Chapter 27 What is Fear?
In those first indeterminable nights acclimating to the miner's axe's punishing weight and rhythm, fragmentary notions began crystallizing for Northern amid the scant respites of rest and meager sustenance.
First, he wasn't alone - other wretched souls, perhaps human or bestial in nature, surely suffered similar brutal captivity elsewhere in this subterranean gulag, enslaved to mine these strange red crystals for purposes as opaque as their gaoler's motives.
It wasn't farfetched to hypothesize this dismal delving represented the lair, or even unholy breeding pits, of the same abyssal fiends responsible for the crimson massacre where his nightmare began.
Speaking of those peculiar crystals, from the first moment of waking Northern had sensed a viscerally disturbing kinship between their ruddy hue and the coagulated sea of blood painting that lethal wasteland.
Though he initially dismissed the notion as mere shock-addled delusion, each swing of his axe driving deeper only reinforced the sickening twinges of recognition.
For the ebon-cored crystals appeared to resonate with a sort of...sanguine malevolence.
The further Northern hacked, the more tangibly that bloodlust solidified into a phantasmal edge slicing his already flayed skin with every fatigued descent of the blade.
His brutish overseer, naturally, evinced neither interest nor apparent awareness of this disturbing phenomenon.
Northern struggled vainly to work around it, to no avail - the relentless grind permitted no pauses, no lateral shifts until the hill had been thoroughly quarried.
The process unfolded in ruthless stages: first batting aside the crimson "shell" encasing the crystals with heavy, thunderous downswings (a feat the monster achieved with negligent ease), before systematically excavating the malefic cores through exhausting, piecemeal shattering strikes.
Whether those scarlet slopes stemmed from prolonged seepage of the crystals' sinister energies, or the inverse, remained an increasingly moot mystery in the face of ceaseless toil.
The more Northern cogitated on the writhing auras suffusing his grim yield, the more it consumed what tattered composure he retained.
For the grimmest soul-peril facing this timid boy went beyond the back-breaking labor, the scourging wounds, malnutrition or sleep deprivation.
More insidiously, Northern's very sense of identity...of personhood...gradually began unraveling amid the numbing rhythm of privation, terror and unremitting exertion.
Naturally, at first he mounted furious interior resistance against that creeping dissociation, determined to cling to his individuality with every tattered scrap of willpower.
This defiant spark revolutionized his fragmented notions toward a new, feverish hope blazing in his chest like a banked forge's smoldering coals - unrealistic, born of vengeance yet undeniably alluring.
For with each agonizing cycle of woundings, enforced starvation and near-perpetual consciousness, the battered captive's seething resentment toward his jailer mutated into a powerful, visceral desire for retribution.
At first merely a bitter coping fantasy to blunt his suffering, this yearning calcified into solemn vow the first time Northern glimpsed the beast's aura flicker with outright murderous intent - a vampiric pall confirming his keeper ranked among the apex predators, on par with the dreaded Night terror itself, if not mightier.
That first inkling Northern might possess the capacity to oppose such an eldritch horror, however farcically, solidified his subversive daydreams into an almost religious zeal.
He silently swore vengeance, no matter the odds or temporal insignificance of his thwarted existence.
The epochal instant crystalized one fateful cycle while he toiled through a haze of splitting blisters, seeping injuries and excruciating muscle siezes threatening to immobilize his limbs at any moment.
The axe slipped from Northern's bloody grip, impacting the cavern floor with a dull clank that prompted an immediate reaction.
The looming sentinel turned toward the lapse with a menacing growl as it clenched its own blade with predatory intent.
Northern's eyes met its abyssal depths, recognizing yet again that unmistakable flicker promising a devastating reprisal.
Enough. He was broken, teetering on utter defeat after weathering relentless nights blurring into a kaleidoscope of torment.
Pain and despair welled up from deep within his core, mercilessly crushing his already fragile defenses.
The axe slipped fully from his grasp as he sank to his knees, resolute.
'I can't...continue this any longer. Death is...preferable...'
All the stubborn bluster, the relentless internal pep-talks insisting this was merely transitory, fleeting hardship before the agony miraculously ceased - those coping fictions shattered like spun glass.
In that sobering epiphany, Northern realized the cowering lies he'd told himself to endure a hell no human should suffer.
Either his prior resilience had been a valiant stance against despair...or this moment of feral resignation was the true cowardice, an excuse to surrender rather than persevere.
He could no longer tell the difference.
A turbulent torrent of madness, pain, and loss of identity consumed his consciousness.
If death offered the only escape from this perpetual torment, then he was finally ready to embrace its void release.
So be it.
The monster unleashed another guttural bark and raised its axe high, sensing the kill.
Northern didn't even try evading the lethal arc despite his father's meager combat tutelage screaming from some primal depth.
However, in the last minute he managed to muster the feeblest sidestep, his legs threatening to buckle, as the brutal blade sheared through his tattered flesh in a blaze of searing agony.
Arterial blood geysered from the wound as the beast wrenched its axe free in a slurry of gore.
Wailing, Northern collapsed fully as the harrowing reality resounded in psychic parallax:
'I'm...going to die...'
His vital reserves rapidly drained into the widening scarlet pool even as the sneering monster loomed above, pitiless executioner fixing to deliver the coup de grace.
In those transcendent moments, Northern's two ephemeral lives flashed in vivid recollection - first his illness-addled struggle, then his second awakening in Tra-el resolved to seize a vibrant existence by achieving something extraordinary, be it academic brilliance or martial supremacy.
Each path espousing a core tenet of rejecting the futility of hope in favor of unyielding self-actualization.
Yet here he knelt in a gory purgatorial, clawing desperately at that discarded, quietly banked hope like a treacherous life-raft despite his steadfast convictions.
The harsh reality couldn't be starker, or more contemptibly wretched - and still, confronted by its monstrous harbinger, the abject truth remained that Northern lacked the stoic courage to fully embrace oblivion, to relinquish even that tenuous, self-deluded grasp on the dream of perseverance.
For he harbored too many insidious fears snaking through his consciousness even as his lifeblood seeped away: the fear of experiencing death itself at the claws of this malign goliath.
The fear of never again glimpsing his loved ones...his parents, his unborn sister.
The fear of failure, mediocrity, of being just another face lost to the vastness.
But perhaps most insidious, the fear of what unholy uncertainty awaited beyond this visceral torment.
And those fears...those limitations...proved his undoing.
As the jagged furrow in his shoulder radiated with searing torment, a piercing scream of anguish and rage tore from Northern's throat, contorting his ashen features into a primal visage of mortal terror.
The monster merely sneered and brought its axehaft down in a brutal coup, smashing Northern's consciousness into blessed, infinite darkness.