W2 – 100 percent sanity- Strained Lungs

Your kin stumbles across a strange corridor of Sinweed, thick with pollen that seems to hang like a red haze in the air. It makes breathing harder and harder as they move through the path, their chest straining to keep them supplied with the oxygen they sorely need. The pollen is sickly sweet and fills the world, making their body warm and their senses hazy. It becomes tempting the further they go to simply lay down just for a time, just to rest their eyes. Do they push through, or do they stop to rest? If they stop to rest, they are beset by twisted nightmares of kin contorted out of all recognition, primal fear, and sharp bared teeth in the darkness.

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Zar hated the Haunted Maze, it happened every year and every year it was different. If he had his way he wouldn't run it, he'd leave the twisted nightmares to themselves, out of his life. But the problem was that there was a certain bravado attached to the maze itself, and he knew people would look down on him if he didn't do it. So here he was, stumbling in the dark through snarled thorns, struggling to breathe.

Finally he managed to dig his horns into a bush in his way and shove through into a clearer passage. Or well, he thought it was a clearer passage anyway. Instead it had a whole plethora of bright red fleshy petals waiting to greet him and a thick cloying cloud of pollen that seemed to hang in the air like smoke over a wildfire. He knew the danger of places like these, where the plants lined up in what looked like a very attractive sort of row. He made his way along as fast as he could, taking as few breaths as he could as he went.

It wasn't really enough though, and he could feel that creeping into his lungs, dulling his senses and slowing his pace. Just lifting his hooves became a trial and the world felt like swimming through thick, cloying water.

He wanted to sleep, but he knew he couldn't. He couldn't afford to stop, because the nightmares would come for him if he did.

He needed to keep moving, walking and walking. One hoof, then the next, then the next. It felt so far away, so very far away.

There was a thump, and he started, wondering what it could be, only to realise in a thick dizzy daze that it was the sound of his body hitting the dark dirt. Oh. He'd fallen.

And he knew the nightmares would follow.