In a realm where Hellfire rains down from the sky as a means of intimidation, punishment and control, Deleria is the ripple of change in the waters of time. After losing everyone she ever had the opportunity to love to the hellfire, she embarks on a...
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A thick, sticky smoke clung to my skin and forced itself into my lungs despite my best efforts to fight it off. My hands clung to my chest, lungs burning, while I gasped for air drowning in a hellscape without water. I wanted to scream and cry out from the searing pain shooting through my body but I knew that would only waste the last bits of oxygen I had left. I gritted my teeth, holding on to my final shreds of sanity..
"Deleria," a low, grumbling voice hissed inches from my ear. "You have always been a poison. A curse to life." The voice spat at me with such cruelty. This voice... it was so familiar and yet so terrifying that my muscles shivered and trembled at the mere sound. It seemed to freeze time with its chilling whispers. I could not see more than a foot in front of me, yet I could hear an orchestra of blood curdling shrieks and screams in between each sentence of this darkness that consumed every part of me. "You don't even know who you really are, all the wicked, terrible things you could do." It sneered in my opposite ear, sending my head flailing towards it only to find nothing but that sticky, all consuming smoke.
Flames erupted to my right, sending my body soaring through the smoke filled air and smashing into the ground at least 10 feet away. Any oxygen I had left was knocked right out of me as I gasped for any relief left in the toxic swarm around me. Shit. This was it, wasn't it? I tried to relax my body as much as I could to make the process less painful. Who was I kidding, dying was painful and there was nothing I could do to help that. Not here, not now.
"Deleria!" Another voice roared in the distance but in a desperate tone this time? I could have sworn the grumble of this voice shook the very ground I laid upon. A different voice from before, smoother, angrier, darker... "Deleria!" It rumbled again, closer now, closing the distance between us. My consciousness was fading fast, my eyes fluttering open and closed as the heaviness tried to drag me under.
"Deleria!" I shot up from my bed desperately gasping for air, clawing at my chest. My mother grasping my shoulders, terror painted across her face. I scanned the room for a moment taking in my surroundings, grounding myself. Based on the light that peaked in from behind the ill fitting curtains, the sun was due to rise any minute now. Breathe. I told myself, feeling my lungs expanding deeply with life giving oxygen. Again. I took another deep inhalation into my lungs, my heart steadily dropping its pace. I noticed the other bed shoved up into the corner on the other side of the room from me, the blankets thrashed and thrown about.
"Another nightmare," I sighed in exasperation, tears welling up in my eyes. I whimpered slightly, trying to catch the emotion before it all came spilling out of me. They have become more frequent, nearly every night now. Once, they were more mild, more infrequent. As I started to grow older, the nightmares became darker and more real. I could practically feel myself and everyone I had ever loved dying all around me each night. It was growing to be too much for me, even with the tonics healers from every stretch of the realm had provided me.
My mother hugged me close to her, rubbing her silky hands up and down my back in reassuring strokes. I sobbed into her shoulder as she held me, letting the emotions flow out of me hearing those awful whispers ringing in my ears. "You have always been a poison," it sneered in my head. It wasn't wrong. I had always been nothing more than a leech, sucking everyone around me dry and leaving them out to die. I looked up into my mothers face, the dark circles under her eyes nearly black from the consistent, sleepless nights.
