Something With a Prince

Chapter Forty-Three: Waters Rising

Tallethea

Have you ever had your head pushed underwater by a wave? You are standing there one minute, surrounded by all this power and yet you feel untouchable. Weightless. Then, for a second, your attention leaves the danger, and you find yourself trusting your surroundings. Forgetting where you are because of what you're experiencing. And it comes out of nowhere. This ruthless crash against your chest that pushes you back and down. That fear seeps in and before you can catch your breath, all that water flushes over your face; you know you cannot scream. You can't breathe—Lest you want to inhale water—and the only thing to do is to wait and be afraid.

Then, it draws back, and you stand, gasping for air. It's only been a minute, yet you've been pinned to the bottom for longer than you care to remember. You've not been drowned, but reminded, reminded that there are consequences to everything. That forgetting where you are, holding too much trust in the things that can hurt you, will always end in the same ways. Trapped and scared, knowing you should have been paying more attention.

Consciousness, in its simple job to bring me back around, committed this crime against me. For when I awoke, my body still lay broken in the gravel and the weight of being awake held me down. Emptiness coaxed me back into sleep, as if it were saying to me now Let it be done. Let us be done now. I am so tired. Just sleep.

How badly, desperately, was my inclination to follow that voice to the deepest recesses of my soul. To happily sink to the bottom and escape the gore, the duty, the pressure of nothingness. But that voice was not the only thing coaxing me. Through the cracks of my eyes, a slender line of visibility granted me enough to tell there was a figure standing at the end of the way. Hands and feet spread shoulder width apart, something dangling from its left hand. My eyes drifted closed again, for a second, and upon reopening them again, the figure was still there.

Let it be done. I'm so tired. The voice tried again. But it was now combated by another voice. My own.

Get up. Stand now and finish this. One more time, the last time. You owe yourself that.

Unfurling my fingers with a painful moan, they fell to the gravel and searched for my blade. The lids of my eyes still heavy, the left swollen, made acquisition a little more difficult but the familiar cool weight of metal led its way into my palm once more.

Get up.

Get up.

Once I was to my feet, and the wobbling ceased, the pursuit for the figure began. Slowly and quite full of stumbling, my path unfurled out and beyond, growing more distant the closer I got. There was no breeze or air that could breathe back the life into my lungs, so I merely wheezed the whole way. Coughing and spitting blood. But it was too much. The strain and trauma on my legs alone, as if every injury I had endured on this journey was slowly seeping through, dropped me to the floor. But no physical trauma could rival that of the laceration done to my mind. My spirit.

No. My voice came again, Stand up. This is not who you are.

Laughing at myself for thinking such a ludicrous, but simple thought, was enough to drive me closer to the edge. My fists gathered gravel and clenched so hard that my laughter turned into some deranged sound. But it worked. I stood again. Walked once more. The only adrenaline remaining was less than residue, an inclination to action rather than the reason for it. And when I saw the test, standing before me with grey eyes and the same sword I had in my own hand, I knew it would be my last. This would end me.

She did not smile or reach for me, nor I for her, but rather the two of us stood there watching each other. Her veins were shot blue-black under the sweet brown complexion of her skin, like tar matting up the course of her body. Brown hair swayed at her temples gently, though there was nothing to stir movement in the air, and the deepest ebony pushed across the familiar color of her irises. I had her mouth, that same set in my jaw when I faced down a challenge.