The Captive Titan [ManxMan]

Chapter Thirty-two: Unintended Consequences

~Chapter Thirty-two: Unintended Consequences~

"Finally!"

Atlas spits out a curse that has more feeling than meaning, as it does not translate into anything I am familiar with. I do not bother to dwell on that, though, when what started as dark, if not outright menacing, clouds forming on the horizon starts to take the shape of a towering being with outstretched wings that flash with lightning while the sky rumbles with laughter like thunder.

However, Atlas does not allow me to dwell on that for very long either, as he places one hand on my cheek and another on my side to turn me to him almost immediately, though it is not enough to actually make me look away since my eyes feel compelled to follow the steady growth of the cloud-being. "Ainmire," he says, demanding my attention, and I tear my eyes away long enough to meet his before I find my attention drifting again. He jerks my face around until I am physically unable to look at anything else but him. "Ainmire!"

I inhale sharply and try to shake away the fog that seems to have left the surface of the lake only to settle in my mind, but it refuses to leave. "What?" I ask, though it comes out as little more than a muffled mumble.

Atlas cups my face in his hands. He then asks something, and it must be serious judging by the desperate look on his face, but the words scramble themselves in my head, or maybe they just do not make sense from the start, and he is the one speaking nonsense. Still, either way, it makes no sense, so I just stare at him in incomprehension, wondering if he will repeat his question in a more understandable way if I look at him long enough.

If anything, though, it just seems to make him worry more, and maybe I should be worried as well, but the fog in my mind has turned into a pressure that feels a great deal like a building ache in my head, not unlike a headache but too sudden to be just that.

I might not understand what is going on, but I can tell one thing at least - something is very wrong.

Understanding that helps me very little, though, and the next time I blink, I end up wavering on the spot. And when I blink again, I open my eyes to find that Atlas is now holding onto my arms, holding me steady. "Ainmire," he says, and that is apparently understandable, even though the words that follow still fail to-

Something snaps in my head - a feeling so foreign and alarming that the pressure immediately disappears, or maybe the snap is the pressure leaving, but even without the pressure, the throbbing headache remains, and I come back to myself shaking like a newborn foal.

"-you leave?" Ainmire demands, shaking me a little, and though I only catch the end of his question, I still gather enough from it to shake my head, even though it is hard when every centimetre of my body is intent on shivering from a chill that does not exist. "You can't?"

I blink in incomprehension before realizing that while I understand the question, I did not really think about it, but now that he has pointed it out...

My magic rises up inside of me, but maybe it is the shaking, or maybe something else is wrong, because any attempt to actually summon my magic to flare it to disrupt my connection to the dream falls flat. So, not trusting the tongue that feels like it is stuck to the roof of my mouth to form words, I shake my head again.

I don't know.

"Damn that masterbator," Atlas hisses, using a term that has always translated odd, and I would have laughed at the choice of words were it not for the fact that I can feel fear starting to claw at my throat as the winged being of clouds stops its approach just over the center of the lake, looming over us and blocking out the sun that should have been still rising but is now in the center of the sky. Atlas seems intent on ignoring them, though, as all he says is, "They can't have you."