Chapter 2 Eoin
EOIN
Pain is a simple fact. It informs me that the integrity of this physical form is compromised. Multiple lacerations. A compound fracture in the ulna of the left wing. Internal hemorrhaging is probable. The dark elves were…thorough.
My awareness floats in a cold, gray sea of sensation, or rather, the lack of it.
Millennia of discipline have allowed me to erect mental walls around the pain, to observe it with clinical detachment.
The dampening runes on the iron cuffs are the primary issue.
They leech my power, leaving me in this weakened, deteriorating state.
They hum with a discordant energy, an ugly stain on the silence of my mind.
Death is a logical outcome. My mission to infiltrate this stronghold and retrieve the Shadow Prism has failed. That is the only true failure. My own existence is a secondary concern. I have existed for eons. To cease is not a tragedy, it is simply an end.
A new element disrupts my assessment.
The heavy scrape of the cell door. The thud of a small body.
A new scent floods the chamber, layering over the odors of stone, damp, and my own cooling blood.
It is human. Female. The scent is composed of fear—a sharp, acrid tang—and old grime, but beneath it, there is something else.
A faint, clean hum, like the resonance of a plucked string at the edge of hearing.
My eyes remain closed. I take stock of her presence without movement.
Her breathing is shallow, ragged. The rhythm of her heart is elevated.
She is small, her weight barely registering on the stone floor.
Insignificant. Another short-lived, fragile creature the elves use and discard.
They have likely thrown her in here to die with me, a final, petty cruelty.
I perceive her with my other senses. A slight form, malnourished.
A body full of old injuries etched into her skin—scars that speak of a life of sustained brutality.
There is a faint, almost imperceptible glow to her, a pale golden light visible only to a Vrakken’s eyes, clinging to her skin like dust motes in a sunbeam.
This must be the source of the hum. Some low-level, latent magical ability.
Purna, perhaps. It is rare in humans. A curiosity, but one that will expire with her.
More time passes. The gray sea of my awareness begins to darken at the edges. My body is failing.
The door scrapes open again. The scent of an Aethel guard, sharp and metallic, cuts through the gloom. He carries a torch, and the sudden light is a blow against my eyelids. I do not flinch. Stillness is my armor.
The guard hauls the female to her feet. She makes a small sound, a pained gasp. He is a large example of his kind, his movements efficient and brutal. He produces a knife. He does not approach me. Instead, he slices a shallow cut along the female’s forearm.
Her blood wells up, a dark ruby line against her pale skin. It smells… different. The faint hum intensifies, a resonant chord that vibrates in the marrow of my bones.
The guard drags her towards me, forcing her bleeding arm downwards. I understand his purpose. A crude experiment. He intends to see if her life force can stabilize my own. It is a futile gesture. I have fed from a thousand vessels. None have ever mattered.
He presses her arm against my lips. The coppery scent of human blood is familiar, uninteresting. I have no need to resist; my body has already begun the final process of shutting down.
A single drop touches my tongue.
Cataclysm.
The universe collapses into a single point of blinding, white-hot fire.
It is not healing. It is an annihilation of everything I am.
The cold, silent void of my apathy—the core of my being, the discipline of ten thousand years—is shattered, flooded with a roaring, violent torrent of pure sensation.
Heat. Power. A feeling so intense, so overwhelming, it borders on agony.
My form convulses, a primal, involuntary reaction to a sensation it cannot comprehend.
The gray sea of my awareness is burned away by a sun going nova inside my skull.
The pain from my wounds vanishes, not healed, but consumed by this new, terrifying fire.
It is life, raw and undiluted, a poison to the perfect, empty stillness I have cultivated for centuries.
More.
The thought is not my own. It is a guttural, instinctual command from a piece of me I did not know existed. It is the roar of an addict’s craving, instantaneous and absolute.
The surge of raw power that floods my veins is unlike anything I have ever known.
It is not the clean, cold energy of the Vrakken; it is wild, chaotic, pure Purna magic.
It crashes against the dampening rune on my right wrist. The iron screams, glowing cherry-red.
With a sound like a thunderclap, the cuff shatters, spraying molten shards across the stone floor.
The guard releases the female, his face a mask of disbelief and terror.
He scrambles backward, his elven composure completely gone.
He understands, on a primal level, that he has just uncaged something far worse than the dying creature he was tormenting.
He flees, slamming the heavy door shut and ramming the bolt home, his panicked footsteps echoing down the corridor.
He has locked the source in here with me.
The silence that descends is absolute. The fire in my veins does not recede.
It burns hotter, demanding fuel. My senses, amplified a thousand-fold, are focused entirely on the female.
She is pressed against the far wall, her thin body trembling, her wide, terrified eyes fixed on me.
The scent of her blood is no longer just a scent; it is a siren’s call, a promise of another taste of that agonizing, beautiful fire.
I am on my feet. I have no memory of the act of rising.
The movement was fluid, silent, devoid of the weakness that had chained me to the floor moments before.
The void inside me is gone, replaced instead by a roaring, cavernous hunger.
My wounds are closing, my bones are mending, all powered by that single, stolen drop.
I look at her. The insignificant human female. The tool the elves had discarded.
She is no longer insignificant. No longer a tool.
She is the source. And I will have more.