Bereft: Foretold

35 | A Cage of Iron

The spirit remembered and forgot many things as she drifted at the side of the one named Veleph.

At times, she knew her name, or thought she did, and sometimes she knew where she belonged and where she had once lived—but always she forgot those fragile images, left only with the fleeting impression of their presence, and she despaired over their loss. The one named Veleph assured her it was the nature of this place, that all spirits forgot what they once were before moving on. 

"Move on where?" she'd asked. He'd laughed. 

He'd assured her she had somewhere to return to, if she wanted to. The spirit wasn't sure. She didn't know.

The one named Veleph liked to talk, and he said it was because she wouldn't remember. It was easier if she forgot, he explained, simpler for them both as his words weren't meant to be heard. The spirit asked him many things, he answered, and she always forgot. The things he said could have shaken worlds to their roots, changed empires, challenged gods. She knew immutable terror and awe as she traveled with him—and always she forgot.

"Who are you?" she asked again when she couldn't recall who her companion was, and he answered, just as he always did, because the stranger didn't forget. He wasn't a spirit, wasn't from this place, and so his memories always remained. If he tired of her repetition, he didn't complain.

"Veleph."

"Who is Veleph?"

"The Fallen King." He smiled then, teeth very bright in the nothingness of that place. "The King Below."

"What is Fallen?" She realized she'd stopped moving, but the one called Veleph had a hand looped about her wrist so she wouldn't get lost. He was taking her somewhere, though she wasn't sure where. He'd told her many times, but it always disappeared. 

"It means I left my first home. That I am broken." 

Broken? He didn't appear broken to the spirit, though it was impossible for her to comprehend the difference between what was whole and what wasn't. In the void, things either were or weren't, with no in-between.

"Why did you leave home?" The word elicited warm sensations for the spirit, stirrings of hope and comfort that were not found elsewhere in this abyss. Why would anyone leave such a thing behind?

"I was no longer welcome there."

"Why?"

"I disobeyed my creator." 

"Why would you do that?" 

The one named Veleph smiled again and the spirit understood the sorrow behind the gesture, colored blue like the sky she wanted so badly to behold. "Matters of the heart, little shadeborn."

She wasn't sure what he meant by that.

They came across an anomaly in the interminable dark, a smattering of color in the otherwise monochrome place. It was crystalline, the color a vivid green, and the shape seemed to fester and twitch, spirals of yellow crawling outward at a sedate pace. Even the spirit knew that the anomaly didn't belong, and the stranger didn't pause before he unfurled his crooked wings and took her away from there.

"What was that?"  

For once, his answer wasn't immediate, and his eyes roved like stars through the celestial sphere. "An infection," he whispered, the words reciprocating the sudden weight of his mood. Where there'd once been levity was now only displeasure, a hollowness that ached without applicable succor. "A festering wound for which there is no remedy."