35

(Illenium, Nevve- Fractures)

Vetia

“What is family to you? Hah, I suppose you cannot answer, but I’ve heard of your little family. You and your friends with whom you traveled. Did you not tire of them? Not even once?”

I tapped the cell bars twice.

“I hardly believe that. Even I grew to resent my own. But such resentment is only natural having been tortured as I am. Would you sacrifice your friends for true freedom?”

I quickly tapped the bars twice again.

“And yet you suffer for their sakes. It’s odd. Do you only suffer for their sakes or are you scared of who you are without them? Is that why you have remained so… docile?”

I hesitated, then tapped the bar once.

“That begs the question, who is hostage to who? Who is prisoner and who is truly free?” I could hear the smile on her face. “If only they knew your pain. Even as they’re drawn further away from you, by her wicked design, you still care for them.”

I tapped the bar.

“So what will you do when they have drifted so far that your suffering no longer means anything to them?”

Darkness grasped the cells. Dripping water the only thing echoing through the twisting silence.

“The time where they are no longer with you nears. Even I know a monster when I see one. Her wickedness, her cunning, is all to isolate us into malleable, broken, mindless slaves. One she can put little rewards before until we are only driven by them. She knows that true misery is brought on by the decimation of one’s humanity. She wants to witness us lose everything we hold dear. The moment we give up fighting, we will be nothing, and she will have won, and the people will praise her as savior, as justice, as truth. Our truth erased. Our suffering forgotten.”

I slammed my fist into the bar. Two punches, two pronounced cracks from fracturing my hands.

“No?” It laughed like a wicked serpent and took to whispering. “How far she must push is entirely dependent on you, Vetia. Don’t lose that fight. It’s your only way out, lest ye become a monster like me.”

* * * * *

Tink. Zap. Tink. Zap. Tink. Zap.

I sat idly, flicking the metal collar around my neck. If I flicked it lightly enough, it would just make a little static shock type of sting. I didn’t have much to do, so shocking myself was a good time killer. It helped to keep me from thinking about everything I missed.

I had begun to notice over time what it was like to go without sleep for so long. Being up, unable to shut my mind off grew draining. Every day blended into the next like they were all the same, and yet I couldn’t keep track of what was happening on what days anymore. My sense of time was so off that I didn’t even remember how many nights I had been here, especially at the Amien Manor. I didn’t want to keep thinking about it, but between being unable to talk, not sleeping and having a miserably lonely day, all I could do was go mad in my own head. Being up so long was maddening. Having terrible food was maddening. Having no friends was maddening. It sent shakes up my spine as I recoiled from the specters at the edges of my vision. I didn’t want to admit it, but I started to like it. A world away from the world. I wasn’t even sure if the people who talked to me had even talked to me. Reality seemed so dreamlike, unreal, forgettable, and terrifying. Then suddenly forgotten, like every moment lasted an eternity and then disappeared in an instant. Is this how God feels?

I thought to myself constantly, maybe I could just use up all my jzanmah and that would propel me to sleep. There were a few heavy days of healing, where I felt tapped at the end of the day, but I wasn’t tired. In fact, I was more energetic than ever and all I could think about was how every guard and servant looked like wonderful midnight snacks. I couldn't remember feeling tired since I woke up in this world. Even at the clinic, I simply fell catatonic until my mind returned to me. Maybe I can rest in catatonia.

In light of my eventual madness, I planned. Simira was still unaware that I could fly and had poisons. It didn’t make much of a difference, though, because there were constantly guards posted on the walls and I was too watched to poison anyone and dash.

So I would sit at that wobbly wooden table in the infirmary and look out the window at the training fields. Adam looked like he was having so much fun. I hardly saw him with that hunchback who cleaned the armor now that he was a guard. He stood out like a sore thumb, being the only person there larger in mass than the Captain. He reminded me of a kid at recess, a big toothy smile on his face, laughing whenever he fell, but always getting up to play sword fight with the others. I spent most of my time watching out the window. I quickly fell victim to the charm of murdering everyone out there silently, when they weren’t looking.

The Wicked Witch of Middle Earth took away my board on a busy day when I called one of the guards who had beaten me a “spineless cortyfucker.” I’d learned lots of Triali insults from the people who berated me and I just couldn’t resist using them. I hadn’t been able to do any real communication since the board was taken and that made dealing with the kid incredibly difficult when he visited. I can probably kill him and nobody will care.

