The Dragon Races- Part 31

Darkness was all there was, and Everlys was fine with that. She woke quietly from her restless slumber, blinking the sleep from her eyes and standing, stepping away from the brown-haired figure deeply asleep next to her. She brushed the dust off her pants, looking to the middle of the cavern.

The middle- the gaping, dark hole- emanated shadow, not light. The complete opposite of the tunnel walls before the brightness had gone in time for night to arrive, as they all assumed.

Everlys could faintly see everything and everyone else. Eriene and Jen sleeping soundlessly, Alaric curled up like a child next to the empty space where she had been, and Therin with his back her, close to blending in with the cave wall with his dark hair and shrouding jacket.

Some... mystery lied in the middle of their cave. Something wanting to be solved and seen.

Everlys didn't know how or why her feet walked her forward to the edge of the abyss and down the steps. She shuttered at the cold, icy sensation, but couldn't end it. She could stop anything.

The cold... it was familiar.

The sharp chill of air on her scarcely bare back and arms, the uncomfortably low, heart-shaped neckline of the seductively bloody red dress. The whooshing of weapons like wind, centimeters from her fair-skinned face.

"Stop." The Sinistrian whispered. But nobody answered her. It did nothing.

Everlys's head snapped up as whatever the manipulating force had been left her mind. She looked up, then down to the dark. She squinted as a light pulsed near where she assumed the ground to be, slowly spreading in it's cryptic glory until it bathed the steps up until her.

Something... something was casting that light. Something that wanted her to walk forward.

The light drew back towards it's center as she traveled down. Every step she took, every step the light pulled away. Until she looked down, finally, at the end of the winding stairway. 

She pulled her knives out as the last piece of chiseled stone held itself under her feet, looking up to flitting shadows and an overwhelming darkness. 

The light radiated brighter as she walked forward. It glowed and glowed like the moon, the sun, the magic of a Space Elemental, something more mystical and ethereal that any of those celestials or summoners. But... Everlys could stare into the light. It didn't burn her.

She froze as footsteps echoed on the walls. Those footsteps weren't hers. 

"Everlys." 

She exhaled a breath once the voice registered. She hadn't heard it many times, but enough to know it was Therin. 

But it didn't sound like him. 

It sounded like a glitch, a warping of the sound waves and twisting of the vocal cords into something unnatural. Some piece of broken, Alderonian technology fused and wired into a human's throat. Something layered with a feminine edge and... dead. Scratched and decaying. Resurrected.

"What... are you doing?"

"Giving you what you should have gotten one of those times when you entered a stranger's house." Everlys twisted out of the way as he lunged for her. "They should have caught you." Tendrils of black crept up the tips of her hair as Therin grabbed hold of the loose blonde strays and yanked her back to him. She yelped in pain, thrashing with her knives, kicking him away as the grip of one of his hands loosened when her blade met with his skin. "Someone... someone should have delivered you the death you were about to give them."

Everlys looked around wildly. There wasn't anything to harness and use her magic on. And as far as she knew, Telekenetic abilities didn't fare well against whatever magic Therin had.

"Come back, Everlys." He called as she started up the steps. She shuttered at the metallic voice, her panting turning to screams as blackness tore through the light and whirled around her body. It dragged her back towards him, pushing her to the ground and leaving no time before he reached for her knives.

A wave of overwhelming fear washed over her as Therin grabbed her wrists and forced them to the stone floor. Everlys could feel the weight of his body as he pressed her own knife to her throat.

"Don't touch me." she managed to say, thrashing her legs and yelping as his heel dug into her ankle. "Get... get off."

Therin smiled. She could almost forget his position over her if she focused on his hair, his eyes, his skin. Something else to stop the cascade of memories. "You've done this before, Everlys." But his voice brought her back. "You've held yourself over someone and slit their throat." His words were emphasized by the pressure of his blade against an artery.

She screamed again, hoping that Alaric or Eriene would hear her.

A minute passed, and Theirn's horribly gleeful expression remained.

Why hadn't anyone come? Why hadn't someone heard her?

"You really are too much of everything for your good. Hopeful yet pessimistic. That combination offers such a range of disappointment." The hand not holding the knife to her neck curled into her hair, forcing her head back. "And beautiful." The feminine voice returned, layering over Therin's. "Has anyone ever mentioned that?"

Yes. Yes, people had mentioned that. They had exploited her beauty. She had exploited her own beauty for Althea.

"Let go of me!" Her voice shattered, throat parched from screaming. "You... you have Raya. Don't you remember?" 

Raya?

Raya. The name... it brought a whirl of memory and feeling. Joyful and euphoric and helpless. Smiling and laughing, wounded and in tears. Staring down at the bloodied floor after one of Lady Castor's killings. Killings done after his own parents extracted memories. 

He would hold her while she cried, listen while she talked. He would let her talk about anything- urge her to tell him what thoughts haunted her beautiful mind, but not so far as to pressure her. He used to find ways to slowly draw her out of the darkness, to bring back what it felt like to be truly happy.

And now that he was in the arena- with Everlys, Alaric, Eriene, and Jen- what had come of her? What had this love done to Raya Castor? What had it done to him?

Therin scrambled away from Everlys's trembling body. He looked down at the knives in his hands, at her as they fell to the floor. But all he saw was Raya.

A hand gripping her torn white shirt and pressed over her chest, the chain of her necklace and half-shattering pendant stained with red. Blood trickling over her fingers and somehow pooling on the blade of her knife, under her pale hand holding the hilt.

He wanted to reach forward and shake her awake, wipe the blood and tears away and heal her from whatever state she was in. But the image switched to a young boy- small, dark, and black-haired, curled up in a corner. His brother. 

"Ahren..." The name escaped Therin's lips in a choked, terrified whisper. "Ahren, you have to get up."

Then a woman with deep brown skin and dark hair, too. Therin's eyes traveled to her exposed neck. No necklace draped down her collarbone. No emotion relayed anyhting in her icy blue eyes.

His mother had no necklace. She had no symbol of love or unity.

Everlys backed away. She dared to bend down and collect her two knives, staring carefully at him. He... was just standing there. Doing nothing besides looking off into nothingness, lost in his own memories- afraid, just as she had been.

Therin looked up at her after another minute. Her knives lowered when she noticed the gleam of tears across the bottom edge of both eyes. 

"What happened to me?" She heard no remnant of the metallic, feminine voice. Only fear and confusion. Those were two emotions she deeply understood. 

Everlys shook her head. "I... don't know."