The tests were grueling from thereon out, and little time had been given to the four who had been first. As they were brought from their sickness, their recovery was well.
Yervandal was only able to observe the four eager and happy watching Aleph, even the more despondent one who was stranger to the three showed gratitude at his life, but he sensed more-so happy her own was assured.
Yervandal had broken them up in that time “SILENCE AND ATTENTION!” His voice thundered.
He had them elsewhere now, a strange chamber, laced with stone, laced with brutality, it lacked any sound save for his voice, their voices.
But even as they had awoken here they struggled to hide what Aleph had slowly imprinted onto those around them
Worry
They rushed Aleph like hounds noticing he had awoken.
“Aleph!” Saiyah cried so eager to confirm he truly was alive, and she wasn’t dreaming she bit down hard, on his arm. Something he was eager to scold and shout for, and something that had Yervandal uncharacteristically laughing.
Care
Human things that would need finer correction, useful in a vacuum but detrimental employed childishly.
Yervandal could remember tight connections in a time before this.
But they were even younger, they grew up fast.
Even more worrying they had been ready by the age of fifteen, as the age of those before him.
They’d been given fewer years, ten without the usage of the device utilizing terror-space to dilate time within.
He knows they don’t need to have all of this–compensation, technology to put them on another time to get longer training, a shocktrooper could learn faster than any living thing he’s learned of in the Universe.
He could see from the very insistence of using technology that Eternia.
Was truly well indeed, afraid of the mechra…. She’d lost faith in them.
The brutality has forced the shocktroopers into bonds, and the vis-stasi lack the wisdom to test more than the brawns, they need their minds.
Yervandal would not utter it, but this cube was his own intercession, they would be trained by Vis-stasi they could trust and shocktroopers themselves for candidates ahead of the marks.
Yervandal would use these four to prove something. If even, we only had a year we’d still be able to serve you with levels of success you couldn’t hope to dream of.
“I’ll make use of every resource. Provided to me.” Yervandal glanced into the dark room, deeply eying weapons. It was in the towers he found Aleph glancing upon, there were courses here for Yervandal to test.
These four, and that one significant among them. Aleph!
They had their strength, power, speed tested now it would be, wisdom, intelligence and the mind.
Their spirit would be broken and brought back here. For greater benefit.
[A month within the ‘Ancients Chamber’ later.]
The four were surprised to see that they would not leave this place, they had a schedule that confused them.
Yervandal demanded that they for twelve-hours to mark the end of a day rest, should they not complete portions of their training in time they would repeat them the next day.
Anna was smart enough to quickly understand what Yervandal was trying to do in this tower, and most strangely this tower hurt their minds to work in.
It was built like an open-maze, a clear exit but it was as if often they could not find it, they were forced to maneuver to a winding series of alternating staircases, some to dead-ends and some straight on to a part of a test in the tower.
They would often be separated, and return together to the coffins, where Anna expounded the likely reasoning.
“This testing is faster, like human training it is as if we are accounting for time.” She spoke in whisper, arms folded into a space that tormented them.
“He doesn’t like to waste time.” Saiyah spoke grimly, the training was even wearing her out.
Yervandal’s warning of not being finished within a year carried more than just threat of being held back and falling behind, but outright classified as full–
“Failures.” Yervandal had said that with so much venom the four were struck down from even thinking of failure.
The tests and training purposed here were clearly for mind, the times they would end up in chamber together by chance or coincidence was often mordaciously maybe through forewarning to Yervandal.
That the test would entail Aleph requiring full utilization of the skillset of being a leader, he lacked enough for them to be in a chamber for all-allotted twelve-hours and back into the coffin’s without finishing a few sections.
Aleph was breaking and the other three so hopeful in him were having it diminished.
One of the tests entailed Aleph suddenly in the forced time within the coffin being given whispers of what their next test would entail.
It followed. With them failing again, due to Anna losing her trust when Aleph had failed
Then one day Yervandal’s belief–no understanding was made reality.
One day after seven months the tower was no longer a maze, they would never be split up, one day they worked like a blanketed machine.
One day Aleph’s resolve was tested again, even as they began to succeed.
Even as Aleph learned to command, strategize, utilize information and study his surroundings, come to a complex understanding of what he is facing merely from clues before encountering them.