I never learned the kid’s name, but he would visit me pretty often, sneaking in to show me his dolls or to sit and grab at the sheets of the cots. He would stand in the doorway saying "Red" until I looked at him, then he would enter. I never heard him say anything else. Funny though. Red is the same word as blood in Triali. Almost like he knows and nobody listens because he is collared by their perceptions.

All things considered, he was a sweet kid. He had issues, but I did my best to learn what to do and what not to do. He was surprisingly strong and he really liked squeezing soft or plush things, so I kept my distance from his reach. It seemed like as long as I didn’t touch him and I didn’t let him grab my clothes, I would be alright. He almost tore my shirt one time because he was showing me a doll and grabbed at the fabric on my shirt. When I pulled away, he just held on tighter and ripped the skirt clean free while I sprayed him with scalding hot water. I learned to ease him off and not to fight, but to distract him with something else. It was a pain, but it was some form of company during the day. The people at the manor despised us just the same, so we were kindred spirits in a sense.

I overheard some guards speaking, and apparently he was an Amien, or at least related to them in some way. By their standards, he was a retard with noble blood, so they took care of him and kept him out of sight. That seemed to be why he stopped visiting. They probably saw him wandering around at some point, in sight and out of line like usual.

How long has it been? A handful of weeks? A month maybe? My measure of time was so messed up. I thought that maybe a few days was the most accurate. My best measure was that every so often, there was a massive influx of people getting hurt, and not just the soldiers. Early in the day it was the soldiers, but later in the week it was a bunch of prostitutes from a local brothel that made a killing off the pent-up guards here. I only really knew because they were always getting hurt, even a few broken limbs at times. And they looked like total shit after everything was done. It didn’t look pleasant at all and it definitely scared me to think what they could be doing, but they had fat stacks of coins in their purses, so it must have been worth it. The weekly fuckening, as I called it, had happened four times, so I assumed I’d been there for about twenty weeks, give or take a few days, even though it had been several months since last night.

As much as I hated those years on the ocean, I wouldn’t have been given such a wonderful offer without them. I’d done it numerous times already, but only a night it would be.

I hadn’t seen anyone other than Adam, and I couldn’t feel either Tells’ or Simira’s auras, whatever those sensations were. I had spent a while figuring that out, too. I could sense people around me and how they were feeling for about from the wall to the other wall before their emotions became fuzzy, but I could still tell who they were regardless of sight.

The days became colder and the people with them. I rifled through the pages of my book that Uylet so graciously ripped out and selected for me to study. I had most of them memorized.

“Woman. I’m speaking to you.”

The nasally hole of John Guard cut through my thoughts. What a dick. I turned around toward him, he who was recently posted at the door to make sure I didn’t do anything else unwanted.

“By the Viscount’s orders: These weeks of conditioning should have you well-adjusted to the life of a regenerator servant. Your ability will be strained in your next assignment. The Viscount has contracted an ailment that labors his speaking. You will be used to rid him of this so he may attend a summit in the city tomorrow morning.”

“Wha-!” electricity surged into my neck, ripping its way through my body. I instinctively burst out speaking and I was reeling on my hands and knees from the pain. I couldn’t catch my breath and my throat wasn’t opening back up. It surged through my mind in a flash, that I would have to use a lethal amount of jzanmah to cure the Viscount. I have to basically kill myself because the Viscount had a cold? I glared up at the guard through blurry watery eyes and tried to signal that I had questions, but my body wouldn’t react to what my brain was instructing. My chest dazed and heaved, trying to fill my lungs with enough air to do what I asked. I shoved myself off the ground, but he had already stepped out and shut the door. There was just a folded piece of paper on my desk, ominously awaiting me.

I had heard a little of the procedure and it was incredibly dangerous for the jzanmah tejuh involved. Such precision in killing so many microorganisms could be lethal for untrained ones like myself. And the Viscount was using me to get rid of a cold. I slumped in my chair, forehead down on the table. I wanted to curse. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and rage and rip every page so that I wouldn’t have to ever heal anyone again. My nails dug into my palms and my head exploded, just trying to keep my breathing from setting off the collar. I gripped the sides of the table and slammed my forehead on it again and again, laughing that I could finally see that bastard and claim victory.

