My Empire

Chapter 8: Drowning In Darkness

                                               ~~~Unknown~~~

Shadows shifted, their mind like the murk like the thick mud of a swamp, cloying and sticking and dragging them down, keeping them away from the surface and blessed, fresh air and thoughts.

Thunder rumbled, black clouds with red spikes of vicious lightning, cleaving apart any rational senses I could have gathered, keeping me below the surface and pulling me deeper and deeper.

It was like a lingering ache, pulsing around them and caging everything in, trapped and cornered below the surface, trying to fight their way up but too weak, too injured, too aching to make it, always tugged back down, like a game of cat and mouse.

It whispered, hissed and screeched, some distant and faint, some jarring and as if right by their ear, echoing and wailing and scattering them even more, pain and confusion and exhaustion working in tandem with the darkness to keep them trapped, a songbird in a cage of shadows and evil, a deer pinned to a tree by a crossbow bolt of red lightning, bleeding and wounded and utterly helpless against the corruption invading and twisting in every corner.

Struggling reached them nowhere, pulled darker and darker, even as they fought for the surface and freedom.

Who were they? What were- did they- who were they? Where were they?

Something hissed distantly, not the darkness, but something bright and vibrant and pure, fighting to reach them. Don't forget, it screamed. Remember. Come back. Fight it.

They didn't understand. They were so tired, it was so dark, the darkness was drowning them, couldn't they just rest? Just, close their eyes and let it muffle everything?

FIGHT IT, COME BACK, THEY NEED YOU. The light screamed, trying to reach them even as it was shoved and pushed away by the shadows, forced into a prison of its own as the waves of ebony night flooded over them, surrendering to the current.

For a fleeting moment, the surface was right there, light and life just beyond a thin veil, and they could hear words, conversation, voices that they knew, strained to remember.

"-Simply refuse to leave-"

"-one of our own, it's personal now-"

"-alive, something from within-"

"-Stay here, with my poppy-"

They reached for the last voice, soft and filled with love, someone they knew but didn't know, their mind too clouded, the darkness too overwhelming to defeat, and they succumbed to the darkness, sickly and painful, crying out for the light, for the goodness.

The light had told them to fight, to remember. They didn't know how, but even as they were overwhelmed and covered by darkness, they held onto the voice, to the love in the words, to the faintest sense of touch that had accompanied it, they wrapped it deep within themself and didn't let the shadows so much as see it, tucked into the core of their being.

Fight. Remember.

Deep underneath the darkness and corruption, they fought, and they remembered. Biding their time for a moment of weakness, for the help they needed to break free and regain themself, win back their memories and the owner of the voice.

Their time would come.