Aleph would endure pain, but it ceased slowing him, his vampiric and even human natures were changing
He learned to tactically and strategically use his regeneration, not over-extending what is within him, even to the point of his face being eviscerated to bone and refusing to bring it back to recovery
He could take greater damage yet sought to learn to evade better, and grew much greater at evading.
Aleph recognized he wasn’t just evading projectiles in some of these tests before they were fired but after some time they traveled.
His mental capabilities were pushed to the point of an overload, he was beginning to see time as a vampire world, psychologically and practically.
Able to examine the exact nature of the projectile approaching him in a single thought and evading.
He faced gunpowder and beam weapons, occasionally able to give full evasion to energy weapons as they traveled at tremendous speed.
He was scaring himself of how monstrous he was becoming.
His mind was working in double as if there was a new-him forming, A new Aleph, who he was before felt out of place now. his mind was splitting and one was taking root ahead of another, it was as if everything came together, it was a realization that Aleph may die to become what he seeks to be here now.
He fought tears in that coffin again, his mind worked fast enough he could think in double-time. He thought of this, everything he was going through and Arianne.
He felt as if who he was some time ago remained and was present with him but was taking a backseat to who he was becoming in merely lesser months.
There was a natural part of him that didn’t need the time-acceleration of New Persia’s shocktrooper facility, one that could learn what took decades in months and what took months in weeks.
It was agonizing, it became painful.
He is wondering if this was the same for them, Saiyah was slowly beginning to not communicate with Aleph often, they switched to gestures.
They learned them in an hour and could recall them weeks after, that scared him the most.
How life was compressing itself, how fast it seemed to be going as if he was speeding into the heat-death of the universe how it was collapsing in on him.
His memories constantly recalling information he can’t forget burrowed into his mind.
But it wasn’t just his mind–
Robots that his hand would be eviscerated by, that did bring his hand to inner-flesh and bone when he struck them up close
Cleaved with ease in his punches untouched, machines dismantled by his bare hands.
Yervandal’s took the brutality of training and tempered it with working the mind and fine utilization
He was changing them.
But Aleph lamented this, they were required to put on such brutal efficiency, he stopped hearing his team talk amongst each other.
He can remember a moment in which they finished a test, he looked to Saiyah seeing part of her face skeletonized, he could se a flow of blood from the wound, an eyeball dangling out of socket.
Bits of flesh burst by a round.
No quip or comment came, not even Asaph spoke.
They all stopped speaking; Aleph was worried they might never speak again.
It didn’t hamper them, this not-speaking, because in time Yervandal taught them of something he angrily stated
“Thou should have known this.” He spoke as an ancient warrior angry at a new line lacking care in training.
It was scary to learn this ability, to practice a mental link between them. And to think it could be wordlessly shared with Shocktroopers he was not as close to almost paralyzed him.
But he broke from it as he encountered the last. The one he suffered with consistently.
One test he still failed.
There were machines in that one…He learned to utilize his ability albeit never bringing full utilization to handicap himself. Even though they failed.
But this time they didn’t.
It was as if this part of the test was the interior of a large ship made of stone, a meltdown inevitable, each time they would’ve been expected to perish due to them never being able to complete all objectives in time.
But Aleph succeeded.
He fully encountered a realization of what Leadership meant not to just vampires. But to Shocktroopers.
Aleph ran into the chamber where the meltdown was “Occurring” it was something that simulated a reactor, his mind so programmed he didn’t care it was a pile of rocks, he struck it with his fist.
His mind immediately identifying it would’ve killed them all–but! Aleph had been faster than that, he completed the test In such a way he assured his own death, he had succeeded
but was given stern warning by Yervandal alone. That sacrifice is a waste if there is even an inkling of hope one may succeed without any loss.
A pyrrhic victory whilst acceptable is not always what is desired. Even more not always will you be so privileged to merely sacrifice yourself without taking those in your command with you.
What kept him anchored was the lingering thought of sacrificing him and his team to accomplish something, he’d much rather just sacrifice himself if possible….
Now Aleph accepted he must to sacrifice everything, himself, his teammates and even his mind to accomplish a mission, he felt those lingering bits of sanity that reminded him of Arianne fade, and soon it was as if he had forgotten her.
He had forgotten Arianne’s warning of truly what he would lose worse than a mortal like her.
Himself.
-
They’d done much better, Aleph demanded they be done in a year, but it was just seven months.
