Are we the bad ones if we can resort to doing things that no one should do? But are we even the good ones if we keep only the Light within us? How thin the line between light and darkness sometimes is... and how complex and incomprehensible the human soul is. We are accompanied by questions in life, to which few can find an answer. We all have our inner demons... but only a fraction of us can accept them as part of us. Because sometimes it's our demons that keep us alive... and we give others the chance to live on. So the question is: what is the value of the human soul?
His own scream of agony woke him from unconsciousness. If only it was the kind of merciful unconsciousness without dreams, without thoughts... without delving into the depths of the soul full of deep and all too fresh scars. But it wasn't. If only he had escaped from the physical torments that could not be described in any possible words into a world where his own material body was connected to him only by a thin rope, by which he returned to his corporeal shell like a rower on a raft back to the shore... but he hadn't. He only escaped from matter into his mind, which was teeming with nightmares, images of the last hours of his life.
He was dead... his physical body was no longer filled with life. Yet his soul was torn from the clutches of death and sealed within his body with iron shackles. Still, he felt pain, even though he shouldn't have.
A few tears of pain ran down his face from his eyes, coming from the deepest recesses of his mind. Tears of an overstressed soul that didn't want to give up without a fight. He wanted to take a deep breath, but his lungs refused to listen. It was just a habit from the life before that... the life he still remembered. But even if he could, the musty air full of rot and decay would make it all worse.
"You still resist," came the voice, as dry as old parchment from the days before the Sundering, reminding him that the nightmares he'd been living through while unconscious were compared to the reality of bluish skies and pink clouds just before dusk.
Sir Zeliek tried to curl his hands into fists, but with torn nails and hammer-crushed fingertips, he only touched the chain, which passed through his palm from the other side out, tearing at the already dead tissue and bone within.
"Maybe you've lost track of time after all this," the voice continued in the darkness of his cell.
Through all the pain, Zeliek's mind woke up with odd words. He didn't really know how long he had been here. How long it had been since things had gone so badly... since the point of no return. He didn't even try to move his bloody, pale lips to form any intelligible words.
"Two weeks have passed out there, but your soul still resists. Is it so precious to you that you don't want to give her up?" The figure finally emerged from the darkness of the cell. The rats scattered in all directions. "Is it worth the pain? You're not worth that kind of pain... certainly not your soul. I know who you are. I know what lies behind your beliefs that make you hide who you really are."
An ashen hand tipped with deadly claws, capable of piercing through any armor regardless of thickness or toughness, grabbed his bloody chin and lifted it up. Zeliek didn't look away as soon as their eyes met. What looked down on him had little to do with a human being. It was a hideous monster, a skeleton... a lich. The lich that tortured him so long and cruelly.
"So tell me: why is your little soul so important to you? All you're left with is pain and suffering. What do you want to do with it?"
Zeliek tried to form a small smile on his lips, but they were stiff and his every movement hurt him excruciatingly.
"I'll keep it... I'll never... give it... to you." His voice cracked with the power of pained screams. Even though it was a voice that was no longer recognizable, it still carried traces of determination and resistance.
"If that's really the case, everything you've been through now will be nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you." The lich let go of him, still hovering near him. "Perhaps we could look again at your worldly life, which set an example for everyone. Maybe you'll finally find something in there that will tell you that there's no point in resisting anymore." A cold ashen hand touched his forehead. Zeliek knew what would happen. But he was ready... like never before.
Sarah! Aneth!
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