After such a night, I wanted to let Simel sleep. But he didn’t want to sleep. He just kept awake, curled up, hiding inside a cocoon of bear pelts. So, as to not waste the hours, I decided to set out again. 

 

<You have learned:

Lichen Tolerance Lv.4>

 

I absently scratch the spot on my right arm where the tarantula bit me. The black lichen is spreading well. A little too well, maybe. My other resistances don’t seem to be hindering it in the least, which confirms the slightly worrying theory that resistances are mainly very specific instruments and useless against other stuff. Interesting. I think I’ll let this lichen stuff keep going until I get to resistance, but at that point my body might beat it off on its own, so it should be fine.

 

We continue going. Simel only has the energy to walk for about an hour before he collapses, only avoiding a faceful of burning soot because I was fast enough to catch him. Thing is, I know exactly why. 

 

He didn’t eat anything last night. I was able to force the water down his throat, but he left the tarantula completely untouched. In the end, I was left to use the legs as bait to catch a few more creatures. 

 

He needs to eat. He needs to drink. He needs to sleep.

 

I can’t let him kill himself. 

 

Around midday, we take a break, and I use the sun and the hot soot to cook a few more tarantula legs. I try to give them to Simel. He doesn’t even look at them. 

 

Maybe someday in the future, he’ll understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. But, for now, I’ll just have to do what needs to be done.

 

Once the legs have cooled down, I crack them open, pull out the flesh and do what needs to be done. I hate doing it, but it needs to be done. So I hold him down. I force him to the floor and I ignore the magic he tries to use against me and the kicking of his legs and the pressing of his arms. I hold him down, one knee on his chest, mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and then I pry open his mouth and force the meat inside. I move his jaw for him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I continue. “Please, swallow, please, Simel,” and I hold his mouth and his nose shut. I know it’s bad. I know it’s not good. But he needs to eat. 

 

Eventually, forced to breathe, he swallows it down. I loosen my grip on his face and he takes a few panting, gasping breaths, snot running down his nose and his eyes red. Then I feel his stomach and chest spasm beneath me so I hold his nose and mouth closed. Stomach acids are important liquids. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I mumble down at him as he spasms and his eyes bulge but after a few seconds, he finally swallows it back down. I let go of his face again.

 

And for just a minute or so, I keep him beneath me, pinned down. But he just lies there, breathing heavily, precious tears rolling down his cheeks. I remove my knee from him and step off. 

 

As I watch, silently, he crawls up into a little ball, hugging his knees to his chest. 

 

I glance over at the other two cooked tarantula legs. Something in my heart clenches painfully and I look back at Simel. “Please don’t make me do that again,” I say to him. I don’t know if he heard me or not, but I’m not going to repeat myself. 

 

I don’t want to do that again, but if he gives me no other choice, then what else is there for me to do? 

 

While he’s still lying there, I put a bottle of water and the other two tarantula legs next to him. Then, I move over to the mouth of the cave. I sit there for around an hour. That’s more than we usually take for lunch break, but I can tell he needs it right now. In the meantime, I just sit at the entrance, staring out across the sands and the soot. 

 

After a while, I decide that enough is enough and stand up, turning around towards Simel. “Alright, let’s head back ou—” I freeze mid-turn. Simel is still curled up, but the water in the bottle is gone and the tarantula legs have been emptied and lie tossed to the side. I blink at the sight. Something warm wells up to my cheeks and I wipe at my eyes. I gulp down a lump in my throat and walk closer, plucking the empty bottle from the floor. Hunching down, I put a hand on Simel’s back, as gently as I possibly can. “Thank you,” I whisper at him, my voice trembling only a little. “Thank you, my friend.”

 

I bring him to his feet and we head back out. 

 

In the evening, I do some more bloodletting and distillation. I don’t know how much Simel needs to drink on the daily, but I think it’s better to have too much than too little water. I cook some tarantula legs for him, alongside some bird legs. I’m beyond relieved to see him actually eat it, though he did almost vomit twice. I gave him some water and he drank it. During the night, while he slept, I continued distilling more water.

 

And, for once, when the morning arose, I felt a strange sense of hopefulness for the future.

 

During the coming days, Simel both ate and drank. He slowly gained more colour to his cheeks, and his eyes weren’t quite so sunken in, and he could walk further every day. For my own part, I was also doing pretty well. The lichen thing was spreading more and more, and it was starting to itch to high hell, but that just meant my tolerances were increasing.