Aleph thought about the pain that held him back before, and felt angered with himself, that truly he could ignore it, if anything being hyper aware of pain encouraged an approach that minimized damage to himself.
This testing taught him that there were times when he would endure hits due to his new-found mental strength to endure a heightened sensitivity to pain only to fail because of such courage.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Durability wasn’t just a weapon but a tool in a set all Shocktroopers had, it was one he knew if he lacked, he may be able to work without.
He even noticed Yervandal must’ve known Aleph was faster and stronger than any other shocktrooper, this may be why these tests were presented this way, to teach Aleph a horrifying thought.
You could have the strength to crush a tank and the ability to easily be impaled by blades, but if you lack mind, technique, genius and strategy you’d die before it could even be known you’d had these!
Aleph took Yervandal’s teachings to heart.
-
A YEAR PASSES IN TIME ALTERED WITHIN THE FACILITY YET REMAINS THE SAME OUTSIDE
Things had changed in the time given, and now the first to arrive from the checkpoint and first to finish above all was Aleph and his unit.
He was observed by Eternia, he was recognizing as utilizing his ability in monitoring, he had become something perfect, the strongest and fastest of the 144,000 merely by chance.
He learned to endure a pain sensitivity that was exactly four times that of a human, something Eternia regretted as a failure of his post birth-manipulation, a great side-effect that seems to be a strength to him now.
Aleph was presented proudly by Yervandal, within the cube they were down below, amongst what looked like a false pseudo-feudal town and village, a massive square where all 144,000 Candidates stood
There was silence and a lack of life in the air.
None spoke, they stood and saluted.
They were all changed, despite Aleph and his unit being the most active, even the most ambient nature of the others was crushed into nothing by now.
Eternia had suspected Krul’s training style for the Shocktroopers was only near perfect but had some flaws, but it may be resourceful mixed with training the training that has now made them all almost perfect and near-death constant combat training and exercises. These flaws were now recently rectified by the Shocktroopers who have now perfected the candidates near entirely.
She had a new generation stronger than ever.
They were ready, there was just one last piece, their armor.
The final seal of judgement to be beared upon them, though they will be able to remove it afterwards, the first equipping is something that will never be forgotten.
-
Saiyah^
My eyes never left a strange-stage like structure where Krul spoke, but I could see something strange, vis-stasi men and vehicles in distance, far ahead was a massive structure with ash and smoke rising. It wasn’t present earlier.
It must’ve appeared sometime after.
But I forgive myself for not noticing, I’m not the same as I had arrived.
I know who I was before the seven months is still there but not fully present.
I question if who I was before scarily enough was human. And if that is what I cast aside.
I can’t talk to Aleph anymore, I can’t break what I’ve learned so quickly, too inefficient, too slow..
Now I’m much like the machines, I understand that a soldier must be as efficient as one, but I struggle with how my mind is warped to consider… Anything anymore, and Aleph’s gone silent. I want to reach out but can’t.
Krul speaks out and my eyes squint to hide I had lost focus, that I had been so in my thoughts. Or so I thought I was– I was listening and can quickly recall the entirety of it.
He went on about how there is another section of training beyond this, but first I heard something worrying.
“You have passed the best of her tests, you’ve learned to become tacticians, master planners, to adapt to any scenario, now you are worthy of the equipment she seeks to bestow upon you.” Krul spoke matter-of-factly.
I bite my tongue. Angry it was true, in seven months Aleph blew much expectation, as our new selves were born this same happened in Aleph, he was too effective and monstrously so, without pain or who he was holding him back.
Aleph monstrously and relentlessly attacked any failure until it became a victory.
I didn’t recognize him; his incompetence had brewed something human. I would wish he could be as capable as he is now without losing who he was.
I miss him. Is all that vibrates through my mind.
I look to the side to see Aleph, static only to see his head turn smooth on rotation. There’s nothing in his eyes anymore.
“Saiyah move!” His eyes shoot a command my brain registers, and my hand strikes right in the formation, we are directly in the front with Anna to my right, Asaph to the right of her.
Anna struck Asaph after and we’re moving.
Krul pointing out “The first line goes to receive your armor; you are ahead of the pack! The first wolves to have their teeth come in!” He says with high cadence, there is a smile on his face.
Nothing good. Is all I can think, Krul is never happy when something happens to us, I know his jealousy, I’ve been told of it by shocktroopers older than Delara who assisted in watching over us.
