HEART'S ALBATROSS

Incomprehensible darkness lay before Lynne. A tinge of silence and peace remained hanging in the air as he inhaled deeply, his eyes twitching slightly. In his heart, there was a sense of anticipation, fear and even a faint presence of longing. The moment he exhales this deep breath, all dams blocking the pain would be breached, and he’d dive straightforwardly into eclipsing madness.

Because of the fact that he suppressed the backlash for so long, Sanguine God warned him that it won’t be as simple as enduring tearing pain. In man’s darkest hour, it’s not a stab wound that bleeds the most, but the uneasy mind that cannot settle over the downpour of thoughts. It’s relatively easy to stab someone, but it’s also relatively easy to that wound to heal. On the other, to mentally scar someone takes time, but it also leaves a mark that can never be erased. Well, Lynne thought, smiling bitterly. Here goes nothing.

As breath escaped through his lips, he felt chill freeze his bones for a moment, causing him to shiver. Whatever little truth existed in the ‘there’s a thin line between the pleasure and the pain’ was immediately washed away from Lynne’s mind. Expanding, contorting and distorting, he felt his body being ripped apart by invisible hands as the silky thin fingers passed through his skin, tickling his flesh and bones before drilling themselves further.

They’d grab the bones, the veins, nerves, anything they could latch onto and then pull out. Disassembled and assembled, he felt like a toy being tested for endurance. From his skin, flesh and bones, hands dug deeper and deeper, until he felt a clutch around his heart. Rather than pain, the feeling was far more uncomfortable, as if there was a mountain pressing onto his lungs. He felt weak, as though someone else held his life at the tip of their fingers. If nails were to dig an inch deeper, he’d bleed out dead.

Invisible hands gripping every inch of his body were cold, indifferent, detached from the reality of things. They only had a singular purpose, and nothing could distract them from it. Yet, Lynne knew it was still only a prelude to the symphony that will overrun the room of his mind soon enough. He took faintest pleasure in this temporary position, forcing his mind to blank out the future.

As invisible hands moved on from his heart, he felt tickling sensation coming from the depths of his being: his Soul, something from which everything else originated. Without it, a body would just be a limp plant without a purpose. It would be alive, but it wouldn’t live. The most powerful, yet the most delicate part of every living being, something that both exists and doesn’t. His mind flashed back to the time he played with another person’s Soul, and he finally understood a little about it. He thought it was only pain echoing out through one’s body, but it was more.

As invisible hands’ nails dug into streams of intangible, overflow of everything he was besieged everything he was. However, he couldn’t blank out. Pain brought him back to face the reality. His mind wished to shut down to preserve itself, yet, at the same time, that same mind wouldn’t allow it. The scream he held back burst out from his lungs, but it was inaudible. The room he and Thalia were in remained silent. Unlike him, Thalia was still preparing, her eyes fixated onto his trembling body. She didn’t see or feel what he was going through and, somewhere in the depths of her heart, she was glad.

His entire body was doused in sweat and blood, shriveling up down to only bones and skin. He appeared like a century-old corpse that was given a last breath at life, one last outlook into the living before passing on. The room was lightly lit, but it was more than enough for her to see the state the body of a man she loved was at. She wanted to walk over and hold him and heal him, but she knew it was pointless.

On the other side, Lynne was screaming over and over again, thinking his hands were clutching onto his chest. Like worms, hands were wiggling throughout his body and he wished to tear them out, but couldn’t. He could only helplessly watch as the whole of his being was being tore open for the world to see. Naked, inside and out, is what he saw; a spiral bound the two mirages – one which he showed the world, and one which he hid deep inside of himself – two faintly humanoid, edgeless shadows stared at one another with intensity that could ignite a frozen lake, stuttered into absolute silence.

Behind the mirage of his innermost self, shadows sprung out like wings, each moving like flickering flame of the candle on the wind. Then, those same shadows began reforming, reshaping their very being as they portrayed things he feared beyond death itself. He stood stark naked, screaming yet motionless, feeling abandoned in eternal cold of nothingness, staring at the things he never dared to think about on his own.

