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Ekarna: Chapter 1: Alone |
| Written by Mark Walsh | |
| Sunday, 18 May 2008 | |
 Drifting between varying states of consciousness, the defeated captive lies on her side praying for Death to finally find her. She dare not think about what may come in the eternal abyss of the afterlife so as to not be let down once again. Dreams and hopes are a precious commodity here and it does not do to throw them around with reckless abandon. There is one hope that she guards most fervently, even from herself. His eyes, they are all she wishes to see just one last time. By catching just a fleeting glimpse of those warm and caring orbs, she hopes to be able to break the monster's grasp and see, even for a moment, the love and kindness that filled her life and completed her soul. These beasts, these monsters who dress themselves in the garb of mortal men, have some strange ungodly power. They, no doubt through some witchcraft, rob you of your identity, erasing all that you once knew and were. Your memories, emotions, loves, and desires are all cast in an overwhelming shadow of doubt and skepticism. You find yourself questioning the existence of those who you once loved, the events that compiled your other life, and that you are a person rather than one of their defeated and helpless pets. Life has become pure misery. The light that once surrounded the captive's meager life has all but been forsaken, leaving her to lie in the dark alone, completely and utterly vulnerable.
A disturbance dissolves the haunting spectres of her now questioned past and brings the captive back to this reality. A rustle. It seems to come from the very air itself. Frightened, she lies, perhaps impossibly, more still, so as to not draw the disturbant's attention. She must have been sleeping, for the once glorious fire has all but lost its vigor. The great flames that fought off the shadows of the night have ceded and returned to the safety of their embers, where they now lie in fear of the ever encroaching night. Their last bastions of light are falling quickly. The night has played the waiting game, knowing that before long the fire's supply lines would run dry and the fuel that feeds their insubordination would bring about their downfall. A sense of dread permeates the air. The silence seems to suffocate all noise. She fears to move, not wanting to draw the attention of some new found demon released upon this world to exact revenge for the gods as punishment for her whispered blasphemies. Straining her hearing, the captive attempts to detect any signs of life surrounding her. It is not like them, for the beast's who hold her chains to stop their never-ending revelry. Perhaps it is but another one of their games they wish to humiliate her with. She wouldn't put it past them to crouch, waiting in anticipation, as her imagination, or what is left of it, runs wild in the lonely night. They will bide their time until they are sure that they have sensed the presence of that which they feed on most, hope. Then they will emerge from the shadows to feast upon its carcass, and in its place instill the dread and hatred that has become so common. The night is different now. The dread has melted into the darkness and it has been replaced with a ringing anticipation. Rent with a charge of excitement that she can not place, the captive decides it is time to tempt fate. Testing her atrophied muscles, they seem to scream with the effort, begging her to not wake them from their lethargy. Creaking, as a floorboard in an old abandoned house might, her muscles take hold of the brittle skeleton and begin the long, slow drag of her body. After what seems like an hour, she flops onto her back, taking in the clear and cloudless night time sky. Pulling her eyes from the starless sky, what meets her gaze is terror incarnate. Scattered around the campfire are the lifeless remains of her now silent captors. What represents true terror is not that they have perished, but rather the manner they have perished in. The few causalities she could see could have only been caused by one of the gods. The fallen victim, now but a meager frame of his once great form, lacks any flesh from his waist up. Its as if he were a chicken bone, licked clean to one's satisfaction. Not a drop of blood was spilt throughout the whole apparently meticulous process. His comrades shared an unfortunately similar fate. Fear set in, as one would expect rigor mortise to shortly after death. It was omnipotent and complete in its onset, commanding all of her senses attention to slightest hint of motion. She was slow to realize that the night itself seems to slide across her gaze. A darkness so complete that light fails to attempt to pierce its depths for fear of what it may hold swirls before her eyes. An outline starts to appear out of the darkness, trimmed in ambiguous silver that refuses to maintain its border and truly define the shape it contains. The figure that starts to take form is awe-inspiring. Wings, expanded to what one would only hope to be their full extent, blot out the night sky in its entirety. A head, or what she could only assume it to be, coalesces out of the void a healthy 20 feet in the air, near the top of spectating trees. As its outline becomes more defined, the shape it takes makes the wife question her consciousness. It could not be real, it is as if her dreams, being long forgotten in her other life, rebelled and came to this world commanding attention. A dragon, standing but mere feet from her, made of the very night itself fills her gaze with its gargantuan proportions. Surely now the punishment she has endured has finally taken its toll, ridding her of her sanity so she now can be at peace. Her breathe freezes in her lungs as the massive void leans forward for closer inspection. Its breathe washes over her and she is paralyzed with astonishment. The breathe smells of freshly tilled fields, the wind as it makes its long arduous journey across the plains, and most unexpected of all, her beloved husband. Tears, which until this point lay hidden in wait, pour forth from their reserves before she even realizes. Images and memories of what she once had flood her, making it hard to maintain consciousness under the burden. "Alone." The very air seems to echo of a thousand disembodied souls singing the word in chorus. The sound dispels her reverie, returning the senses that