“Vis-Stasi have hated our caste from the beginning they’d never celebrate us!” I vividly recall Delara giving advice on when to be careful.
But it is too late for me as we march, we cross a winding path, an oppressive structure laced in dark-steel fortified with plumes of smoke blowing out, an intensity of heat felt even from the path we walk toward it.
The buildings surrounding us are not feudal within, these were places where the others had been training like us, in more open spaces due to the number of candidates.
I do wonder if the training in New Persia is as everywhere else.
I’ve been here long enough to be considered an adult-twice over amongst humans but I hardly feel as if I’ve aged.
I feel like just a more dangerous fifteen-year-old born after all this time.
Albeit with enough strength and speed to eviscerate a bear as if it was a chore.
But I wonder if what is in there is enough to eviscerate me in a new way, I have a sense of dread and lingering doom.
The entrance is heavily fortified, I can see layers upon layers of metal.
“Are they forging our armor right now?” The doors are hot, and are a slightly different color, the Vis-stasi don’t follow us within.
Faded worn out markings are within, arrows pointing.
The interior is incredibly hot, and there are checkpoints, massive barriers of metal, we stop at a checkpoint where a massive door opens.
This is not to protect our armor from being stolen; such fortifications would be to keep anyone inside from escaping! Even us! It has me finally breaking out of order to steal a glance at Anna and Asaph!
Their faces are full of resolve but they crumble as they catch of glimpse of my own which has faltered!
We aren’t led by words but grunts and men in suits as if they are to run a boiler.
I look to Aleph in worry, for both of us…
“We’ll be fine.” He doesn’t speak to me, but he gives me a look that the old-me would’ve understood, the look I often gave him. Smirking at me.
I almost lose all tension, but as I feel a small nudge to my side I glance to a vis-stasi in boiler-suit, or at the least I hope this is a vis-stasi, I can’t imagine who else would be bold enough.
He’s hitting me with all the force he has, enough to break wind and it only feels like a nudge.
“They’re separating us?” I speak aloud in question.
He nods and points at a door, it has a massive warning sign, it’s bolted so thick even I know I couldn’t tear it down regardless of how easily I know I could burst of steel bulkhead.
I feel something is wrong here, this armoring I draw back to what I’ve been told, what I heard before.
Even now I remember how Delara never removes her armor, how Yervandal never removes it, how none of the first-generation I met as a young child ever removed it.
I remember my father, seeing him without armor only once…
A vampire shouldn’t be able to have scars, we regenerate too quick especially one as powerful as he was but…
Those scars hadn’t regenerated….
I gulp nervously.
I feel oddly thirsty for blood now. So starved of it and rarely getting it unless the odd-chance I’ve been injured, I hope for freedom after this even a moment where I can feast.
The heat is getting to me! The man in the boiler suit seems to near the bulkhead door, a rhythmic coded percussive knock as it opening, more and more shocktroopers file in.
Each door is separated by twenty feet. We’re going to be far apart each room begins to make vicious sounds of winds as I hear them open.
Soundproof! Something is wrong and it’s driving me nuts now.
I’m entering a strange room, a gust of heat blows onto me, a storm of fire as I see embers flying out of a large pit, deep within are chains somehow not melted attached within, a pedestal is there.
I finally hear a voice, it’s deep and thick with insult “Go! Accept your reward, take it.” It sounds like a taunt, it had a sense of rehearsal, I consider turning around.
Snapping his neck. Maybe– no I can only step forwards, I feel a natural lure to it, it’s on a higher catwalk led to stairs.
I often heard among human’s hell is on earth prepared to be separated on a gulf at the end of days, I imagined it was beneath whatever kingdom the God they believed would set up.
And yet I’m walking upwards to something that feels like it, fire and heat. My heart is weeping but my teeth are not gnashing– Or at least I hope they won’t be…
I step upwards on the catwalk, I can only hear the heat of a kind of metal being poured, I can see a gigantic mold of cast, I can see mechanical arms far behind what I understand as a giant crucible.
I can see patterns etched in, mechanical arms behind assembling something with the delicacy of an angel and the mastery of a careful loving God.
It has me worried how they have this assembly so naturally processing, until I see the mechanical arms dip them.
I’m getting an idea of what’s about to happen but I’m not moving, it’s as if I’m programmed to accept what I’m slowly understanding is about to happen.
“Your armor is made to your measurement; it was prepared almost when I was finished.” Delara’s voice haunts my mind.
