Mythic (NaNoWriMo14)

Chapter 13 - Burning Out

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Chapter 13 - Burning Out 

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Pressed between a mattress and the air around him, Nazine didn't feel right.

Everything had taken on a surreal quality. Up was no longer up, just a direction he didn't care much for. Down dictated the way his body fell after he gave up the struggle to rise from anything than where it'd fallen last time as he continued to cling to a drifting consciousness.

The witch Mythic had done more than simply hypnotise him. She'd grabbed his mind and wrapped it tight in her own will. No matter how he'd pushed, how he'd fought, no thought of his own had penetrated that sphere. Inside that sphere, he was perfectly human. 

Inside that sphere, he couldn't commune with his phoenix. 

He'd watched through eyes he didn't control as the witch had moved his body and sent it to sleep, unable to summon fire or any of the other reasons why the Order considered him special. Even after she'd released him, Nazine hadn't been able to tap into the phoenix, the raw energy it'd always supplied him with. It was like every attachment, every bond he'd ever formed with his Mythic over his life had been completely severed. 

Nazine had never realised how core the phoenix was until it was taken away. He'd considered it a tool with a will molded from primal instinct, one that the Order wanted him to bring under his complete control and harness as the source for his own abilities. For the first time, he was starting to question that view. 

Because something that basic wouldn't shut me down like this. 

That something in him that had driven him forward through the day, kept his senses sharp and clear was just missing. He considered pinning it on the after effects of possession but couldn't bring himself to accept that as the truth. It was believable, sure, but if he were being honest with himself, it would have been settling for an excuse. 

Somehow, one of his hands made it to the crystal key laying just under his nose, linked to him only by that fragile gold chain that was suddenly more precious than ever before. He managed to shift his head enough on the pillow to look at it. Focus on it. If the previously established connections to his phoenix were gone, then he'd damned well just have to make more. 

A voice came from some direction that wasn't up or down. "In here, thrall. Be quick about it."

Another answered it. "Of course." 

There was the brush of fabric on fabric, the same squeak of weight on the mattress that he'd heard when they'd placed Nazine himself on it, but it was more of a curiosity to Nazine than a fact or something that mattered. Everything sounded like it was underwater, like he was hearing it through ears that weren't quite his as someone leaned over, occupying the space between the only two directions Nazine could currently make sense of. 

Pressure on his forehead. Quiet words, one of which the Order had often request he refrain from using. "Zin, you just have to hang on. We'll do what we can, I promise." Fingers that tried to pry his key from his grasp. Fingers that gave up when Nazine's tightened around them and instead wrapped their rough surface around his and squeezed. "Just hang on."

Nazine clung to his key long after the mattress squeaked again and a click marked the exits of the voices. Nothing mattered--no direction, no voices, no touch--nothing but finding the phoenix into whatever dark pit it'd fallen to and rekindle the embers into flames.

He'd find that truth. 

*+*+*+* 

Rena was aware that when the quartermaster had told her she couldn't train in a dress, what they'd actually meant was that the djinn no longer wanted her wearing the dress that had attachments to the Order.