Story of Kings

Chapter 21

Amelia dove down into the abyss that was Kane's soul, her heart racing as she fell without end. In the angel compound she had to heal minor wounds like this before but only once had someone's soul been so expansive; god-king Zuan's. But his soul had been pristine white, a perfectly ordered metropolis that put Vloissa to shame. No winding roads, or back alleyways, but instead large, great roads stretching out beyond the limits of her sight with perfectly identical buildings in between. Amelia had always thought that Zuan was trying to model his city after his own soul, but Kane's? Kane's soul was nothing like that. It was an empty void, and she could feel its enormity and never-ending nature. She had never known a soul to be so empty before yet his somehow was.

Eventually the sensation of falling slowed, and then stopped, something of a solid ground underneath her feet. It was dissociating, walking on nothing, but Amelia was grateful that she had stopped falling. She was awfully confused though; Kane wasn't there. In the past when she worked on a soul injury the patient always appeared in their soul as a representation of themself, usually unconscious but sometimes awake and in pain, able to communicate with her. Yet Kane was absent. Did she somehow land far from his center? Was she somewhere in the outskirts of his heart, his sanctuary? She should have landed right by his core, a small, crystalline object that was his soul in the material that produced this vast chamber his consciousness occupied, in essence, what served to create his 'sanctuary,' but like everything else, it, too, was absent.

Amelia channeled her power and conjured a ball of light in her hand, casting her golden-white light all around. As she looked around her brow furrowed, her light was cast upon what seemed to be objects in the dark, but they remained black, Amelia could tell her light was being stopped in some places but proceeded further in others. Was his soul occupied, and she just didn't have the sight to see it? Carefully walking forward, a hand tentatively outstretched, Amelia was surprised when her hand touched a smooth surface before her. She ran her hand along the cold surface, feeling it out and finding that it seemed to be a wall at first but found that it ended not too much higher than herself. But it wasn't smooth, rather, it was jagged. The remains of a wall? His soul was severely injured but- from what she first saw of his wound she knew it was very progressed, much further than it should have been for having only happened at most an hour ago. God-king Zuan could have inflicted such an injury, but everyone would have felt his presence if he had entered battle and she doubted Kane would have survived and gotten away if the god-king had been present. So, this wound didn't make sense, not unless Kane had already been injured.

Like Evelyn, did Kane already have serious damage done to his soul? It was the only explanation she could think of, and perhaps that explained the void-like nature of his soul. In her teachings, Amelia had learned that once separated from the core of the soul, one's heart would remain, but its essence would begin to fade. Left unattended for too long and their soul would begin to lose color, and everything would turn to a dull grey. This would cause a variety of symptoms, namely a lack of emotions or the dampening of them, but could this really be what afflicted Kane? His heart and soul were utterly black and such progression was never mentioned and she found it hard to believe that a person would be able to function if they were so broken.

But she didn't know Kane, had never met him. Was he a devoid person, lacking emotion? Amelia shook her head at the thought, probably not. Evelyn seemed to react to his injury too much for him to be emotionless. Amelia had seen her face when her eyes landed on Kane laying on the cot, felt the flood of fear and desperation. Amelia briefly wondered if they were lovers but pushed the thought from her mind, she did not want that sort of pressure when trying to heal him.

Amelia looked around in the dark, remembering that she was there to heal him, but she had no idea where to begin. In her lessons finding their consciousness and core was easy and had never been taught that she would have to look for it, so it hadn't even crossed her mind to ask how to do so, much less in the dark. Amelia bit her lower lip, what was she going to do? Eventually she brushed her hand down the dark wall before her, deciding that she would follow it along by feeling it out. Perhaps his soul was just complicated, she told herself, and that she could very well be close to his core without realizing it. Maybe just the wall stood in her way.