Fyra (First Draft)

Eighteen

Her dreams were filled with fire and death. She was burning, pain shooting up her spine and dancing across her limbs.  She stood amid ash and flames and she could do nothing to stop herself from feeding the inferno. The hollow faces of those she had loved, and loved still, stared at her with glassy, lifeless eyes. They stood upright, wearing twisted smiles.

Cirian's voice echoed through her mind, whispering things he had never said. His voice merged with the others, until all she could hear were screams. Athan laughed and smiled his familiar crooked smile, but then he changed, his grin shining with malice and lies.

She spun into the abyss, taking with her her monstrosity, the slight, but ever present flame that flickered inside her, always telling her to let the world burn for what it had done to her.

Fyra shivered as the chaos of her dreams faded. Reality weaved itself into existence in front of her, and her heart slowing as the memory of the dream escaped her grasp. She took a ragged gasp of stale air, her eyes fluttering open. Blackness consumed her, rendering her a child cowering at the dark and the monsters that lurked within. 

Her stomach sank as a cold stone of fear grew within it. A dull ache throbbed through her neck and back, the frigid ground below her a telling sign that the events that she remembered were indeed real. She was no longer wrapped in the safety of deception, and if she wanted to live, she had to stay awake.

Sleep would never be an escape from the reality and cost of her actions, the actions that had such good intentions. All she had wanted to do was protect her friend, the person who had saved her in so many ways. A friend who happened to be the son of the man who had most likely imprisoned her in this dank hole. The friend who happened to be a prince, and the prince of Aceria no less.

And the other boy, the one who had almost been a brother to her, the one who had ripped her heart out of her chest with deception. The boy who she had seen briefly; the boy who's foolish words had brought such sorrowful rage into her soul. While she wanted to hear his explanation, she only feared that more lies would drip into the river of already rushing through her, destroying her from the inside.

Fyra knew if she tried, her magic could stop this darkness, this isolation, this mind numbing pain. Despite her aversion of her own gifts, the power that cursed her brought strength to her as she used it. She could be an eternal well of churning emotion and explosive power, if only she thought she deserved it; I'd inly the thought didn't terrify her more than words could express. If she would call upon even the smallest of sparks, she would find warmth, or light, but her hands shook with fear as she brought them in front of her. The magic that she possessed was not a gift, but curse, a disease she had no hope of curing.

Fear wasn't like other emotions, she couldn't channel it in any way. Fear was like a parasite, starting off small and insignificant, but in the end, stealing all that made her who she was.

Worming their way into the back of her mind, Fyra's fears fed on her very soul, making her question who she was, eating at her hope. It tainted her perception of herself and her gifts, making her fear who she was, what she could do. 

Fyra could not make herself let go of the fear that had sustained her for so long. Her fear of her own magic had aided her survival; fear of death kept her from giving up.

It was no use letting her mind run away from her, and so she lay where she lay before, culling her knees to her chest. It seemed she would either die here, or someone, presumably the people who had put her here, would let her out.