The TwiceBorn

Under Infidel Skies

"Now there's no looking forward; now there's no turning back. When you say we belong to the light, we belong to the thunder."--Pat Benatar

Scream after scream shredded her throat and left it on fire as though someone had forced her to drink scalding water. She kept on until all that would come up from her throat was a guttural alley-dog whine. Lucan had stripped her of her clothes, tied her down, and then painstakingly burned each letter of the word apostate right below her breasts and she'd watched the first two letters, watched while she could still scream as the iron melted her skin like butter and the room filled with the sweet thick odor of her flesh.

On the second letter, she'd bitten off part of her tongue and swallowed it, screaming and choking on her blood. Lucan had pressed his hand to the side of her face and forced her to turn her head and she saw him up close, his eyes nothing but ruinous black caves and in the last few moments of her sanity, she tried to say I renounce, I renounce, I renounce but as the third letter dissolved her skin, it also dissolved all the fragile supposings she'd had about losing her mind, all the tiptoeing around the wondered "what ifs?" were left behind as the pain pushed her past the gates of sanity and into the sterile black of madness.

She drifted through varying shades of twilight that pulsed in time to the beat of her heart.

That...fucking...thing...

That simply would not stop

Thump...thump...thump...keeping her tied to this world...

And she saw Casper in the fields, endlessly plowing and pulling her along in his wake, the reins looped over her shoulders, endlessly looped and unable to be shed, she stumbled along behind him and when she looked down all she saw was blood and still she walked...

Like the roads with JoHan walking, and walking, thinking she had seen her great destiny and with only a few steps more,she would lay her hands upon it...

Nothing but lies, she'd played a bit part like so many others and now here she was...her heart like thunder...feeling more pain than she could comprehend.

Alora...Alora...Alora...

Someone was calling her name from faraway.

Maybe from the next mountain she thought nonsensically, I can't get out of this valley and maybe...just maybe...it was death calling her, that made sense because nothing ever came to her, she had to go out and meet it, and then she would bear and that she would gladly do, if death kept his end of the bargain.

"I'm walking as fast as I can." She mumbled and looked at the man in the cowl whose face was wet with tears.

"Please tell me the way,I'm lost. I'm lost. Help me." She said as best she could. Her tongue was swollen. It filled her mouth but didn't feel right, it no longer fit.

"Please...please Islinn...renounce," The man begged. "Say you will and I'll get Lord Kenric...please, for the love of Brede...renounce..."