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The pressure on her heart was almost too much for her to bear. Gasping for the air her lungs no longer could reach, she stood awkwardly, as though suddenly frozen solid in the embrace of an inexplicable terror. She stood and rattled, unaware of her surroundings, while feeling as though her entire body was being torn apart by a tremendous force. A force so great, that it were capable of shredding up the fabric of Life itself. Her Master, she knew, had once again come to speak with her.
Shapes and colors blurred before her quivering eyes, until the world around her was naught but misty monochromes and depth of blackest black, from which a glacial gloom spilled unrelentlessly so as to extinguish any spark of life remaining in its path. Even though she had already died a very long time ago, she still did vividly suffer from the searing pain of her Master's all-consuming presence, and the piercing sting of red-hot needles stabbing her entire body as He spoke to her very essence.
Now is the time, the repressive silence whispered to her captive soul,
release mine, release mine.
She choked on the air she no longer breathed, feeling as though every bone in her body were being violently crushed. The force of her Master commands was squeezing every ounce of life out of her body, until the world itself stood still like a rusted clock. Everything went black, and in the midst of that timeless moment she was certain she had died.
* * *
Colors sprang back to life. Dark wooden textures stared back at her for long stretches of time, impassive and uncaring. All of a sudden, she blinked and realized she was staring up at a ceiling, yet she did not remember why, nor how she had gotten here. She kept staring at it, as though that was the most natural thing in the world to be doing at this point. Slowly the memories of the past few minutes returned to her in vivid shades of grey. 'Release mine', her soul remembered, 'release mine' He had said to her. Release mine... her brow crinkled into a subtle frown. She had no choice but to obey.
After a moment longer of unpleasant contemplation, she finally picked herself up from the hallway floor. She quickly scrutinized her surroundings and, noticing that no one had seen what had just occurred, she marched off towards her objective's room.
* * *
When she opened the door, she was greeted by a warm darkness. She looked around carefully, her surhuman eyesight piercing through the veil of darkness as though it did not even exist. Ignoring the lump hiding in the darkest corner of the room, she went and opened wide the curtains so to reveal the bright light shining down from magnificently clear blue skies. A perfect day, according to Living standards. She glanced down at the hustle and bustle of the city streets, rife with men, women and children of all ages going about their daily, futile routines. Ignorant. Worthless...
A loud groan brought her mind back into the room. She glanced over her shoulder at the groaning lump, the adolescent elven boy huddled up on the bed furthest away from any light source. He groaned again, and she understood the message.
"If you want me to shut the curtains," she announced in a monotone, "you will have to speak up and ask me." She waited for an answer, and after a long silence, she decided to partially shut the curtains and return some darkness to the room.
"I thought you feared the darkness," she added after a moment of scrutiny, "so why would you shut the curtains ?" He answered with a groan. Suddenly, she comprehended.
"The fire ?", she asked him with the slightest hint of concern in her voice. He groaned, and replied in a small hoarse voice, "... yeah."
Nothing more needed said. She went and sat beside him, and she pulled him into the icy warmth of her embrace with the care of a wise mother. His oddly enlongated arms were quick to consctrict her, yet she paid no heed to their tightness. Instead, she held him closer and stroked her fingers through his hair, for no reason she could think of. With time, these few years during which she had learned to know and understand him, she had begun to display odd traits of behaviour that were not befitting of her status. She, the shadow of a woman once human and alive, serving a power greater than the world itself, exhibited reactions that the Living called 'signs of affection'. Yet she knew not the meaning of love, nor what it meant to feel. Why, then, did her undead heart feel dislike at seeing this child ache, so much so that it became more important to try and comfort him, rather than to fulfill her Master's mission ? She did not understand. And little did it really matter.
She held the boy close to herself. Her mind emptied of all thoughts, of all light, and became as a deep abyss. From the core of her soul emerged the power granted to her by her Master, the power of the Spirit Realm itself. Unseeable by the eye of the Living, misty tendrils emerged from it and tangled themselves about the white intensity of the boy's soul. It was then that she begun to drain him of the fiery plague that were his own powers, as she had done so many times before.
