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One day, there had been blooming trees raining petals, and a dusty paved road had turned all white and pink and soft. Sarmenti had tiptoed and swirled around them like he himself had been the wind, and Baldwin had slowly followed, eyes tracing his every sway. The lute had been hanging on his back while he’d been dancing, but Baldwin had heard the music even without the instruments; the rustling of leaves and shuffling of steps, and those little merry bells raising their pitch with Sarmenti’s every move. Scrawny fingers, rapid and fragile like spider legs, had been running over Baldwin’s strong arms, and large gloved hands had been holding Sarmenti’s grumpy white face. He would scratch his mask, trying to make Baldwin shiver at the screech of his nails, or forcibly press Baldwin’s palms to his cheeks as if to make them crush his skull. A chuckle would follow, and then a tired grunt. And soon the dreamy music would resume again as they had wandered alone, with no aim other than enjoyment of breeze and flower rain and each other’s company.
Baldwin recalled that day when he made the first step into the dig, where the walls and the floors were of black crumbling stone and of red squirming flesh. The air was burning him even through rags and armor, and the choir here was made of gurgles and echoing roars of creatures awaiting to bare their fangs and claws and contorting limbs. And Sarmenti wasn’t with him, as he hadn’t returned alive from the first foray into this damned place. Baldwin wished to remember him as he’d been dancing and living and fooling around in his own grim ways. But dozens of mad twitching eyes were staring at Baldwin as he led his group forward, and in them he could see the reflection of Sarmenti’s ill fate. They had watched him bleed out, they had watched him be torn apart and robbed of breath, and they forced Baldwin to watch it as well.
He’d refused all help, Damian had said as he’d been holding his feeble body in his arms. He’d let the horror shriek into his ears until only its hollow echoes had been banging his head from inside. He’d let it slash his garb and then his skin for what had been its might, and he had been choking with laughter upon seeing his blood splattered around. His mask had no longer been white, Reynauld had said as well, and his voice had turned to groans and bubbles through the laughs. In his goggle eyes there had been scarlet tears, burning and dripping relentlessly as he had begged to end the torture, the game, the spectacle. And he had drawn himself a smile with his knife, all across his face; and a shrouded creature behind the mammoth beast had shot its spine into Sarmenti’s chest, and all had become silent.
This was what Reynauld and Damian had told of when they had descended from the resting ground of the departed lord of their Hamlet. Amani had not wanted to speak nor cry nor look at what had been left of Sarmenti upon their return. Many tears had been shed that night over his lifeless body, lying in a beautiful cage, adorned with roses and cloths of the same color as his clotted blood. Baldwin had hated this sight. He’d hated Sarmenti’s eyes being closed and still when they should’ve been glowing with life in all its derangement, and laughing on their own even if his voice had been gone. He wished he’d seen his last tears of which he’d been told, and a mere thought of them had jerked his heart so he had gasped and fallen onto his knees.
Baldwin’s heart was still skipping beats and echoing into his head when he remembered that night. But this time he could not fall, as his party relied on him. He couldn’t promise to lead them till the end, however, as more and more creatures challenged them.
There were the shrouded ones of which he’d heard from Reynauld and Damian, along with humans of malignant growths on their bodies, thickened blood hanging off their mouths as they fervently jumped in front of their monstrous masters. He would tell himself to focus, follow the spirit of Audrey and Barristan as they rushed to the creatures’ death. But the ruffles of their cloaks and crumbling of their bones, as fluid as their flesh, were reviving Baldwin’s thoughts again as his blood splashed.
There would’ve been a certain tune, discordant yet calming, if the weight of Baldwin’s mind had veiled his concentration again. There would’ve been a certain look towards him, mild disturbance trying to hide a genuine inspiration. A little frown worth a thousand rowdy voices of praise. Baldwin would listen to Sarmenti play and smile till his thoughts returned to their order, and for even longer. But when extracted from the depths of the memories, a lovesome melody would appear distorted, like the bodies of monsters who had put the music to end.
Audrey thrust her pickaxe into the skull of the ravaged cultist, and Junia charged another lightning bolt to finish him off. Baldwin wiped the blood off his chin, turning away from help in silence. Barristan chuckled—he probably thought Baldwin to have too much pride. He wished it was just pride.
Another day, Sarmenti had been sobbing as his lean body had ached from all laughs he couldn’t have kept in himself. It had been his first expedition, as Baldwin recalled. He’d jumped at the front, with his knife aiming towards an eye of a bipedal fish, threatening Baldwin with its cutlass. The same knife would’ve found its way to prod at Baldwin’s ribs. He would’ve felt his bandages become soggy and heavy right where the blade had landed, but not the nagging sting of it. And all that havoc Sarmenti had caused would’ve not been the same if he’d stayed silent. Baldwin had told him later that there’d been a pleasure to hear his screeching laughs, for they had stabbed him right where no blade could have. Sarmenti had been numb for a good minute before bursting again, bells of his garb annoyingly swinging over his own voice. He had asked which of them had been the real maniac all along, and Baldwin had had no response but a smile.
