Second Chances
31
DEC/21
He awoke in darkness, drowning in a black and waterless sea. He began to struggle as invisible arms grabbed at him with icy fingers that ripped into his soft form with resolute determination; dragging him down into those unseen depths. He tried to cry out, in agony or fear or desperation, but no sound bubbled forth from his starving lungs. It was just a mouthless scream – a paltry, futile act of hopelessness and despair; a useless gesture in the grip of these unseen claws that pulled him inexorably towards the inevitable…
He fought as long as he could, but eventually his form grew limp as he was dragged through the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, the agony of the rending claws becoming background noise for the new normal. At some point during this torture, he became acutely aware of the five pairs of eyes that watched him as he endured these torments. Each pair of eyes was affixed to a serpentine face – one each of red and blue and black and white and green – and each malicious face split into wide, toothy grins at the acknowledgement of his plight. None of the heads spoke – they didn’t need to; he could feel their emotions in the vast emptiness around him, soundlessly screaming into the deepest recesses of his soul. Delight. Disdain. Disinterest. Hatred. Contempt. Pleasure. The sheer enormity of these emotions tore into him like daggers, rending the flesh from his bones and tearing into the very core of his being. He had failed them…Her…and he would pay the ultimate price for this dereliction; though part of him knew that even if he had lived a life of exemplary service, he would have suffered the same fate. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty was the point. It was the sole, driving force behind Her malevolent and terrible and supreme reign.
Not yet, you old fool.
A voice, somehow familiar to him, then reached down to him there in those darkest depths, arriving like a faint glimmer of light amidst this ocean of unimaginable blackness. These simple words took root in the primeval part of his mind, the fragment of himself that he had tried to protect against the searing agony and torment that had long ago torn the rest of him apart. He grew emboldened by these words and the Hope they brought with them, as they reached down to him like a helping hand breaking through the darkness and pulling him free of the unending and grasping despair that had held him for so long.
There, I’ve got you.
He blinked against the bright light and was greeted by a wave of confusion that was immediately followed by a burst of wracking pain; angry fire that traveled along a highway of nerves before exploding in a blast of white-hot light in the center of his brain which then sent searing shrapnel of pain ripping throughout his body. Shadowy unconsciousness, sensing his weakness, tugged at him with her black, sinewy arms and beckoned him seductively to return to the dark and nurturing embrace of a painless slumber.
Stay with me, you codger.
Slowly the pain subsided as he felt a warm and comforting hum spread throughout his body. His form vibrated with the harmony of the universe, and he could feel crushed bones and damaged organs and sundered flesh re-knit and mend itself as the soothing sound coursed through him, taking the pain along with it and leaving a delicious numbness in its wake.
After a long moment, he dared to open his eyes again and this time, instead of blazing light and blistering pain, he was greeted by a mass of red curls that perfectly framed a pair of bright, silver eyes set atop a worried-but-relieved smile.
He tried to sit up but a delicate hand upon his chest held him in place as surely as a slaver’s bonds. “Sit still, you old fool,” the freckled face before him said in a sweet whisper; a voice soft and chiding, but also tinged with fear and worry. “We almost lost you there….well, we did lose you there for a moment.”
“Wh….wha…t happened?” he murmured weakly, responding in a voice that felt and sounded as if it hadn’t been used in many years.
“The rebels had several Psions in their ranks, and one of them turned out to be a fairly accomplished graviturge. She pulled three of you out of the sky,” she said as she turned her head slightly, nodding softly towards two crumpled figures laying a few dozen feet away, their red cloaks and black wings standing out in stark contrast to the white sand beneath them. The only movement from the two still forms was the listless flutter of a few black feathers that were coaxed to dance at the stubborn nudging of the desert wind.
Confusion set in immediately, as he had no memory of a battle or of rebels or of being pulled from the air…in fact he hardly even recognized the face in front of him or knew his own name; these memories all trickled back to him like slow drips of water from a spent canteen: His name was Vashir. Drip. Her name was Lyra. Drip. He was a Templar. Drip. He had been pulled from the sky. Drip. Outside of these occasional trickles, his only real, solid and tangible memories were of those ten eyes that haunted him amidst that drowning, total blackness; tortured memories that now rooted themselves in the darkest recesses of his heart, becoming one with him. Forming him.
After several moments, he felt he had enough recollection to piece together the fragments of the day’s events, and only then did Lyra finally allow him to sit up. “You couldn’t help them, they way you…helped…me?” Vashir asked in a quiet voice, indicating to the two fallen Templars beside them. He wasn’t concerned for the plight of his fellows – their loss would make for substantially less competition for advancement and reward back in Balic – but he did wonder why she had helped only him. Their bond ran deep, but so too did Lyra’s sense of obligation.
She looked back at the two still forms, a faraway look in those shining silver eyes. “No,” she said sadly. “I only narrowly made it to you, and barely had the vitale and time to bring you back.”
Vashir could then see the lines of exhaustion around her eyes and mouth, and he fully realized the weight of the burden she bore; not just in the energy that must have been required to save him, but also the emotional toll in not being able to likewise save the others weighed heavily upon her as well.
Lyra continued, “I almost didn’t make it to you in time. If Kresh hadn’t broken their ranks and fractured their Psion’s defenses, I wouldn’t have been able to get to you at all.”
