Further down the hill, in the many valleys, as far as eye could see, there were more obelisks. More shrines and memorials, tombstones and markers.
“A graveyard,” Pero remarked.
They ranged in shape, size and color. The number of them was like the stars. They could not be counted. And before most sat or lay a man, a woman, or a child, similarly crouched and waylaid by grief and sorrow.
“I would not call it a blessing, Pero, but few of your kind have beheld this sight unless they were coming to genuflect. This is the other side of heartache.”
“Heartache has another side? Heartache is not enough?”
Ven shook his head. “This is lunacy, Pero. Madness. Detonated grief. This is where the mind wanders when it has abandoned hope and can find no useful purpose in living anymore.”
“They are dead?”
“In a manner of speaking, they are nearly dead. They have chosen to objectify mortal life to such a severe degree that a single failure resulting in loss, a moment of weakness or surrender, a bad decision, became the rusty hinge on which reality squeaks. The strong edifice of their existence crumbles around them, burned and ruined, hollowed and empty. Swept clean. Hate for the necessary and ordained cycle of nature, the grand procession of life and death, steals their sanity. Alive, they die. They walk, and they roam. Lost. Ever searching. Hearing things. Seeing things. Having difficulty breathing. Such waste. Those blackish ghouls beyond the dome come here to feed, to take advantage of them, consume their ruin, possess them. They cause them to act out, behave in all manner of lunacy and unseemliness. They cooperate in order to feel something, anything, to remember what it was like to not be alone.”
Ven waved his hand and gold sprinkles fell on Avenel’s back, but nothing happened. They were absorbed by his cloak.
“There is no magic or faith I can offer him anymore that can help. One day he’ll stop eating and drinking. He may even end it sooner, throwing himself off a cliff or falling on his sword. Who can say? He’s hurting and I can’t reach him.”
– Excerpt from The Crystal Crux Series
SHIMMER