Astraea had made an offhand comment about the location of a small, round chunk of citrine. He'd mentioned it during idle conversation, but Bartos had caught the fleeting, sidelong look from the stag, as if Astraea knew somehow that it was relevant to the cat. As if Astraea had been waiting for the perfect moment to let slip that he knew. Bartos didn't know what he was waiting for. Or why he had waited so long. But there was no room in his thoughts for bitterness or anger. All he cared about was finding her.

The instant he arrived inside of Eridanus, the cat stood within the cave mouth and reached out for her. He didn't care with what it was that he found her, magic, or the bond that he always hoped still somehow existed - the bond he'd given up on after she rejected him, after he stole away into the darkness with Astraea and Senka, after she died. He vowed never to try it again, even after it faltered, and he couldn't tell if it had snapped or faded. He never wanted to touch it again for fear that he would hear something back. But now, it was almost like it was the only thing that existed to him and his heart cried and wept and sought through the darkness for strings of that ameliorated feeling. The bond. A piece of their love, a sign of her. Anywhere.

Clover... are you here?
His heart whispered. And in the distance, in the darkness, he felt something whisper back. The blood in his veins burned with something he couldn't tell; excitement, fear? Anxiety? Hope? The cat plunged into the shadows of Eridanus, barely able to see with the lights extinguished, stumbling over roots and rocks and through the thick of the underbrush as he went. His tail curled high over him and his twisted leg almost dragged behind him, unable to keep up with his fast-paced searching. His heart followed the feeling of her existing somewhere still. Almost out of reach... almost in reach.

He cursed the foul darkness that fell over this place like it was a reminder of what had once taken Clover. Like it was the final obstacle that stood between him and his wife. But what more, what worse could he face, now that she was dead? This darkness was an inconvenience at best. Bartos had suffered more than mere shadow before.

This was the forest cast in darkness that Bartos had waded through in search of her.

This was the forest in which he would find her.

And this was the forest from which he would drag her out.

That forest long existed in his memories and his dreams as the vision that separated them, the static that cut between the bond he had forged. Strange how he would find himself here in the forest of ghosts and night to rescue her once and for all. It wasn't too late. It was too late. She was already dead. But I can still find you. The cat plunged deeper into the jungle, ignorant to the sound of birds and other animals, the rustle of undergrowth as lesser Gembounds fled in his wake. He didn't care to hide himself. He tripped, caught his paws, kept running, and ultimately it slowed him down, but it never dampened his determination. His stone buzzed with the feeling of her so close to him. How could it be that all this time, she still existed, and it had taken him this long to know where?

Astraea has kept you from me.

And maybe there was good reason for it. But no reason would be good enough for Bartos; nothing would keep him from finally reuniting with her. Nothing could stop him.

Keep calling me Clover. I can find you, I know I can. We'll go home together.

Eridanus yawned all around him, its trees quivering, its leaves howling, betraying the direction of anything Bartos might have known before. His ears rotated and listened to the sounds all around, but it was a sense useless to him, as was sight. Smell. He didn't need anything except for the pull of his heart to where her stone ultimately lay.

The slipped underneath twisting roots, around massive trunks that shot up in the jungle, an obstacle course virtually unbeatable in the pitch blackness. He splashed through puddles of water, smearing mud through his fur, but he didn't care about the weight that it added to his thick, unruly coat. He didn't care about the sensation of the passing air on his whiskers or the squelch of the wet substrate between his toes. He didn't care about how he could feel eyes on him every where he went. He only cared about finding her, and so his magic lashed out again, probing for the connection that had bound him to her eternally.

It burned, and he veered towards it, and with every step he could feel it getting stronger. Some kind of magnetism pushed him towards her. Bartos didn't even stop or think or try to get a read on his surroundings, he didn't care where he was, as long as he was getting closer.

Suddenly, the tug of her gemstone blared, making his chest tighten with alarm at the overpowering energy between himself and her. Bartos halted, pinning his eyes blindly in the direction it lay. He couldn't tell how close she was, or where she was, only that she must have been there. So he walked. Each step, he felt, each step he breathed and smelled and scoured the ground. Then it dropped away at the edge of his paws, his toes clinging to the ridge. She sat somewhere below.

The cat ever so slowly made his descent. He nearly slipped a few times, using his tail to help balance precariously, retractile claws digging into the dirt and mud before finally he made it to the bottom. For a moment, he thought there was nothing. But her stone screamed so strongly for him just up ahead.

He walked.

He walked until the feeling sizzled at his paws. And when he ducked his head, his nose met the dry, smooth texture of bone.

i felt you escape into empty space where my heart can't feel
down in that darkness, you met all the things you feared
and i knew, i knew there was nothing i could do

could you stomach it anymore, could you stand to be a breath away?
can you feel the way your face distorts, did you think that it could be this way?
i can hear you from behind the door, i can feel you from a mile away
as you're growing out of my control, will you watch me as i fade away?
A coldness sat in him that he had never known before.

He froze, unable to pull himself away from what had fallen into the mud. He stared. He could see nothing in the darkness, but he felt it all the same. That lingering dread that he knew existed. The truth that he had been told so many times before. It sat here before him, alive, but not breathing; it burned and screamed, and lay twisted, mangled, bleached, gnawed, exposed, decayed.

This was the truth that he had been running from. The truth that had lived in the darkened forest for all of his life. This was what he had come to rescue.

This... This...

The pain blossomed in his chest and squeezed his lungs, crawling up his throat. He hadn't reacted like this when they first told him and maybe it was because he almost didn't believe it was true, that it wasn't real. But it was. She was here. Exactly how they said she would be. Heat gathered in his face and he couldn't control the tears that fled from his eyes. He sucked in a breath, he shook, a shudder wracking his body as he slowly pulled his head away from what he felt.

