The Day My Dream Died

31 - Silence Sustained

— 31 —

Silence Sustained

\\//

Recoiling from the abrupt end to the memory, Lise staggers. Elineal turns her head, looking straight at her.

'Wh-Where is...' She utters, cracking. 'Where is he... e-eeeee...'

The brief lucidity retreats from her eyes as her words fade back into inaudible murmuring.

Lise asks without much hope, 'Elineal, can you hear me?'

The woman's eye twitches. Nothing.

//\\

Lise weeps in waking. Thrown into icy waters, submerged in pain, her flailing is more harm than help. If not for the elixir allowing her breath, she would drown in it. All that remained of the scozel gone now. The regret will come later. For now, she only foresees relief.

Damn me to death. This pain will not end me; I must continue.

Still, she doesn't move until the scozel's blessing warms her against the chill. So begins the struggle to escape with Elineal safe. It would be made easier by that wagon used to transport her here, but it is nowhere nearby. She staggered around the tower with the staff in hand, sword in the other. If not for the fiends she would have just tried to carry Elineal out, but in the state she is in that would leave them too much time to take control again.

Sitting back in the tower, she scrubs the grimace from her face, feeling pain's encroachment on her thoughts once more. Trapped. These chains are heavy, and wearing on her raw flesh. It brings to mind the words Seli had spoken to Pelezel in the memory. Freedom chained. She doesn't know what it refers to specifically; it might simply be the fiends' influence spilt, no more meaningful than that.

Shaking her head, Priorities, she reminds herself. "While you're preoccupied with procuring prescience the present needs your presence." Saneness attained, Akota survives through his profound influence on her.

Lise rises slowly, returning to the door. She leaves Elineal where she lies—looking at her, she is tempted. The last thing trapping her here. Tempted to leave her and go. She can't carry her. She hasn't the strength left, leave her and go. Tempted, terribly, for it will tear her. She hasn't the strength to save her.

She leaves...

The slow turn of the spiraling hall, one step at a time, the tower is behind her. For all her efforts, she walks forward a failure. So near to a success of a kind, a pitiful semblance in reality, but not the full failure she suffered each step before. In the end, she accomplished nothing. The same end. The only end. And perhaps, despite herself, a kind of prescience is attained in that recognition—if only a pitiful semblance in reality.