Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 23

~23~

Forty-seven days before the destruction of Nutharion City

Standing upon the gray disc in the deepness of the dream, Litnig stared into the darkness in his soul. His body rested in a hollow he’d dug and lined with blankets. He was well rested, well fed, well hydrated. Maia stood guard over him.

He was safe, and it was time to master himself.

The human dark walker stood before him, free of its chains. Last of the three. Over the prior two weeks, Litnig had wrestled with and beaten the Sh’ma and the Aleani. It had been like strangling a part of himself.

And even in victory, he feared the final confrontation. The human walker had been the first on the disc to terrify him. It was the part of his darkness he felt closest to.

So it was the part of his darkness he was most afraid to challenge.

The statue made the faintest beginnings of movement toward him, and Litnig seized the initiative. He lurched forward and grabbed it by its face. He meant to slam it against the disc as it had slammed him in Soulth’il. The tactic had worked well against the Aleani.

Anger filled him, and the world slowed. He couldn’t force the statue’s head back. It felt like he was trying to push a watermelon through taffy or thick mud. His arm stretched, as though something was attempting to wrench it off at the shoulder. The dark walker’s emotions wormed through him. Its voice, his voice, but deeper and darker, filled his mind.

Have you not given, Litnig Jin?

Have you not worked?

Have you not sweated and bled? Have you not faced death?

Images too. Ryse and Leramis, together, laughing. Touching. Kissing. Like they did in his nightmares.

Have you not sacrificed?

He breathed. His arm shook. His hand felt hot, as though all the energy of his mind was concentrated within it.

Your father never loved you.

A boot pressed against his throat. He remembered crying. Wanting to scream but being unable to breathe. His mother shrieking and flailing and his brother hammering his father’s legs with his tiny fists. He smelled leather and felt hard wood against the back of his skull.

Your mother was killed before your eyes.

He saw her die for the thousandth time. The white sword. The red, weeping smile.

Your brother abandoned you.

Cole dove into the ocean, the rope around his waist. Litnig’s cheek, red and stinging, ached. “Don’t you fucking touch me! Don’t you fucking touch me! Don’t you fucking touch me!”

You have nothing left. No friends. No family. No reason to love the world and every reason to hate it.

“No,” he said.

He spoke the word aloud. Words had power, especially in the dream. And no could be the most powerful word of all. It echoed over the stream of ideas flowing through his mind.

The ideas grew stronger.

Every reason to hate this world, that gives so much to so few for so little. That lets others lord over you not for virtue of talent or intelligence or effort but because they were born to the right family at the right time.

“No,”he said again. The images—of his mother’s bones, of his brother dead at the bottom of the sea, of Ryse and Leramis in the throes of passion, blanched. The motion of them slowed, then fragmented, then ceased. The voice and the images disappeared.