(THOB) Chapter 144: That'll Leave A Scar (Patreon)

Ezril frowned at thought of the infirmary. Fighting the Merdendi hadn’t been one of his brightest ideas. In fact, he was beginning to wonder what had gotten into him. He’d won the fight but it was too soon to be walking around in pain. For the rest of what was left of the day he avoided everyone else. He kept himself locked away in his room doing nothing worth remembering. The maids brought his meals as was their duty, but none ever knocked. They left his meals at his door and turned away, as if fearing what would happen should they draw his attention. He didn’t blame them, he was, it seemed, becoming a scarier person than he’d been during his last stay here.

Nightfall came with the arrival of sleep. And sleep came with the terrors that lurked at the edge of everything in the waking world. Tonight his dream was as unwelcomed as it always was and he met it without fear. Lenaria had made a point of not being in any of them and the power of disappointment outweighed the nature of fear.

Tonight he found himself in a cave. It was larger than anything he’d ever known. It was easily the size of multiple villages, and yet he felt he could traverse every corner of it if he so wished. However, there was a corner his mind refused to approach. There, hidden in a darkness brighter than every other in the cave was a disturbance, a thing that was not meant to be there.

Against his mind’s insistence, against the voice in his head telling him to stay away, Ezril approached it. He was done being terrified of the things that lurked in his dreams. There would be no shattered throne tonight. There would be no Sunders waiting for him with the sweet promises of things that a man should not be promised. This he knew with the certainty of a man watching the night skies, knowing the sun would rise with the morning. Besides, the throne was never in a cave. This dream was not one designed to haunt him. Still, it did not eliminate the fact that it could’ve been designed to scare him. There’s never been any harm in fear, he thought, not anymore.

He took a step forward and paused. He was wrong, there might be no harm in fear anymore but it still commanded him, as it had done all those years ago in the seminary. He frowned and willed his legs to move and they disobeyed him, rebelled against his every will. Whatever was hidden in the corner was something he was not ready for, something he did not have the power to meet. The knowledge only served to spur him on. He’d stood before the shattered throne and won. He’d stood before it and scolded it as if it was a child. This was nothing in the sight of the throne. This was nothing in the presence of the fear he’d faced down so many times.

With the anger that bubbled in him constantly he moved his legs, and his feet shuffled forward slowly. He’d intended to make one long stride but was content to settle for a simple shuffle. He’d shuffle his way to the corner if he had to.

It took him a while, but before too long he was where he wanted to be. The corner was everything he’d expected it to be. The darkness was wrong, as if tainted by something trying to be bright that wasn’t light. It was what he expected of blood if it was dirty; reddish with smatterings of black.

He took another step closer, guided by a guide he did not know. It almost seemed as if he only moved because he was allowed. That each shuffle forward was not simply by his will but by permission granted by someone.

In the corner he watched a figure stand. It was distorted in the confusion, but he knew whatever it was, it was not happy. It moved with the precision of something daunted by the dissonance of sanity and madness. There was anger all over it, but to claim that was all he felt from it was to lie. From it he could hear the wrath, feel the rage. It was an embodiment of anger and violence and wrath and judgement. There was no good in all he felt and the emotions roiled over him like something putrid. It was gracefully wrong, determined to be nothing more than what it was, and nothing less. When the figure moved, the darkness shivered. Ezril assumed from its effect on the darkness that its motions were akin to a person flinging a chair, and breaking a window; the kinds of things people did when they couldn’t control themselves.

He took another step and his legs refused to move.

“Too close,” something whispered in his ear.

It was the voice of a young girl. In it he could hear her warning, but there was also hope. It wasn’t the kind of hope that told him the voice hoped for something. No. It was the kind that said the voice always sounded as if there was always hope. He knew without understanding how that if the voice was lost in the defeat of war and everything it knew lay desolate at its feet there would still be the taint of hope in it. This, he knew, was his guide. Too close… he almost laughed.

“Not close enough,” he whispered back and took another step. This one was not allowed. It was a rebellious step and it didn’t shuffle, it moved as it was intended.

The tainted figure froze, an embodiment of chaos and violence. It was a figure without form, and yet he could see its features. Its twisted long arms shimmering in the darkness. Its legs. Something he assumed could only be its head turned slowly till it looked behind itself. When it spoke, its voice was a thundering of horses, a wailing of men and women. It was the sound of spilled blood, of mercy discarded, of vengeance given, of death enforced. When it spoke, it reminded Ezril of the taste of blood and the rush of a need to survive.

Its mouth split in a smirk and its teeth gleaned white. “I see you.”

Anger surged through Ezril suddenly and sense was thrown to the darkness to hold. It saw him, and he saw it too. The knowledge that he wasn’t ready for what it was grated at him and he threw it to the darkness as he’d done sense. Hilts grew in his hands, forged from the darkness around him and he closed his fists around them. As if summoned, blades grew from the hilts, pure as the darkest nights.

He bared his teeth in a snarl and war raged through him. When he spoke there was only wrath in his voice. “I see you too, Rin.”

With the pain of fire coursing through him, and Sunders ready for slaughter, he readied for war.

Then he surged forward.

NO!

Ezril woke with a start. His hands gripped his sheets in pain and the darkness burned against him. He bit back on his pain and muffled whatever sound sought to be evoked. This pain was not new. He knew it well enough to know from whence it came. He looked to the sheets on his side and wasn’t surprised to find the darkness burning, the sheet consuming in flames. He frowned at the sight. He would need a convenient explanation for this when the time came, but, for now, he released his grip on the sheets and shook his hands free. Gently, like fire in the rain, the darkness stilled. The pain in his hand, however, remained.

“That’ll leave a scar,” he mumbled to himself.

He rolled himself back into bed and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep, hoping his rage would remain for what was to come. But when sleep finally came, all that was left to him was the darkness and the voice of a young girl full of hope.

“You aren’t ready, child,” she said.