The Arwain Chronicles: A mistake...
Pain... that was all he seemed to be capable of being feeling, experiencing or knowing. He was drowning in a sea composed of pure pain made manifest. Yet somehow, amid all the agony he was in, it inexplicably felt like he was surfacing, rising from the depths where there was only pain and agony of a kind known to no one that had ever existed. Unlike before where he'd been aware of nothing, not even he himself and his own existence, he was now just mildly aware that he was a person. Daniel, yes, people know him as Daniel, or was it Jim? May be Arwain? Yes, he was Arwain. A number of faces drifted in and out of focus in his memory. He wasn't sure whether he knew any of them, wait... that one was Elly, or was she Chloe. He didn't know, it'd already faded from sight. Who was the old man with the chess piece in hand? It was called chess, right? Why was he in so much pain?
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Tatia sat alone in the corner of the room feeling extremely tired. She wasn't alone in the feeling, if she walked out of the room she wouldn't have found any other phoenix in sight. They'd all resigned to their various rooms to rest. Each one was as tired as she was. Twenty straight days of continuous concentration would do that to you. She sat back in a recliner that she'd conjured in the corner of the room. She had a new and deep respect for the boy that currently lay unconscious on the bed. No one, not even their queen would have made the sacrifice that he did. Just the thought of it horrified her beyond measure, yet he had seen it through. If nothing else, the boy had mettle.
Tatia had been sentenced to twenty years within the dungeons for going against the queen and helping the boy the first time around. The silence and solitude had been awful but manageable. The real torture had been not being allowed even a single book for the whole period. Despite the fact that she already knew all there was to know within the library, rifling through and rereading the old books, had always had an almost therapeutic effect on her. Barely a day had ever passed without her going through at least fifty books in the library. Being suddenly cut off from it had almost taken her apart. The only thing that kept her sane, was reciting word for word every single book within the library in their alphabetical order. By the time her sentence was up, she'd repeated all the contents of the library thousands of times. Still it all had been nothing compared to the feeling of touching a book once again after her sentence was over. She'd cried just holding it. That was close to four years ago.
When he had appeared in the bed convulsing on the bed, everyone had been split between killing him immediately and first obtaining whatever new information he had to offer then killing him. This time not even she had been inclined to help him. Apart from the fact that she would sooner saw off her own foot than re-experience twenty years without a book, there was also the fact that her debt to Eldrid was paid. She had brought her mate back to her once before, she was under no obligation to do it again. Given the fact that the boy would be their only link to the outside world for the foreseeable future, their innate desire for new knowledge had in the end won out. It had however become clear all too quickly that there would be no information obtained from the boy's mind in the state that he was in. This left them with only the first option. Kill him.
Aria was still in the infirmary being nursed back to health for attempting it. She was the head of the royal guard, the most highly trained division of their military. She also was the one that had been chosen to end the boy's life. No one knew exactly what had gone on inside the room when they'd left her to do the deed. All they'd heard a few moments later, was an agonized scream which they'd easily recognized as Aria's. She was launched through one of the walls of the room landing almost a hundred meters away. Attempting to kill the boy had been a wrong move on their part as it caused his magic to become activated almost like a subconscious defense mechanism. However, with a mind as torn as his was, the magic was uncontrolled and unstable. It was like having a thousand nuclear bombs put together that could go off at any time, except worse and by far! Any other attempt on his life would have only made the situation far worse and mean the demise of everyone much sooner. It was clear to their queen just as it was to everyone else that the only way to keep him from taking every single one of them when his magic finally imploded on him, was to put his mind back together. The only way to save themselves was to actually save him.
