Get Out!
I gasp as Falcen’s mental shout slams through my mind, forcibly ejecting me from the horrific vision. I stagger back, nearly tripping over my own feet before I catch myself against the rough cave wall. “What—?”
Falcen’s eyes are wild, his chest heaving with rapid breaths. He looks like a cornered animal, ready to lash out at any perceived threat—even me.
“That memory doesn’t belong to you,” he snarls.
“I didn’t—it wasn’t intentional. When I healed you, I must’ve linked us again—”
“—and in my weakened state I didn’t build enough of a mental fortress to keep you the fuck out. What did you do? How the fuck did you heal me?”
I recoil at the venom in his voice. But he’s hurt, I reason, and surprised, and very unhappy with his current circumstance of dragging me across the realm, so I give him the benefit of the doubt and lie to him, because by the look on his face, healing isn’t part of a normal Soulren’s repertoire.
“I went and found the gold powder,” I lie. “But I had to use it all in order to bring you fully back to health.”
Just as his eyes narrow and he parts his mouth, I add a distraction. “Is that what will happen to me? If I keep using my abilities, will I end up like you? Constantly starving for souls?”
A muscle twitches under Falcen’s eye, but he seems to calm down with the change in subject. “There’s no possible way you’ll end up like me.”
He sounds so certain, but it’s not exactly the reassurance I was hoping for. Fear curdles in my gut, souring the stubborn traces of desire.
Run far away from him, my little ember says before snuffing itself out.
“Hey.” Falcen’s gruff voice pulls me from the spiraling dread.
Reluctantly, I meet his gaze. In the waning light of his soul-glyphs, light that I gave him, his eyes are fathomless pools, equal parts captivating and unnerving.
“You are not me,” he says. “What I am, what I’ve done, that doesn’t have to be your fate.”
I’m not sure I’ll ever get the vision of Falcen being tortured on an altar out of my head. It will forever be seared into my mind’s eye, but I do my best to move forward, because he certainly has.
“Does your magick ever talk to you?” I ask.
Falcen looks at me askance. “What do you mean?”
I chew on my lip, debating whether to tell Falcen more about the strange presence that seems to reside within my magick. But the sheer bafflement in his expression holds me back.
“Never mind. I’m just overwhelmed, I guess. It’s a lot to take in.”
Falcen studies me for a long moment, as if he can see right through my flimsy deflection.
But his mental fortress must be back in place, prohibiting both entry and exit, because he doesn’t comment.
Instead, he gives a short nod. “Understandable. The first brush with the Void leaves a mark. And you’ve had several in a very short time period. ”
I burrow into my cloak, still caked in Falcen’s blood, remembering the icy caress of his dark magick, the seductive draw of oblivion.
“The rogue Soulen’s polluted essence was slimy and disgusting,” I say. “Like sewage. But yours was different. Cold, yes, but more like the chill of a moonless night. How do you stand it? Living with that inside you?”
Falcen looks away. “You learn to get used to it, to channel the hunger into purpose. The academy trains us to harness the craving, to use it as a weapon against the Voidspawn.”
There’s a bitter edge to his words, and I’m certain I inadvertently glimpsed the toll such “training” must take.
I think of the emotionless way he recounted being mauled, the flat affect as he spoke of having his organs regrown, the way he was so defeated on that stone slab.
Ready to be tortured. What other horrors has he endured in the name of duty?
He turns away, presenting me with the rigid line of his fully healed back. “Get some rest. We leave at first light.”
I curl up on my side, facing away from him, my body still thrumming with unfulfilled need.
Sleep seems a laughable concept at this moment.
And a long time coming.