The Sunlapse (A Light in the Mist AU/rewrite)

VI

Song of the Chapter
Amon Amarth - Embrace the Endless Ocean

Finally Rootspring plunged into the waters, with the sea's roars swiftly drowning Ashfur's wretched cries of wrath. The last of him was overtaken, and his form soon laid entrapped completely beneath. A single beam of the celestial streamed from the circle of rocks above his head, a flock of foam fleeing past like a troop of stars.

Quickly, his grasp on the light above was thieved of, and he plunged further beneath the ocean's veil. He could swim not through this sea, and so, to merely fall away from the putrid glow above was his only pathway. Rootspring drifted, and the distant howls were overtaken to become a dreadful silence, only the gurgle of the water to break it.

As Rootspring continued his descent, the cold around him gained intensity. He fell away, and finally the bitter glow of the wilderness rude he once walked was folded in the dark water, and to descend into the abyss was all he had left to do. He turned, the sea's arms grasping him so tight that a mere movement was wretched labour.

Beneath him stretched a void, black as night, so eternal that it gained its own realm of only dark. No sun, nor moon, nor stars scathed the vast universe that he sunk through, and any tale that light once was here simply couldn't be spoken. Dark waters fell through his jaw, nostrils flaring from the cold. A tainted lullaby whispered to shut his eyes and allow the ocean to deliver its dark tranquillity, but he had to reach the tender light of his world before demise came to claim him, and so he continued descending through the choking void.

"I'm almost there, Bristlefrost," he whispered, though his words broke within the weight of the water. Agony was beginning to torment his being, as he descended further into everlasting dark. His body was crushed in the abyss, in a darkness so full the birth of the blind would bear more light. Until finally, beneath his floating foot, a single star in the void revealed its glow to his sight.

 With his senses dragged by sleep, he sunk forth towards the gap, and a light ever growing ascended forth for him. Like the riding rays of the sun within his morn, hope was blooming in his heart, and finally his descent gained enough travel to reach the light. 

The abyss vanished, and a thousand stars now flew around, with the timid beams of the moon lighting the circle of rocks beneath him. But, as his foot touched the entrance, all it met was rigid ice. Dread stormed within as he remembered, of Ashfur's vile plan to imprison him in the water, which now soon would merely be ice.

In frenzied terror he plied at the frost, but his claws could not rend what entrapped him. He sunk back, with woe burning within, yet the source of his sorrow was carnal knowledge of Bristlefrost and not of his own fate. White crystal gathered at his feet from the cold's intensity, clustering upon every hair on his skin. 

He sank away from the light, the agonizing plight of his fate tormenting him. Though the veil of the dark waters was now soon to be lifted, another wretched veil, that of the frost, simply replaced it. The infernal blast of ice clasped him, with a frozen mask forming upon his face from the tears his eyes overflowed with.

His pathway of life was to be with Bristlefrost, for him to feel her love and for her to feel his. But that life was fading from sight, ever so fast, and soon all he knew was the cold. Oh, the actions of that foul soul, making it so that he would never see his love! A slow rending of the flesh and bone be a better death than this. 

Goodbye, my love, he thought, but his profound words of his sorrow within fell on no ear. He  now sunk away from the light again, the dreaded return of the abyss folding around the moon and stars, and, just for a moment, he thought he could see Ashfur above him, grinning down at him with malice. The cold and terror no longer gripped him, and he drifted only into a placid warmth. His heart fell into the tranquillity, for the frost had claimed him, and now he could not move at all. A tainted calm would be Rootspring's last emotion. His soul drifted away into the dark, and that sea had turned into painted glass forevermore.

*** 

Upon the return of his lost senses, Rootspring found himself falling through rays of light. Like the glows of amethyst, diamond and sapphire combined, striking him with fierce rays of fire. Though he'd awaken from a death of only sightless black, he did not yet know where he was, and a haze still captured his thoughts

He plummeted through the portal vast, his eyes burning from the white fire. A lurch stabbed his breast as Rootspring finally found the central point of the lights, and he soared, like a flightless bird in freefall through everlasting starlight. Divine energy, that of the stars' themselves, enlightened his mind, of a source he did not see. 

He fell through the last of the portal, plummeting away into darkness. Ever so swiftly, his senses fled again, like the sun dropping from where it once rode in celestial skies and back towards dark horizons, its wings of light once waving over the seas and now falling away into the melancholy shade of its veil. 

Rootspring fell upon the earth, with bitter winds sweeping through the stark air. He did not yet care to open his eyes. A flood of woe stormed within him, creating wretched lakes in his heart, but now he could not leave for the evil omen had claimed him. Bristlefrost, Shadowsight, Tree, all of them, he'd fallen away and left them behind. His sorrow felt like that of a wretched vision, and not the darkness of a waking death. 

After a moment, his eyes opened once again. He found himself shaded in a melancholy gloom, laying upon a solitary pathway. A starless atmosphere, in murky black watched from above, with the hue of pitch. This was a realm, not of StarClan, nor the Dark Forest, nor of the living world, where cold silence settled upon only a dreadful road.