If I was going to die, then I would die still fighting.
God’s fury made the very stones in the cavern walls crack. Everything shook, the ground rolling as if with an earthquake. I tried to run, but the strength had gone out of my muscles and my knees buckled. A massive tentacle wrapped around me as I tried to crawl away, right as my fingers closed around the handle of my dagger, and jerked me up into the air.
“What have you done?” God’s voice slithered inside my ears like cold, sharp wire prodding my eardrums. “What have you done? You offered your soul to another! You betrayed your God!” It roared, and the cracks in the cavern walls spread, chunks of stone beginning to fall. The Eld howled, panicking as the cavern began to collapse around them.
God was beautiful no longer. It looked like a beast that had crawled up from the deepest, darkest ocean depths. Its gray flesh was so pale it was nearly translucent, run through with a spiderweb of blue veins. Numerous tentacles, dozens of them, coiled around the cavern, up the walls and into the water, and tightened mercilessly around me. They were covered with white eyes, blinking among the suckers, looking around with wild anger. God’s face was no longer mist and swirling colors, but gaunt with wide bulbous eyes, and gills fluttering along Its too-long neck.
Its tentacles wrapped tighter and tighter. The cavern had completely collapsed in, and we were sinking down among mud, rock, and water. We were falling into nothingness, the dirt and stones vanishing into the abyss as darkness stretched out around us in every direction. Lightning flashed in the distance, and the air filled with thick white fog. The silhouettes of massive beings, briefly illuminated by the lightning, sent adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“You are mine!” Its voice was guttural and distorted, as if a hundred voices had all shouted at once. “You cannot take my sacrifice from me!”
We plunged down, into dark freezing water. All I could see were the numerous eyeball-covered tentacles spread out around me, a monstrous web in the water. Deeper and deeper we went. The pressure was building, my body aching under the weight of the water pressing down.
“You cannot escape me, mortal. You are meant for me. Your Earth is meant for me.”
My fingers ached as I gripped the dagger as tightly as I could. I was determined to hold on, no matter how deep we went, no matter how much it hurt. My body was being squeezed, slowly crushed in the grip of those tentacles and the pressure of the water. But my arms were free.
I swung back the dagger and plunged it down, as hard as I could, right into one of the pale eyeballs in the tentacle gripping me.
A nauseating shudder went through the water, and there was a roar of fury that nearly made my eyes roll back. I pulled back my arm and stabbed again, the dagger sliding in up to the hilt. The volume and horror of the sounds the God made were beyond words. Such wrath needed no language. It was palpable, wracking my body with pain as I was dragged deeper and deeper into the depths. I stabbed again, plunging in the knife and leaving it there when the pain made it impossible to retain any more conscious thought.
The tentacle’s grip on me loosened.
The water swirled, tumbling me, sucking me down, down, down. Water rushed into my lungs. Everything burned, everything ached. I couldn’t tell what was up or down, left or right, air or water. There was only darkness.
Darkness that seemed to go on for eternity.
I was dying.
Death felt…cold. Uncomfortable. But not as terrifying as I’d thought it would.
The silence was nice. The cold…after a while…felt nice.
There was catharsis in acknowledging that I wasn’t going to make it. I made peace with it.
Maybe I could drift for a while. Maybe I could sleep.
I wanted to sleep. Just sleep. I was so tired. But…
There was a silver thread in the dark, glowing bright and beautiful, and it wouldn’t let my eyes close.
I stared at it, numb at first and a little irritated. Why was it here? Disturbing my darkness, refusing to let me drift. Then I felt it tug. Just a little trembling tug that seemed to pull on all my ribs at once. It made my heart lurch. It made my brain wake up.
“Raelynn!”
That voice…so…soft…so far away. I’d have to swim forever to reach it. I didn’t want to swim. I wanted to drift.
“Raelynn! Keep going! Don’t you fucking give up!”
Where? I wanted to ask. How can I reach you? The voice was so familiar, but so far away. I wrapped my hands around the silver thread, using it to pull myself through the darkness. I didn’t know if I was in the water anymore. I wasn’t breathing. Air didn’t seem necessary. But it was cold and thick and strange. Would it be like this forever?