Red Hands (editing)

Chapter 11: Legacy of the Divine

Each time Mars left the dungeon, he abandoned me in the darkness with nothing but my pain and my sins to ponder. I was trapped in numbness and exhaustion, curled up and shivering in the corner. I rested in a gelatinous bath of my own blood, congealed by the cool dry air. When I lifted my hands to rub warmth into arms that weren't my own, each gesture sluffed off layers of blood from me as if it was a second skin, a part of myself peeled away from touch alone. The friction did nothing to comfort the ache in my bones, but I barely felt them. I hovered above my heavy limbs, a soul escaped from earthly flesh like a wandering ghost haunting the pit of the underworld.

I must've been dead. I'd died there in the suffocating black that sucked my life from my lips with every exhale. The void was all around me, the hell I'd always imagined when I'd pleaded for the Nameless Divine to release me from Mars's ceaseless torment. Murk pressed in on my sides, emptying me of all feeling until I was as hollow as my body. Death was a vacuum, vacant of all life and light, a mass of chaos that swallowed me up until I was nothing but the blackness that surrounded me.

Dead was a lonely place to be, a misery all of its own. I could still feel the jagged cellar walls closing in on me, slabs of stone adhered so closely together that not one sliver of light strained through the cracks. Nothing existed except my prone body slouched against the wall in a collection of thickened black blood, and my uncoupled mind, lost in the eternal punishment of what's once been.

I deserved to be dead. I'd stained too many lives with the black ink of my hands, and there was no suffering I could bear in life or death that'd wash away my sins. I hoped that from her seat beside the divine where she belonged, Priestess Zelze was looking down at me, comforted in my righteous retribution. I'd never earn her forgiveness, but maybe my suffering'd soothe her sorrow. Surely Oggs and Wylo were standing beside her, watching me agonize in darkness and isolation and finding some repose that finally I'd found the place where I belonged. I couldn't give them back their lives, but I'd endure the pain if it was solace for the dead.

Crrrrrk GREKK! The metal door to the dungeon struck open, shocking me back to my senses just as it locked closed. A halo of orange light cast a long shadow across the cellar floor, the flicker of torchlight sending ghoul-like figures across the walls. The metallic stench of my own blood filled my nostrils, and I gasped as torrents of pain rushed over my body again, the sounds of my own ragged breathing and Mars's cool laugh ringing in my ears like a death knell.

Light burst across my eyelids in trapezoidal planes of orange and yellow, sensation rolling through me like a wave crashing upon the shore of the white sand of my skin. My body ached with memories of pain that belonged to someone I used to be and pain that wasn't mine - a sharp pang of lightning struck through my shoulders as if a blade had severed my tendons. The next breath I took felt like shards of glass grating against my throat and lungs, and the cough was worse. The force of it tightened my muscles, bringing my head forward and forcing my eyes open.

I squeezed my eyelids against the light, opened them again, and blinked away the painful tears until the blaring sunlight became a blur of kaleidoscopic colors. Pam's familiar white face hovered in front of mine, crystal eyes reflecting mystic ocean blue, framed by square white brows and ceramic skin wrinkled like leather. His pale lips formed words that sounded foreign to my ears, but his fretting watery eyes were all I needed to see for me to lift my hand to touch his face. His skin was soft like velvet but cool as ice, a cold caressing touch to my trembling arm that quickly dropped back to the stone beneath my aching body. I'd wanted him to know that I was okay and he shouldn't worry, but the crevice between his eyebrows only deepened.

"This is not right, Florian, and you know it!"

Dol's voice set my skin alight, fury raging through my blood with adrenaline so compelling I forced myself forward on two hands. Nausea wracked through my head like drums, and I fell backward into Pam's steady arms. He guided me tenderly against a temple column, into the shade of the collapsed stone roof above us that shadowed my vision enough that I could make out Dol and Florian Lightlake in the center of the courtyard.