The Sacrifice: Fallen | Loki | Book 2

Chapter 27: Perfect

It had felt like the most dreamless night. 

Nothing for the senses to perceive, just a pitch-black void, wide, engulfing, consuming. Paralyzed inside a casket, six feet beneath the feet of the one who'd lowered him there. Only, he wasn't dead. 

Humans considered death the irrevocable failure of the body, wrongfully taking the heart for the most decisive influence. But one could live without a heart, modern technology had gotten there. The brain however, was the true mainstay. 

Death is the death of brain activity. Where there is no brain, there is no life. It was easy, therefore,  to mistake this state as death. It was far worse than that. 

Being left with just so much consciousness left as to perceive the lack of sensation, this painful, maddening void - it was a perverse form of cruelty. So there he was, Tom, with what was left of his consciousness, at the verge of going mad. 

Thoughts began, left finished, were forgotten. A never-ending circle of words, incoherent, all screaming and yet saying nothing at once. Darkness dancing around him, drowning him, he had no arms and legs to fight or run. He would've screamed, but he didn't find a voice to. 

It was impossible to tell time. Nothing indicated if a minute had passed, or a year. 

Like a streak of mercy seemed the pain which suddenly overcame him. A sensation, something to hold on to, orientation. Where there was pain, there was consciousness. Tom knew then, he was still there, and not dead. Where there was pain, there was flesh. 

Another sensation. Freezing cold, so cold, it burnt. Where there was pain, there was skin. The world regained its unyielding pull, gravity drew his blood downwards, he could differentiate up and down.

His lungs unfolded. Precious air filled his chest deeply, until he could no longer expand. Much like a man who'd barely escaped drowning, chained by the feet to the unreachable bottom of the sea. Underwater only a second ago, he found his knees against wet soil now. 

Tom's eyes darted from one point to the other, desperately searching for something meaningful, attempting to see through the water film covering his eyes. His left hand stung like hell. A short laugh of bliss. He was back, the darkness faded to light. Where there was light, there was life.

"Tom." He heard his own voice call him. "Tom, you need to listen." 

Tom raised his gaze, still on the ground. His surroundings took defined shape, color. Before his knees a pool of golden liquid. Behind it, Loki. In his arms - Xenia. Limp, pale, with a hideous gash marring her throat. The source of the golden blood in which he had been bathed. If he hadn't been so ecstatic about being alive, it would've frozen the blood in his veins. A nightmarish sight. 

Edward. It all came back, flooded his mind. Frigga, their mother. The fight. Edward was gone, and now Xenia, too - and in between all of it, a blank space in his memory. Tom outstretched his hands to rip her away from the monster. He flinched immediately.

His left hand was mutilated. Covered with blood, the flesh seemingly torn off violently. Two fingers were completely missing. Maltreated stumps remained. The bleeding was still active. 

Hatred smoldered inside him, hotter than a hundred suns. Loki's unsettling green eyes sparked it off. They way he held Xenia's corpse, cradled to his chest almost like a baby - was he mocking her, him? Tom, too, had gotten past the point of inhibition. He had but his own body to fight, a slightly bent rod lied not far to his side. Loki perceived Tom's intention a split-second before he himself knew it. A fast flick of his wrist, and the rod was hurled off, deeply into the forest.