Devotion: A Tale of Liars and Beasts

12. Revelations

At first, Enara hadn't been sure if the mushroom spores were working.

But little by little, the hazy iridescence of the berries gave way to an atmosphere much darker. The type of darkness that creeps through every crack, crawls from every shadow.

Enara was vaguely aware of her Gods in the room with her, but they felt distant.

Images would suddenly crash into her, unleashing every sound and sensation in full force; memories in hurricane form:

A thatched home, crackling under sweltering blazes. Sparks and screams rising with the black smoke.

A moment of reprieve.

Enara would try to catch her breath, when suddenly she'd be hit with another.

A body, pale and bent, swinging from the gallows. More screams- no- cheers, curdling in the soot-filled air.

Enara felt her body lurch forward, wind knocked from her lungs as she braced against the cool stone floor. But she couldn't see the ground below her, only-

Nets filled with stones, fastened with ropes to bloodied ankles. Pleading sobs, the thrashing of limbs in water. All the while, the smell of burning flesh hung in the air.

She cried out, the barrage of images washing over her senses with such clarity she was nearly choking on the smoke herself. It might as well have been her own flesh being burned.

Enara could vaguely feel guiding hands on her, rubbing her back, holding her face gently. But they felt like a distant dream.

She was living in a nightmare now.

In the beginning Enara saw many different images. Some of them even repeated on loop, again and again. Horrific sights:

Hands reaching through cracks in burning houses, skin charred and melting from their very bones, seeking escape that would never come.

Mothers dragged apart from their small children in front of their homes, only to be beat down with stones, into the very dirt upon which they'd walked each and every day before. Never knowing it would be the place upon which they'd draw their last breath. The very place they walked past to go to market, or to bring their children to the lake. A mundane threshold, now turned to the grimmest threshold of all; a bloodied gate to the other side.

Eventually the images slowed, and fewer repeated themselves. They whittled down to the ones that felt the most visceral.

For some reason, they weren't the ones Enara would've expected to affect her most.

But again and again, she saw those ankles, chewed bloodied and raw by the thick ropes.

Feet bare, also bloodied.

How those legs thrashed and struggled... but no movement was ever great enough. The ropes remained steadfast.