The Fall Of Imbria (The Fendara Series. Book One)

Chapter Twenty Seven: Simon

The familiar sounds of beating rain fill my ears. The smell of dirt and dew finds its way to my nostrils.

Soon my gasping for oxygen overtakes me, and my agonized breathing becomes overwhelmingly prioritized over all else. Just as I take another struggled breath, blood rolls out my mouth and seeps down my face. Glooming clouds gather, slowly starting to hover over me. The grey thundering streaks of blue snapping across the sky, a subtle scream of electricity like that of Victorias.

My bounding heartbeat has begun to diminish into a quiet patter as I limply turn my head, finally seeing her once more.

Far off in the distance, a shadowed figure of a women appears, her dark hair flowing in the storm. The white of her dress soaking in the wet of the rain. Her cloak is as piercing as her grey steel eyes. The bareness of her feet, dirty with the clay mud puddling beneath the grass.

A song echo's out across the war struck plain.

Safe and sound you are my love

A sacred place to be

Here in my arms

Forever warm

Mine you always will be

But the wolf will come

To dig its teeth deeper than it should

The crimson rain will wash me away and you will never know

the fight I fought

the naked shame

how much I lost with you

dear boy don't ever think I never loved you

forever I am yours.

Her voice calls quietly, ringing with a melody as old as time, a tune I can't remember hearing but one I know to be for me.

Something about the tempo felt soothing, as if I were to breath my last breath I would do it with a smile on my face, like the most relaxed warlock on his death bed could be.

Then again- that would mean that I'm dying and for some reason I find my stress growing, not a drop of my blood alleviated at all by the tune.

As the rain continues to fall upon my face, I turn my gaze back to the gloomy streaks of clouds and listen to the sounds of metal clashing. Thunder growling. Screams of war. And then a sensation I've slowly been becoming accustomed to rushes through me. Death.

It's a suffocating and slow squeeze of my strange heart as the crimson continues to flood my lungs and rise again with a cough expelling from my trembling lips.

Just as I breathe what might be my final breath, a loud crack erupts throughout the earth piercing my eardrums. Too weak to move I just lay here as the ground beneath me begins to separate, slowly pulling me deeper and deeper into the red dirt.

The feeling alone of falling into a sink hole draws my concern, but as the sensation of heat beats upon my back, so do the blisters as they begin to cover my flesh.

Gehenna.

Dreaded, Gehenna.

If my mouth wasn't full of the taste of iron, I could curse, but instead I leave it to my mind to do the job.

Fuck.

Fucking.

Fuck.

Fucked. That is what I am. Screwed even, one could say. So, Gods damned screwed.