I can see mechanical hands, purple metal withstanding the heat to immense degrees, claws that no longer are purple in seconds as the room burns a brighter hot, my boots melt under my feet, searing my flesh and skin.
It burns but this is pain I can endure; what I know I can’t endure what I know is greater than that is what they are about to do.
I’m paralyzed in submission; I know there is nothing more if I seek to run.
What would happen if I ran– No why would I run? Why…Why would I run, this is what I’ve worked for all the pain that I did suffer that was great enough to harm me this truly will– Aleph! I want to escape.
But I’m on that pedestal, I want to escape and stop this, for him it will be–My arms are caught as if this is predicted.
I can feel it on my bones quickly, the heat of the metal so hot my flesh that I’ve seen go from vulnerable to reinforced is melted through, as if the hot blade of a destroying-angel has swept through.
My bone barely holds, rapidly regenerating.
I scream.
I cry out for mercy babbling incoherent nothings I can’t even hope to understand.
I barely notice, only catching glimpses of a helmet slowly rising from the depths, facing away from me!
It’s dreadful as I see the rest of out come out of the crucible, large armor, smooth yet sharp and angular, it’s in two distinct parts.
The First is approaching to me. Even in pain I’m lost in thought in how strange archaic electronics are inserted into the helmet without melting by auxiliary mechanical parts, the man in a boiler suit comes by my side.
There is a second one I couldn’t have hoped to notice now in my state.
He’s holding some tool; it clamps onto my waist to hold me still!
I swing almost knocking him and the other into the crucible, I can almost hear his shout against the roaring heat and blazing sound
I can see them extending more mechanical arms, simply dexterous claws akin to that of a vicious crab deep in the walls.
I keep screaming as they grab on, sinking into flesh and melting through. I’m left with the feeling of being within an inferno!
I feel as if the blood inside of me begins to reach a point of boiling that has me shaking uncontrollably, I’m assured I can feel scorching gusts of steam exit my mouth like a sinner in a great lake of fire.
I’m dying! I’m dying! I’m frantic, I only become more frantic as I see chains drag something toward me, on rail-line to bring a frame onto me.
I lost the ability to scream, the heat was already incinerating me, the metallic frame for the armor!
It’s not even purple as it comes out the standard color that Yervandal, Delara and all others bore, it’s a bright fiery orange bordering on white as it is cast! Live!
It is planted to my flesh, I can feel it scald sink into my flesh, like a hot poker onto soft cream it weeds through my flesh, turning what isn’t under it to ash, until it strikes the bones of my chest.
In an X-Shape I’m enduring pain.
I feel bits of my throat regenerate in the heat.
And I hear near the wails, the gnashing of teeth of the only occupant of hell currently. Me!
I’m in hell and I can’t die!
The under-portion of the armor must not be finished, what is like a fine suit is brought by mechanical arms and laced around my entire body, I feel my clothes melt under them as it wraps to my skin and keeps me burned.
Bolts are slammed into the armor intensifying the pain.
I feel like a subject of all the torment God has allowed and I beg him for relief.
The rest of the armor hasn’t been fully installed and I feel like I’m trapped, the armor is heavy even for my standard of strength, I don’t feel wires, electronics or anything of the sort under me.
It’s pure metal, well-crafted intricately cast and smooth but metal none-the less cast over me.
It feels like a second body formed on me, restraining me
Like a prison! I’m trapped I can’t escape! Then I see it…. I’m not done.
I’m brought to greater pain, greater torment as more pieces come.
Attachments for the gauntlets,
Hot metal rings on my joints to latch the armor,
A burning bodysuit that's melted my clothes in an instant at the sheer heat now forming that had been wrapped on me like a hot-net, flexible torture..
held to my body like a prison-jumpsuit…
and a loose guard attached to my neck, I feel it burn and heat up the flesh of my neck until my vocal cords burn out. I’ve lost my voice and can’t scream anymore!
My voice isn’t coming back, I’m fighting against the restraining mechanical arms, I can feel one snap, a man in a boiler suit silently watching, his face obscured, body language so neutral I couldn’t tell if he enjoyed or was simply a spectator.
I hated him all the same! I reached out as there was an audible crack, the sound akin to an explosion as I snapped a binding that held my arm!
Crunch! In time with the regeneration of my throat I wail again as another mechanical arm more violent, an auxiliary lash out and crushed my harm, heating the grip underneath.
