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Then came the screaming.
Not mine, but the screams of dozens, if not hundreds,thousandsof voices. Screams of true agony, the kind of sound that made me sick just to hear it. My screams melted among them, and I realized that it would never end. This raw feeling in my throat would go on, this pain would go on, this ripping feeling wouldn’t stop. This was the endless, holy suffering God spoke of. This was the fate of my soul.
But no matter how much It ripped at me, no matter how shattered my mind became in Its grip, I was tethered and my soul wouldn’t let go. God couldn’t take me, because I’d bound myself to another.
To Leon.
And when I realized that, the colors around me suddenly vanished and I was struggling, thrashing, then tearing away from God’s hold, screaming, “No! No, no,no! I’m not yours!”
I scrambled back against the stone wall of the cavern, gasping, my vision sliding in and out of focus. God’s perfect face was twitching, morphing rapidly between beautiful and vile. The illusion was breaking, and it was as if I could see both at once: the horrifying reality of Its massive tentacled form, and the too-perfect mask of a beautiful being.
“You can’t take me!” The louder I shouted, the more I could breathe, the more I could move. The control it had over me could be fought back, and I fought it viciously. “You will never be free from this place because you’llneverhave your last sacrifice!” I laughed hysterically as I laid my hand over Leon’s mark on my thigh, the cuts still tender but no longer bleeding. Somewhere, Leon was still alive. He’d survived. When God had tried to take me, tried to separate my body and soul, I’d felt my tether to him pull taut and hold me back, refusing to let go.
Every path I’d taken, every seemingly inconsequential decision, had led to this moment. The choice between two eternities, a choice that was mine alone. I’d chosen. I knew to whom my soul belonged, and it wasn’t to a merciless God.
It belonged to another monster, a monster who had found me and protected me despite his darkness. It belonged to a demon who, even now, I knew was trying to reach me. To protect me, to save me. I stood up a little taller against the wall, even though I had never been so afraid.
Maybe this would be the day I died. Maybe this really was my fate. But in the end, the choice had still been mine. I’d found the deepest depths of this darkness and looked upon true horror. I’d fought every step of the way.
If I was going to die, then I would die still fighting.
God’s fury made the very stones in the cavern walls crack. Everything shook, the ground rolling as if with an earthquake. I tried to run, but the strength had gone out of my muscles and my knees buckled. A massive tentacle wrapped around me as I tried to crawl away, right as my fingers closed around the handle of my dagger, and jerked me up into the air.
“What have you done?” God’s voice slithered inside my ears like cold, sharp wire prodding my eardrums. “What have you done?You offered your soul to another! You betrayed your God!” It roared, and the cracks in the cavern walls spread, chunks of stone beginning to fall. The Eld howled, panicking as the cavern began to collapse around them.
God was beautiful no longer. It looked like a beast that had crawled up from the deepest, darkest ocean depths. Its gray flesh was so pale it was nearly translucent, run through with a spiderweb of blue veins. Numerous tentacles, dozens of them, coiled around the cavern, up the walls and into the water, and tightened mercilessly around me. They were covered with white eyes, blinking among the suckers, looking around with wild anger. God’s face was no longer mist and swirling colors, but gaunt with wide bulbous eyes, and gills fluttering along Its too-long neck.
Its tentacles wrapped tighter and tighter. The cavern had completely collapsed in, and we were sinking down among mud, rock, and water. We were falling into nothingness, the dirt and stones vanishing into the abyss as darkness stretched out around us in every direction. Lightning flashed in the distance, and the air filled with thick white fog. The silhouettes of massive beings, briefly illuminated by the lightning, sent adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“You are mine!” Its voice was guttural and distorted, as if a hundred voices had all shouted at once. “You cannot take my sacrifice from me!”
We plunged down, into dark freezing water. All I could see were the numerous eyeball-covered tentacles spread out around me, a monstrous web in the water. Deeper and deeper we went. The pressure was building, my body aching under the weight of the water pressing down.
“You cannot escape me, mortal. You are meant for me. Your Earth is meant for me.”
My fingers ached as I gripped the dagger as tightly as I could. I was determined to hold on, no matter how deep we went, no matter how much it hurt. My body was being squeezed, slowly crushed in the grip of those tentacles and the pressure of the water. But my arms were free.
I swung back the dagger and plunged it down, as hard as I could, right into one of the pale eyeballs in the tentacle gripping me.
A nauseating shudder went through the water, and there was a roar of fury that nearly made my eyes roll back. I pulled back my arm and stabbed again, the dagger sliding in up to the hilt. The volume and horror of the sounds the God made were beyond words. Such wrath needed no language. It was palpable, wracking my body with pain as I was dragged deeper and deeper into the depths. I stabbed again, plunging in the knife and leaving it there when the pain made it impossible to retain any more conscious thought.
The tentacle’s grip on me loosened.
The water swirled, tumbling me, sucking me down, down, down. Water rushed into my lungs. Everything burned, everything ached. I couldn’t tell what was up or down, left or right, air or water. There was only darkness.
Darkness that seemed to go on for eternity.
I was dying.
Death felt...cold. Uncomfortable. But not as terrifying as I’d thought it would.
The silence was nice. The cold...after a while...felt nice.
There was catharsis in acknowledging that I wasn’t going to make it. I made peace with it.
Maybe I could drift for a while. Maybe I could sleep.
I wanted to sleep. Just sleep. I was so tired. But…
