My eyes went past my agitated friends to Commander Rel, and I could see she was focused on me with shock in her eyes. Bari and Dara did not understand, but I knew that what she had just cast was supposed to obliterate all three of us; instead, my robes were not even torn apart.
I pushed myself to my feet, and the world tilted around me. My friends were screaming, Bari’s voice raw with fear, Dara’s sharp with desperation, but I could barely hear them over the roaring in my ears. The headache was still there, a constant presence, but the anger kept rising.
’How many times do I have to kill you all until you stay dead?’
Commander Rel’s eyes widened as I stood, and I thought she was about to run, but Bari and Dara did not understand the invisible communication going on between us, and they were not yet aware that I was on my feet.
I stepped forward and placed a hand on Bari’s shoulder, and I felt him flinch. "Elric..."
"Move," I said. My voice was flat, strange, as if someone else was speaking through me. "Let me handle this."
Bari’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He stepped aside, and I walked past him, and Dara’s web of Threadwork as if it was not there, toward Commander Rel.
She was watching me with those cold grey eyes, and her staff had appeared in her hands.
I pressed my fingers to the crown of my head in annoyance at the headache that was flaring, before I looked at the Commander through my fingers, "That all?"
My voice was cold and steady, and I did not recognize it, but I did not fight it, because for once it was useful. "That’s the famous Force Resonance of an Aldenmere Commander? I’ve been hit harder by the wind. "
I spat at her feet, and the spittle hissed on the ground as if it was evaporating... odd. "Orath’s right, there is a reason your husband and your unit would die on the frontlines, butchered like animals, while you are here and cannot kill three Acolytes."
Now, she took a step back, and the fear and caution in her eyes could no longer be hidden.
I smiled, and the smile was not mine, since it came despite the pain that felt as if my head was being torn apart. "Come on, Commander. Show me something. Or are you as useless as the rest of this dead camp?"
The fear in her eyes began to vanish, and I could see the anger rising inside of her. What finally broke her was the voice of Orath, "Commander. Commander. Why are you taking so long? It is one Acolyte. Stop playing and clear the trash so we can work. "
The word trash did something to Commander Rel’s pride that my insults had only started.
I took another step forward, and her spell pulsed. I could feel the force building in her hand, the pressure of it pressing against my skin. But it did not hurt. It felt... familiar. Like something I had felt before, something I had survived before.
The force-spell in her palm grew and bled into her staff. I watched it closely, a grin frozen at the edge of my lips. A purple bolt began to grow on her staff, and for a moment, I was becoming annoyed at how slow she was casting, before she drew the entire bolt into a blast that would tear through a building.
Bari was shouting something, and Dara was throwing herself in front of me, and Commander Rel’s hand came down.
And the blast left her staff like a thrown sun.
∞
My hands came up. I did not decide it. The decision was almost unconscious. The blast hit my open hands. I felt the impact, the pressure, the weight of it pressing against my skin. And I held it. I held it like it was nothing, like it was a ball being thrown to me by a child.
Commander Rel’s eyes went wide. "What..."
I did not know why I could do this. I did not know how I could do this. But I did not question it. I just acted.
My mind began to buzz as fragments of memories began to tear themselves through the pain. I saw myself killing this woman, over and over again, and I did it so quickly that she was not even aware she had died most of the time.
How is that possible? I don’t know, but it felt true, and I chose to believe it, because everything happening around me was madness.
"Your attacks," I said, "are not strong enough."
I brought my other hand up, and I pressed the force bolt between my palms. It crackled and pulsed, struggling to escape, but I held it. I compressed it, making it smaller and brighter.
The awareness floated past my consciousness that I was able to do this because I must have a higher Force Resonance than Commander Rel, but that did not make much sense... but I still ran with it.
The air around me began to shimmer, and the ground beneath my feet began to crack; even the pyramid’s black surface began to ripple, as my friends were pushed back from the growing pressure around me,
"Your force," I said, looking Commander Rel in the eyes, "is nothing."
And then my hands, without any mental control, brought the churning orb of force over my head, and the bolt exploded upward, and a shockwave of force and light tore through the camp.
I heard a loud shriek, and I remembered it all... There was a grey bastard on my shoulder, eating my mind.
The shriek of what I could only describe as pain kept rising, and reality began to shatter.
∞
First, everything seemed to be frozen in place, and then, as if reality was made from rubber that was being melted... it began to merge and flow downward.
I felt a moment of terror as my friends began to melt into colored goo, the sky, the pyramid, and everything was flowing downward, as if a gigantic drain had opened under my feet.
I felt something sag on my shoulder, and I turned to see the face of the man who had been swallowing my mind... his yellow eyes were wide open in shock, and there was a hole burned in the center of his forehead.
’You died too quickly,’ I whispered, and then my body began to melt.
∞
I woke... and I was inside a glass vat, suspended in a pale liquid.