 

After a couple of days, I started feeling oddly tired. While bloodletting, I would at times suddenly black out, only waking up a couple of minutes later, with no idea what did it. At one point, this blackout even lasted a full hour. That wouldn’t normally have been the last drop, but combined with the fact that I always felt tired and weak, I decided to do away with the lichen. So, I sat down one evening, poked a few holes around the area covered in the black, crusty lichen, and then I just cut it out in one big flap. When I did, I found a bunch of stringy things inside the flesh, which is… maybe not good? I don’t know.

 

I’m more worried because the wound won’t stop bleeding. 

 

Not that my wounds bleeding a lot is anything new, no, it’s just that for some reason, my regeneration meditation isn’t helping, nor is my moving meditation or anything like that. It won’t heal, and it won’t stop bleeding. In what was absolutely not pure desperation and a dash of panic, I took some skin and hides and hair and whatnot from my inventory and used it to tie a tight gauze around the wound on my arm. I can’t really afford to spend too much time and effort on a simple flesh wound. 

 

The next day, when I give it another look to check if it's still bleeding, I find that not only is it still open, but the flesh itself is starting to grow black spots of lichen. Uhuh. Yeah. Uh. Okay, that might not be all that good. My arm is starting to feel worryingly cold, too. With it being my right arm, losing it would be detrimental at best. 

 

Redoing the gauze, I decide to just not think about it. Once my resistance catches up, it’ll heal in no time! 

 

After about a week more, I decided to amputate it.

 

Leaning down, I poke Simel. “Hey, Simel,” I whisper. My throat hurts. “Simel, we need to go. Wake up.” He doesn’t move. I poke him again. “Simel,” I say. “Simel, wake up.” His face, pale and dry and stale, twitches. His eyes, set within deep, dark eyeholes, slowly flutter open and he stares up at me, at some little point behind me. He doesn’t move any more. But he’s awake. Just like the day before, and just like the day before that, and the day before that, I take his skeletal hand in mine and pull him up so that he sits. I have to hold his shoulder in place so he doesn’t fall. “Here, let’s go,” I whisper. His hands slowly move, his arms trembling as he lifts them above my shoulders. I let go of his shoulder and put my only hand beneath him, hoisting him up on my back. 

 

I put his sleeping things into my inventory. Then, I carefully stand up, stumbling only once, twice, before righting out. Simel’s head rests against the back of mine, his slow, shallow breaths, as raspy as sandpaper, meeting my ears. That means he’s still alive.

 

Even after a month on these black dunes, he’s still alive.

 

I head out.

 

As I walk, I take slow, shallow breaths. Everything smells like soot and death and cold bone. But I can smell it. A city. Distant but closer with each staggering step I take. It smells like spices and living skin and dusty clothes. Like greasy hair and polished sandstone and milk. Like people, living and existing together. Children and adults and elders and the rich and the poor and the beggars and the believers. I smell them. Their collective breath carried on the dry wind. Close. Nearby. 

 

I pass by a little cave. I can smell the things living in there, hungry and dry and starved. I pay them little more than a glancing thought as I continue walking, wading through the ankle-high soot. 

 

I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I’m hot and I’m cold and I almost feel like I’m already dead. I can’t feel my feet but I can feel the lack of my right arm. It’s healed into a stump but it’s still useless. But I’m close now. We’re close. I can smell it. Closer, closer.

 

The sun begins to set. 

 

I can feel Simel’s heartbeat against my back. Weak. Gentle. Slow. When was the last time he ate? He hasn’t been able to keep anything down for the past week. I forced water down his throat but it didn’t help. He’s still so weak. He can’t even muster the energy to stand, or to sit, or to look at me with any emotion but bland apathy. 

 

He’s dying. Simel is dying. I can’t stop. If I stop I don’t know if it’ll be the last time I lay him down on a bear’s hide to sleep. I can’t tell if this is his last day. I can’t let him die. He’s depending on me. If he dies, what kind of friend does that make me?

 

I keep walking. The sun is down. The cold is starting to claw its way up through the sand and the soot, freezing my breath white, leaving my jaw to chitter and chatter. I only pause to pull the bear hide out of my inventory to cover Simel with. Then I keep walking. 

 

His breath is so slow. His heart, too. I can hear it. As soft as a dying clock.

 

I can usually smell when something is dead before the light leaves its eyes. But I can’t smell Simel at all. Never could, never can. I wonder if he’s already dead, and I’ve only been carrying his corpse with me these past few days? I can’t know. I can’t know.

 

I pass over a hill and freeze in place, the only movement I can muser being the beating of my heart, the breathing of my lungs and the trembling in my jaw as I finally lay eyes on something that is neither soot nor sand nor rock nor cave.

 

Before me, just down the hill, lies a city.