Michael aimlessly wandered through the veil of snow ravaging the unforgiving wasteland of ice and sleet. The violent wind relentlessly howled in his ears, eerily reminding him of the nightmare creature from before. The incomprehensible white shrouded his vision in the chaotic palette of a blinding abyss and the encroaching darkness of night. With each step, Michael stumbled as the deep snow shifted before his feet, threatening to swallow him whole and bury him in the suffocating blizzard.
Michael outstretched his shaky hand to pierce beyond the veil and find something... anything to save him, yet the only thing he felt were the insidious shards of frost puncturing his pale skin and freezing his muscles and bones, slowly making way towards his heart like it was sentient.
Thankfully, the frost couldn't gnaw into his entire body.
Wrapped tightly around him was a crude, improvised coat of butchered fur from the nightmare creatures he mauled earlier. Because... someone destroyed most of it, it looked more like a chunk of unrefined pelt covered in frozen blood and guts, and his unskillful skinning didn't help.
Michael wouldn't be surprised if anyone saw him in this state, they would shed a tear purely from how poor of a job he did. But that was to be expected, he didn't exactly know how to survive in the wild.
Plus, it did the job. The fur successfully stopped the small frost shards from digging inside of him.
Although the frost couldn't get him, the cold sure did.
At the beginning of his unbroken journey, his entire body endlessly shivered from the blistering cold. If it wasn't for the numbing sensation, the unimaginable pain coursing through his body like shockwaves would've made him lurch over and pass out long ago, now that the adrenaline from the previous battle dissipated.
Now, his state was much worse.
With every shallow breath he laboriously took, his aching lungs would burn like it was on fire, making his whole body uncontrollably convulse. He unknowingly stumbled with uncontrolled steps from his legs growing numb in the raw cold, removing all feeling in them with each step. Every few moments, the unforgettable pain of having his insides ruthlessly torn apart and mutilated only to be painfully repaired again and again coursed within him, forcing him to kneel and cry out into the void. No one could hear his subdued screams amongst the roaring wind.
His body wasn't the only one suffering. His mind constantly ached as if a knife pierced his brain and ceaselessly twisted, trying to end his pointless determination that just refuses to be extinguished.
He hadn't even noticed that his arms had stopped shaking from freezing.
'Am I really... going to die like this?'
He survived and bested four awakened nightmare creatures, only to die to the weather?
Michael's thoughts slowly became ambiguous and incomprehensible. His steps grew incomparably sluggish as his body lurched down in fatigue.
And his frail figure fell, kicking up loose snow around him.
Michael laid on the ground like a corpse accepting it's fate, being buried amongst the unending blizzard. The drifting snow landed against his long, brunette hair violently blowing with the wind. It wasn't long before the entirety of his fur coat was covered in snow, as if it were a casket. In just a few seconds, he was already half-buried.
He couldn't move his battered body or his feeble arms beneath the crippling weight of the snow. His mind couldn't even comprehend he had fallen, only the fact that it felt so comfortable to lay down.
'Let me... dream for a while...'
He calmed his shallow breathing and closed his weary eyes as the constant agony surging through his body ceased. He could sense his faint heartbeat slow by the second.
As Michael was about to fall into the warm embrace of his dreams, he heard muffled footsteps approaching him. He languidly opened his heavy eyes and used all his strength to look up to see a vague figure in the distance. His cloudy eyes couldn't make out what it was until it stopped right before him.
The female figure had long, brunette hair chaotically flowing in the wind, with her hazy eyes reflecting a boundless cloudy void. Her skin rotted under her torn rags, and her angelic yet husky voice was soothing, but... inhuman.
"Look at you, giving up just like that?"
Michael couldn't must any strength to open his mouth, yet he never stopped looking at his mother in the eyes.
"Is this what I died for? A useless son?"
"..."
"You know what? Just give up. The world has already abandoned you... there is no point to your suffering, it's meaningless. You know that all too well, don't you?"
"..."
