3MA

3MA | Chapter 39

39
SHADOW CHAMBERS

I've only begged twice in my life.

The first time was to a gravestone in the Trudge Cemetery, for my mother to return from the dead.

The second time was to a constellation, The Armoured Dove, to help guide my father back home from wherever he had fled.

Now, curled up in a shivering ball in the center of the Octagon, I beg for the third time, to the Black Lightning that courses through my veins, leaving trails of dread and despair in its path, to leave me be. To let me die in peace.

I pry a single eyelid open.

The Amphitheater is gone.

No. The world is gone.

The half-moon sweep of stone seats, that were just a moment before crammed with thousands of Camelot citizens, is now a dense expanse of endless black. The towering TV screens. The shattered Fantasia sign. LeMorte and his private Skybox. The King's Spear dominating the horizon. My friends and my enemies.

All gone.

The only things left in the world are me and the Octagon and a knowing, watching abyss, that presses in on me from all sides; a dark tide sent to devour me.

I glance to my side and see there's something I missed. My father's punching bag hangs motionless beside me, hovering a few feet above the canvas. Scrawled across its familiar cracked surface are the words: GREATNESS LIES WITHIN.

The bag rotates and reveals the other side. Another message reads: HELL LIES WITHIN.

Someone's idea of a sick joke.

The bag hangs from an impossibly long chain. I follow its rusted links into the void above, investigating its source. My mouth slowly becomes unhinged as I crane my neck backward and stare into the sky.

A massive heart hovers in the air above me. Not a stone heart like the Hearthstone. But a real human organ, its vast, blue-veined surface stretching across all of Camelot.

It beats in perfect rhythm with the thudding in my chest. It takes me a moment to understand that, somehow, it's my heart.

Just like the punching bag, it must be some kind of twisted illusion brought on by the Black Lightning.

I squint and see the punching bag's chain leads directly into an open artery: an entrance into my own heart.

Suddenly, I hear Kah Dolgin's voice echoing through the creeping void around me.

"Who are you?" I hear myself ask.

"Answer resides in one of heart's chambers chambers chambers," Kah's voice warbles.

It seems The Mystic was right. Because I can feel the answer waiting for me in the heavens.

I grip a fist around the chain and begin climbing, pulling my body up link by link, into the flat, moonless sky. After a few minutes of shimmying up the chain, I look down and note a minuscule disc of light; the spotlit Octagon, floating far below, like the last star left on earth.

I watch in dismay as it's finally engulfed by the encroaching darkness.

I keep climbing, making sure not to glance at the rising abyss, which now seems to be following me up the chain, nipping at my toes. A faceless predator playing with its prey.

The chain finally leads me directly into the artery, a shadowed cave of flesh. Inside, I hop off the chain, surprised by the solidity of the ground as my bare feet make contact with the floor.