What Makes a Monster

♱Eighty-Two♱

Third Person P.O.V.

Soran descends into darkness. Pain rolls over in waves. A shrill scream tears aparts his insides, as if someone has reached within and is holding his organs in the palm of his hand. He's pulled through the dark, dragged like a rag doll with no control of where he's going. There's pain, but he isn't certain it's his own, and a woman's voice screaming like the sounds of nails on a chalkboard.

Then he's dropped, plummeting faster and faster. Wind hisses past, stinging his already throbbing skin until he hits the ground hard. The world around him shifts from black to searing light. Wind turns to thunderous claps of a storm, water pelting against his skin as painful as needles piercing his skin. Every part of his body aches as he blinks until the light fades. He's peering up into a stormy sky, breathing in sand, water and smelling blood in the air. Metallic, copper, but also not quite right, an almost foul taste of rot.

"S-Soran."

Soran groans when turning towards the voice. His eyes widen in a mixture of shock and disbelief upon seeing Karsissia sprawled across stoney debris. Her legs are crushed beneath a mound of red stone. Stone that Soran himself is laying against, the debris crunching and crumbling beneath him when he sits up, confused.

"Karsissia?" he whispers, peering about to discover where he has landed; the Red Keep, or rather, what's left of it.

The familiar dead lands stretch on, the dry earth becoming wet mud that is drowning the debris of Karsissia's once great castle. What remains is mere rubble, crushed skeletons, shattered glass, flames eating away what they can and casting dark gray smoke into an already dark sky. Lightning flashes over, red as blood, hissing when it cracks against the sand.

"What the hell happened?" Soran asks.

He can hardly believe his eyes when seeing Karsissia looking so frail. Her skin is gray as ash, veins pulsing beneath her skin. Blood leaks from almost every orifice, staining the ground around her. She's barely moving. Her wounds aren't healing. She's reaching for him, eyes wide, frightened...Karsissia is never frightened.

He crawls towards her until a heavy hand falls on his shoulder. His entire body stiffens. Something is very wrong. The hand on his shoulder almost burns. His instincts tell him to run. Don't look back. Don't help. Just run.

But the hold tightens when Quelen chuckles, "Ah, look who decided to join us." His voice crackles like the lightning above. "I'm shocked Karsissia had the energy to call you here. Always got a trick up your sleeve, don't you?"

Slowly, Soran faces Quelen. He's leaning down, smiling menacingly. Although it's certainly him, something is off, just like there is something off about Karsissia. The once frightening aura she had is gone. Quelen though, is suddenly far more fearful. His very presence causes an animalistic fear in Soran's gut.

"Best not get close, she didn't call you here for any good reason, I assure you," says Quelen with a hard push. Soran slips against the rubble that rumbles beneath him.

"I've never been called for good reason," Soran argues. He stands, eyes shifting between Karsissia's broken form beneath the crumbled castle and Quelen's intimidating stature.

"True." He chuckles. "She should have listened to you." He steps closer to her. Soran slides himself between them, earning a raised brow. "Are you seriously trying to protect her?"

"What's going on?" he asks instead. A perfectly reasonable question considering how he was dragged from his home only to appear in a mass of chaotic destruction.

Quelen holds out his arms as if to show off his work when laughing, "A betrayal, as you warned her."

"Why?"