Darkness.
Stars.
That's all there is. A comforting blanket of darkness with pinpricks of light as far as the eye can see.
Consciousness returned slowly. This time, consciousness seemed to bring with it the control she was lacking after she threw herself to the mercy of the hoard. She was having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. The line between what was real and what was a dream had blurred and warped. She couldn't distinguish between the two anymore. Everything was blurred. Everything was distorted. Nothing was real. Everything was real. The idea of returning back to life as it was in Beqanna didn't even seem real. She wanted to go back, but could she? Could she really after all of this, regardless of what was real and what wasn't?
She didn't have the answer. She doubted her ability to find an answer. To say she had been unable to predict anything as of yet would be a gross understatement. So Nadya was done with trying to think of what was next. She was finished with trying to paint a picture of the future only to be stepped on and disappointed. All that Nadya had was the present. Now. This moment. This is where she would live.
Even her death, it seemed, she couldn't execute to her liking. Her sacrifice had backfired in the worst possible of ways. She had wanted to spare her friends and in doing so she had condemned them to meet death at her own hooves. It was twisted. It was wrong. It was picking her apart on the inside.
She realized, slowly, that she was no longer alone. Her first instinct was to recoil, for she didn't trust herself to be in the company of others. Not anymore. Not after what she had done. She still didn't have all the pieces of what had happened to her - did these poor souls suffer the same fate? Had they been pulled from the brink of insanity and despair after being forced to live the worst possible existence? Had they seen their sacrifice for those they loved be relegated to nothing but a speed bump and a path to unfathomable pain?
Nadya was not that strong girl who stood in front of a hoard of undead for her friends anymore. She was so, so tired of of the pain. The damage was clearly visible from the outside. Her eyes were empty. Her coat was dull. She was covered in burns, scratches, and wounds that have long become infected. Her ribs pressed uncomfortably against her skin which was stretched too tightly against her bones. There was nothing about her which screamed health. But the true damage was on the inside - images of what she had done, or things she had done, replay over and over behind those hollow eyes.
She had never known exhaustion at this level before - physical, mental, emotional. She'd been beaten at every level. She'd been ready to die twice over. Yet here she is. Battered. Beaten. Breathing. Surviving. Barely.
But she was alive.
If you could call it that.
The others appear ragged as well. She didn't have to wait and wonder about there stories. Before she could think, their stories came pouring into her mind. She cried out as the images tore through her already fragile mind. She saw their dreams, their nightmares, their fears, their triumphs. In the end she saw their doom - the circumstances that brought them all to this place. Her eyes squeezed shut and she shook her head as the images fought for dominance - names and sights and sounds and scents. Too much, she thought, it's all too much.
As suddenly as the images begun, they ceased. She looked at the four again - this time knowing the names and stories that go with the ragged faces. She suspected they knew hers as well, and shame crawled up the back of her throat. They must have seen her fail her family. They must have seen her failed sacrifice. They must have seen her become a monster and turn on her friends. They must have seen her murder and destroy...
The emotions are washed away just as quickly as they had come - the empathy she felt, the pain. Instead they are replaced with all-consuming anger that seems like its utterly out of place, yet all too familiar. Again she's at war with herself. She should be used to this feeling - this out of control feeling - by now. Perhaps she's the only of the group who's felt it before. This all-consuming possession is not unlike the demon who took hold of her and forced her to destroy her companions and friends - the undead monster who wanted blood and death and gore. They had seen it, but only she had felt it. She was too tired to fight the return of the demon to its defeated host.
The voice was speaking to her through her own lips, just as it had done before when it demanded that she feed. When it demanded that she slaughter - she butcher. But now she was given a new set of choices - now she was forced to determine the fate of not only her life but the fate of the other four who had been dragged from reality with her. She struggles against the demon to conjure images from their memories and push away the monster.
The loss and pain was so real - so visceral to her. She saw children murdered and children become murderers. She saw starvation and desperation. Blood, so much blood, that stirred something primal inside her - disturbing her that much more. She saw two become victim to those who had turned like she had turned on her own friends - something that sent a stabbing pain of guilt and fury through her heart. The others were victims of hunger, starvation, madness even - another type of torment she could certainly understand - as they picked their own flesh from bone as infection ripped them apart from inside out. But the part of her that was still bound to morality - the living consciousness that clung to life - wanted to save those that fell victim to those who had been turned. Those who fell victim to monsters like her. She had to save those who had been butchered by the undead. They could have been her victims. Her meal. Her kills. Heartworm and Rhonan must live. So she had no choice. Or at least she didn't think she did.
"Jaide and Tyrna." She managed to say, though doing so caused her blood to turn cold and a new emptiness to fill her chest. If she could, she would sacrifice herself again. This demon had already claimed her - had already poisoned her. It had already possessed her mind twice over. None of them deserve this torment.
But she certainly does.
N A D Y A
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