Amaryah's Awakening

Chapter Eighteen

Horcus' Lair, Kozantei, Fourth Quadrant, Andromeda Galaxy.

Amaryah

The woman's net pad pinged, and she looked away from the scene before her, sadistic smile fading as she registered the caller. She made a disgusted sound, her lips twisting into disappointment. She snapped her fingers and answered her phone, her forced polite voice at odds with the expression contorting her face.

"Yes Sir, right away."

The cleanser had frozen at her finger snap but held Mya firmly to the ground. When the call ended, she looked back at Mya who lay beneath the cleanser whose wheezing breath still filled the room.

"Mark the bitch, so she won't forget me." She turned and stomped from the room, having to answer to whoever it was that held her leash. The cleanser growled, the sound vibrating Mya's chest as she struggled against its grip.

Claws dug into her face and she bucked, her wild screams filling the room. The sound of a wounded animal. The cleanser pushed a mild poison into her skin, ensuring that it would scar and that the healing would be long and difficult. Her eye slowly lost its color becoming a stark silver white long after it had finally healed. Her sight forever altered. When it left the room, Mya lay on the ground, her face a bloody mess oozing a foul-smelling thick liquid that mixed with her blood.

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Mya shuddered in the darkness that held her, her skin crawling with the pain that had clasped her at the sight of the memories. She screamed into the void that held her and pushed her power about her. The energy flew from her with a loud boom. The darkness cracked, like an egg that was about to bring forth life. Red light streamed into the darkness that encased Mya, bathing her in its glow. She shuddered again at the vastness of the power she'd expelled. How was she capable of such cataclysmic energy when the supreme had called her weak? She looked around her, her eyes slowly beginning to focus.

The skies were red with white flashes of light dancing behind the clouds of the skies creating a dramatic display. It looked as if the skies were bathed in blood. Wind whipped around her but seemed to veer away from touching her, she did not feel its contact on her skin but could see the skeletal branches of trees bowing to it. There was no sign of life around her, no sound of it either, there was only the howling. Her feet carried her forward, eyes trained on the empty branches of the dancing trees. She stumbled over something and fell to her knees. Looking back to see what had tripped her, she saw the hollow eyes of a skull staring it her, its grin fixed and seemingly amused at the horror that began to grow within her.

The wind howled louder, as if sensing her presence, as if protesting its inability to strip the flesh from her bones with its strength. Looking about her, she saw mountains of skulls, skeletons and bodies rotting in the elements upon a hard dirt ground. She covered her mouth, her mind already noting that there should be a scent associated with such an occurrence. All around her was death, her breathing increased. She felt as if the winds were pressing in on her, the souls of all the dead slithering about her now, watching her as if she were to blame. She was to blame, her mind screamed at her. She felt it within her, this was her fault. You caused this; you did this... you...you...you. The dead whispered.

When Mya woke, she was lying on the ground outside the cave, Artemisia pacing about her, tail twitching in worry. She hastily got to her feet, dusting away dirt from her suit. What the fuck was that? She thought, but even as she asked the question she knew.

The Horcus had punished her for her lie and had forced out her deepest fears. Mya's heart sped at the thought, all those dead, because of her... her mother gone because of her. She shook herself and made to grab her bag from the ground when the Horcus morphed before her. A shadowy form of a woman now, but the deep voice remained unchanged.