Summer Garden

Trei

Trei opened his eyes tiredly, feeling his stomach growling.

He dragged an angry hand across the ground, marking another day in his cell. This was his third sunrise. He raised his chains weakly. The woman keeping him here hadn't come back. She wasn't torturing him like Janus would. She'd simply abandoned him to rot. His new body wasn't rotting, it was living, in some way... But it was alive, and that meant it needed something to stay that way.

He stretched out a toe, groaning as he reached for the beam of light at the extreme limit of his range. He sucked in his breath painful as he touched the edge, and felt a rapid warmth spread across him. It didn't fill him, and didn't make the hunger go away - in fact it made it worse. But, it stopped him getting a lot weaker. That was his only goal, for now. To stay alive. To survive.

He didn't have the strength to break chains designed for a rabid ghoul when he was this weak. He couldn't fight back. He didn't know enough magic to do anything useful. He knew the restoration magic that Astrian had taught him, but there was nothing left for him to suck the life out of.

He glanced over at the pile of bones and clothes by the wall. That had been the first thing he'd absorbed, before trying to break free. The body of Janus. Somehow, that had seemed to make his strength drain even quicker.

Trei nestled his head against the stone in his usual place, and looked up at the ceiling, fighting back tears. It was hard to keep the thoughts of failure at bay. No one had come for him. He didn't know if they would, or could.

His bravado about Summer coming in a blaze of glory was gone now. If she could find him, she would have been here a long time ago. If she still wanted to. He'd divided them, in one of his last moments. Proposing to Summer like that, in front of the others. He couldn't deny it. He liked Astrian, and he'd enjoyed flirting with Luna. Heck, even Vastras made him feel protective. But Summer... He'd fallen for her from the first moment he'd seen her. That regal and mythical creature, sitting by a well, drinking tea. She was the idea of beauty turned into physical form, and given the soul of a warrior.

She was his ideal.

He'd never deserved someone like that.

He didn't deserve her.

He was just another failed experiment of a failed mage.

He closed his eyes, giving in and sinking into the feeling.