I wonder if Adam and Tells will be there to watch me win.

Why did I get powers in the first place? Why am I the only one able to heal people? What use are powers if they’re just going to be thrown away by some greedy shits. I’ve been planning. I’ve been scheming. If Simira wants to treat me like an expendable thing, I’ll show her what really lies in my heart. I can’t wait to see her face when it happens.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I swiped the paper up and glared it over. I may be enlightened, but I still have to be smart and hide my intentions, my realizations. The sigil was extensive. Seven shapes to the sigil and some of them were miserably complicated. They didn’t even resemble typical shapes anymore and looked more like intricate letters. It reminded me of a complicated math equation. That’s probably what it was, an equation to bend physics and siphon jzanmah to rid somebody’s system of plague. The world knows of these creatures, those little tiny death blots, but they won’t tell me how to treat them, so I must kill. Are they so reliant on jzanmah for everything that they had abandoned science and medicine?

The window was the perfect honey trap for birds. A sweet scent on the wind here and there. Nobody’s looking? Bite the head off and send the body down the hatch. It’s about survival, and I’ll do whatever it takes. I studied the sigil for as long as I could between occasionally healing guards. I really did the bare minimum healing, making sure I used as little jzanmah as possible. If I went in there with head pains at all, I would not live through the sigil. If I die, I won’t be able to kill Simira, and I can’t have that. I had cemented that in my mind. I wanted her dead and nothing more. Somebody like her simply shouldn’t exist. I will save her father and survive. I will escape, use my resources, take her life, and then sneak away with my friends. Oh, right… I have friends, don’t I?

* * * * *

The time came. The guard led me out of the infirmary across the manor. Everyone in every hall was disgusted by me, the criminal shazgadj. Every hall I passed through, I tried to seek out every aura and recognize them, but they were all other servants and attendants.

I stumbled forward when I felt two very memorable auras ahead of me. Tarynn and Simira. I also noticed the Captain in there, but he was probably just there to hold a sword around my neck the whole time.

Tells was outside, posted against the wall by the door guards. I shot her a grin and wink. She radiated shock, worry and confusion, but why did she get more scared when she saw me? She’s tough. She’ll figure something out when I die. I cannot worry about her. I must continue my act!

The doors to the room were huge. They looked to be made of expensive, dark and heavy wood. There was an intricate seal on the door, seven hands thrusting a sword into the sun. The guard stopped me and rechecked my collar, then opened the doors for me.

Simira, Tarynn, Zev, and dear daddy Amien. Am I crying, or are my eyes already dripping blood? Interesting. Noted.

Being so close to all of the people had me feeling a mix of emotions. Oh the smiles I wanted to show them all, but instead I played the sad, destroyed servant. Dead face and dead eyes.

The Viscount was a thin old man. He looked like the twins, but if they had let themselves go for the rest of their lives and whose hair had grayed. His face was sunken in and dreary. His body looked bone thin beneath the silken sheets of his bed.

As soon as I stepped into the room, I examined the change in auras around me. Simira was both amused and terribly guilty. Must have been really worried about dear old daddy and his little cough. Tarynn felt grief. Grief and fear. What a fucking joke. I stood next to the Viscount’s bed. The entire room remained silent. I didn’t give a shit about the life of the worthless old fuck I had to help, but I have to do it!

Captain Zev began to brief me. “Viscount Amien has been feeling a high temperature, frequent coughing-”

I raised my hand toward him without looking and he stopped talking. I didn’t need to hear it. He squinted at me and placed his hand on his blue hip dagger. I carved the rectangle and eyes into the air, placing the sheen of light before my eyes. Oh, a chunk of hair fell out onto the Viscount. I brushed it away quickly. I could see the beats of the Viscount’s heart, his stomach, his lungs. He wasn’t particularly unhealthy, but there were distinct markings in his lungs, like millions of tiny dots. They extended up his lungs into his throat some way, which definitely seemed like a common cold and at worst a light flu.

Needless to say, it was time to invoke the sigil that might just kill me. I laid the sheet on the bed before me and began the process. The first shape was made of four long triangles that met at their tips, creating a shape like a geometric four-leaf clover. As my finger traced the light green jzanmah in the air, the back of my head tingled aggressively. The normal flow of the lines was almost electric. I knew I couldn’t afford to mess up any of the shapes or it might just backfire dangerously. The shape bolded in the air, but it was still jittering. I began the next of six symbols.

