14. Trespass #2
What Aeden didn’t expect was the high-pitched noise that burst into focus inside his head, followed by a pressure.
It was enough to cause his eyes to water, and Aeden wondered what was going on.
The pain in his stomach intensified as the high-pitched noise became louder and louder.
Aeden clasped his hands to either side of his head to try and drown it out.
It was all in vain, however, as the sound wasn’t auditory, it seemed.
If it was a true sound, it would have echoed around the cave like Aeden’s cries had.
No, this sound was more focused. Either way, he wanted it to stop.
He sank to his knees and writhed around, tears streaming down his face.
The noise continued until he heard something else: chirp-like chittering. That’s when he realised what the noise was: it was a high-pitched noise of an Aer-Kin.
A hatchling.
Aeden worried that if it carried on, his eyes might start to bleed, or even worse his head might pop.
He slammed his eyes shut as he tried to focus his thoughts, trying his hardest to distract himself from the pain.
“ Hhhhhhhh .” It was a strange sound, but one that sounded like the forming of a word. “ Hhhhhhhe ,” it continued, softer in tone. “ Hheeeelp .” It was an almost feminine, childlike voice.
And it was inside Aeden’s head.
“How?” he said out loud, feeling as though he had lost his mind. “How can I help? I don’t know what to do.”
“ Ffffocus ,” the voice said again. It was a feminine voice, soft and scratchy, like words were new to them.
“I don’t know how to help.”
“ P-Please .” The voice was pained, and there was a tearful stammer in it.
Aeden squeezed his eyes even tighter as he tried to focus on the voice. He had no idea what he was doing, but within a moment, he felt as though he was suspended in air again, surrounded by the black void he had witnessed in his dream.
“Hello, are you here?” he called out.
There was a vivid blue light stream, but it wasn’t connected to him like before. It was crisscrossed all over the place, and the more Aeden studied it, the more he realised it was tied in a knot.
“ Please, help. I need you to break that knot. It’s strangling me .” The voice sounded like they were ready to burst into tears at any moment. The pain they were feeling must have been unbearable.
“How?” Aeden asked. As far as he could tell, he couldn’t move while in this space.
He recalled Master Ember and Master Storme’s warnings about bonding and the consequences of not being strong enough.
For a moment, he wondered if he might die, but strangely enough, he wasn’t afraid.
An overwhelming urge to protect the egg filled his very core.
He had to help the hatchling at any cost, even against his better judgement .
“ Fffocus, please, help me, I can’t hatch until ” – the voice cried out in pain, and it broke Aeden’s heart.
Reaching forward, he grabbed hold of the light stream and pulled it towards him. It straightened the stream, ironing out the kinks within it.
“ Keep going, please hurry .”
All the while the pain in Aeden’s head as well as in his stomach persisted, but he pushed through, continuing to pull on the stream as the knot got closer and closer to him.
After a few more pulls, it was close enough for him to reach the knot, and he grabbed hold of it with his right hand, pulling it towards himself.
When he got two hands on it, he realised how tight the knot was, but that didn’t stop him from starting to pull and twist at it.
Each moment hurt, like a burning, searing pain.
It felt like an animal was inside Aeden’s stomach clawing at him from within.
It was unbearable. He didn’t give up, however.
The urge to untie the knot was too strong.
He had to help whatever it was, he had to end their suffering.
When he managed to force a gap in the knot, he knew he had done it, and with a few more twists, he managed to unload the light stream and remove the knot entirely.
“ You did it! ” the voice cried with happiness.
The pain subsided almost immediately as the voice became clearer.
The light stream brightened in front of Aeden as he instinctively grabbed hold of it. The pressure in his head was building even harder, but this time, it sounded more like a heartbeat.
He let go of the light stream, and it stopped.
“Don’t let go,” the voice said, “you need to complete the bonding. ”
Aeden reached out and clutched the light stream again. The pressure and beating in his head were intense. The temptation to let go was there, but he felt as though he couldn’t. He had to hold on.
The tendril of light wrapped around his arms and started climbing up towards him, his veins glowing with a white-hot light that was as painful as it was scary. It was as though the very blood inside of him was boiling, and Aeden let out another pained cry.
“I can’t hold on,” he cried out.
Everything started to darken around him as the pain became too much to take. He blinked with tired, heavy eyes, his breathing becoming laboured until he eventually passed out.