"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." Uda began, but the man ignored her.
An uncomfortable silence fell, and Orfet suggested they check the barrier. The others were clearly still haunted by their memories of an attack by the Nightshades, the scale of which Uda could only guess. So there was neither approval nor protest, and Orfet nodded toward the stairs.
Uda finally followed him and had to drag Nia along, whose usual mood swings had given way to pure panic. Her skin felt cold as Uda helped her up the old stairs, and her face was once again as white as snow.
"Nia, we will get out of here. I still do not know why you even followed me. Why you did not stay safe. But that does not matter now. What matters is that we get as many of these people as possible safely to the shield," Uda whispered softly.
"I... yes," was all Nia said.
They were lucky that the ascent went relatively smoothly. There were spots where they had to balance or carefully climb over destroyed sections of stairs, but overall they made good progress. Even Nia soon regained some of her composure and moved forward with a grim, determined expression.
"Isn't it rather reckless not to barricade the windows?" Uda asked skeptically as she looked at one of the openings that allowed a view outside and through which Orfet and the others had launched their attack on the monster.
"Originally, we stayed only on the first two floors and had blocked access to the upper levels as best we could with beams and shelves. The Nightshades drove us up here, but after holding us trapped for a while, they flew away again and we did not see them anymore. Just when we thought it was over for now, the Deepwinder appeared and turned the tower entrance into rubble. So of course we cleared the stairs again as quickly as possible and started throwing things at it. The rest you know..." Orfet explained as they reached the last steps.
"Deepwinder, so that is what it was called..." Uda murmured to herself.
Again she immediately knew that it was the name for the wormlike being she had helped defeat.
"Yes. Ils recognized it, almost went mad when he heard the crashing and the screams... But how did you manage to move so quickly? Sometimes I only saw you as a blurry shape," Orfet asked over his shoulder as he crawled up the last steps on all fours.
"Quickly? I was not quick at all! But I have quite a lot of stamina, and my body seems very resilient. But using these abilities exhausts me greatly. I did not attack the Deepwinder for long and still felt like I was going insane from the pain..." Uda pondered.
"Not fast? I did not even really see you run from your crouch to the well! All I saw was a dark shimmer that surrounded you," said Nia.
"Maybe I just did not notice it myself? I had already wondered why the monster attacked me so slowly..."
"It was not slow. When you first crashed into the Deepwinder, it almost immediately slammed its head down to crush you, but you were already somewhere else..." reported Nia.
"Maybe my perception of time was different? But can that even be? That sounds pretty... well, crazy..." Uda doubted as Orfet reached out his hand to help her through the opening onto the platform at the top of the tower.
"All this is crazy," he said.
Soon they stood at the edge of a large stone platform and could see the landscape around them through the battlements.
Outside the walls that the tower was embedded in, Uda could see wide grasslands that occasionally gave way to dark patches of forest. The meadows were dotted with beautiful flowers, but the mist, glittering in the rising sun, lent the scenery a ghostly air. In the distance, she saw mountain-like ridges, their gray stone structures also gleaming in the sun.
The wind whistled around them and tugged at Uda's half-tattered linen clothing. She quickly went to the other side of the platform and looked down at the ruins. There were the houses, looking small and insignificant. In the distance, larger and larger buildings rose, and the ruin looked almost like a single gigantic castle, with small towers, ramparts, battlements, moss-covered roofs, and ivy-overgrown walls.
"Over there, I see it!" Orfet suddenly cried out, still standing with Nia on the other side of the tower's peak. "The barrier, just like you said. It is incredibly huge; I cannot even see where it begins or ends!"
Uda hurried back to them and looked down. She spotted the place where they'd lost the others. Beyond it stretched a forest that eventually gave way to gentle, wooded hills at the horizon. There, where the forest had begun to take root, they had rested after losing the others... But Uda still could not see a barrier, no matter how hard she tried. Only in the far distance, just barely visible, something shimmered on the highest hill – maybe a reflection of the sun, maybe something else.
Nia also seemed to have the same problem, as she too was squinting into the forest area. Suddenly, she grabbed Uda's arm with both hands and hid behind her.
"There, down there!" she gasped.
Uda was confused at first, but then she saw the lizardlike creatures with shaggy black fur moving toward the tower.
"Damn, they are in our way!" Orfet swore and slammed his fist against the wall he had been leaning on just moments ago. "What are we supposed to do...?"
"Maybe I can take them out, but there seem to be quite a lot of them. Inside here we are safe for now..." Uda considered.
More monsters, and different ones again! How many kinds of them are there anyway? she thought grimly.
Lost in thought, Uda suddenly felt something disturbingly familiar, close, and somehow unclean. She wanted to ask the others if they felt the same when Orfet suddenly fell to his knees and vomited onto the ground, coughing violently. His body trembled, and he groaned. Uda rushed to him, unsure of what to do. She looked helplessly at Nia, who stared down at her with an empty gaze.
"What is wrong with you? Nia, damn it, what's going on?" Uda cried desperately.
"Our end is coming. I can feel them, how they crawl and slither and coil and drift through the air... They are coming, they are coming to us and will free us from this Dream... Finally, I'll be free..." murmured Nia with a crooked smile.
The fragile young woman suddenly seemed different and mentally absent. The lightness of her words unsettled Uda more than all the horrors she had seen so far. Then Nia raised her arm and pointed to something in the distance. Uda stood up but stayed by the side of the trembling Orfet.
Then her breath caught.
Nia had pointed to the stone mountain formation over which the morning sun was now rising. Despite all the rays of light, the mountainside was shrouded in an unhealthy darkness - a darkness that seemed to devour the landscape as it moved toward them. The distance made it impossible for Uda to recognize any details, but there were three things she was sure of: the shadow in the distance was alive and it was malicious and... it was coming towards theml.
"Fuck!" Uda exclaimed.
"It... feels so terrible... There are so many, I think. So full of terrors..." gasped Orfet, who was slowly calming down but still looked as if he had been badly beaten.
Uda shook her head in confusion, because she did not feel anything except the panic she experienced at the sight of the surging dark mass.
"Shadows, the shadows are coming. This is our end," Nia repeated, this time also a little confused.
Finally, she looked around at Uda and seemed to appear somewhat more normal.
"We have to get back to the others," urged Uda.
As quickly as possible, they descended the tower. They had to support Orfet, who was still completely distraught and murmuring incoherent things. When they reached the others, Uda almost lost her balance. Some were unconscious, while others clawed desperately at the tower walls, their nails tearing off as they moaned in madness. The place stank of vomit and urine. The man who had recently torn apart his pillow now lay motionless on the ground with a serious head injury, the wall beside him splattered with blood.
"He tried to bash his head in," Ya stammered, crouching beside a puddle of vomit and only now seemed to realize that Uda, Nia and Orfet had returned.
Uda staggered back and slid down against the wall. She let her arms hang over her knees and tried to shut out the chaos around her.
Everyone's still alive - at least for now. Most are half insane. Useless. A flood of dark creatures is heading straight for us, and the path to the barrier is blocked. What now? What can I do? How do I get us out of this?