Chapter 35: Intermezzo
The darkness came and went for Simon, though it was impossible to judge exactly how long each cycle took. Still, each time his view of the desert was replaced by dirt and shadows, it was utterly terrifying.
He would be plunged into absolute darkness for some indefinite period, with nothing but a dull ache for company. Then he would suddenly be allowed to see the wider world above the sand for days or weeks until the next storm rearranged things again.
The first time he got his tedious desert view back after an eternity of darkness, he thanked a god he didn’t even believe in for saving him. He would have wept tears of joy if he’d been capable of such a thing.
He couldn’t, though.
So, instead, he burned every one of the stars in the night sky into his mind, trying to make sure he never took them for granted again. But no matter how hard he tried to remember them and their exact positions, they faded after weeks or months of being alone in the dark.
Sometimes things changed or stood out, but in the months and years that must have followed his petrification, boredom, and monotony were the rule, not the exception. Sometimes the basilisk would return and eat more of his body, filling Simon with hope.
It never entirely managed to get to his head, though, and so in the end, he continued to exist as a disembodied mind as he watched the world go by. Twice he saw merchant caravans in the distance, though they gave this place a wide berth for obvious reasons. Once, he saw a group of warriors entering the ruins to slay the thing that had done this to him.
However, Simon couldn’t shout a warning or even see if they were successful. Because of the way he was pointing, he would live forever in mystery. Part of him hoped they had failed because he would only get out of this if the thing finally finished eating him. Most of him wanted vengeance more, though, and he hoped the monster was just as dead as its victims that were scattered around this city, getting its bones bleached by the hot desert sun for the rest of eternity.
All the dark periods he was forced to endure seemed endless at the time, but eventually they ended. Then, one day Simon was submerged so far underneath the suffocating sand that he never reemerged. Intellectually he knew that a few weeks could feel like an eternity, but there was something altogether different about the way he felt after being lost in the void for months or years. His thought process started to dull as he could feel his mind slowly grinding to a halt.