5. LET IT OUT
I woke up shivering in my own sweat.
As my consciousness fully returned, I was met with pain, coursing like a current through my entire body.
My head lolled to the side as I surveyed my state of being through the haziness in my head. I was propped up on the floor against the wall, chained where I had previously been before they’d brought in the wooden table and . . . the iron nails.
I groaned, slowly becoming aware of each puncture and its location.
My pants were soaked again from the wet floors, and iron nails maimed both my thighs.
My arms hung limp at my sides, a plethora of nails sticking out at different angles in each one.
It looked like Ramil had added a few more after I passed out, for good fucking measure.
I tried to lift my right arm, but the moment my muscles flexed, the pain threatened to pull me into darkness again, and colors danced across my vision.
Fuck.
The table had been removed from the cell, and the air was clear, which meant the poison had long since faded, and it was probably time for whatever infliction Ramil’s cronies wanted to deal out next.
I expected them to show up with tools to slowly pull the nails from me, but when two of them entered my cell empty-handed, I knew something was off.
There were no weapons. No bowls of smoke.
Instead, a male with a ruddy face and a poor excuse of a red beard smirked at me from the doorway while the other approached with a clenched fist.
I anticipated the punch and let my jaw slacken, ready to take the hit, but instead of laying his fist into me, he crouched before me and said, “Lyceius sends his regards.” With his words, he opened his fist and thrust a handful of dust in my face.
The glittering particles lingered in the air around me, forcing me to inhale them into my lungs.
Once I did, everything went terribly wrong.
It was a hallucinogen, and it plucked my worst memories from where they were buried deep within me, and sent them dancing to the forefront of my mind in a parade of warped horrors.
I coughed and thrashed but the toxin was already taking root.
Panic rushed through me, as what I had fought for so long to suppress—what had taken me years to master—washed back over me like a rising tide.
Trapped in my own mind, drowning in memories of death and destruction, I was thrust into the mud as the bodies of those I knew and fought beside fell around me as corpses—some bloodied, some battered and bruised, some sliced apart or burned beyond recognition.
Each lifeless face had its eyes fixed on me.
A particular male fell to his knees before me, begging forgiveness for failing me. The spear that had punctured through his chest had torn through his heart. I tried to muster up my power, but it fizzled out into nothing. I wanted to give him a quick death and end his suffering, but I couldn’t.
To my left, a creature ran at me with its weapon raised.
I had no weapon of my own to meet it, so my power lashed out.
Just before it made contact, the creature morphed into Aremis, and my shadowfire was moving too quickly for me to stop.
It blew through his chest, skewering him to a halt.
Blood spluttered from his mouth as he tried to say something.
Shadows wafted through the hole where his heart had been, and I stood there, mouth gaping at his fatal wound.
Next to me, my father appeared, yelling, “You’ve killed us! You’ve killed us all!”
When I met his eyes, the image of him warped into Roirdan, and he was clutching a knife that had been buried in his gut as he choked out, “Brother, what have you done?”
The pleas of a thousand dying soldiers rose and rang in my ears—agonizing death cries filled with despair, from males and females who would never see their loved ones again. And among the horrifying chorus, the shrieks of wild, sinister creatures sliced through the air, taunting me.
I tried to wake up, tried to bring myself back to reality and out of this nightmare, but I was trapped.
A gritty voice slithered into my head, sounding both male and female, haunting in its cadence. It could never really be used for good, could it?
A second whisper skittered past like a fleeting soul, hissing, Could it?!
It begs to be let out, the voice said. Let it out, Dark One.
Stop it! I shouted in my mind.
Let it OUT!
I tried to shield my mind, to make the visions stop, to silence the voice, but I failed. It struck at my very essence like a viper. I felt the bite of its bitterness as my mind warred with itself over who I was, what I had done, and what I was truly scared of.
All those years of training, suppressing, fighting back the urge that crawled within my veins, it all felt like it was going to suddenly snap free.
The mud began moving beneath me, and I began sinking.
Then, standing before me, was Syros, The Adorner.
He raised his hands above his head to bestow my shroud.
His face was lined with pity and regret as bloody tears streaked from his eyes.
When he opened his mouth to speak the ritual words, all I heard were the bellowing howls of the dying along with their spluttering last breaths as his lips moved.
The shroud fell heavy on my shoulders, like a lead-weighted pauldron. What was supposed to be a gift felt like a burden, and the weight of it only made me sink faster, until I was clawing at the thick mud that threatened to swallow me whole.
With one final breath, I cried out for someone—anyone—to help me, but the mud washed over my eyes, and I sank into a cold, dark abyss.