Images flashed before her closed eyes, as the essence of Life pervading his senses surged into her own body. Her hands gripped the boy tightly, as her mind showed her the memories of the life she had once known. Memories of a child staring up at her with fear and utter loathing. Memories of a one-armed woman and her warhammer, blurred and blended with the sight of splattered blood on an up-close wall. Memories, drowned by grey darkness, burned to life by the power of the Demon she held close to herself. Fire, flames of Life and emotions she no longer knew, consuming and corrupting her Unlife. Burning pain, fire, red light scorching her closed eyes. She held on to him until the pain became too intense, and screamed. Screamed the overwhelming pain out of her body and soul. Screamed, until her lungs no longer could.
Silence was breached by her breathless gasping. Slowly, she regained a sense of awareness of her surroundings, as the flames of hell had ceased to burn her alive. Her heart, filled with emotions she no longer knew how to name, pounded ruthlessly against the depths of her chest. Every ounce of her body ached with a sensation of overexertion. And, in her arms, the boy now peacefully slept. She rested her face against his head and let out a quiet scream, stifled by his thick white hair, and held him for a while longer before lowering him onto the bed. Even then she stared at him, watched the calmness of his traits, and stroked his cheek like loving parents do, though she did not understand why.
She eventually got herself up on wobbly legs, and strained her complaining muscles into walking over to the table where some of their belongings had been sprawled about rather carelessly. She moved aside the remnants of an earlier lunch and a couple of books, uncovering a map pinned to the table by a small dagger. Her hand immediately grasped its hilt, but her eyes uncontrollably strayed towards the area marked down by its blade: a small town by the name of Desri. A small town of elves, where a couple of the Dead Goddess's avatars had been spotted. She knew what had to be done, yet her hand did not comply with her brain's orders. She could not remove the dagger from its resting place, despite her Master's clear orders. She could not...—
But she had to. She had no choice. Harnessing the strength of his fiery rage burning in her veins, she yanked out the dagger from the table, and strode back over to the sleeping boy. She gazed down at him with anger and regret flitting through her purple eyes, and held the dagger aloft.
"... I'm sorry", she breathed to him, before plunging the dagger's blade deeply into his chest, deeply through his beating heart.
* * *
A loud, shrill screech soon filled the entire room. The boy's eyes had darted open, his back arched and contorted painfully. All color begun to drain away from his golden-brown skin, turning it ashen-colored. His large hands gripped the dagger firmly, and pushed it further into his own chest while pallid strips of melted skin enclosed the blade securely. Bones snapped and cracked while his skin re-adjusted to the mutation of his skeleton, and the nauseating scent of rotten flesh pervaded the air. Soon, there no longer lied a skinny elven boy upon the blood-stained bed, but a large humanoid creature screeching into the shadows through sharp pointed teeth. It screeched, screeched as though in agony as it teared its own skin to shreds with large clawed fingernails. It screeched and snapped its head towards its aggressor, glaring at her with grey eyes overflowing with unbridled rage. She had no time to avoid its attack: the creature was quick to roll itself off the bed into an almost cat-like position and swipe at her legs, tripping her up in the process. She only had time to cover up her face with her arms, and expect the worst.
Yet nothing happened. The creature did not attack. She eventually risked taking a peek at the creature, and discovered it frozen in place, blankly staring in her direction as though seeing a sight more frightful than itself. It let out quiet, rasping breaths, which soon turned into a strident, lasting screech as it coiled into itself, claws scraping at the floorboards. The creature screeched more and more, and more and more did it sound like a yelping plea. It screeched and screeched, louder and louder, until it suddenly fell silent and immobile. She dared not speak nor move, merely stared at the creature as it rose awkwardly onto its feet, as though it had never stood on its own legs before. The creature no longer paid heed to her, finding its own arms far more interesting and worthy of thorough investigation.
Before long the creature disappeared into grey mist, but not before she had a chance to glimpse its eyes. Only then did she understand what had just occurred. But she refused to believe it. No, she could not believe.
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