novelraw Chapter 95: Upside-down Tree
Chapter 95: Upside-down Tree
The sound of the dark sea crushing against the plateau of the upside-down tree was oddly calming.
The moon still lingered high above. If Damon had to guess, it was in the exact same spot it had been when they first got here, although as his senses came to be, he couldn’t remember when he sat at the edge of the plateau, let alone how much time had really passed.
His cheeks were now slightly sunken, his lips dried from dehydration. And as he took a close look around himself, he slowly began to notice that his fingers had gone stiff from the cold.
"How long have I been sitting here?" he tried to murmur to himself, but only raspy sounds escaped his mouth as he tried to speak. Clearly, it was long enough to make him lose his voice.
Damon, however, didn’t focus on the raspy sound of his voice but instead dwelt on a different question. ’Where’s Nyla?’
The last thing he remembered was seeing her face right above him as he lay down after... after something he couldn’t remember. No matter how hard he pressed on that thread of thought, it unravelled into nothing.
He decided to take a look around, and when he did—
There she was.
Sitting a couple of meters away from him, her long legs dangling over the edge, while her long black hair swayed with the wind. Her brown eyes, although he couldn’t quite see them from a distance, were lost in some foreign thought or a dream. She looked like she hadn’t moved in a very long time.
With the confusion only deepening with each second, Damon activated Absolute Comprehension in a desperate attempt to understand what was going on, but when the ability activated, something unexpected happened. His mind was flooded with memories that were previously hidden.
His arrival at the plateau, the way his world suddenly spun, his dream of Ayame on the beach, followed by Nyla’s CPR on him.
As he soaked those memories in, a dreadful realisation struck him.
’Something’s affecting our minds.’
It was a terrifying thought. It wasn’t like a physical danger that they could fight, it directly affected their minds, reaching past every defence.
Damon jumped to his feet, unwilling to waste even a second more under whatever spell had been cast on them.
He looked around, trying to find the source of it, and at first, there was nothing. But as he scanned the plateau a couple more times, he caught a glimpse of something most people wouldn’t notice.
The tree roots stretching toward the dark sky were emitting some sort of tiny particles. They were smaller than dust, carrying the same silver-purple colour as the tree and the moon. From a distance, they were nearly invisible, more like a trick of the light than a real thing, but with his ability active, he could clearly see them.
His first instinct was to grab Nyla and run, but as he turned toward the dark sea, he saw more of those particles drifting above the water. Their concentration was lower there than it was near the tree roots, but it was still there, still a threat, and compared to the relative safety of the plateau, getting their minds controlled while stranded in the middle of a dark sea was a death sentence.
He gritted his teeth as he pushed the thought of escaping through the dark sea away.
His gaze then returned to Nyla.
She still hadn’t moved. Her eyes stared at the moon above with an unblinking gaze.
Damon moved quickly toward her and shook her shoulder, trying to snap her out of her daze.
’Nyla... Nyla!... Nyla!!’
It was only once he yelled her name for a third time that the girl turned toward him.
Her expression shifted almost immediately, not to confusion or surprise, but to something far worse given the situation. She smiled, a warm and easy smile that was followed by her arms wrapping around his neck.
Catching a glimpse of her brown eyes, Damon noticed a faint silver-purple hue behind them, sitting just beneath the surface
’She’s under mind control... dammit.’
He cursed inwardly, running through options and discarding them just as fast. There was no obvious counter to this. No way to physically shake it loose from her. He couldn’t exactly argue someone out of a mental imprisonment.
Then, an idea struck him.
It was a risk. He’d never used his Domain inside the rift before. He’d also never taken someone there with him, as he never had a reason to. But standing here with no other options and a silver glow creeping further into Nyla’s eyes, there was no room for hesitation.
Damon stepped toward her and grabbed her waist tightly.
"Mmmm," she made a pleased sound at his action, leaning into him without a second thought. But Damon wasn’t going for a simple hug. The moment his hands reached Nyla, he activated his Domain.
In an instant, their surroundings changed, and the two of them appeared in the middle of a castle made of black ice.
Feeling Nyla under his touch, Damon let out a relieved sigh. ’It worked.’
He watched as the sliver-purple hue behind her eyes slowly dimmed, and her eyes snapped into focus.
"Huh?" She blinked. A faint frown settled on her brow as she stared at Damon with a confused look. "What is—"
Her question was cut short as she realised his grip on her waist. Her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t move back, didn’t want to.
Damon didn’t notice her flustered expression as he focused on the matter at hand. "You’re back."
"Back?" Her brow rose. "Was I gone somewhere?" She lingered for a moment and only then began to look around. "Where are we?"
Her confusion continued for a couple more moments before she began to recall that castle from the rift she, Damon and the rest of their group went to. "Wait, isn’t that—?"
"Yes. It’s a long story, but it’s a sort of ability of mine. I’ll explain later." He brushed off the unimportant detail and quickly focused on their current situation. "The upside-down tree, do you remember anything?"
Nyla frowned and closed her eyes as she tried to remember, but no matter how hard she focused, no memories came to mind. "N-No... I don’t understand..."
"The roots are casting some sort of mind control on everything nearby," Damon quickly began to explain.