The Revenant:Book 2

A World Gone Mad

ELENA

I don't know how long I'd been sitting there in the void. A long, seemingly endless nothingness stretched out for an eternity. I tried walking. Tried to find something amidst the dark. I could hear my footsteps beneath me, bare and unclothed.

When I found nothing, I just sat. This was death... Just like Nova described it. A dark, empty blackness with no sound or any inhabitants.

It was cold. Much colder than I anticipated, or as much as one can anticipate the cold grip of death to be. I didn't want to believe I'd died at first. It seemed to happen so suddenly.

There was a deep pain in my chest, ebbing and pulsing against my right left breast just above a heart that no longer held a rhythm.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't get used to it. This emptiness. It was peaceful. No noise, no issues...just silence and lethargy.

So, naturally you can imagine my surprise when a time came where I couldn't breathe. Strange, considering I was already dead but It was like I'd forgotten how to breathe for so long and now that I had remembered, my body couldn't process how to do it.

I felt something enter my mouth, round and tube like. It slid its way down my throat, gagging me. I choked and coughed, clutching at air. There was nothing there, but I could feel it. I shut my eyes as they became watery, blurring my vision.

When I opened them again, to my surprise, the void was gone. I was suspended in the air, floating in a strange red liquid. Small bubbles of air rose from beneath me and I was trapped in some sort of glass container.

What...the fuck is going on?!

I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

Some sort of respiratory device was clamped over my mouth, and I could feel the bile beginning to build in my throat as I gagged on the tube.

Suddenly the liquid began to sink lower, the sound of a drain suctioning all of it down rang in my eardrums. It was far louder than it should have been.

I fell to my knees, my body trembling. I grabbed at the tubes chord and pulled with all my might. I wriggled it out of the depths of my throat with an agonizingly slow pace despite my best efforts to just get it over with and promptly threw up after it fell out of my mouth.

I coughed and wheezed, heaving up what looked like gallons of vomit and blood.

My breathing was heavy as I fell out of the chamber onto a cold, tiled floor. Blinding light flooded my vision, and the last image I saw was that...bitch who'd tortured Nova before I passed out into the familiar darkness again.

I wanted to pass it all as nothing but a dream. Just a bad dream that I experienced and I would wake up to that void once again.

I was a little disappointed when I woke up to find out that it was all too real.

My old room. I'd recognise the design of my diamond shaped ceiling anywhere. I hadn't slept in the palace since I was a little girl. Since before I joined the army.

My bed was still soft as always, like I was floating on a cloud. My pillow had sunk into the crevices of my neck, massaging my aching muscles.

The cold was gone. Replaced by an almost overwhelming warmth. I heard the cheerful chirping of birds, felt the suns warm rays against the left of my cheek.

It's midday...

Something moved beside me and my body tensed up. It wasn't long before Hirovia towered over me, her flashlight in hand, flickering the light in either of my eyes.