"I can't believe my son, the one I sacrificed everything for, amounted to nothing but a failure and a killer."
"..."
"Everything you did led you to this point. The only person you have to blame is yourself, you deserve to endure this nightmare alone."
"..."
"What gives you the right to dream when you threw yours away? Your existence will only destroy the dreams of those around you, just like how you destroyed mine."
"..."
"How disgusting, fighting to survive when you know you'll only end up being alone. I feel sick just looking at you."
Michael calmly lowered his head and spoke in a rough voice carrying a hint of subdued mirth.
"You know..."
Michael struggled to crawl forward and lifted his exhausted body off the ground, coughing up blood that eventually flowed back to him.
"...It's funny you say that..."
He glared back up at his mother, his emerald eyes contrasting the white veil with a fierce scowl.
"...Because my mother can't see."
Michael got on his knees and staggered onto his legs. After a few moments of resisting against the violent winds, he stood up straight on his numbed feet and mustered all his remaining strength to take a single step.
"You're not her."
He took another step.
"You're not real."
And another.
"You're just my imagination."
Passing his mother, Michael continued trudging through the deep snow, ignoring her constant whispers that seemed to silence the howling winds. It was strange, he knew it wasn't really her because she was dead. Yet, with every word she spoke, it hurt him more and more. She wasn't real, but her words could've been.
Michael knew his mother well and felt she would never say those things, but did he know her completely? Just like how she didn't know all of him?
What was he really imagining, and why? Was it because of the blizzard? Why was she saying those words?
Even after regaining some of his focus and determination, thinking was still laborious and difficult, so he couldn't ponder these questions too much. That might have been for the best.
Michael steadily wandered through the barren landscape, fighting against the violent winds of the unyielding blizzard. He pushed through the nightmare, ignoring the insidious illusion following him and plaguing his thoughts.
'Just... a little bit more.'
=====
Michael forgot how long he had been wandering in this endless hell for. Was it a mere couple minutes? Hours? Days? The night seemed eternal, never ending. The moon was somewhere above him, looking down on him beyond the blizzard, if there even was a sky to begin with.
In the end, after however long he roamed in silence, biting his lips to deal with the pain and cold, his determination wasn't for naught.
He noticed a vague silhouette of elevated land beyond the curtain of white. Upon closer inspection, he discerned an opening to a cave tunnel, causing his heartbeat to involuntarily accelerate in excitement and relief.
Sluggishly moving his frozen muscles and aching bones, Michael approached the cave in silent anticipation. For the first time in what felt like hours, he no longer had to resist against the unyielding wind pushing him off his feet.
As he stepped out the snowy veil and entered a boundless void of darkness, Michael instantly collapsed onto the rocky ground enveloped in loose snow.
After a few moments of respite, he begrudgingly lifted himself off the ground and sat against the cave's walls riddled with jagged edges and cracks. He tucked his shaking knees under the fur coat and cuddled himself for warmth.
'I did it... I really did it.'
Now that his body warmed up and was no longer numb from the freezing cold, the incomprehensible pain only worsened. He tightly grabbed his stomach and mouth once his mind completely comprehended what was inside it. He ate so much rotten guts, and drank so much vile blood. Not only was his body stained with blood not his, undoubtedly, his insides were too.
Michael subdued his cries and attempted to distract himself with the surroundings
The tunnel he found himself in was not too big, mostly filled with various rock formations and loose snow on the floor. The cave gradually descended deep into the ground from the looks of it, creating an abyssal void emitting an eerie chill different from the blizzard. It felt almost ethereal in nature, as if it were a portal to another kind of hell.
Michael was absolutely exhausted and only wanted to sleep. He had no idea how to make a campfire to combat the cold, so his only choice was to rest on the rigid floor tightly wrapped with the gross fur.
He was about to do just that until he heard an frightening roar deep within the tunnel, shrouded in treacherous shadows. Michael instantly shuffled onto his feet as ethereal sparks converged in his hand forming a crude dagger carved from bone.
