Bereft: Foretold

21 | A King's Warning

In the quiet of my anxious slumber, towers of igneous rock and bruised shadows materialized around me, forming tangible shapes and structures in the haze of my dreamscape. The lights remained oblique, stretched in lines of white and black as wayward fractals drifted in the air. I knew this place, had been here before. 

My eyes widened because this was no dream.

I stood in a familiar study, not a hand's width from the wall of shelves chiseled from pure stone. The shelves were burdened with thin sheets of glossy black stone used in lieu of less durable, fragile parchment, and each sheet was riddled with unintelligible script. Overhead, diffuse red light filtered into the room from veins of fiery color stretched across the ribbed ceiling.

At a table burdened by more of the obsidian tablets, I found the creator of this dark reality watching me with eyes like imploding stars.

I reacted without thought; my back struck the wall of shelves and I snarled, fingers digging into the harsh rock as if I could pry it apart and disappear within its stony embrace. Last I'd seen the King Below, he'd been breaking the bindings holding me in place inside his inescapable prison. Suppressing the rill of terror snaking through my heart was impossible.

The Baal rose from his simple chair, setting aside his slate with little thought. Despite becoming Fallen, the self-proclaimed King held the same terrible beauty as his Absolian kin, the same refined bone structure, faultless skin, and untenable facial symmetry. He dressed as he had when he'd been a member of the Absolian Command, in a high-collared military jacket and polished boots. I'd seen him dressed in the less formal attire of the Pitlings before, and it did nothing to mitigate his incomparable aura of menace and intrigue.

"Darius," he greeted, his smile sharp-toothed and ill-mannered. "You've looked better."

"Release me from your nightmare," I demanded, locked in place by my own dread and fury. I did not truly stand in his study in his temple within the vast wasteland of the Pit, but nor was I simply asleep. The Baal had the ability to reach through the Song of Existence and to take an unaware mind beyond its bounds. This place existed and yet did not exist. It was born by the Baal's will and would fade just the same.

"I can give you a nightmare, if that is what you want." 

The image distorted, and the shelves at my back gave way. I landed on hard-packed earth, skinning my palms as the unbearable heat of the Pit's flames arched over our heads. I saw the chains lying not a foot from me, just where they have been when they'd fallen from my wrists ten years ago.

"You're not creative," I spat as I rose to my feet. I kicked one of the fetters for good measure, sending a cloud of dirt over his legs. The Baal brought his hands together and bowed his head as shadows rippled behind him.

"Shall I...try another?"

The prison was whisked away and replaced with a colder, more modern scene. The night enveloped the misty landscape while the dawn ached in the east to shed its radiance over the world. The Baal was there, kneeling on a familiar wet road, his wings outspread to block the rain from falling upon what lay across his lap.

I could hear my pulse undulating in my ears as I paced around the image until I could see what the King Below held.

Sara's mouth was moving, speaking too softly to be heard, her head cradled by the Baal's arm as my soul slipped from her tremulous fingertips and gathered within his steadfast hand. Her side and the spoiled mud beneath were tarnished by rust-colored blood, blood that poured from her ripped open wound. So much blood.