The room was dark, crowded with a thousand sweating bodies. Smoke and flame choked the air. She felt the rough rope around each wrist and ankle, digging deep gashes into her skin. Her back was arched painfully. Slowly lashes opened, sweat and smoke stinging her eyes.
She looked down, and saw her shimmering flesh, slick with blood of a multitude of claw marks, running the full course of her naked body. Fear swirled around her like a beast, cutting into her very soul, sharper than any knife. She coughed, rattling her bonds, the movement sending lightning down her spine. "No." She whispered, looking through the assembly in front of her. The dark hooded figures, chanting... but she couldn't understand their words. The choir of voices grew until she was enveloped in a booming symphony, so loud she could hear nothing else. It swelled in great crests until she feared she would go mad. She had not realized she had been screaming until the voices, stopped as one, and only hers remained, echoing off the stone walls.
She screamed until her voice grew hoarse and raw. It was then that the sea of men started to part, in silent steps. Her eyes widened with fear as she saw another hooded figure float down the newly cleared path of men. His face shadowed by his hood, but his emerald eyes bore holes into her very flesh. His gaze lingered, hungrily over her thighs. In his hand rested a long white-hot branding iron. "Please don't." She whispered, and the men all around her laughed in monstrous cruelty. The man came, chanting words she could not understand in a soft whisper. Brand was handed to another so that he might hold her chin steady with one hand, the other clawing it's way painfully down her neck until he reached her heart, leaving pinprick trails of blood in his wake. Fingernails dug deep into her chest, feeling him splinter her ribs as probing fingers made their way straight into her heart. Blood trickled from the wound and pooled on the ground around her bound feet. "Whore." Was all he said, and his voice was so familiar she felt her pulsing chambers shatter in his grasp. The man released her chin and pulled down his hood, and in horrified shock, she looked deep into her husbands burning eyes.
She had no time to react, he pulled the broken shards of her heart from her chest. Long, dangerous points of red glass, and fed them to her, one by one. There they piled, in her mouth, cutting deep gashes into her tongue. Lips painted bloody red and dripping. The blue of her eyes slid down her cheeks tinting her tears with sky hues. The brand was back in Raij’s hand his dark emeralds dancing with merriment, with utter satisfaction. Her skin screamed along with the crashing thunder from the booming storm that raged outside, the white hot steel pressing deep into the hole in her chest. Smoke billowed thick and black, curling around her body, engulfing her completely.
And in this darkness, she heard a sound, so distant at first, but growing in intensity until the very ground shook with it’s fervor, and the smoke around her cleared. The hooded men, were falling from the sky in bloodied pieces. A million hands fell armless around her. A million heads rolling across the floor. The sky opened up to rain big crimson drops. And there he was, standing with broken, misshapen fingers, smiling so sweetly at her, arms spread wide. She swallowed, and her heart shards slid down her throat. She smiled at him flashing red and ivory. “Ys.” She said quietly.
Her bindings caught flame, yet her skin did not burn, and he lowered her slowly to her feet. Blue eyes nearly devoid of color, looking more like icy chasms , landed on a cowering figure in the corner. Blood slicked body gravitated toward him, her movements predatory. She crouched low, cupping her husbands chin in her hands. His mouth opened and he vomited up the red glass shards of his heart. “Goodbye love.” She whispered, feeling Ys’ arms sliding around her waist. Her palms burned but for an instant, before Raij’s head went up in flames.
And Synaria woke up screaming.
Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:53 pm