The second was in the top triangle, shaped like a capital A that continued the center line to the right and formed an equilateral triangle with the leg, with a plus at the top point of the A.

The third was in the right triangle and looked like a jagged tree of three branches with an arrowhead at the base of it.

Four was in the bottom one, and it was the most difficult so far. It was a tiny wavy spiral with a hooked x through it. This one took me a good minute to do. The sigil shuddered several times and the people around me grew anxious. Amateurs. Tracing symbols with fingers wasn’t particularly difficult, it just required patience and a little finesse. I hooked the x off and quickly continued on.

Five was literally just a backwards P in the left triangle, so that was easy.

Six was a set of what reminded me of Chinese characters. Each triangle had the symbol nearest to the middle. I traced down and slanted left, then put a leg on the right of it. There were two parallel lines branching off of the right side, and three off the left. The right side formed what looked like a flag with two other lines, the rightmost flag end stretched down past the bottom of the flag. The left lines were crossed by a x. I repeated this symbol four times. The sigil buzzed wildly with chaotic power. It wobbled and jittered the whole time and I just had to keep my cool while it tore into the back of my head, heating me until I was sweating. It was exhausting, the fatigue that the sigil brought on, but the four symbols were done in about a minute. I hadn’t realized the amount of jzanmah it took to draw sigils, how much each line consumed.

The seventh shape was a circle around the entire sigil, with small triangles at five uneven points. I noticed a sensation as I drew this circle. Each triangle was honing in on a section, like they were directing the flow of the jzanmah toward points in the Viscount’s body. The precision of these triangles was the most important part. As I coalesced jzanmah in my finger to trace, the sigil hummed until I needed to make a point. It was like a seventh sense. Slight deviations caused the sigil to immensely rumble until I corrected, but it guided me to correctly draw them on. I finished and a wave of searing jzanmah cascaded through my entire body.

It was suddenly like I’d just sprinted a 5k and couldn’t take in air. My breathing became heavy and labored, so much that the collar let out little static shocks into my neck. All I had to do was initiate the sigil, then I was done here. No wonder people died from this. I apparently had a greater jzanmah tolerance than normal people and my body wanted to give out before I’d even initiated the sigil. Hopefully that wave was the end of it. Activating it would release all that stored jzanmah in the sigil, and I could be done.

I caught my breath for a moment and leaned over the Viscount. I slowly pushed the sigil toward his neck and chest, then lowered my finger into it. I let it spin like I was playing roulette and immediately teetered, losing balance. Jzanmah surged through me violently, like it was forcing its way out of my mouth and nose to rush to the erratic sigil. My body froze and seized. My head was fire like somebody had dug a hole through the back of my skull and stirred my brains with a flaming iron knife. I collapsed onto the floor. I didn’t even feel a sensation to pass out because there was so much adrenaline rushing through me in my cold sweat, like my body was electrocuted and searching for anything to keep it alive. My eyes watered and my nose rushed with blood. My ears clogged with pressure and warm blood trickled from each one. My vision tinted red. It was so beautiful seeing everything bathed in blood light.

Thought no longer exists. The world is but a feeling of. There are two sources of fear and worry when I fall, but everyone else turned gleeful or relieved when the Viscount’s aura strengthened. Light was kaleidoscopic, filling my eyes with dazzling spots of darkness and crimson. I rose, not on my own, but being carried like a bride. The guard held me in his arms loosely. His arms were so warm and I was so depleted of jzanmah that I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die, so I grasped onto every little surge of brain activity, every bite of adrenaline to keep me functioning. I was scared. Scared of death. A death like this, so far from my own mind. I wanted to be me when I died, not a raving lunatic. Not a fireblood. Me! Divine! I raised my hands and held onto him like a child in a fetal position. And I shivered being born back into my own body of jzanmah. I couldn’t stop the shivering. My hands grabbed his neck tightly, my scraggly nails digging into his flesh. They started cutting into him, ever so lightly. Blood on my fingers, in my hands, giving me strength. They clutched him for dear life, the only way I could feed myself secretly. That was the only thing that mattered. I was desperate for jzanmah. So much so that it felt like my entire mind was slipping into the animalistic cravings.