Michael stared into the abyss, waiting for something, anything, to reveal itself. He didn't have to wait long for the abyss to stare back.
Loud footsteps shook the cave, causing dust and loose rock to fall on Michael as he tightened his grip, facing the beastly growls slowly approaching him. Emerged from the wicked darkness was a hulking nightmare creature resembling a bear, covered in impenetrable brown fur stained with filthy blood. The claws on the gigantic paws were easily the size of Michael's forearms, and the serrated fangs hanging from its maw were larger than his legs.
Michael's knees buckled and his vision grew incomparably dizzy at just the mere sight, and yet his grip onto his dagger only tightened further.
He may have been nervous, scared, frightened, or every possible word in the human language to describe absolute fear and dread, but he was confident in his survival. Since he first stepped foot in this hell, he hung on by the skin of his teeth. The nightmare creature before him may have been larger than anything he had faced yet, more fearsome, more vile, but that was also it's weakness.
'I'll win. If it's larger, then that just means it's slowe-'
Michael lost the capability to think when he flew across the cave and collided with the walls, too fast to even comprehend what happened.
An agonizing pain permeated throughout his whole body, something he had never felt before.
It was nothing.
Most of his bones and muscles were broken in an instant, leaving his body horribly mangled and shattered. His body slid down the cracked wall and landed in a pool of his blood dyed onto the snow, utterly incapacitated.
Michael's head fell into the snow, barely clinging to his body by a thread of flesh. His neck was almost totally severed, revealing his spine and releasing so much blood. He faced the dark abyss, his face dull and still like a corpse. His emerald eyes that once radiated so much warmth and love, was no more, staring at the nightmare creature leisurely approaching.
Beyond the approaching beast was an illusive phantom shrouded in an unintelligible blur. Unknowingly, his eyes twitched to focus on the wraith, and even though it was so far away, standing on the boundary of light and dark, Michael felt a long forgotten sense envelop his body.
As if it were a nexus of warmth, the tenderness embraced his mangled body, slowly wrapping him like a blanket until it touched his face and softly caressed his cheeks. It was a familiar affection, one he craved to feel once again.
Frosty tears streamed onto the snow once a gentle, angelic voice whispered into his ear.
"It pains me to see you cold, darling."
The nightmare creature finally carried its burdensome body to Michael, an abnormal amount of blood pooling beneath its paws. The beast opened its horrendous maws and latched onto the fallen prey, greedily gulping blood and feasting on flesh like it had just woken up from a long slumber. A revolting smell permeated the cave, carrying the stench of blood stained with a filthy source.
It quickly repelled in disgust at the taste, but it was already too late. A river of blood viciously streamed into its body and contorted the beast, no better than a puppet connected to strings. The nightmare creature unwillingly walked to Michael, stumbling and slipping on crimson soaked snow.
It stood before Michael's opened mouth and vomited, releasing all of Michael's blood and guts, including its own.
After a few moments, Michael felt the sense of his body painfully repairing, mending torn flesh and shattered bones. If he had vocal chords at this moment, his screams would've overpowered the raging blizzard.
It didn't take long for Michael to be on his own two feet again. In fact, it took surprisingly a short amount of time, but he couldn't care less, if he was even capable of caring about anything.
Michael limped to the beast wriggling in agony. For some reason, the gruesome sight gave him so much... glee. Despite the unimaginable pain coursing through him, he couldn't help but wickedly smile in eerie silence.
He latched his hands onto the squirming creature's head and willed his crude dagger to take shape from ethereal sparks, casting faint light against the cave and causing the treacherous shadows to dance.
'I'll give you a tune to dance to.'
Michael raised his hand gripping the dagger and stabbed with all his strength, but it barely left a scratch.
So he did it again.
And again.
And again...
[You have slain a Fallen Beast: Cave Guardian.]
[You have received a new memory: Sweet Nectar.]
Michael knelt down and opened his mouth.
[Your blood grows thicker.]
"Please find me, darling. It's so cold without you."