In Lost Dreams the Four Were Bound

29 - Neris - Dreams of Breakage

Staring into the dark, Neris crouched and listened to the groans of the twisting caverns around her. She trembled while frames of jilted shadows snapped back and forth as she inhaled and froze. Her black ears turned to face the skittering of stones somewhere in the distance.

"Neris! Neris!" a male voice called, the words echoing throughout the cavern. The words were raspy and full of exhaustion, coupled with desperation and an undertone of malice. Nearby she heard the same voice roar and watched as a faint trickle of light poured into the dark hole. All around her, the cries and beckons reverberated. The shadows of her hiding place trembled with the heartbeat syllables of her name. "Neris! Come here, Neris!"

In her vision, the scene of a gaping cavern played out, filled with dark-skinned talvuo shirking to hideaways and offshoots. White- and bronze-skinned travelers crept in, and black-skinned talvuo left with them. Sometimes free, sometimes in chains, their rust-colored eyes sometimes lit but most times dull. In the dream, a pair of angry red eyes filled her thoughts.

"Nerin!" The voice was at once full of anger and glee. Before she could act, Neris heard her brother squirming and crying. Her hiding crevice spun away from her as she snuck along a narrow tunnel. At the end farthest away from the light, she heard a little boy's muffled cries and a grown man's grunts and sputters. "Just a bit more. Just a little bit more, boy."

"Father." The word fell from her lips as she walked to the tunnel's end. Images of her brother sprawled along the ground played within her frame of view. The man's obsidian skeleton was bent over the little boy, his head down and back arched. Her nerves froze, and her stomach dropped as she watched the tall figure stand up from the failed conquest. The man eyed her with bitterness and lust. Her hands began to shake as she fumbled the drawstrings of her tunic, watching as the figure towered over her. "I'm here, fath—"

"Oh, Neris!" a smiling, depraved face said.

The scene splintered between fragments as she was pinned, strangled, propped against the wall, slapped, bit, and turned. It was as if Neris's mind were being torn apart as the mangled memories melted together. Crying, pain, bitterness, regret, and endless turmoil overflowed as a thousand gaunt black skulls laughed and cursed at her. Out of the corner of her eye, a bruised and crying little boy reached out to her, snot and blood covering his round, screaming face. Dirt clung to his sooty ears. She reached for him, but she couldn't protect him. She couldn't even defend herself.

"When will you give me another? Another Neris. One to replace that whore's offspring. Pureblooded with my blood thrice over. Mine! Mine!"

That would not be their lot.

"You will respect your blood! You will respect my blood!"

She couldn't take it anymore.

Pinned to the ground as the braying and laughing echoed all around them, Neris's hand stopped short of the little boy. Gripping something soft, she fingered it and found a hardened point. As she was turned over, flashes of red splashed upon her face as the man above her yowled. The walls shattered as a tiny black doll fell from her hand, its tin sword coated with red and jelly. Roaring above her, the skeleton screamed as one of its orbs gushed a monstrous torrent of red.

In moments the world fell away as he slapped her again and again. Iron chains emerged from the abyss as he beat her, shackling her ankles and wrists. Bronze and black figures surrounded her, their cloaks covering her frame as they poked and prodded her being.

As they pulled her away from the shrieking monster, her non-father bellowed. "You'll wish someday! Wish like she did. Wish to respect your blood. To respect me!"

"Nerin!" the young voice shrieked as the darkness around them was embraced by gilded hands and light. The little boy's figure shrank into blinding eternity, a shadowy silhouette standing above him as both siblings cried into the effervescence.