Chapter 70 Elena
ELENA
What if the three goddesses were to become one? Who then remains the most monstrous? The one who folds quickly, or the one who withstands the longest?
—from A Critique of the Ancient Gods (note: debunked by historians)
Cold in the shape of a beast sank its teeth into her flesh, spearing her bones, snapping her veins, flooding her with agony.
Elena screamed.
It was as if she had been submerged underwater and set afire. She was only dimly aware of the mountain shaking horribly as Samson gripped her face, his nails cutting into her skin.
A deep crack echoed through the chamber. It sounded like a laugh, like a memory. Her Agni screeched, twisting, and Elena felt as if every cell within her body had been set ablaze twice over.
She could only clutch Samson.
She could only remember the earnest passion in his voice as he had grasped her face and asked her to trust him.
She could only give, because she had never learned to stop.
Her Agni surged forward at his call, and she felt the furious heat of his Agni swallow her own, growing in size, in strength.
Her vision split.
Elena saw two things at once.
She saw herself falling, her chakras blazing with the ferocity of a dying star, her Agni molten and vicious like the magma beneath the earth.
She saw Samson kneeling before a dead snake that was full of silver and shadows, his chakras a beautiful, horrid blue, like the deepest of oceans, the worst of terrors.
He said something. A word she knew, from a lifetime ago. A word that was both a promise and a curse, the beginning of her misery, and the end of it all.
Agneepath.
To her horror, the dead snake rose.
And it spoke with the voice of Yassen Knight.
“You stupid, beautiful idiots,” it began.