A Court of Desires and Darkness

Chapter 20

Darkness. 

Silence. 

Emptiness.

My body-less soul floats in a vast, never-ending chasm of darkness. Almost all my life, I have lived side by side with shadows, with darkness. But this... this is different. I do not feel, cannot hear. For only silence rings all around me. 

It soothes, caresses. A warm blanket during a winter's storm. Out there, beyond the darkness, is a ravishing storm, a bellow of earth and magic.

The fluid abyss vibrates, the sensation booming from all sides of my soul. I cannot look around, so I just float into it, like a raft on an open ocean. 

Memories flash around me, images mostly. Of my family--my mother who was the only kind one to me. Her gentle smile as she soothed bruises on my hands, or when we got caught in a rainstorm, soaked from head to toe. The family hut, and that little clearing of tall grasses behind it where I used to play with a friend. The Moon Ceremonies that the village would hold each month. I always felt overlooked by the Celestial being. Not from the sun, though. It gleamed at me, ever since I was a young child. I would sometimes hold my own Sun Ceremonies--much to the village's disgust, and to my father's scolding. 

Images of my village, destroyed and underwater, danced around me. Bodies--fae and livestock--and pieces of homes, of weapons, and various objects floating in a then calm lake. 

Death. 

So much death. 

Images of winged fae turning to dust underneath a blinding white light, falling to the surface of the earth. Foot soldiers, foe and ally crumpling as well under another beam. 

The Bone Carver.

I visited the Carver, once. 

Almost nine hundred years ago, shortly after my village's demise. He appeared to me as my father first, stern and cold. That smile on his face when I entered the chambers of the prison was unnerving. When I looked away and back, he was my mother. I practically stumbled from the shock. I trekked through that perilous, dark mountain in search for him, in order to get some information. With one visit to my home village, I knew that it was no natural disaster that ravaged that land. It reeked of magic--old, old magic. I was prepared to bargain with him, offering up my own bones when I die, as I have been warned he asked for often. In the end, no bargain was made. I wonder if he knew that his death would be at my hands. 

That rumbling grew more frequent, more intense. Still, I could not move to look around. 

The darkness around me began moving--flowing. Like a river racing through a broken dam, I floated toward... something. Far, far away, there was a blinding light. It was familiar--I could just barely remember having just watched it emerge somewhere, an ethereal figure of golden fire soaring underneath a blue, beautiful sky. 

The Sun, I thought in awe. 

Faster and faster, my soul moved towards that light. I let the current take me, eager to get to that end. The closer I got, though, the less ethereal it looked. It almost looked like...

Amren. 

More images. She jumped into the Cauldron, cracking it in three. And coming out as golden fire.

I kept hurtling towards her, unable to stop. 

A loud sound like thunder roared around us, the darkness shaking. 

Parts of it broke off from the surroundings, rushing to me as I race by. I can do nothing but watch as limbs are formed out of nothing but shadows. They create a body--my body.