Page 62 of Endless Terrors
“Nothing. Just try to stay still.” Her focus moved away from me, and her next words were directed to my family. “Repeat after me. Concentrate on your intent as you speak.”
They began to chant. It was a low, eerie sound, and tension built in my shoulders as I waited for something to happen. I wasn’t sure what I expected. But the seconds ticked by, the chant went on, and nothing changed. Was the spell even working? I fought to hold back an anxious frown.
And then … something did happen.
The sensation was subtle at first. Almost indiscernible, like the smallest of slivers tucked beneath my fingernail. I stared up at the ceiling, focusing completely on my body. The voices of my Court faded into a background hum as the imaginary slivers went deeper. They became shards of glass. I felt my mouth open in the beginnings of a scream, but an explosion of agony silenced me.
It felt like I was dying.
Then I was falling through light, flipping and turning, with nothing but air and panic to grab onto. There was a rushing sound in my ears, and I couldn’t hear my family’s chants anymore. It felt as though I was being put together and pulled apart all at once. I couldn’t sob or beg for help. At some point, I heard a single sound leave my throat, something akin to a whimper.
Heat surrounded me, so intense that I knew there would be no surviving it. While the pain ripped me apart, I was blinded by images. Disjointed, senseless scenes. Crowds. Battles. Creatures I’d never seen the likes of before. Clouds. Stars. I kept falling, relentlessly enduring that vivid pain, my mouth stretched in a soundless scream. A cruel, colorful parade of panic and images went on and on, and there was no end in sight.
The end did come eventually. There was another flash of light and agony, and after that, beautiful, merciful darkness. By the time it closed in around me, I was ready for it. I went into it willingly.
A small eternity passed. I was floating. Everything was quiet, peaceful. I was nothing and no one. There was only a vague sense of existence, and even that didn’t matter.
Then I woke up in Hell.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When I opened my eyes again, I was so disoriented that I felt like a newborn.
I blinked, putting a word to the action, and struggled to form more coherent thoughts. It was a sensation similar to waking up, a sort of hazy confusion as dreams and reality collided. I didn’t think I was awake, though. There was something against my back and everything was so dark. I blinked some more, trying to look around. But the dream was too unfocused, or maybe there was something wrong with my eyes. I still didn’t panic. Every dream ended, after all. I just had to wait.
Then something moved.
I was in a room of sorts, I thought faintly. Something big had detached from the ceiling. Whatever it was drew closer, and it became a looming blur. I frowned up at the shape, still too bleary to feel anything like fear or alarm. It was too dark to make out any of its features, but I could see the outline of wings. The sounds coming from its throat seemed like the language of an insect, all chitters and clicks. Even now, I felt no fear. This was just a strange dream. Nothing could truly hurt you in a dream, could it?
I didn’t know my own name, much less what was or wasn’t possible.
Noise erupted into the silence. The creature launched into the air, flapping its wings. The darkness swallowed it, and a moment later, something else moved. This shape was on the ground, walking on two legs, and it was much smaller than the one I’d just faced. My vision was beginning to clear. I blinked some more and watched it come toward me. A bright light flickered near its head. Other shapes were behind it. They carried lights, too. Torches, I thought.
They crowded the room, and I cringed away from them. I huddled in the shadows, still devastatingly disoriented. They were talking, I had managed to put that much together. But the words were meaningless and guttural.
A few seconds after that, I finally realized that I was naked.
With limbs that didn’t feel like mine, I brought my knees to my chest. A curtain of hair fell into my eyes. As I sat there, watching the blurs argue amongst each other, a new thought occurred to me.
What if this wasn’t a dream?
I must’ve made a sound, because the shapes suddenly quieted. One of them dared to approach. It knelt next to me with slow, deliberate movements. It spoke again, and I stared into its black eyes, startled that I could actually see them now. I could see everything.
Long, dark hair draped over its massive shoulders. It had two slits in the middle of its face, and teeth that could only be described as fangs. They were so big they hugged the curve of its top and bottom lips. Its fingernails were black, and the ones on its long, arched feet looked more like black claws.
But this creature’s most jarring feature was its skin—every inch was gray and mottled. The texture looked like scabs, or maybe scales.
My gaze shifted, taking in the details of the creatures filling the room behind it. They looked similar, with slight variations in height, build, and facial features.
The quiet didn’t last long. Their voices were loud again, their eyes wide and wondering as they took me in, this strange thing that clearly did not belong. I tensed, on the verge of moving away from their torches and stares. Before I could, the creature in front of me turned and said something to them, its voice low and sharp. Once they’d fallen silent, it faced me again, and it repeated the words it had been saying.
Suddenly, in a burst of clarity, I understood. It was speaking in English, my own tongue.
“What’s your name? Are you hurt?” the creature was asking.
I still didn’t answer; I couldn’t. The memories were coming back now, in all the brightness and the noise.
I remembered finding my mother’s body in a shadowed hallway. Peering out a window at my brother’s empty garden. Meeting a hazel-eyed faerie through the bars of a cage. Then the images starting coming even faster and closer together, and I couldn’t process them quickly enough to fully grasp all the information. So much pain. So much death. But … there was joy, too.
