The Dwindling End is here.
I cannot stop the feeders, but I will save as many as I can, one soul at a time until the last light falls.
Humans are violent, desperate creatures. I know well their hatred, their mistrust, and their fear. My purpose in...
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The empty is my personal hell. A complete deprivation of the senses, where I float in an endless void until whatever injuries I've accrued sort themselves. In the beginning, during the first chaotic, violent days of the Dwindling End, the time spent in the empty was brief, fleeting. Grievous injuries inflicted by desperate creatures sealed in a blink. But the longer I am here, the more of their sins I absorb into myself, the more time I spend in that wretched limbo.
I know this is where I will go when I end.
How long have I been here this time? Once, this wound would have been nothing, but now...now I wonder if I will come back from this.
Fear is an emotion I vaguely understand. It is not something we are created with, but the memories of humanity have taught me a great deal about it. Their fear of death, of the unknown, and the inevitability of it, is something I can grasp.
But I don't fear the empty as much as I hate my awareness of it. The acute awareness of nothing that will break me.
Hours, days, the empty wears on me, until a thread of sensation finally seeps through.
Pressure. A rhythmic press and pull bearing down on my back. Not a painful sensation but a curious one. Had an animal come to examine my prone form?
Memory flared of the dog with the rich golden fur. A well-groomed animal in the middle of the wilderness, at the end of the world. Not the companion of the one who injured me.
A puzzle my muddled mind latched onto, clawing free of the empty as more sensations registered. Cool, damp air wafted over the fever hot skin of my face and chest. I was on my side, cheek pressed against something soft, a sharp contrast to the solid rock beneath my hip. A persistent drip of liquid sounded from somewhere, from everywhere. I was no longer lying on the forest floor, but where was I now? How had I gotten here? Bodily exhaustion threatened to drag me under again, a consequence of escaping the empty.
The press and pull at my back continued, gentle fixed movements that lulled me further until the humming started. A soft, breathy sound that wound through the damp air, until words broke through. A broken child's lullaby I knew but never heard, sifted from the bleeding memories of mankind.
"Hush, Riley, you'll wake him," said a new voice, another female. Her voice was close, almost a whisper in my ear. The gentle pressure at my back continued.
The humming stopped. I wanted it back. "What if it helps?" There is a strange innocence in that question. A child, here?
The pressure at my back pauses. A warm calloused hand presses against my forehead. The shock of it should have made me tense, but exhaustion kept my body lax.
"Fever still high." The female's voice is a murmur, gentle as her touch. "Keep singing Riley. Maybe it will help."
That sweet, sing-song humming resumes, and the hand moves off my skin. There is a tightness in my chest, a sensation I don't understand. When the careful pressure at my back resumes, it is maddening.
