Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

The Void that Was With Us

"Wake up fifteen, wake up."

He didn't want to wake up. He wanted anything BUT to wake up.

"Come on fifteen I know you're in there."

Soemthing stung his face, and he opened groggy muddled eyes onto the scene before him. The room around him was slate grey, the floor layered in a thin film of filth, mostly blood, slowly being washed away by the slow trickle of water from an open faucet against the far wall.

It stank, and despite his drug addled brain, he knew where he was, and he knew what was going on.

It wasn't often they let him get this lucid. Mostly they just let him sleep, waking them up on occasion and pumping them full of drugs before sending them out to wreak havoc on their enemy.

Gods of War Admiral Abelmen had said.

Gods of war he had called them.

He did not feel like a god.

He hung against the far wall like a piece of heavily used equipment, just waiting for his next deployment.

Fifteen hadn't been allowed to lay down in months.

When had he started calling himself 15?

Probably just force of habit right now.

As soon as his eyes opened and the fog in his mind cleared, the pain came. It wasn't so bad as to cause him to feint or scream, but it was bad enough to make him squirm. It was a hard sort of pain to describe, originating from everywhere in his body and nowhere, like he was on fire, and flames licked over his skin, but.... Less than that because it wasn't enough to make him scream.

Less fire and more embers waiting to be stoked if the levels of drug in his system were to drop too far.

His eyes focused and he looked to the man who had called his name.

Admiral Abelmen stood before him in his once smart-grey uniform now stained darker grey with the continual ashfall outside. The expression on his face was soft, almost tender, but the look in his eyes was....

Was....

Void

Like there was nothing there. Looking into the blackness of his pupils, he felt like he might fall in and drown.

He tried to look away, but the man's hand was in the way cupping the side of his face, and forcing him to look the admiral in the eye. "There you are fifteen, I have another mission for you."

His already crumbling and brittle resolve melted away like cotton candy in a rainstorm. Images flashed through his head, the bloody sky, the sound of ash rolling against his armor, and the cracking of bone underneath his hands.

His mind was filled with visions of dripping orange blood dripping down his hands and onto his feet. He began to breathe heavily, his heart pounding in his chest. He gasped for air that felt as if it was thickening around him, less air and more liquid. His lungs weren't powerful enough to pull it in.

he was hyperventilating now, straining for oxygen that just, wasn't, there.

Clawing for air like a drowning man, his mind was inside a confused haze, he knew it was, but even as he tried to think, rational thought slipped away from him into a land of tired confusion

He shook his head, "I.... I don't want to." It came out as a whimper, a plea, "S-send someone else I- c-can't."

The man stroked the side of his face with all the tenderness that a father might reserve for his child, "Shh, shh its alright, don't cry, don't cry fifteen."