Chapter 266 - Broken (1/2)

Li stepped back as he felt the cloying darkness of the broken dwarven civilization return around him. He blinked his eyes. The change was intensely jarring. This throne room, this broken space filled with broken things and a broken man, was once something that hummed and whirred with life and magic and light.

He felt Tia squeeze his hand as she too returned to the world from within Tyr's heart, finding the shift just as jarring. Feeling her hand returned Li fully to his senses – he had to be strong, unaffected like an oak in the wind for her, after all.

He stepped in front of Tia while keeping hold of her hand, letting her have some comfort as she adjusted. The shift was jarring not only purely from a visual aspect, but also emotionally and spiritually. Diving into hearts as deeply as Tia did was something far more intimate than any kind of artificial dive Li had experienced in virtual reality or even when he saw into his head priest Ivo's past.

Artificial reality made him know that he was in something fake. A game. And in Ivo's case, Li felt more like an outward spectator looking into something else, something that was not his. But in Tia's case, her soul essentially resonated on the same frequency with whoever she was diving into, and that meant when she peered into their memories, she felt everything.

All the senses. All the emotions. All of it.

And Li could tell that the emotions he felt were not exactly pleasant. An overwhelming sense of anxiety. Nervousness. Fear. A need to suppress those emotions, only for that whole bottling process to keep those negative emotions festering.

Then despair. Despair so thick and dark that it was many shades darker than the ruins around him.

”Tyr,” said Li finally, his voice projecting loud and clear through the broken throne room. ”I know you can hear me. I know you are still in there.”

Tyr lifted his helmed head from his knees, peering the dark spot where his eyes should have been at to Li.

”You have drawn me from my slumber,” said Tyr. ”I know you have seen within my soul. But I have nothing to give you. Nothing to talk to you about. I am nothing.”

”The great king Tyr speaks once more,” said Asala quietly, more to herself than anyone else. She scribbled on her tablet, awed that she was in the presence of living history.

”Great?” Tyr's voice wavered and echoed in entirely unnatural way, as if there was a second, more guttural voice underlining his own. He laughed dejectedly, as if the mere mention of the word 'great' was so offensive as to elicit nothing but snorting scorn from him.

”You were great. That is undeniable,” said Li. ”All your people believed in you.”

Tyr shuddered. ”They believed in a lie. The lie that was me. The lie that I was anything but worthless. And now, that lie has killed them.”

”This darkness…” Li waved his hand around to the immense mass of black slime, to the huge complex of tendrils that pulsated all throughout the dwarven city. ”Was it this that ended them?”

”No, it was me,” said Tyr, shaking his head. ”It was me. My failure. My lack of ability and worth. They said I was worthy of the ritual, but no, I was not, and now, everyone is fallen.”

”Hm.” Li looked to Tyr, at the huge dwarf's motionless, listless form, and he knew that the dwarven king was broken beyond repair. The kind of depressive depth that was nigh impossible to crawl out of, and he could not blame the monarch, for after all, that depth was carved by the life of his entire kingdom, all that he had known and loved.

But at the same time, Li needed to know if the black slime – the reason he came down here in the first place – was under control.