Aetherworld

...Is not my Friend - Chapter 5

Choking woke me up. A knee pressed down on my chest preventing me from sucking precious air in, not that it would have mattered; two hands were squeezing my throat. No scream could escape my lips, not even a whimper for help. I grabbed at the hands, tearing my fingernails into them; anything to pry them off. I kicked at my unknown attacker but couldn't get any power into it, they were too close and the angle too awkward.

It took concentration to use dark vision, but panic had already set in and my desperation for air prevented me from focusing on anything else.

My leg slammed down, hitting something soft. James moaned. I kicked him again. Please! It took him too long to realize what was happening but when he did, he cried out. His hatchet sparked into the rock wall above me, missing its mark. One of the hands blessedly left my neck and for a moment I was able to choke down some air, but at the same time my knife left its holster. I felt my attacker lash out with it and to my despair I heard it hit its mark. James made a sickening gurgling noise. The hatchet didn't swing again.

Both hands were on my neck. The rough voice of Hendrick washed over me and I prayed he'd kill whatever was here. I couldn't understand him, the lack of oxygen had my head swimming and I was walking the knifes edge of consciousness. Anger, desperation, and fear stronger than I'd ever thought were possible slammed through me one after the other, but I was beginning to slip.

A thread of hope kept me from toppling. I'm not dying now. I can't die, I don't die here. NO. But as the precious moments slipped by nothing came to save me. James hadn't made a sound since my knife left its sheath. Despite that I knew I wasn't going to die.

I tried using a blast of mana, reaching my hand out where I thought he was. It streamed out of my palm but all it did was light up the room blue, passing harmlessly through him. My vision had grown too blurry to see my attacker and tears blurred the edges. Hendrick help!

My hand crawled across the stone floor looking for something to save me grasping at air and knocking the lamp out of reach. I couldn't find the knife either. Someone, please.

I couldn't sustain the beam of mana, all the good it did anyway, and my hand fell to my side. At the same time my conscious slipped and the sensation of falling washed over me like I was leaving my body. As the last of the blue light faded above me my vision grew dark.

I grew colder, egged on by the growing sensation of falling. My soul didn't feel like it was in my body anymore, stretching me until something snapped.

I was dead. It was a fact, and facts were cruel weren't they. This was the Aether, the place between life and death where one could travel wherever they sought to go. There was a place for my soul here and I knew how to get there. This too was a fact, but a soul could only know this when it entered.

Swirling mist surrounded me and all the colour had been leached from my body, though the world around me still held it. There were things were moving beyond the fog, and eyes peered out watching me. The whispers had come from these things, sprites with different forms. Some were like you'd imagine a fairy; others resembled no animal I had ever seen. I paid them no mind.

I felt no gravity here, no pain either. Because I was dead. I had hoped till the end someone would save me, but no one came. I wasn't meant to die here. I was supposed to find some sort of magical power at the last minute. Some miracle, or saviour should have saved me. I'm destined for more.

No. Apparently not. Fate was against me there; I'd dug my own grave and refused to lay in it. I was meant to die there too. That fact I knew.

I seethed. I wanted more. Fate sought to end me here, but I wasn't going to let it. Determined, I called out to all that was around me. Rock. Stone. Earth. It was all I had, and I reached out to