Anya tossed and turned in her sleep. The wound on her hand burned with cold, keeping her from any true rest. Her eyes flicked back and forth behind their lids. Mumbled words spilled from her lips... "Eugen. Eugen. Eugen..."
She was standing at the door of the house, looking out over the freshly-tilled fields. Regan was standing with their son on his shoulders, pointing at something in the distance. She smiled. All was well.
But the scene began to change; the ink of the dream washed and ran and flowed away from the canvas of her mind, leaving behind raw truth. Warm spring sunlight turned to bitter, sunless winter. In moments, tangled weeds sprung up from fallow fields. Her husband paled and fell and rotted away; his yellow-white bones lay lifeless in the dirt in front of her. And Eugen... Eugen was gone.
The shadows of the dream-world grew deeper; the feeble light that filtered through the clouds above dimmed. A chill ran up her back. She knew she was not alone.
"What do you want?!" she screamed into the wind.
The answer snapped into her mind like the crack of a whip. Him.
"I am doing as you asked! Give me time!"
An image of her son appeared in her head; his face was a pale white mask, and his eyes burned black. She recoiled, fell to the ground, but the image followed her.
It is not yours to dictate terms, little leaf in the wind. You will do as I command, or your son will suffer and die.
Eugen. She was doing this for Eugen. She brought him to mind, caressed his face - his real face, not the dark caricature that was being forced upon her mind - and heard his voice. Slowly, his young, pink face replaced the one before her, and she stood from the ground and looked around. "Where are you, shadow of Ygn?" She could hear her voice quavering, but she breathed deeply and continued. "Afraid to show yourself?"
Hnnnh. There it was again, the not-quite-laugh. Amusement mingled with derision. You are a strong little one. Something flickered in the corner of her eye, and she span to face it, but there was nothing there. She heard a noise behind her, and span again to face nothing.
She realised what was was happening. She set her mind on her son, breathed deeply, and stood still, staring straight ahead.
Something moved in the corner of her eye. She did not turn. A hiss rose from her feet. She did not look down. A cold touch ran down her back. She did not even twitch.
Hnnnnnnnnnh. Enough of these petty games.
Did she hear the slightest hint of anger? She smiled. "Well? Still afraid to stand before me?"
You do not warrant an audience on your terms, little furless rodent. But even as the presence whispered harshly in her mind, tendrils of shadow arose from the ground and coiled together, twisting and contorting to form a shape.
Through dark tendrils, whipping back and forth, she saw what looked like a hooded human figure, half again as high as she was, floating above the ground. Beneath its hood writhed something darker than darkness; it hurt to look directly at it. From the hem of what looked like the figure's cloak the tendrils of darkness flowed, moving ceaselessly about, probing at everything around her. A tendril moved up to brush her cheek; she clenched her teeth, but did not move away.
"So this is what you look like?"
Look like? Tendrils flicked angrily towards her and stopped just short, as though forcibly restrained. She did not flinch. Foolish girl. I am shadow and darkness and fear made manifest, unbound by mortal form. I am the terror in the night, the shadow at the door, the-...
"Yes, yes, I think I have the general-..."
Her wound flared with pain, and she gasped. Lines of darkness whipped towards her again, but this time nothing held them back. They wrapped around her limbs and chest and pulled her into the ever-shifting mass of dark tendrils until her face was brought against the nothingness beneath the figure's hood. She tried to look away as the wrongness of the thing ate into her mind, but she could not.
Enough of your games. She tried to hold Eugen in her mind, but he slipped away and was replaced only by the all-consuming darkness. You will fulfill your promise, and perhaps your son will live.
Perhaps? "You... you said-..." she gasped.
A tendril burrowed into her hand and forced its way up her arm. I could stop your heart with the merest touch.
The cold agony of the tendril passed her elbow and continued onward. Every moment you live is a moment granted by me, and me alone.
The pain pressed up through her shoulder and into her chest. You will do as I will, and nothing more.
The tendril brushed against her heart, and she felt it clench tightly against the cold. Its beating ceased. Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh. The creature's mocking sigh echoed in her ears as darkness fell across her mind.
Anya's eyes snapped open as she awoke. She looked around as much as she could without moving. The faintest light was beginning to filter through the room's small windows.
Her whole body shaking, she rose from her bedroll. Her left arm would hardly move; it was cold to the touch.
Scraping together the embers of the night's fire, and adding the little wood they had left to the fire-pit, she nursed the warmth back into her arm and waited for the others to awake.
No comments:
Post a Comment