Dual Soul Reincarnation

Chapter 11 - Unity

[The Bodyguard]

It was a fraction of a second, but that was all it took. Nebesha and I were watching over the princess as the Unity Dinner neared it's end. Then for a moment, I heard nothing. I saw people speaking and walking, but sound didn't reach my ears.

A spell!

Quickly, I looked around, scanning the room for its threat. Just as I noticed a figure standing up in the King's north balcony, my hearing came back to me.

"-jesty! LOOK OUT!!" I heard Her Highness shout. Whipping my head in her direction, I saw blood fly as she let out a scream.

"AAGHH!!!"

Twice now I had failed her.

I looked over Nebesha.

"Nebesha! After him!" I shouted, nodding towards the balcony. As we both looked up, we saw the figure quickly running into the shadows of the hall that led to it.

"On it!" He moved rapidly through the crowd, a swiftness his armored form would not suggest. My faith in him I quickly rushed to the princess, who was bleeding from her leg.

However...

She didn't seem in pain at all. She wasn't looking at or addressing the wound.

She just stared at her hands, frozen.

[The Princess]

The most horrifying moment in my life was just a few seconds stretched out over forever. As I watched that chandelier fall towards my father's head and Martin took over before I could even think to react, my mind was flooded with the image of my mother. The last moments as her bloodied body desperately tried to warp me away with a fumbled teleportation spell. As her body disappeared beyond a horizon line, my consciousness fading. I was about to lose my father too.

But in that same second, as I felt Martin take control at the speed of lightning, at that same speed I was thrown into numbness. More than numbness, I was thrown into what Martin had up until now delayed to properly describe.

The void.

"Emptiness" didn't do it justice. I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing, was nothing! I had no form, no mouth to cry for help or arms to hold myself with. My thoughts, my ability to think... it just existed... devoid of anything to act through or observe. I couldn't act at all, only endure.

I endured for what I would later learn were a mere few seconds. In those few seconds, I felt the nothingness eat away at me. I felt as if I was disappearing, a sadness and fear encroaching my every thought. It wasn't physical. It was an emotion, one that I never knew existed. A painful mixture of deep, deep sorrow and ever-growing terror. An emotion that hurt more and more with every passing moment.

In an instant, my body returned to me.

It felt as if the ocean had fallen on me. I was hit by all my senses where once they ceased to be. Beyond that, was just how much information my mind had to take in all at once. Filling silence was a room of a hundred voices, talking loudly amongst themselves in absolute panic. Filling darkness was brightly lit room filled with a thousand colors. I was beyond disorienting.

"Have someone gather more guards! We need to quell the panic! Get those who are here on it immediately!!!"

My father's voice rang out through a fog.

The chaos only added to the terror that resided in me from what I experienced. I could do nothing but stare at my own hands, not believing they were my own. Was that what Martin dealt with? How much did he deal with when we shared senses? Did some remnant of that terror still reside? Did it still grasp and pull at his soul, begging it to return? And I was just letting him take it on all alone?