It was hard to breathe through the air full of the fetid flesh of shapeshifting beasts, fumes of their blood and phlegm laced with venoms, and exhaustion of the mind transferring into the body. When Barristan raised his shield over Baldwin, his knees had already been wobbling, and the gleam of his polished sword had been overshadowed by its shattered form. The altar stood between him and someone who once had been a gladiator among cultists; awaiting a touch of the mummified hand to force itself to cry. A mighty thing slammed itself into Barristan, pushing him into the rear ranks and making him see swirling stars. Someone screamed, most likely Junia, when a flying beast of maws and meaty wings spat over her with its poison. And before Barristan could return to his senses, something too terrible flashed in front of Baldwin, exposing his flesh and nerves and soul and brain and burning them from within.
He’d asked Sarmenti why the heiress had refused to send them together into the last dungeon. He’d shrugged and rolled onto his side, bells jingling just once before they’d landed on Baldwin’s arm. He’d wondered if he should’ve talked to her, and Sarmenti had only jeered, his eyes of two different shapes, mocking Baldwin without words. He’d started to stand up, determined to meet the heiress, only for Sarmenti to rush and encircle his chest. When Baldwin had stopped, he’d driven himself away in a second, his glance nervously dancing anywhere other than on Baldwin.
The shield was brought again, and a spell was cast, but Baldwin felt nothing. He’d seen the ruin they’d marched towards; and his innards still flushed from fire a gaze from beyond had breathed upon them. The sword was slipping from his grip, and he almost didn’t bother to pick it up again. He’d refused all healing spells, they’d said. He had died with a smile he had carved himself, as a dying beast had been towering over his cooling body on the shaking stone of the hellish pit. The same very stone was shaking under Baldwin’s legs, as if the force from beneath couldn’t wait to erupt and devour them whole. But the templar was slain, and the crown was raised above the screaming altar, and they were still worthlessly alive.
Those poems Sarmenti had composed hadn’t been made for his tongue to sing. When he’d raised his voice during respite, he must’ve been doing so just to drive his teammates to the verge of insanity—for how shrill and unsettling his singing had been. He would’ve laughed at those wrinkled faces he’d seen, but retaliated immediately when Baldwin had borrowed his creations. There had been his dirk swinging next to Baldwin’s neck when they had stayed alone with the music, when Sarmenti had—accidentally—raised a different voice, not meant for anyone to hear. Baldwin would've not asked him to join him in a duet for the next camping session. He’d known that Sarmenti would've kept a more soothing song only for those nights with them being locked away from the others, with moonlight brushing their faces, strangely full of emotions for those which had become ones with the masks.
Something was shivering inside Junia when she approached Baldwin in camp, as if she had known what she could expect. She was a kind woman, but her kindness no longer had any worth. Not for him being ready to drop his sword, drop his plate, undo the bindings hiding his illness, and welcome the creatures hungry for human regrets. Oh, he had so many. A grumpy face of the heiress flashed in his head, which he had decided not to encounter; a song unheard by anyone but one person, who was now covered under endless layers of crimson. A step towards the unknown, a chin lifted high, teeth clenched tight and a spirit pulsing like candlelight, telling him there was certain glory in the confident march to his end. So many marches he had led before, so many ends he could've met, so many blows and strikes and assaults that could've awakened his muddled sensations. Nothing. Emptiness was only expecting him, and nothing else but the laughs of the departed had ever shaken his sickened nerves. Baldwin felt the unease in the air on the sides of his, as he grunted and cast his soaked shroud into the fire. He gave them his apologies, while his mind was nudging and reeling for him to touch the fire directly.
He had begged for his life to end, and his wish had come true. And so did Baldwin, but the spells still were ringing and the shields were rising high, even if he ripped his decaying flesh off himself. Especially if he did so. To bolster him when they could run, to save a crumbling pillar only to be buried underneath! He did not understand. The mercy wasted on him was the mercy they could cast on themselves, escape into safety and return hardened while Baldwin’s body would be consumed by things infesting the dig. When the second templar appeared before him, Baldwin shoved Barristan away and stood at the very front where the bulging glare would sear him again.
He didn’t have to wait long. His heart was nothing but coal, brittle and crushing under the burden of revelations. Something was pulsing inside him, inside the eye gazing into his soul, inside the room that was to become his grave. No explanations came to his mind, and there was nowhere to come, when everything had been burned away. Baldwin raised his head the last time, expecting to face the visage of the beast ready to ravage his body. But there was a new sight, with a painful glimpse of familiarity, and what had been left of Baldwin’s heart was now brimming white.
A black shroud, vast as the room, held a skinny tall body behind, and a delicate curved spear tip peeked from its folds. The mask was of shimmering metal, long and emotionless, but behind it was the look he had rarely seen before. It was not the one of dry contempt, nor of the anger mixed with exhaustion, nor of the careless mockery with no hard feelings behind. An unusual passion emerged from those eyes under the scarlet tears they were shedding; and they were blinking so every often and gleaming and changing their shape unlike everything else on his face. Baldwin spotted his hands—bones wrapped in black matter, hanging free but itching for a touch. And that spear seemed to be thrust into the chill silent heart of the Reaper, while its silver tip was thirsting for more blood and more souls to be skewered on it.
And he spread his arms, his cloak flying forth like wings; and he darted towards Baldwin’s embrace. And soon the spear tip was soaked in Baldwin’s blood as well, while its shaft kept them impaled together. The space and the room all turned black and velvety like his cloak, heavy but soft and welcoming around Baldwin’s weakening body. And his arms were holding Sarmenti, and Sarmenti’s arms were holding him, while his life was slowly seeping away down the spear tip. Right into that dark domain, humid and smothering but strangely pleasant—from where Sarmenti had rushed to him, and right where Baldwin would stay with him.