A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 50 The Tearing

"You couldn't bear it, could you? You couldn't look that far inside, into your memories...into your past." He whispered, stepping forward. Moving but not knowing what he was doing.

Ahleena still didn't move, still just stared at him with the coldest eyes he had ever seen. He wondered if she were lost to him forever. How could she still be sane when she had just done the impossible, had just taken the very flow of life within her and froze it like that? It was so wrong, so unnatural, that he suspected that if she were truly full of hatred she would have turned Rift Wraith from it.

Like Mirage. His thoughts skittered unbidden to her, before he could force them away. It had been so very fleeting, yet it had raked his soul with the bitter claws of grief, sharpened to new heights by the new clarity of his memories. He shoved it down in desperation. He couldn't fall apart now, not when Ahleena needed him.

Behind him, he heard the girls stop moaning in pain. He could hear them getting up. He forced his thoughts to Ahleena, to their link, trying to send warmth, love, life through it. Into her. Trying to ignore his senses.

Yet his ears couldn't be turned off. He was still aware of the girls walking up behind him, accompanied by that rapid, soft pattern of the steps of the Torn. His nose caught their scent, the poignant scent of blood hitting his mind with a primal hammer, as always.

Abruptly, lightning-quick, he was overcome with a furious rage. This was the fault of the Torn! They had done this to them, had done this to Ahleena!

He spun, a true blur of movement, and dropped into the ready crouch of the predator. The light flickering in his eyes was the harshest, icy blue, a visible threat of the savage power within him.

"You! You did this!" He snarled, pointing one long, claw-tipped finger at the Torn.

The Torn crouched down, all arms and legs and angles. The skin strips waving above them were rigid and still, pointing outwards in every direction, a nightmare peacock fan.

"There will be no created scars. There will be no created lies. There will be all reality." The Torn said. Their words were filled with images of walls crumbling down, dusty gray blocks dissolving back to the earth, and behind those walls a flood of sweet, pure air. A flood of such bittersweet happiness that no shape could hold it, no scent could define it, no color could match it.

Callin, Raina, and Carmen all staggered back, eyes popping wide in shock. With that single thought, that single rake of power through their minds, the Torn had freed them from the entirety of the blocks placed in their minds by the lab telepaths. It was like being freed from a cell, of like being released of a hidden, soul-crushing weight. Memories and emotions opened up within their minds like another life, filled with message and meaning, a blooming flower of truth.

"Before you step there, before you become whole, Weave us, Heal us, End us. Weave back the Berserker." The Torn pleaded.

They had lowered themselves even further, until the soft, pale skin of their bellies were brushing the grass. And where the grass touched them, wisps of dust rose into the air. Wisps that faded away almost instantly. They were being cut apart, being eroded, consumed by reality. They were not safe here. They didn't really belong here.

Callin abruptly heard the message his ears were giving him. The Torn, all three, or was it six? of them were dying! Their heartbeats were faltering, stuttering weakly, a softening drumbeat full of approaching finality. The pain that Carmen, Raina, and he had felt as the Torn had reached deep into their minds had been just a shadow of what the Torn were being tortured by.

He understood that pain now. It had been an echo of the effect of having these tormented minds so deep within theirs, pulling at their most intense, buried memories. But the Torn had done it to help them, to free them from the scars placed in their minds by the lab.