Chapter Text
It slithers up, coiling around my body, my limbs. I can’t move, can’t breathe; it’s suffocating me, this invisible force. ‘The Gate?’ I wonder, voice not quite in my head. But why? I hadn’t had a nightmare of that wretched structure, of that piercing eye and those paralyzing tendrils, in the months since restoring my limbs and Al’s body.
None of those unconscious revisits to that hell ever subjected me to tangible pain, either.
Under the pressure of the unidentifiable force, electricity shot through my skin, flesh and bone, sparking down to the tips of my fingers and toes. A headache unlike any other bloomed from the base of my skull, messaging its way throughout my entire brain. It throbbed over my temples, pounded behind my eyes. Nausea built from the pit of my stomach in result of the force and I dully recalled this was what a migraine felt like. All the while, my lungs refused to expand, heart pounding frantically and irregularly.
O Mortal, utter the words; utter them and lets you and I form a blood pact.
No!
All you’re to do is speak the words, sacrificing nothing more than mere breath, and I shall grant you power.
Just leave me alone!!
Power above all else; the world will be at your, at OUR, fingertips! All you must do is repeat these words:
Tears, formed in pain and through the emotions assaulting my core, pricked behind my clamped shut eyelids. Daringly I pry them open, using all my strength to accomplish the easy feat. There, mere inches away, was the face of my assailant.
Its head was comparable to the length of two cars, smooth scales poking from under the firm metal plating of gold lining its long snout. A large head dress, shaped to emulate open flame, sat at the crest of its thin skull, a symbol I couldn’t understand painted in the middle. Eyes adorned with slitted pupils in a burning red pierced into mine, the play on words nearly literal. It was as if a sharpened blade had just been driven through the very core of my soul.
The beast spoke one final time, its hot, thick breath reeking of decay blowing over me, and I had to force myself not to scream as culminated realization sunk in.
“I wish darkness upon the world.”