Eight #3
“Back off,” Callen snaps, stepping closer to Rask, close enough that I’m sure he can smell his rancid breath. “You don’t scare me.”
“I should,” Rask rumbles, and before I can blink, his fist comes down in a lazy arc, catching Callen square on the shoulder.
The sound is dull, like a boot striking packed earth.
Callen doesn’t crumple though—his stubbornness keeps him upright—but the force drives him to one knee.
Rask grabs him by the collar and lifts him off the floor like a sack of flour. The fabric tears at the seams.
“Enough!” I shout. My voice cracks, raw and furious, unsure who I’m even addressing.
Rask’s head swivels, his eyes finding me immediately.
“Well, look here,” he says, “the pretty one wants a piece.”
He grins, exposing broken teeth that look more like slabs of stone than bone. “Your little Shadow prince isn’t here to protect you this time.”
I want to run, to phase straight through the walls like one of the Overseers. Overseers who are suspiciously absent despite their usual penchant for conflict.
“I don’t want to fight, and I don’t need protecting,” I declare, forcing my voice to steady. “But I won’t stand by and let you hurt that girl or my friend.”
It’s a bluff. Even as the words leave my lips, doubt and fear claw at me. Maybe I do need a little protecting here.
My heart races as I face Rask. I cannot fight this man. He's twice my size—maybe more—and he has backup. All I can do is buy Callen enough time to get Morwen out of here. Whatever pain comes, I can endure it. I know how.
Atheron’s laughter echoes through the room, menacing and chaotic. “Well, this should be entertaining.”
Rask throws Callen to the ground in a heap. Mercifully, he gets up, clutching at his arm before meeting my eyes. I flick my gaze towards Morwen, hoping he understands. He moves without hesitation.
Rask flexes his hands and his knuckles pop. “You sure pretty boy? You look softer than dough.”
In comparison to him, perhaps, but I’m not made of glass. I nod anyway.
He lunges. I expect a punch, but he fakes low before ramming his massive head straight into my chest. The impact knocks the wind out of me, and my feet leave the ground before stone crashes into my back.
The world blurs and I taste iron. Rask straddles me, pinning my arms with his knees.
I’m sick of being pinned beneath stronger men.
He raises one fist, and I watch as the skin ripples and hardens, his fleshy knuckles transforming into rough, solid stone.
I catch a glimpse of Callen—he has Morwen’s arm draped over his shoulders as he takes her away.
My Mana bubbles within me, desperate for release, but I force it back down.
I cannot reveal myself here.
I force the power back into its shell and brace for pain.
Rask brings his fist down. I try to turn my head, but it’s too late. The punch connects with my nose. I see stars, then black.
I tunnel down within myself, looking for that innermost place where I can lose myself and become numb.
Somewhere in the muffled noise between punches, I see flashes of black.
A blow lands on my jaw, and I feel my teeth crack.
Everything shifts, colours drain away, so I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the world.
Sound is replaced by a slow, underwater roar as the blows continue to rain down on my head. I can feel the grotesque persistence of the Mother Shard's magic. She heals as quickly as Rask destroys. Bone knits. Teeth reform. Flesh closes just in time to split again beneath the next blow.
The pain becomes endless precisely because it means nothing.
Rask leans down, his face a blur of joy and rage that I glimpse through the crack of vision visible between my swelling and unswelling eyes.
“Is this what you wanted?” he slurs, spit landing on my face.
What cruel torture this place allows.
He smashes my face again, hard—with both fists, I think. I feel hot blood running into my eyes. A chill seeps into the air and shadows shift restlessly through my blurry vision. Consciousness slips as everything goes dark.
The last thing I hear is a gargled choking from above me. The suffocating weight pinning my body vanishes, and my arms are freed.
A shadow moves at the edge of my vision, there and gone again.
Atheron's voice slices through the haze, dripping with malice. “You will pay for this—”
But I hear no more as the world empties, receding into nothing at all.
I surface in pieces. Severed parts still yearning towards each other.
My memories float in the void, with no body to inhabit. There is the taste of blood, salt and iron, and then a faint burning feeling as though I have been set alight, though I’m too far outside myself to feel it.
A ringing starts—high, endless—a single note stretched in an infinite loop.
It is cold here. No walls. No ceiling. No floor.
Only whiteness so dense it feels difficult to breathe.
I try to pull myself together into something whole, but all that forms is a spiderweb of black cracks spreading in every direction.
I step with no feet, the fractures shimmering with impossible colour as I move, floating above and below at once. I gaze into the cracks and find a hundred reflections, each one almost recognisable, but every angle is distorted.
I want to vomit, to cry, to break.
A voice finds me before anything else does. It hisses at me, soft and languid, before rumbling and cascading into a thousand overlapping voices, ancient and terrible.
“Broken child. What are you? Why are you here?”
I do not answer.
The words echo. Broken, broken, broken.
The world shifts away, waiting for a confession I do not have.
A figure forms in the void, and it is Kael, but not entirely.
His eyes are shadow-black, his body flickering with ink and starlight, but his mouth is not his own.
It is twisted into Atheron’s sneer. He stands over me, tall and merciless.
When he speaks to me it is the voice of the Mother Shard, layered and powerful.
“Weak. Broken thing.” Kael’s twisted form fractures and reforms as Alaris, then Fenwyn, then settles on Atheron.
“How did you get here? How have you made it this far, when your light is so dim?” He leans in, his eyes pure white and terrifying.
“What strength can you offer me, broken thing? Tainted thing.”
I try to answer, to say, “I don’t know,” but the void steals my voice, swallowing every word before it surfaces.
Atheron’s face morphs into Morwen’s, but her hair is endless, and her lips are stitched shut with lines of shining, blue thread.
She raises a hand, palm open, and an orb of water forms there, swelling until it bursts and floods through me until I feel like I am drowning.
Eventually the flood recedes and I feel strangely renewed. Wiped clean.
In the fresh silence, the Mother Shard’s voice returns, colder, more bitter. Angry.
“Such a weak Champion. Why are you here?” The words echo out, multiplying until they become a harsh, cackling laugh. “All of you are inadequate. Dimming. Fading. Wrong. What must I do? My children long for me. They need me.”
I want to hide. I want to shrink until I am nothing and fall into the shadowy cracks.
“I will run dry. My Veins... they run dry.” The voice shrieks.
“Weak, weak, weak,” echoes from somewhere in the void.