Withered

Chapter 13

I lay there, coughing out a lung as a dizzy spell hits me despite the fact I'm laying down. I cough and cough, only to end up wheezing once I'm done. Muscles shaking even though they aren't working right now.

I raise my eyes to the sky, not that I can see anything. Just this haze of colors, so blurred that I can't really make much out unless it happens to be really big. But now that the sun is close to setting, everything has faded into this grayish mix of stuff. I definitely qualify as blind right now.

The Wither Storm roars, louder than ever. My ears, which work quite well in comparison to everything else, trying to figure it out. They sound off, like multiple roars instead of one immense roar.

Coughing again, my whole body lurching with effort, I dismiss the idea. My head almost seems to sigh, retreating back to just wallow in the headache, to stew in the fatigue aching through my body, to accept the screaming frozen limb that was once my arm.

To me only a second went by, maybe I blacked out, but I shiver when a cold wind hits me. When my eyes decide to flutter open, a gravelly groan moaning from my lungs, it's dark. I wonder if that means the monsters will kill me before the parasites. Probably be less painful that way.

I'm going to die. Holy... I can't find the strength to convince me otherwise but it's a heavy thought. I'm going to die. That just makes my heart have a harder time beating, my head throbbing that much more painfully, my body pulsing in more fatigue, my arm actually going numb a bit.

Wow, after so long, I can't even mentally support pain anymore. That, or I'm not alive enough to pay any thought to it.

Alive, I wonder if my friends think I'm still alive. They probably never had the chance to look for me, and I wouldn't be surprised if they thought that explosion killed me. It's amazing that I'm even alive at all right now. Death has been trying to grab at me for so long now.

My heart lurches in my chest, trying to turn my attention back up the mountain. Wisps of determination trying to spur me back to life. Death still hasn't gotten me yet, there's still more for me to do.

I sigh, giving into the bodily aches instead. Only a twitch running through my body at those thoughts. But my heart, my relentless beating heart, refuses to gives up. Pictures, not the blurry images I'm used to now, of my friends smiling and laughing. So full of life, so full of happiness.

They're still alive, and so am I. I have to make sure they stay that way.

Groaning, my pulse thumping within, I tighten my grip on my sword. Bracing myself as I begin to climb up the mountain. This was a hard climb last time I did this... a day ago? I don't know, but I do know that this is going to be rough.

No matter how much my throbbing heart says to not stop, that's just impossible. It's a miracle that my dead and dying legs can even support my weight at all. The fact my arm also hasn't collapsed and still hauls the sword up is yet another miracle.

A violent family of coughs explode out of my lungs, and I lean against the mountain face. All my weight on it so these stupid coughs that are basically punches to the chest now don't push me backwards. I haven't come all this way just to fall to my death. That's not how I die.

When I recover, my arm sends a frozen dagger of misery at that thought, I continue up. Hauling myself up one block at a time, my lungs wheezing as my legs wobble. I wonder how many muscles cells I have left to even give oxygen to.

Yet still, even with the sight of my friends happy so implanted in my head, it gets so difficult to keep going. Every step up I want to collapse. Even my bones so weak and heavy and weary from holding me up.