He worried, then startled, then irritated. No, I couldn’t have that. My sweet scent would make him NICE AND DOCILE I JUST WANNA SUCK HIM DRY HAAH! It did. A little more deep. More blood. It was good. So good. No. NO! CCOOOOOOLD GROUNDDD. Stone. My cell. Reaching. He pulled away. No no no. No leaving. Wanted stay and- hurt head. Bleeding head. Can’t see. Can feel. He left. Smaller auras around me. Dart to one. Small, hairy rodent. Drawn in by sweetness. More came. Drank blood, swallow whole.

Twas a dream. I can see again. Hunched over a pool of blood and tiny bones. I chewed something, something hairy and small. So cold. Shivers. Only fleeting life offers warmth. Only blood brings life. How strange, my senses returned, but my body didn’t stop, nor did I let it. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Rodents bit in half and down the hatch. Bones and fur and organs all the way down. Why count at a feast so plenty? The rush is euphoric. I ran my hands through the pool of viscera and bathed in it. I did it. I lived through the sigil. I am invincible. I had to be. Laughter. Mine. I couldn’t even making sounds, but I couldn’t stop laughing in emotion. The world was trying to kill me, but I couldn’t die. Oh, elation. Light in the head. Free in the heart. Enlightened be my senses. Godly be my body! Approaching aura. No, no. Hide the blood. Hide the blood. No rodent bones and no fur. Down the hatch they go, where the world would forget about them. Blood on my hands? No, in my hands. I could never be caught red handed if my hands never stained. Hehe! They are near. The people at the cell door. I sawsee everything. They are sad, afraid, crying. How sad, how unfortunate. For whom do they cry? Nobody is dead. If only words could have left my lips to tell them to cheer themselves. Oh poor Tarynn, whose guard kept him from the door. My mouth, whose words I wished would reach to ask wherefore dost thou weep? But alas, the poor boy heard not my words. Tears befell his face in so beauteous a way. I wished to lick them from his eyes that he may never sully himself so and then take his eyes so he may never see painful things, then his ears so he may never hear cries, then his mouth, because it would be funny. If only he could see as I did, how his sister stained my soul. Oh the hate, oh the rage in my soul to rip her life from the world. I loath her. I dreamt of drinking her blood til she will be a husk of dry flesh. Ah, the tears that sully his face do sully mine. My visage, burdened by emotion and the cruelty of the universe. It wept for that in front of me, not from me. Oh, how I wished to blot out the sun and engulf us in darkness that none may see me in all my singular glory. The bars are my window and the walls my world. This cell is no cage, but a book where stories make dreams of themselves and shed their blood into me. The world exists outside, and I inside of it, a world of my own, outside of the world but in the world in a worldly way only the world above Hell and between the sun can drink. But the yearning, the horror of seeing something so wondrously pitiful. He felt for who? Oh, what ailment has he been afflicted by? Has he seen something so horrific that he cannot not bear it not? Nay, twas not behind me. The rodents line my stomach, not the walls. Joyousness line this worlds, so why are his eyes not enthralled in love? Lo! He speaks! His lips and mouth reveal their secrets, oh but they ask for me? Oh why am I in hysterics? Why am I in madness? Oh Tarynn! God, nymph, perfect, divine, of what, my love, should I answer thine cry? Like a babe blind to the world for his own eyes deceive him of who I am. Me? Forsooth I am madly in love, and hysterically overjoyed! My days infinite and my time eternal! Why had those in love been so misunderstood? Oh, honorable, you beared welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue. Thou appeared as the innocent flower, but twas the serpent under it which bore thy venom. If nary a serpent, then born sans a spine! The sweetest scent to fill the chamber and the world flowed about me. Weariness of the soul was so potent. Wayward toward home he walks. How I search and lose sight. No matter, he is dead without, for there is only my within.

Away the pathetic prince dashed and onward could my plot fly.

T’were I a devil, the porter should surely let me by.

On a night most salacious, the shadow of death will loom.

Deep into the drunken night’s watch, she stumbles into the room.

The vixen bled in the night over a devil’s foolish err.

Then slip the assassin away, cloaked in dusk’s chilling air.

The thought raced my heart, bursting at its seams.

Long had I the night to perfect my little schemes.