Behind |First book in The Risen Saga|

Chapter twenty four

Why wasn't anything happening? I defeated it. I wanted out now. This wasn't right. The blackness still surrounded me like a blanket draped over a high-ceiling roof but I couldn't hear the whispers and I felt alone in my own head again. That was a plus.

I wandered the blackness and called for Tyson but there was no response and when he was here I felt his presence. I couldn't feel it anymore. This wasn't right and I knew it. I thought that maybe I had to do something else but then I could feel a horrible pain in my head, it rocked through the area around me like an earthquake rocks the world and after that, the earth is never the same again. 

I wanted to clutch my head in pain but I couldn't because I didn't have hands in my mind, it felt like I was a spectator, like in the necklace's visions. I screamed and it rung through my head like a bell. 

The whispers started again and I felt like crying but the thing was, I couldn't. I looked around and instead of pitch blackness, I saw one small space, brightened by light, like a spotlight. I walked to it, wondering what had changed and I realized that there was someone sitting in it. A familiar someone. Long red hair, blue skin. She turned around and I suppressed a gasp of surprise and disgust. 

Her body had bloody cracks in it like a broken vase reassembled by glue, her eyes out of place and her whole body shaking, eyes pitch black. The Queen whimpered and fell to her knees at my feet. Was this real? No, it can't be. 

Her bony hands wrapped around my ankles and made the skin there burn. That's when I noticed that I actually had a body, it was just I thought I couldn't feel with it. 

"Why?" she asked and her horrid eyes cried blood red tears, running down her cheeks, "Did it make you feel good to kill me? Was it for your pleasure?" she said and squinted her eyes at me. I shook my head vigorously and tried to pull away from the burn of her hands. 

"I didn't mean to," I said, "I wasn't myself. I'm sorry." I cried and pulled harder but her hands were like manacles and they wouldn't come undone. They burned my skin and made them start to bleed. 

"Seth," she said, "Your pleasure," she rambled but I wasn't listening, trying to get her hands off my ankles. She looked away and started to cry normal tears and then she looked back up at me and she looked worse.

One eyes was gone and most of her beautiful red hair, her clothes were gone but you couldn't tell what anything was, her body was incapacitated. Her nose was disfigured and her hands were missing fingers that were newly bloody.

"Your pleasure," she said, "Your pleasure. Your pleasure!" she screamed and pulled off of me, causing me to stumble backwards and stare in astonishment. I didn't want to hurt her but she had hurt someone I loved and I still didn't know how much power I had and why I even existed. 

She kept screaming the same thing while I ran off into the darkness again. Your pleasure. Your pleasure.

Another bright like showed and I hesitantly walked into it. Nothing was inside but I knew I wasn't alone. My eyes grazed the darkness around me, looking for any signs of movement of life. Not only was there blackness but the light didn't seem comforting either. It cast down an eerie glow and made me shudder. 

"Ava?" I heard Tyson's voice but it didn't seem like him. It sounded muffled and strangled, the word slurring. Usually he said my name filled with love and longing but this had no emotion, that was the first sign that something was wrong. 

Something stumbled out of the darkness. A disfigured creature with no hair and skin hanging off of the disgusting bones. It walked out into the brighter light and I stumbled away from it. It was Tyson. His face was his face but the skin was hanging off and it was a discolored grey. Wrinkled and looking like it was weathered. His body was covered in dried blood and his bones stuck out of his chest and hips.