It’s built with blades not meant to rip but to tighten grip, the heat of them is boiling my blood and melting through my bone!
Finally. I see the armor approach.
It burns all the same, wrapped around me is a suit, that is latched to me, cast live on me, each piece that latches to my body is still hot but seems to cool, steam blowing off quickly as it cools to a dark purplish hue.
Until my body is covered in a full shell of smooth rigid armor, I feel as if I’m in a hot prison, as if Gehenna has been wrapped around me.
I can’t stop myself when I see the final piece. A man in a boiler suit seems to be pulling a mechanical arm that holds the final piece…
Electronics inserted, I can see a plain helmet, turned to face me, my future gazing at me.
“No no no stop!” I beg pathetically! Constantly like a mantra to convince them.
I only earn a tilt of the head and momentary pause as I stare into the reflective visor, before they carry on.
My exposed weakness and fruitless begging I gave burns in my mind as much as the armor encasing me, burns me like the bars of a tight prison.
The helmet had a blank blackened visor, electronics within resistant to heat with technology and materials I couldn’t possibly hope to understand.
It’s turned around, prepared to be placed on me.
I wail as it’s raised above my head.
They lower it… Darkness encapsulates me and I’m in an inferno, darkness surrounds me, as sound seems to become muffled.
I hear the heat of the crucible, the fluid burning within, I can hear my flesh constantly burned and regenerated.
My memory is so perfect every ounce of torment is amplified. I’m there for what seems like hours.
Hours do indeed pass, but the room does not cool, I’m dark and blind.
I seek to break out, I throw my arm again, snapping another machine and bang my fist against the chest of my armor, yet even with force that could rip a hull and bulkhead of titanium my harm only recoiling off as if I’m a child!
I scream in rage, desperate to break out, it’s like I am restrained by this armor, my movements are more labored I can’t push my joints out of place against this armor, it is protecting me from myself!
I am a prisoner under something fit to my own form!
Once again, my arm is quickly restrained, I nearly grasp the neck of one the two men and crush his skull, I barely was able to grab him, my arm quickly re-restrained. I’ve lost again.
An endless cycle of regenerating flesh being melted away soon after it returns keeping me on the absolute verge of death even for a vampire of my caste.
I then relent, I fall weak and give up, I can’t move, the armor is too strong, I couldn’t break it even if I escaped, it’s melded and bolted together so tightly, segemented into an underlayer acting as its frame and secondary.
It’s the armor of a knight A punished Knight…
For a long while I am sitill consumed in darkness, until the brutal silence I endure amidst my torture is killed by a mechanical voice intruding within my mind.
“Activated.”
Dear God, it’s even burned its way into my mind.
The pain was not as it was double on spirit and body, it indeed was the helmet is as if the very systems of it scorched into my spirit and imprinted onto me like a brand, I can hear its systems broadcast to my head.
The only portion of the armor to be powered is the damned helmet, it’s as if it is wired to my mind, I try to resist its voice but it is as if it continues
I am tormented by the voice of the suit repeating ‘activated’ until I nearly lose it, it stops. But it only leaves me in more pained silence, left to ponder ‘why’ I am tormented more, why every ounce of training was suffering.
Until
I’ve realized it now, the Shocktroopers are her chosen her greatest, and because of that such measure will be taken to restrain us! This is not a reward…but our pre-emptive punishment, a warning… It is a horrifying realization I’m assured of.
I’m now encased in a strong prison, that I can’t hope to remove with ease but I am assured in vice versa would have difficulty would be broken into.
In all this suffering I have what feels like a voice ease it, as if informing me of this purpose.
What hurts you, traps you will be your protection, and what protects you will hurt you. Is a voice, the voice of who I will fight for, unnaturally and unbelievably speaking into my mind.
Yet I submit to it, and in time I brace through this pain, as I stand for hours in this chamber, and continue to burn within this prison without relief, till I feel as if I am nearly dying as my blood boils.
As my eyes melt in my sockets and become hot thick near liquid that rolls along the scorching flesh along the way.
You should rebel. It’s a small voice that fades as a stronger one rises. You have your reward, nothing your enemies may do now will amount to what has been done, you now wear bindings. The stronger voice is not my own like the former. It’s Her’s and yet I follow it.
But what lies in the former voice–my voice I still seek to consider.