were hijacked once more into her control. Confusion more than fear, attempts to claw its way out of her insides, leaving her unexpectedly frozen in shock. Then, in this moment, she remembers her now unidentifiable captors so unceremoniously strewn across the otherwise timid landscape. With a reinvigorated sense of duty, fear clambers to the forefront once more, forcing the woman into some, as yet to be decided, action. Being hog tied as she was, flight from hernew-found tormentor seems an impossibility. Not that one would expect it to do much good if she could dash off into the forest, considering her foe. The only remaining option left is pleading for mercy. Without much expectation of success, she musters up energy that has long been yielded, and words resonate off her out of practice vocal chords. "P..p..please don't kill..." Stuttering at first, the energy needed seems too much to ask. Mid sentence, the words die in her throat, failing to pay the required debt to escape. Hopelessness grabs at her heart, wrenching it, to wring it free of this troublesome life. Silver lines stretch across the forehead of the hulking beast, no doubt representing the furrowed brow of confusion. Not seeming to comprehend what the small form in front of it is getting at, the dragon once more attempts to communicate. The eerie, ethereal chorus strikes up again, singing the words in perfect unison. "I know your loneliness. I too am alone." The words have little effect upon the stunned spectator. Tucked away in the farthest recesses of her mind, emotions and of all things pity make their presence known once more, shedding the partition that saved them from the darkness that plagued her mind. In what could only be the dragon's eyes, elongated pools of the same silver sheen which seems to hold back the void that composes it, she senses a mad longing that only she would dare venture to understand. The beast did not appear to be lying. Its eyes narrate a tale of loss and loneliness that only makes to strengthen the darkness that pervades it presence. The widow, for all the humanity that was stolen from her, still could feel nothing but remorse and pity for the beast.` With a new found sense of curiosity, something long lost from her repertoire, energy begins to course through her body with renewed vigor. Without thinking, the woman pulls herself into a sitting position, before realizing that her hemp shackles no longer deny her freedom. Looking up at the dark mass, she swears she sees the hint of a smile hide at the corners of the dragon's gigantic maw. For the first time in as long as she dare remember, her movements were unhindered by any type of restraint. Feeling liberated and slightly emboldened, the escapee decides to speak once more, or at least attempt to. Her throat, dry and cracked from dehydration, resists feebly, finally releasing the words it so desperately tries to detain. "H...how do you know that I am alone?" She says this to the ground, fearing to appear anything but weak and vulnerable to her audience. Losing interest in the scurryings of the forest ants around her filthy feet, she ventures a look up to the dragon's face. Her breathe catches in her throat as shes peers into the dragon's eyes, which now are illuminating the dim surroundings with their blinding glow. The crystal clear moons, hanging in mid air but inches from her face demand her unblinking stare. Brighter still they become until finally her eyes tear with the strain. Just when the urge to blink begins to override her voluntary refusal, the deafening silence is torn asunder by the ethereal chorus once more. "I am your knight in shining armor. I love you with all of my heart, and will protect you as my beloved queen forever." The singing is different this time. One voice rises over the rest, clear above the din of the others, filling the words with the passion and emotion that serves to give them meaning. It is his voice and she knows it with out thought. The words seize her heart, stabbing madly at it so as to bring to the surface the scars that time and torture have long tried to cover. In this moment some spark, some small entity that has endured despite all that happened has finally been overwhelmed, and despite its tenacity, flickers from existence. These words, this phrase, they representEmara at her weakest and most vulnerable; at the point with which she no longer was in control of her fate because her heart was no longer hers. Whispered so tenderly in her ear in front of everything important to her, these words were meant to express that which is indescribable. Their vows had been uttered and they were no longer alone in this world or the next because of the oaths they had sworn. As if that wasn't enough, when she had just regained her composure, he leaned in, his smell igniting her nostrils with wild fantasy and longing, and whispered these words so lovingly and sincerely that she couldn't help but believe them. Hearing the words now, in some sick and satirical fashion, from a monstrous proxy destroys her memory of the event, forever staining it as a catalyst for her captivity. In her now completely dark and shadowed mind, the thoughts that feared the light, that lurked in the time between thought, find themselves completely at home, free to intrude upon her wakingcognitions . Anger, hate, and disgust, no longer restrained, seek to dominate her each and every thought. She blames him for making her weak and dependent. She hates him for making promises that he couldn't or didn't want to keep. Her anger burns as bright as molten lead. She has been cheated by the world in every conceivable way, and now she will no longer stand for it. Steeling herself against the injustices of the world, her gaze hardens with determination as she stares into the depths of the dragon's fathomless eyes. "I am alone." Her voice rings clear with no sign of hesitance or fear. The cold air seems to drink thirstily from the sound, refusing to leave enough to warrant an echo. A crease of silver materializes at the corners of the dragon's mouths. A smile, or the shade of one, seems to pass with ease across the beasts face, as if in some other time or place they didn't come at such a heavy cost. As fast as it had come, the smile was gone, leaving no traces of its existence. Rallying his voice once more the dragon resigns, "I too am alone." Copyright 2008 |
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