Promise the Sky

Chapter 51

 A.N. Sorry for the mix-up, I changed the order of some chapters and confused myself. Chapter 51 should be Ben, and 52 Keenan. It doesn't really matter if you've read them the wrong way, it's just that the Keenan chapter placemarks a few days in Ben's storyline so that it doesn't just jump straight forward :)

Chapter 51

Ben

 

 

 

"Fancy a swim did we, little god?"

Null chuckles, wading through to the centre of the room. He leaves the door open but I have checked the lake to a predefined space and it continues to flow against the empty doorway as though it were watertight.

"Got thirsty," I mutter emotionlessly, holding my head in my hands. "Might have overdone the 'powerful magic' thing."

My head hangs between my knees, swaying slowly over the surface of the water. Just around my feet I have flattened the ripples to a perfect sheen, flat as glass. And from it, my reflection stares up at me with haunted eyes and a ruined face.

"Can we get rid of this wet please?" Null asks distastefully. I catch his face reflected in the corner of my mirror and as he lifts his sodden robes to sit at my side, he pulls his lips back over his teeth like a cat that has swallowed something horrible.

"I don't know where to put it," I drawl, unable to care about anything beneath the heavy pressure of depression, and turn my attentions back to my own nightmarish reflection. "I don't know where it came from... Do I really look this hideous?"

"What?"

Null turns his head, finally noticing what I'm doing. He hisses, suddenly angry, and swipes his hand through the pristine surface of the lake.

"No. No mirrors. Get rid of this water right now."

I bite my lip but obey instantly, waving a limp hand to send every molecule of dampness down the many cracks and holes of the recently damaged floor. Most disappears out the door in one great wave and I sigh.

"I have no idea where that all went," I say.

"No matter, no matter," Null waves it away dismissively, pleasant as long as he gets his way, "I hear my guard force has a tendency to sleep on the job." He winks. "A tsunami would be the perfect punishment for that kind of idler, don't you think?"

I shrug, still staring downwards even though the only thing that faces me now is rough stone. The cracks remind me of home, of my beautiful, delicate home, swallowed by a great chasm. Sinead would never take me back now... not that I deserve it. I have been too consumed by thoughts of another woman. Another woman I have betrayed equally as terribly.

Not that Melissa would want me either.

I am hideous, a great beast of shorn bone and weeping flesh. Who could look past such a gaping wound? And when it heals, it will become a great slash of silver scar tissue, from the corner of my left eye, running parallel right down to the end of my nose. That is, if the constant flow of magic ever allows it to heal. I know nothing of this barbaric technique; who knows, it could remain raw and bleeding for the rest of my life.

Or I could simply die in my sleep, that too is as much of a possibility.

"Benjamin, stand up."

I just do it. Better not to think upon this cruel world and the commands within it, better to just try and survive with what little happiness I might one day scrape together.