As if on cue, Kresh walked up beside Lyra, dragging the body of a dwarven woman garbed in leathers and rags through the sand behind him, dropping her lifeless form ignobly in the sand with a thud. He stood and glared down at Vashir, his purple eyes shining with mirth and haughty superiority. “Thought you were worm food, V,” he said in his cheery baritone.
Vashir hated Kresh with his every ounce of his being, but even he had to admit that the Templar Prime made an imposing figure standing there hulking over him, his black skin and red robes dramatically highlighted by the amber sun behind him as his resplendent golden wings reached ostentatiously towards the heavens. By the Five, he despised this man, and it killed him to think that he might owe him yet another favor; and so, Vashir only glared up at him in response to the man’s pithy remark.
Kresh smirked knowingly and turned his attention away from Vashir and back towards the dwarven woman, as he knelt over her body and put his palm over her face and began ripping lost memories free of lifeless bone. Lyra reached down and pulled Vashir to his feet, ignoring the looks of pain that washed over him as he stood. When he finally got his bearings, he took a moment and reveled in the warmth on his skin from the sun overhead; the way the cool breeze gently tugged at his hair; in the sensation of nurturing breath in his lungs; and in the sound of the strong, steady beating of his heart. Life is a gift he thought, as he flapped his mighty wings and stepped into the air. And it was a gift that he meant to hold on to for a long, long time…
By the Dawn, Oni was right!
Vashir could barely contain his relief when he saw Ixen’s eyes flutter open and his companion’s lungs draw in their first breath of the day. He recognized the look of confusion and pain and fear that instantly formed on the man’s golden face, for he had worn that very look when he had been ripped free of death’s icy grasp. Ixen sat up with a gasp and looked around frantically, his hands going instinctively to his throat, gingerly tracing the path that the killer’s blade had traveled the day before; the place where the cruel steel had painfully severed his scales and tendons and arteries and his very tether to the living world.
As delighted as he was to witness his friend’s rebirth, Vashir could not make eye contact with the man, as the guilt of his role in his friend’s death rushed back into memory, and those terrible final words he had uttered before the blade sheared those shiny golden scales that ringed Ixen’s neck. You must have me confused with someone who gives a fuck. What an horrific eulogy to accompany ones soul into the eternal tortures of the afterlife. After a lifetime of struggle and turmoil, all in the name of bringing a glimmer of goodness into this awful world, to have your life’s mission capstoned with a phrase of such utter disregard; it haunted Vashir. Regardless of the intent behind the words – the reckless hope that such feigned disdain might stay the killer’s hand – to have those terrible words escort you into Her dark embrace was unthinkable. Forget forgiveness, could Ixen ever trust him again after something like that? Would he, if the tables were turned?
He tried to stammer out an apology or explanation, but settled instead on “Welcome back old friend,” the words catching in his throat with their hollowness, as he turned away in shame unable to return Ixen’s gaze. Oni and Arnia were better suited to usher him back into the world of the living than he was, anyway.
He glanced over to where David was sitting with his back against the wall of the small pavilion, staring off into the distance with a haunted, faraway look in his pale eyes. These two men had both borne witness to a horror that many had before them, but they had returned to talk about it: they had seen the wrath of the Dragon Queen scorned, and they had felt firsthand the awful might of her rage as they suffered torments unimaginable to those blessed with the gift of life. When he had visited the Dark Realm he had only been dead for less than a minute, yet it had felt like years. David and Ixen had been dead more than a day; what torments had they experienced in that amount of time? How deep were the scars that such memories would leave upon their very souls?
As Arnia and Oni commiserated with their newly returned friends and filled them in on the events that had transpired since their passing, Vashir found himself thinking of his own dalliance with death again. What had surprised him most when Lyra’s healing words had found him at the bottom of that Lifeless Sea was that Tiamat hadn’t seemed angry at being denied Her prize. The voices in the dark recesses of his mind were surprisingly silent and still as he burst forth from Her grasp. Her silence in that moment was more chilling than any shouts of rage or any malevolent threats She might have cast his way, for She knew that such things were entirely unnecessary. She knew that he would be back, it was only a matter of time; and time is something that a Dark Goddess has an eternity of. She needn’t do anything but wait…
And with this revelation, the enormity of the task that lay before them was fully revealed, once again. If they failed, they were doomed to spend the rest of existence bearing witness to all of the cruelty and all of the malevolence that the Dark Queen brandished in Her black heart. There would be no escape from Her clutches the next time they found themselves in her terrible grasp, and she would have all the time in the world – quite literally – to dream up new torments to dole out upon them. She had a hundred lifetimes to hone and perfect the tortures that she gleefully administered out to Her guests in the Dark Realm, and she would have eons more to craft and construct new torments to practice upon them.
Oni and Arnia helped Ixen to his feet, holding the druid steady as he made the first step of his new life; the druid of the sewers took a few deep breaths before standing tall and nodding that he was okay. David took the cue and stood up as well, his soft eyes turning to razored glass; focused and sharp. The five of them stood there, wordlessly facing one another while they steeled themselves for what lay ahead. Life is a gift; they all knew that; it was an all-to-brief reprieve from an eternity of suffering and torment. It was a gift so precious, that it is rarely given a second time. Yet Ixen and David had both been re-gifted it on the same day; and these rare endowments were proffered by the hand of a dormant God, nonetheless.
Yes, life was a gift; and these five knew that they had an obligation to use this gift to its fullest. And not just for the living, but for the dead as well; so that these unfortunates might be bestowed the boon of a restful slumber when they swam beneath the Lifeless Sea…