But the stone, her citrine eye, called him back. He couldn't resist. He could never resist.

Bartos reverently lowered himself to the ground. He pulled closer, and suddenly he could feel what remained of her between his paws, and he didn't resist the touch of what was left on his legs, under his toes, he didn't resist it when his body begged him to envelop her, and his neck bowed to pressed his forehead against the tatters of skin that still clung to her skull. He didn't resist when his body shook and quiet sobs slowly mounted into a wracking, desperate wail. How could this happen. How could he have let this happen.

He pushed his glasses aside, letting them fall freely into the dirt next to her skull. Bartos shut his eyes tight, but it didn't stop the tears from flooding his face and staining her bones, bleeding forlorn and heartbroken cries into the silence of the jungle, gripping her with the refusal to let her go. Don't let her go. Please. She's all I ever had.

There had been a mess of things storming within her for some time now, and she determined the cause to be Bartos. She decided to try and distance herself from him to see if it would ventilate whatever was between them, but the distance only made things more unclear.

Just now, disabling pain lurched within her, pulling her out of her travel-form into a mangled mess somewhere in Orion. The creature stood disoriented and looked about her defensively. It wasn't very sharp, but somewhere she could have sworn on her fate she heard his voice. She couldn't make out the words, but the echoes of the sound. Recoiling back into the shadow and leaving the physical world, Senka traveled slowly toward the presence of Bartos. Whatever he was doing, it was causing strong emotion. It was taboo for her to enter his dreamstates at all, but she did it a lot. She stole into his body to remember what it felt like to be alive. He suffered. She hungered. She fed on his suffering.

And without realizing it, she came to know him in a way she shouldn't have. She shared him.

She shared his pain, his love, his heartbreak, and now, his heartbreaking discovery.

Senka arrived in Cetus as Bartos was stumbling down the trench. By this time, she had heard his voice again, and the closer she got, the clearer it got each time. He was talking to—no, reaching out to—the doe from his dreams. Thankfully the cave was still dark and she could travel freely over the ground as shade, swooping over the edge of the trench and melding finally with the feline's struggling shadow. From underneath, she observed his trying body with a narrow, hidden eye. He was muddied and pained, and desperate to reach the bottom despite his leg.

At the bottom, Senka released from his shadow to a nearby boulder so she could watch with an eye opened between a slit in the rocks, peering out in the darkness, a spy; and Bartos walked slowly toward something, but Senka knew it by know. Her physical body stepped out from her realm and into this one, keeping behind the boulder, but her single eye remained where it was. Crouching behind the boulder, her empty eye sockets closed tightly as she listened to the small cat whimper, then wail. Her eye watched as he pushed his glasses aside, paws clutching the skull of the doe hopelessly.

Please. She's all I ever had.

Her claws dug into the soft ground. Could she kill him to end his pain, she would; could she bring him to her realm to free him, she would; could she wipe his memories, she would. In retrospect, all her hunger ever did for her was curse her. It corrupted her. She was beautiful once, and now she was horrifying. She was a terrifying creature, but now she shared the pain of this feline. It inhibited her ability at times to do many things, because if Bartos was somewhere feeling something like this, she was drawn to see. Senka was a slave to her fate, a byproduct of her hunger, a vessel for greater chaos.

She rose, slipping around the edge of the boulder and approaching Bartos solemnly. A wriggling strand of shadow reached out to suck up his glasses, putting them away for safekeeping. She lowered herself beside him, a tangible tendril stroking the back of his fur gently. She only knew Clover from what an inner Bartos had shown her. He only needed her stone, right? Senka had moved her eye closer, floating on a raised tendril beside her as it examined the stone in the skull's right eye.

"You found her." Senka said softly, worrying now about his journey back. She could feel it, churning inside of him. Herself. He didn't want anyone near Clover. It was more than a meanness.

"Rest your leg Bartos. Let me take you two back," she pleaded. "Tell me where."

The gem she could pocket, like his glasses. She learned with Giggles that an extended time in her realm was damaging. If he were only there for the breath of a moment, the time it took to travel in a zip to a different part of the cave, it shouldn't harm him. She could scruff him, but her saliva was definitely harmful to him.

He had shut himself away from everything around him, clinging to her, or what remained of her, wishing still that he could have seen her one last time. He hated himself for having disappeared and leaving the caves to her ruin. He hated himself for giving up. In those moments, he felt there was nothing else he could have done - he tried, and he failed, and he was pushed away from her when she still existed. I could have saved you. I could have if I tried harder. But he didn't. He already had tried and it didn't work, nothing did. If I had just stayed I could have found a way.

But how many times would he have to tell himself that before he could accept it wasn't true? How many times would he repeat it to himself and cry and mourn because of what could have been, but wasn't? There was no changing the past now - he'd never know if he could have succeeded, but even so, that truth lingered above him, haunting him with its cold breath. He never would have succeeded. She broke everything apart. Yet...

Bartos hadn't even felt the darkness approach around him. He didn't notice the curling tendrils that produced their wicked eye, he barely registered her voice in the back of his mind. A shadow unlike Clover, unlike Belladonna. Or maybe this shadow was to him what Belladonna had become to Clover. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his face against the bone, swallowing, refusing her help. "Please just leave me," he whimpered, clutching her tighter to him. It was bad enough that anyone could see him like this, falling apart like it was his own heart opened up and crushed in the dirt, so weak, so ready to die.

@Game Master CJ