[ti]private[/ti]Burning the Field

He walked to the Shrine. Part of it was fruitless- the Prince and Shrine both were no longer there. But the land gave him solace, and maybe that would be enough.

Things crept along the edges of his vision. Hunkered shapes, creatures, warriors. He spun to face them, and they were always gone. He hurried his pace.

(It did not help.)

He reached the edge of the pit, dug deep into the earth, and the shapes- the darkness- was spreading, creeping until his peripheral was gone entirely.

Something had cast eerie darkness on him before- but it hadn't been like this. This wasn't a blindfold, or a magic spell like the pokemon used. It was... too real. Too human.

What was happening to him?

“VERAI!”

Kazuki’s brows furrow. Verai ignoring him is nothing new, but he’s been calling after him for a good minute now and hasn’t heard a thing. It's even more eerie since the man has already turned his way.

Sprigatito purrs on his shoulder. <Hi Purrai!> he says, chipper as ever, though he doesn’t do his usual greeting of launching off Kazuki to run up to his friend. His body feels too heavy for it, likely due to sleeping too much at the shrine.

“I know you want your ‘alone time’ and all, but someone wouldn’t stop crying about how he didn’t get to see you,” Kazuki huffs, drawing closer. He doesn’t understand why Verai would come here—it’s a barren waste, a pit even more than the Precipice Shrine, as the hole left leads only to darkness. The grass is dying, and there are no other visitors, pokemon or human.

“What… is going on with you?” He stops in his tracks a few feet away from Verai. His eyes widen.

A frantic series of steps as he surges up to him, his hand reaching to grab his chin. “What the fuck happened to your eyes?!”

No matter how closely he looks, whichever angle he turns the man’s face, there’s no mistaking it—Verai’s eyes have turned completely white. A stuttering note confirms he can’t see, and the revelation douses Kazuki like cold water.

“How is this even possible? You can’t die in this game, but you can go blind?” There’s anger in his voice, an edge of panic. He knows that fundamentally, Verai hasn’t been hurt. This isn’t real life, it’s just a game- but how the hell could this be fun by design?

Mistra. “The mists?” Before he can ask further, he feels Verai clutch his arms. There is no dig of nails or attempt to grapple, it’s purely for support, and when Verai speaks, it’s with the voice of an aimless man, trying to find any kind of bearing in reality.

It is a far cry from who he knows Verai to be.

“It’s real. In the game, at least.” He thinks back on his hallucinations at Mistra and wonders if they’ve lingered in Verai’s case. His hand lets go of the other’s face and moves to take hold of his arm. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the shrine. That has to fix this.”

He thinks this might just be an injury. He’s had to complete an adventure with a punctured shoulder, after all, and knowing Verai, he has to have set himself to the same unreasonable pain threshold. But that still didn’t answer how.

“That something you mentioned… were you attacked?” His voice dips into a growl, eyes flickering around the barren landscape as if he could spot the party at fault and pulverize them.

Verai recounts his experiences, Kazuki stepping carefully to avoid dragging the other man. The mention of a ring catches his attention. He’s unsurprised at the knowledge that Verai has been in a fighting ring- the man moved with experience, but unpolished from lack of practice. He’s left to wonder why he quit.

His brows knit together as he finds out something in that hellhole had his face. And that Verai has a daughter.

Verai’s hand squeezes his arm, and Kazuki finds himself thinking, 'Fantastic. That kid is going to fucking murder me,' because inadvertently or not, he’s contributed to her dad’s nightmares.

Verai continues, and Kazuki does end up snorting at the understatement, but doesn’t interrupt. The rest of the details, with Verai finding his own dead body, getting attacked by a mysterious figure, and then having the brief respite followed by more inexplicable paralysis dream-esque encounters, leave Kazuki muttering, "How are you still even playing this game? All of that sounds insane."

“Rotted fruit…” Of everything, that rang the most bells. “Did it look like that fucked up deer we fought a while back? It could be that again. It could’ve been from Mistra in the first place.” Maybe wandered to Birchwild by sheer bad luck.

Kazuki clicks his tongue, frustrated at how little he knows. He grips Verai’s arm tighter, the frantic pulse a dull beat under his palm, and tries to move them quickly to cut through the Steppes, back to the edge of the Timberland.

