Glory
Elias was pulled awake with the same unnatural jerk as before. He gasped like a fish, face cold and wet against the ground.
He lifted his cheek from the stickiness with confusion. He could taste his own blood, but it was saltier than before. His blood tended toward sweetness at the best of times, but this was like the sea.
Elias struggled to sit, then vertigo hit him in a wave and he leaned back over to throw up. He reached to his head and felt where it ached. The skin was very tender but it wasn’t bleeding.
He stared at the blood as his hand roved his body, searching for the origin point. His shoulder hurt quite a bit but with an ache like the injury had happened weeks ago.
After ages of running his hands over his body, his veins chilled to ice, Elias reached, shaking, into the mess beneath him and picked up a bit of bone. A chip, curved like his skull.
He lifted the piece and, with a wave of horror, fit the fragment into the crescent that hurt. The raw skin was already closed and healing.
His eyes found the treetop, twenty hands above the ground.
Ah, then.
He could not die.
He could not escape this as any of God’s creatures could.
Victor had taken even that from him.
Elias let himself fall back into the mess of his blood, brains, and vomit. His throat was fully healed, but still he screamed silent.