The Revelation of the Vine: Graft

Chapter 31: Binding the Shepherd

  Lingering in the darkness, frozen, I felt like I was being suspended by invisible hands. I couldn't move anything but my eyes, and in every direction I looked there was phantom in the corner of my vision. It moved as I looked, swirling around the edge of sight, always hiding in the blind-spots of my peripheral vision. The hands' grip became tighter around my arms, legs, ankles, and wrists and then pulled as if to stretch me apart. I hung in the darkness, chasing the phantom in my vision, as my heart began to pound in my chest and echoed in my inner ears. Faster and faster my heart pumped, and I feared it would burst. I felt the heavy sludge of the Corruption surging through my blood; pumping through my veins which each pulse of the muscle. It burned, but I couldn't scream. I felt it spread its oozy roots into my muscles, tissues, and bones. The hands slipped through my body and grabbed my soul, as the echoing words of Kivan began to swirl around me in no particular order. After I spent an eternity being pulled to the breaking point, chasing the phantom, and feeling the Corruption take hold of every part of my being, the hands released their grip or maybe I became numb to the sensation of their touch; I couldn't really tell, but I still couldn't move my body. The phantom began to slow down, and I began to catch bigger glimpses of it as I chased it more frantically with my eyes; a black blur in the stationary darkness of the background. How I could tell it was anything at all was beyond me; I just knew it was there, and that I had to see what it was. A sweeping wave of dizziness washed over me as the phantom swirled around the circle of my eyes, bringing them around and around in pursuit. It began to spiral inward like a long, tattered black cloak. When it reached the center, it stopped and hovered vertically, then spread itself out in front of my eyes like a dragon-winged wraith. My ears shook, and I felt every inch of my body expand and shake uncontrollably, as a vicious, unearthly scream belted from its invisible mouth, surrounding me in a spiraling cone of violent sound. Just when I felt like I was going to explode, it stopped, and the last stretch of the destructive blast echoed past me. I felt a brief reprieve as the dragon specter, retracted its wing and spiraled upward, and then appeared to fly away into the darkness. I lost sight of it for a length of time that seemed like the shortest and longest moment smashed into one. Then I saw it again, straight ahead in the darkness, phasing like an effervescent shadow. It was coming straight at me like an arrow aimed at the heart. The specter dragon hit me full force in the chest, knocking all of the wind out of my lungs, causing me to suck in a huge gulp of air, as it exploded over me in a wave of the black ooze. I felt the ooze suck down my throat and into my lungs, and burn my insides in a new place, as it slowly took control of my respiratory functions. I felt my breathing slow, and an odd sensation passed through me, as I slowly stopped breathing all together, feeling no more need for air. It was strange going from 700 years of breathing to no longer needing to; my body tried, but there was no way to bring more air in, or let air out. The Corruption filled my lungs to capacity and somehow fed them the necessary oxygen to do what they needed to without any work. An overwhelming cold wrapped over me, as I felt my heart slow next. The thumps became sticky as my blood was overtaken by the oozing Corruption. I felt it push through my veins, filling every ounce of my body, and then my heart stopped beating; no more sticky thumps, or sludgy pulses in my limbs. There was no more need for a pumping heart; the Corruption filled everything, just as it had done with my lungs. The frigid ooze crawled through my neck, then into my jaw, and up my face. I felt it pass over my eyes, and I was immediately granted vision in this dark space. I suddenly wished I hadn't become able to see. The vision before me was terrible and horrifying. It looked like I was inside the pulsing heart of the Corruption itself. Black sludge oozed down the walls that sucked in and pushed out all around me with slits that looked like stab wounds opening and closing, as the slime covered them up and bubbled out. "Welcome ho-ome," Kivan stepped through a bursting bubble of the sludge as one of the slits opened, and then bowed with a strange jester's curtsy, "Captain Virgil of the Shadow." I wanted to attack him, but it was just my thoughts in a dark place in the back of my mind. My body moved forward without my will. For a brief moment I saw Kivan's true self flash across the black sludgy eyes that I knew now adorned my own corrupted face. He looked terrified, and I knew that he was being held captive in his mind, just like me, while his body forcibly acted against his will. My mouth opened, and I watched from the depths of my consciousness all that would transpire without my consent. "What does the Shadow command," my body asked, standing in front of Kivan. "You know," He sang, and performed an odd movement like a puppet being tugged forward, and then let his chin slam onto my shoulder. His head turned toward my ear, and he screamed, "Kill them! Kill them all!" "It shall be done," my body said, not even flinching at the piercing sound waves that trashed it. "Gooood," a long raspy breath escaped his mouth, as a tendril of the Corruption stretched out and licked at my ear. The sound of his voice sickened me in my true self. His head lifted from my shoulder, and he took a few wobbly steps backwards. "They will be very pleased," he said and sunk back into the bubbling slit from whence he came. I stood in the pulsating chamber, letting the Corruption drip down from the ceiling and cover me in fresh sludge. My body oozed and bubbled, and I could see the puffs of smog swirling back into myself. I tried to scream inside my head, to force the corruption away, but it was too much. Each glob that hit my head sent a fresh wave of pressure against my true self, burying me in the darkest depths of my conscious mind beneath the sludge. My body moved toward one of the bubbling slits. I saw the Crown outside when the bubble popped, and then it was swallowed by the closing gash. I saw it again as it opened, and my body stepped closer. The bubble popped against my face, but I didn't feel it. More and more of the courtyard became visible, as I saw the group running around, hollering. "Virgil!" The word came crashing through the next bubble. They were searching for me. "Captain!" The next bubble that popped pushed the sludge away from my body, and I stepped through the wound. Kivan's twisted voice whispered from behind me, echoing into my mind as the light of the world surrounded me once again, "Kill them quietly; one by one. Not even you could face them all at once."