In Lost Dreams the Four Were Bound

11 - Unknown - Reliving the Fall

It began like it always did, at the start of a tryst that never should have been. If he had avoided it altogether, none of the other events would have come to pass. But that was impossible. Cycles were by their very nature embedded within his being. Watching the scenes for the next in an uncountable series was taking its mental toll upon his beleaguered consciousness. Like all things bitter, he had not been spared the double-edged sword of joy and agony. His addled mind fixated on terrors he could only hope were those of a stillborn tragedy. So it was that he lived that day again and again, unable to alter its events or inject a single change.

There was the morning as it had been. The red desert stretched out before him, reaching from the square window over which he kept his vigil. Behind his disembodied form, he felt the rumblings of another. The voice was incomprehensible but soothing as his mind drifted, his detached consciousness flowing backwards through space. He was assailed by ghostly arms as they wandered over bits and pieces of his emulated body.

"Good man, Vir . . . Dav," the voice whispered in his ear as his world turned about.

Stonework and linens flew around him, evaporating into the distance as he landed on his back, his eyes staring up into a sea of olive skin. A cascade of shadowy faces danced about him, planting spots of tingling warmth over his illusory frame. As the ghostly heads merged, he was overcome by a bright light. He turned his eyes away, shivering as he avoided the blinding luminescence. He felt a gentle hand upon his face drawing his gaze. Turning forward once again, the light scattered as the imagery of a pair of bright yellow eyes filled his vision, flickering with allure and a solemn love.

"I want to be warmed," the feminine voice said, echoing through the scene, distorting his ethereal senses as it tempted and beckoned him.

"Senna," a male voice said from within him, answering the call.

At once he was overcome with an all-consuming warmth, his body merging with the speaker's until all that remained was passion and shortness of breath. All around him, the darkness filled with flames as the sensations of their union intensified. Cries of passion rippled across his invisible skin. Stroking fingers and love bites gnawed at the fabric of his being. At the height of the flames, a woman's visage formed before him. Her short, disheveled silver hair was thrown to one side. Perspiration streamed down her light-brown features as she opened her sultry yellow eyes.

"I want to be burned until there's nothing but ash," she said as she pressed her lips to his.

A detached horror floated around him as the flames ignited her. Unable to break free, they continued their lovemaking as her skin peeled away, falling in grey flakes that were scattered by a chilling breeze. As he pulled back, her body fell, leaving nothing but her frozen face as it stared at him with her bright yellow eyes. Unable to control his actions, he reached for her, but as his left non-hand touched her brow, the world seemed to shatter. Falling away like pieces of a mirror, reality splintered into glistening fragments across the infinite plane. As the diamond-like pieces shimmered, he turned his non-hand over as he looked at the black, disfigured form of his left palm. The three-fingered abomination clenched into a monstrous fist as the ground beneath him transformed, the darkness replaced by the dusty red of the far-off desert.

His heart seemed to all but stop as he looked up. A pair of burly, red-headed men looked down at him from atop an impossibly tall stone wall, their green eyes intent yet amiable. An elder and a younger, twins in all appearance but those defined by age, the two men hollered over the far-off battlements.

"Sister!"

"Niece!"

Their shouts carried into his transparent skull as he walked along the grand expanse of dusty red dirt. Dirt and clay wedged themselves on his disembodied boots while his eyes danced from them to the wall to the men high above.