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When I lifted my foot, I was blind.
When I put it down, I was suddenly able to see.
I was no longer in a simple cavern.
The ground was still hard rock and dirt, though it had been turned a copper-red. Lifeless; it was more than an absence, it was a sensation.No wonder my magic was repelled. The planes in front of me spread out for miles, ending in blackness on all sides. Above was the same blackness. Not quite a ceiling, but I couldn’t call the vortex a sky. I turned back, and the same space stretched around me.
I turned back and there was a lake in front of me.
The drowning sensation returned in force.
It wasn’t just a sensation in my throat, though. My entire body was encased in water; when I blinked, all I saw around me was water.
I choked, crying out a name I couldn’t even recall. A thousand desperate thoughts flickered through my mind, competing for what little air I had. As if they’d always belonged there and rushed to the surface.
Endure. Endure for him. Endure. It will not be forever. It will not get worse. Endure.
My body was emaciated under the water, skin barely hanging on. A tangle of red hair long enough to strangle me encased my already drowning chest. My lungs burned and burned, desperate, my lips open, begging for air only to be slammed with more salt water.
And then, in another blink, it was gone. I gasped, my chest heaving. My body was dry. My hair was tied back. My arms had muscles.
But it felt so real… so familiar…
Of course, it does.
Because my soul had spent a hundred years here, in this very realm. And I knew—knew in a way I could never prove, but neither could I doubt it—that the lake the under-realm had put in front of me had been the site of my own torture.
Those werememories.Memories that filtered back in, echoes of pain that still scarred my soul.
There is no escape.
I had been an exception. Ihadescaped. Or had I, because I was right back here where I had been imprisoned. Maybe I had never left. Maybe it was pointless. Sorrow pierced me, hopelessness pushing me towards the water. I took a step, and the water drew closer of its own accord.
Wasn’t it easier not to hope? Not to fight? To accept it?
I raked my nails down my arm, drawing real blood—not like the unseen invisible slices. The pain shocked me, breaking the temporary hold Tartarus had on me.
“I will not stop,” I snarled.
The lake vanished.
And the land in front of me was utterly changed.
Chapter IX
The realm had beenempty, or at least the part of the pits it revealed to me.
But when I resisted the siren call of my old torture, it dropped the facade. Now, the plains that stretched for miles and miles were no longer deserted.
A cacophony erupted, hurting my ears. Yells of agony, pleas for mercy. Thousands and thousands of voices, all belonging to those now presented in front of me.
Every manner of brutality was on display for me. Creatures of every description had only one thing in common: they were in pain. My eyes darted around, unable to process what I was seeing. They were impaled on spikes; they were encased in blocks of ice, eyes flickering desperately; they had bites taken out of them, entire stomachs missing only to regrow; they were flayed; they were whipped; they were hung upside down while blood streamed down their entire body.
The copper hue of the dirt took on another meaning.
The scent of burned flesh and rotted blood filled my senses, compounding with the poisoned air that had chased me throughout the realm. I ran to the first one I saw, a humanoid creature who was bound to a table. His body was male, though his head was covered in a shroud. Two cranks at either end of the table magically continued to move,pulling at the shackles on his hands and feet. His arms and legs were distended, the body never built to survive such manipulation.
“I’m… I’m going to help you.” It was hard to get the words out. I was torn between sobbing and throwing up again, but I shoved both sensations aside.
