The Heirs of Death

3.1 The Council

THE COUNCIL

Winds howled around me, my dress billowing with echoing rattles as my hair flew in a mess of silky raven. The usual cold fire blazed under my floating form, my eyes roaming the familiar dungeons. Ever since the last time a dream had overtaken me, the place hadn't changed a bit. Dim and cold, like a pit in the blackest prisons of Rimelia. The only thing that changed was the cells. The doors were flung open while the prisoners were nowhere to be found. Instead, the only thing that greeted me was the silence of their absence. And the glowing light in the end.

Ripples of a soothing blue danced in this darkness, piercing it like the whisper of an undying promise. But it was no longer bright. The once glimmering beam that called my magic with such intensity became a doddering flicker dancing on the edges of vanishing. And I stood still in the lugubriousness of the place, my mind reeling like it had always done on where I was, and what Sorcha had said when I first met her.

A thing that called my soul to see. But to see what?

Through the silence a growl rang, bouncing from one wall to the other. A second followed before everything went back to its idle state.

Or though I thought.

No growls resonated, but the floor cried, bricks and stones falling one after the other in a black nothingness. Like trying to satisfy an undying hunger, the entire place crumbled,  slumping into that black hole. Soon, the place vanished with the wind, the emptiness under my feet growing with a stupendous speed. And from that darkness, a pair of skeleton hands surged.  Bony and pale, they rose from that darkness, trying to grasp me. To drown me in whatever hell existed down below.

Trepidation got the best of me and I looked around for an escape route. But there was none. Nothing but the unending blank. Before I could think of anything to do, a voice echoed in the dullness of the place. A voice that rebounded in my mind, again and again, the world fading with it. The well-known haziness washed over me and I watched with awe--an awe that never ceased no matter how many times I lived through it--as my soul was pulled back through time and space to my body.

The voice still echoed, sounding closer and far urgent as my soul snuggled once again in my physique. My eyes forcibly opened and were greeted by the face of the King. His lips were moving and it took me a while to realize he was whispering my name, his hands firmly holding me against him. And it took me a bit more to feel the shakiness of my body and the fast thumping of my heart.

The saving voice was his, it had always been the same.

"Another nightmare?" he mumbled, his mouth pressed against my forehead, his arms as tight as the ones I wrapped him with.