth in to his skin, as he felt the strange chill of midnight and heard the sky rip with a fresh light rain, he pulled himself free of the dark and the stone, forced himself to stand despite the quaking of his everything, and made his way.
The process was slow. It was made slower by the intensity of his fever and the strange sensation of rigor throughout the density of his body; yet he progressed, heading east, until he was warmed all over by wave after wave of sunlit rays.
He could not see himself. He could not hear either, but had not yet taken notice of the silence that settled across his world. Only the pain kept him cognizant, and even that was a flightly, uncontrollable aspect to his experience. He came upon a forest and, finding the darkness soothing, collapsed among the foreign brambles to sleep. Lazarus had no intention of dying here - he thought of very little now, not even able to rouse the image of Amekaze, or the memory of his battle atop the mountain's edge - but he knew innately that this place was foreign. It was wrong, it was not his, he was displaced - but it was dark and hidden, and as he slipped unconscious, he knew it was what he required.
The process was slow. It was made slower by the intensity of his fever and the strange sensation of rigor throughout the density of his body; yet he progressed, heading east, until he was warmed all over by wave after wave of sunlit rays.
He could not see himself. He could not hear either, but had not yet taken notice of the silence that settled across his world. Only the pain kept him cognizant, and even that was a flightly, uncontrollable aspect to his experience. He came upon a forest and, finding the darkness soothing, collapsed among the foreign brambles to sleep. Lazarus had no intention of dying here - he thought of very little now, not even able to rouse the image of Amekaze, or the memory of his battle atop the mountain's edge - but he knew innately that this place was foreign. It was wrong, it was not his, he was displaced - but it was dark and hidden, and as he slipped unconscious, he knew it was what he required.