**BOOK 1 IN THE TALES FROM DROMISSE SERIES**
Silvia considers herself the luckiest woman in all Dromisse. Her soon-to-be fiancé, Duncan Ora, is a candidate for Light Within, the greatest gift that the Almighty Gale can bestow upon someone. Then a ra...
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(Errr, technical difficulties today! I guess this part gets to be published early! Thanks to everyone who has read this far! There's still plenty of story to go!)
"Focus, Rimis."
Duncan's eyes are clamped shut. He can hear Hazel's voice in the distant parts of his mind. He's lost in a half sort of dream where he's gripping a woman's neck, her features growing pale and her eyes lolling in their sockets.
"I don't ... understand what I'm lookin' for," Duncan says as he releases the woman, and she falls slack to the ground—
And then there's darkness all around him. He feels a soft couch under his legs. A man sits next to him.
"I hate you," he says. "You miserable excuse for a human being. I will never forgive you."
He says to the stranger, with the voice of a woman, "And I'll never forgive you." His voice is smooth. Detached. Apathetic. It belongs to someone else.
Hazel says, "You're looking for what happened to you in the Life Before, what made you this way. I'm turning the machine off."
Click! Hazel's cold, dark lab fills Duncan's vision. She turns to face him, crossing her arms. "What exactly did you see? Hear? What did you feel, or taste? What emotions were you having? Sometimes the memories from the Life Before must be interpreted through layers of symbolism."
Duncan's hair splays across his nose and open mouth. He draws a few locks off his tongue and sits up. A curtain of wires drapes down his cheeks. "Every time you've run me through that machine, I've been in a bad situation," he says. "Always feelin' anger, hatred, betrayal, disappointment, or somethin' else negative. It's never good, frequently violent. And I'm never ... me."
Hazel's lips perk up, and she lets out a giddy giggle. She scrawls on her notebook. "Good. That's what you should feel." She waves a hand. "Disconnect yourself for now. Too much of this might overwhelm you."
Duncan begins pulling the suction cups off his face. "Why's it good I'm feelin' these things? It don't feel good."
"Something, or ... someone," Hazel taps his chest, "is trying to starve you."
"I don't feel hungry."
Hazel peers at Duncan from her peripheral. "Tell me, Duncan." She laces her fingers together. "How much do you really know about Rimis, about this world? Probably just what the Church told you."
"Rimis is the first sinner," Duncan says. "The one who incited everyone to rebel against Gale. Dromisse is the dream world created by Gale for our punishment. If we repent, we can wake up and return to him." He scrunches his brow. "The Chapters of Atrocities list the things Rimis did. Among them are murder, betrayal, cannibalism ..." His stomach does electrical leaps. He wants to discover his identity, but perhaps the memories aren't returning properly because he's frightened of what he is.
