There's a difference between hearing her scream in pain when Arkyn breaks her bones or cuts her skin, and when The Eternal gets into her head. I can never tell if he makes her scream because he enjoys it, or if stealing her memories really is a painful process.
It's not her regular screams that haunt my nights, but these ones. The ones that sound like thousands of crying souls from the underworld. The ones that make hearing every other horrid sound in this world sound like a lullaby. And it's never a scream that quiets and then picks up here and there. It's a scream that goes on for however long she can hold her breath, and all at the same volume until he finishes. It's the type of scream that everyone thinks of when they hear of the damned in the underworld, yet has never actually heard and lived to tell the tale.
The scream of a mother losing her child, or a soulmate losing the one they thought they'd have forever. The scream of someone who just broke, and lost.
Even Arkyn can be spotted looking away or cringing and shifting his jaw at the sound. I think all but that demon witch Visha would soon enough need to leave before going crazy themselves. I've been here each time that he's taken a piece of her away, and after each time I can never tell if I'm truly okay. I can't tell if I'm still the Sitara that Siscilla saw as her prodigy.
The only upside about all of this is that I don't have to heal any bones, but her wrists are mangled from her tugging against her chains, and her vocal cords will be hoarse and run thin. Just looking at the blood dripping down her arms makes bile find its way up my throat. I have to swallow it and hold in my cough to rid of the burning feeling it left behind. If I threw up now, I'd just be told to clean it up, and I'd much rather use my time and what energy I've gained on her.
Kallisté has been a presence I never thought I needed. The darkness of my own cell hasn't troubled me as much as it used to, and it makes me more confident that the girl will make it out of here. I could care less for my life when it comes down to it. Sure, I like being a part of the living, but she's not just some girl. She's more, and though I don't know the true depth of which that means, I know that she's going to play a huge part in the likely troubled future to come.
If The Eternal spoke correctly in the ballroom, then the Prince bears the other two elements, and though they're powerful alone, they're nowhere near as powerful as they would be with their remaining brethren. The elements make up this world, and as someone who lives in it, I personally want them to keep it in the light. The men before me want to bathe it in darkness, and we all know how I feel about the labyrinth that still plagues nightmares behind my closed eyes.
My life is a mere thing compared to hers, and as such, I can come to terms with leaving this world so long as she gets to stay. I'm not some suicidal maniac who's going to take the knife at one of the guard's sides and slit my throat, I'm more of a transfer my life force into her kind of person. The siphoning is nothing of a simple chant and spilled blood. I'd have to remain in physical contact with her and be in the process of dying myself in order to give her all I have - merely a minor complication now considering I'm not far from it either. Siscilla says it's painless which I suppose is good, but even if there was pain, I'd still do it. I'd do it now if I weren't practically positive that they'd still torture and break her.
The last thing I want to do is go into the next life and find her following not long after me. My chances at the moment are better spent at healing her and keeping both of us alive. I just wish that he'd stop hurting her - stop making her scream like that.
Normally, The Eternal would've been done by now, but he seems to be truly making her a clean sheet this time. It has my nerves making my chest tighten and my palms sweaty. It took me forever to get her to the memory recovery to which she was before all of this, and now...I'm not even sure that there's a strong chance that I can get her to part one in the next few days.
I don't know the knowledge behind taking memory, so I can't very well try and return hers once he's done. I don't know if all those thoughts transfer from her to him, or if he simply messes with the three parts of the brain that hold her memory, misfiring the signals or destroying those cells so that they never return. I don't know if she dies a little more each time he does this, and I don't know if it's slowly converting her from good to evil. She hasn't changed much in the past, but again, this one's different - it feels different - so there's bound to be some changes within her that I may not necessarily like.
She's in the middle of one of her screeches when she just...stops. I look up, finding The Eternal now turning her head this way and that as if examining the mind concealed by her sunken-in skull. I can't see what he does, only that she's unconscious and completely limp. If it weren't for the hum within me telling me that her heart's still beating, I'd think she was dead.
"She's strong, but I think that should hold," he determines after a moment. He drops her chin without care and I bite my tongue to hold in the wince I get when her neck pops at the jolting movement.
"You believe them to be making improvements?" Arkyn asks, his eyes empty and careless as always. His choice of words is infuriating, but I still tuck the slice of information away for whatever it may give me.
"Time is of the essence, and our enemies are predictable despite their advantages."
Something bursts in my chest. Something powerful and warm and...sad. Sad because what I feel flood my system is hope, and what hope could I have now when the girl hangs broken before me yet again, only this time she's more hollow than she's ever been. Our enemies. Their enemies are who I've been praying to every God and Saint and deity alike would come to save us since I was thrown into the cells and forced to watch them tear into her like cattle. I can imagine how they're planning to get here now - to get her back, but I know why this feels different.
It's the last one.
He said that time was of the essence, so they're running out of time to do whatever it is they wanted with her, so here he is. Taking the last bit. There won't be a next time for me to hear those screams, and despite my earlier wishes, I want to take them back. At least before, I knew that I could potentially get her to remember again, but now, while I hope for someone to run in and rescue us, I fear that the person they'll run down here to save won't be the person they find at all.
The Eternal nods to the two guards posted beside the door. They walk to the chains tied to the wall and release them. She falls to the ground with a heart wrenching thud, but I don't move. I'm not allowed to move until they both exit the room, and they're making simple conversation made of careful words so as not to give me any information I'm not supposed to know.
"You say they, yet we all know that it's far less which..." Arkyn glances at me, but I still keep my eyes downcast. "Surely we have the upper hand with an elemental in our hands."
"We have a bargaining chip in which will do little to halt their plans. We need her withered for us to have the upper hand, or else they'll throw the first punch, and I can guarantee you it won't land where you move to block."
"And how is it we're to get her withered, if I may ask? I've been down here more times than one would think needed in order to break her."
"It's not breaking her that's the problem. It's remaking." He says the word with such passion, and it's not making me think that he's going to return her to the strong woman who tore apart his prized dog like a stuffed animal. "It's easy to shatter a mirror. A puzzle to piece back together, and a challenge for even the most gifted hands to return it to its original state. I don't want to see one crystal clear reflection when I piece her back together. I want to make a dozen mangled and wrongly duplicated facial features that look a hundred times worse than one could imagine. I don't want to make her into the salvation the prophecy perceives, but the ruination of the land and the sea that is the base of this world. Tear those apart, control the thing that controls them, and there will be no enemy. Only a thing to be drowned and buried."
By the Gods and their Saints, he's the definition of unhinged. I couldn't help but stare at him as he spoke - to watch his eyes somehow dim until the whole of them was stark black. To fear his words and the way the that the darkness spread from him to the shadows and chilled the room to icy temperatures that rose goosebumps on my skin. Arkyn's eyes snap to mine, and I instantly return my head to its inferior state.
The warmth returns to the room, but the chill remains on my skin from him talking not only breaking her but creating her into one of his own Hellhounds - and likely the most powerful and potentially dangerous of them all. He doesn't want to take her power for his own, but rather make her into one of his own. Once he's done that...
Gods save us, and Saints protect us.
I can't stop my hands from shaking, nor my eyes from filling with water but not a single tear falling. I haven't felt this scared in a while, and now that I can picture the girl still lying unconscious waking with black and red eyes...I hope Kallisté and her alpha know what they're doing. I hope that there's still hope for her, but I'm no seer, and I can't do more than what I've already been doing.
"Keep an eye on her," The Eternal orders. He walks towards the door with Arkyn on his heels. "I want to know the moment that she's ready to kill the ones she once loved."