The Captive Titan [ManxMan]

Chapter Twenty-one: World's End

[So, warning: this chapter contains semi-graphic vomiting, mentions grave injuries, and implies mass deaths. Please be careful if you feel like any of this may trigger you.]

~Chapter Twenty-one: World's End~

It is not a conscious thought that causes me to teleport; it is pure instinct, and that is probably why I end up flying into a wall rather than landing on my feet. It is luck, though, sheer luck, that keeps me from teleporting to the mouth of the Grand Canyon or to the long-gone roof of the Parthenon. And it is habit that allows my magic to successfully teleport my entire being to the same location and not just random parts of me to random places.

That is why, when my back hits the wall, I fall not into pieces or even very far but instead only a few meters into a pile of something cold - snow? - that cushions my hard landing.

All that really has a chance to register, though, is that there are no startled screams following my sudden appearance before the physical pain hits. My first breath of cold air turns into a hiss part way, but when I find myself growing tense, that only seems to make it worse, as the pain is the burning in my eyes, the pounding in my head, the burnt stinging of my skin, and the ache in my muscles. And then there is pain in my soul - the screams still echoing in my mind and through my bones, ringing just as loud internally as my ears are physically.

Afraid to move, I remain slumped in the snow at the base of the wall I hit, feeling the burn of the cold against what can only be singed skin through clothes that feel surprisingly whole. My breaths come in shallow gasps, as I am too scared to breathe any deeper in the event that it only makes the pain worse. Not that it can get worse. Or if it does, I at least will not be feeling it for long because there is no way I could stay conscious through it.

And then the screaming cuts off, leaving only the ringing in my ears, which is deafening in the surrounding silence.

Before I even really feel the stomach-twisting nausea, a pressure builds in the back of my throat, and the only brief warning I receive is the taste of bile on my tongue before I end up vomiting on my legs and then to my left once I realize what is going on. I try to open my eyes, having closed them at some point before teleporting to block out the light, but my eyelids feel sticky, and even when I force them open after retching up the rest of my last meal, I cannot see.

For a stomach-dropping moment, I have to wonder if my eyes are gone, a part of me really having been displaced in the teleportation, but then I feel them shift - something that should not be felt, but that is still relieving in a horrifying way - before I have to close them again because though my meal is long gone, that does not mean I cannot start dry heaving. And that is how I remain, blinded, hunched over a horrible-smelling patch of bile-covered snow, trying not to move more than the vomiting already required because even the sudden end to the screams and the understanding of what that means is not enough to make the pain fade away.

If anything, it is worse now that I keep moving.

Like a gift from the Fates, the dry heaving eventually stops, but I suspect that has more to do with the seeping exhaustion settling into my bones - digging its serrated claws into my mind and something deep inside my chest - than the lack of nausea, which is still swirling around my stomach. My heart aches, but my eyes remain tearless, even if my face feels hot, sticky, and wet anyway. I should probably try to figure out why it feels that way, but it is...really hard to bring myself to care. To want to bring myself to care.

Because I might be alive, but there are so many gods that now aren't - that had their lights extinguished between one moment and the next. Because Celtic gods don't just disappear into some deep pit of Annwn for an indefinite amount of time, waiting to be released. Celtic gods just cease to exist. It is why the Fomóiri never returned, it is why we have grown so few in numbers, and it is why I can no longer feel the Morrígan, or Cana, or Ogma, o-or the Dagda, or...