The Mark of Aether

The Elusion

Thunder rippled through the crying sky, wails of pain crashing into an abyss of nothingness. Vultures circled the stone tower, singing death with every wingbeat. Stones cracked and fire devoured behind me, chanting fear into an already plummeting heart.

And it was why I kept pushing through.

Why I kept absconding and springing through the humongous hallways, my feet raw and throbbing from the continuous dashes. Each step, a pierce of metal through my flesh and core. Each breath a torment, a punishment, but I had to keep going. To survive, I had to.

Stench burnt inside my lungs, tightening around my heart. The reek in the air was vehement, a curse upon my weary body. A raging pain coursed in my blood and bones.

I grabbed my bleeding left arm, blood soaking red as the warm fabric stuck to my skin. I jogged as fast as my knackered legs could carry me, the weight of my body barely sustained. My vision was blurring and doubling, my physique wanting to succumb, yet I kept pushing.

The horrendous growls resonated again in the dim passageway, and I didn't dare to look behind. Didn't have the wits or the guts to see those demoniac red eyes again, or the redoubtable envy lacing them. The covetous desire, the avid lust, to pierce those razor iron teeth in my flesh haunted my imagination. The scene of that devil devouring me, my blood oozing from between his canines, was the main reason why I never stopped.

And I never intended to.

Time passed by as a haze, a defiant blur. Seconds felt like hours, and hours like lifetimes. How long I'd been escaping, I held no snippet of an idea.

Abruptly, I stopped in front of a wall-length window, the glass standing as high as an obstacle between me and my path to freedom.

More possibly, my doom.

I blundered in my shifting and fell straight, my head hitting against an uprising tile with a groan. Blood trailed from the side of my face, red dampness smearing my left temple, burning against the stir of warm, dry wind.

Among the clamorous pounding of blood in my ears, I could hear the crashing sound behind me. The continuous earthquakes made my heart vault in my stomach. Sweat beaded from my forehead profusely, stinking and burning against the torn wounds.

Fear was eating me from the inside out, terror tearing at my bones, threatening to break from the continuous shattering. Cold seeped into my system, my fingertips going abnormally numb.

The halls were falling with painful groans at a fearful speed. Soon enough, I would be buried underneath masses of old, rusty rocks.

And for the second time that night, I saw him. His fangs looked sharper than what I could remember. What I dared to remember. His wings were spread, tackling the walls down. He sauntered his way like a king, a merciless demon with only one desire: to rip my throat and my heart away.

I backpedaled until my back hit the cool of the grey, dusty window. The screams of the raging storms hit my ears like agonizing cries of help. And pain. I glanced between the glassy window and the charging demon.

I was at bay!

My death was marked in both ways, yet I refused to breathe my last in his grasp.

Shutting any rising thought or doubt, I charged and crashed through the window, the glass shattering along each inch of my body.

I leaped into the raining outer, my body falling slack in the empty ravine encircling the stone tower. For moments that passed too slowly, I dashed in the heavy air towards that pit of nothingness. That entrance to hell.