Revolution (The Risen Series Book 2)

Chapter 24 ~ A Dream of a Dream

Happy Hogmanay!

Well done to everyone for getting through another year, and here's to the next.

This is just a short chapter, more of a dream, but I hope it tides you over to the next update...

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Chapter 24: A Dream of a Dream
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Swirling blackness and gentle wisps of grey cocooned me away from any pain I might have felt. Only slight prickles of sensation, like the tickling brush of butterfly wings, reached me here. If this was death, it was peaceful, but achingly empty; neither cold nor warm, nor quiet or loud. I floated in that space for an unmeasurable amount of time, quiet and at ease for the first time in my very long existence.

Until my lost thoughts slowly returned.

It could have been Hell I occupied as my mind replayed the last few fearful moments of my life, the way I’d begged gods I hadn’t believed in since my childhood to let me stay. I died again and again with the same frozen image of Atanas’ face at the forefront every time. It was the pain Airell had been so desperate to see; the moment Atanas realised he couldn’t save me.

The amount of blood that had spilled down my clothes, the fangs that had all but torn my head off, even vampires couldn’t survive such wounds...right?

A flash of a mummified arm grabbing me, the sickening sensation of falling into the tomb, a bite powerful enough to crush my windpipe, it was but a memory and yet it still made my consciousness recoil.

The moment replayed again in more detail and it was then I realised the memory was wrong. I shouldn’t haven been able to see Atanas’ face. Nor could I understand how I was seeing my own bloodshot eyes and bloody lips parted in a scream. It was as if I was watching from inside the tomb, looking up at the scene from beneath. I felt my blood flow warm and sweet down my throat as if I was drinking it, my joints locked and jerking as if I held my own struggling body captive. It filled me with a shot of unease.

Washed away by the terror I felt at witnessing my death as if I was the killer, I was left surrounded by dark once more. But there was no peace in the oppressive night. Gnawing hunger drew pitiful and echoing moans, accompanied by the sickening feeling of my skin drawn disturbingly tight over bones and peeling away from around my nails.

Was this another memory the afterlife made me relive to torment me? It felt familiar enough. I’d been starving before, kept in the dark before, but never to the extent I felt here. The pain was a inescapable agony no being could ignore. It twisted and ate away even at thoughts until I couldn’t even remember my own name. Just as I thought I could take no more, that such suffering would leave my sanity forever snapped, the view changed again. Hell had yet more to show me even though I could swear I’d been suffering in this purgatory for many slow rolling centuries.

This time it was different though.
The change came with a powerful knocking force, like being physically shoved back into another reality.
A bright blue sky stretched overhead for miles until it reached the craggy peeks of snowcapped mountains. Fields of green and yellow shimmered and rustled in the warm breeze, grass tickling my ankles beneath the plain brown dress I wore. A dress I didn’t recognise. And blonde hair swirled around my waist instead of the short silver I remembered.