Sprigatito doesn’t understand what’s happening, still so tired, but it doesn’t seem like Verai is doing well. He mewls quietly as the trainers talk, taking advantage of how close the two stand to try and move to Verai’s shoulder, his fur abundant with the aroma of fresh, relaxing jasmine.

Kazuki can’t help but chuckle a bit. “Seems like you’ve been seeing me a lot.” Which is priceless from the guy who’s gone out of his way to embed himself in Verai’s game- though in his defense, becoming an ominous figure of his delusions had not been part of the plan.

But any amusement he feels at this prospect dissipates as Verai describes him as having been overtaken by something. He doesn’t know why, but the idea causes his body to tense, some part in the back of his brain receding as if having had a light flashed on it.

Sprigatito makes it to his destination, lazily draping himself around Verai’s shoulders. Verai gently bunts him back and he purrs, rubbing his head against the man’s cheek. If Purrai says it will be alright, then surely it will.

They’ve made some good headway. Scraping the Steppes for so long has paid off in how many shortcuts Kazuki has found. But he stops when he catches Verai’s next words, barely overheard in the rumbling landscape.

His hand, still clutching Verai’s arm, squeezes, and though Verai can’t see it, the conflict is clear on Kazuki’s face. He doesn’t say anything for a good, long while.

“… I went into Mistra because that player- Lacrimosa said he saw you go in.” Which, as it turns out, was a load of bullshit. “He tagged along, and I figured, ah, well, fuck, he’s harmless, it’ll be fine.”

The Steppes feel so quiet, despite the weather. The vast patches of short grass rustle under a passing breeze. “There was this sea of darkness all around us, and I couldn’t- I didn’t even realize how long I’d been wading in it. There was something at the end I needed to see. It was calling for me.”

He starts walking. It’s better if he’s moving during this part; he’ll be less angry. “And then I couldn’t move. And Lacrimosa—” his face pinches “—fucking hell, I don’t know what came over him. He started acting strange. Getting all touchy and talking nonsense.”

A shadow passes over his face. He can see the boundary line now, the edges of the crawling mists that mark the Timberlands. “But I think he- knew. About me. Who I am in real life.” It’s fucking annoying to admit, since a good part of him is still convinced it must’ve just been because of his avatar’s identical looks. But another part of him doubts.

He looks back at Verai when the other man asks his question, taken aback for a moment when he realizes he’s looking straight at him. He has to take a moment to observe his eyes, trying to find a hint of them focusing despite the complete lack of anything other than sclera.

“I didn’t,” he admits. “I whited out before I could reach it.” And until now he’s unsure if that was a stroke of luck or not. Until now he wonders what had been there.

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I’m telling you that you have to be fucking careful. It doesn’t matter to me if some fucked up hacker digs up my info.” Half a lie and half a truth; he would rather not have to deal with someone leaking his information again, but it’s not as if they have any leverage if they did. He has a team for it. He did live with Ren, but anyone who tries to lay a hand on Ren is basically self-flagellating.

“You, however. You have a kid.” And he doesn’t know what Verai’s current circumstances are, but he doubts the man is prepared for that kind of a breach.

They enter the Timberlands, the fog swirling under their feet. “Nearly there. You sure you… don’t see anything?”

Kazuki sighs. “Then just follow my lead.” He carves out a path through the mists, Verai in tow. Any pokemon that attempt to stand in his way are scared off with a stomp or a crackle of threatening spark. He makes noise deliberately even if it attracts more vermin, because otherwise there’s only the haunting silence of the Timberlands, and if seeing this place is unnerving, he can’t imagine how it feels only to hear it.

They reach Precipice Shrine. He leads Verai over to the edge of the abyss. “Alright, just—no, don’t take another step. You’ll fall in, and who knows where the portal leads to.” He tugs him down, ushering him to sit beside him. “Just sit. You need to gaze into it for it to work, so lean forwards a bit.” His arm is ready to clamp over his back and pull him if need be.

“Sit. And listen.”

The abyss hums with a strange energy. Even for having just arrived, Kazuki can already feel it restoring his wounds, and Sprigatito still wrapped around Verai’s shoulders seems to purr, feeling refreshed. Seeing opportunity, the cat hops down to curl up in Verai’s lap.