All the mistakes he had ever done were being displayed, all the people he wronged, all the times he wronged, all he ever regretted was laid bare before him… for a moment. Then, next to him, another shadow sprung. And then another. And then another. Although featureless, he could easily discern whom these mirages belonged to. Thalia, Parsia, Median, Yunchi, Fen’er, Elynal, Anna, Ella… a whole assortment of all people that ever meant anything to him was watching the same show he was, a display of his innermost darkness.

He saw them, yet couldn’t voice his thoughts. He couldn’t tell them that this was wrong, that this is not what he thinks. He could only let them see all he was, from cradle to the grave. Reality and fiction melded into one as if brushed together, and he was no longer able to discern between the two.

There is one indisputable truth that Lynne had realized at that moment; beyond everything, he feared the silence. Ever since he begun, there were no sounds, nothing to give him indication of life. He found silence far more terrifying than anything else. The pain suddenly multiplied as all mirages disappeared and all his regrets that were laid bare for display vanished. From nothingness, something formed as he found himself standing atop the mountain in the stars. From up there, he overlooked all the realms below and he felt as though he could crush them all with the tip of his fingers.

Rather, a noiseless feeling from within his depths arose, causing him to shudder: he wanted to crush them. A sudden urge to plunge them all into eternal nothingness assailed his senses, and no other thought could be summoned. At that moment, he felt afraid. Not of the darkness, not of the silence, not of the insurmountable enemies waiting for him, but of himself. Was this who he truly was? Someone who, in the depths of his Soul, only wishes to see wanton destruction? Absolute collapse of everything, living and dead? No… a child’s voice echoed out in his mind at that moment, sending a strange, electric-like jolt through his mind.

A voice was so familiar, yet so distant, as though buried in the masses of memories that overflowed his mind. Realms beneath the tips of his fingers disappeared and he stood in white space, before him a tall, oak tree with its branches swaying in gentle gale. Next to the stump stood a child staring at him; appearing fickle and fragile, the child wore tattered clothes, his body bruised and bleeding across, blue eyes seemingly holding all the secrets of the universe, brown hair swaying in wind’s rhythm. The child was expressionless, yet still appeared smiling, as its eyes forced Lynne to shiver.

No, the same voice beckoned out, but the child hadn’t parted its lips. No… that’s all it said, yet, amidst the burning pain that was akin to billions of needles etching themselves into every inch of his body and then pushing further down, he felt a strange sense of relief, almost as thought he restored faith in surviving.

Invisible hands suddenly crawled outside his body and grabbed onto his arms and feet, pulling them apart like chains. Then, they wrung his neck, tore open his chest and ripped out his still-beating heart. Their nails moved further down, gashing his guts and letting them spill over like a hastily-made dinner. His eyes tickled for a moment before thin fingers dug their way in, clawing them out from their sockets. It hurt. So much so that he could no longer must even a scream, only wreathe in agony that he never thought imaginable. Invisible hands hacked and slashed and rived and frayed and flayed and cleaved, over and over again, as his body was dissected in every way humanly possible, again and again.

All the while, those same hands and fingers played a melody with his heart and his Soul, causing images of everything and everyone to constantly flash before his eyes. He watched a relay of his entire life, all the parts that made him doubt himself, again and again, until they lost all meaning. Then, within those truths, illusions bedded their way in; when he was eight, he stole fifty gold coins from his father – he knew that was the truth. However, now, he stole two hundred, used it to buy a knife and gut his father alive in the middle of the street, under the eyes of hundreds of observers who clapped and clamored in joy.

When he was fourteen, he ran past an alley during a cold night and saw four men attacking a young woman and did nothing to stop it – he knew that was the truth. However, what he saw clashed with what he believed in; rather than running past, he was one of those four men – the leading one at that – and instead of one young woman, there were five children before him.

Still, throughout the whole ordeal of physical, emotional and mental torture, he hung onto that faint ‘No…’ that was spoken in childish, familiar voice. He hung on it as though it was his last thread of hope, last shred of sanity and humanity remaining within him. What was the truth and what was the lie quickly lost all meaning, as images of horrific acts he committed began to blur before his eyes; murder, slavery, genocide, raping, torture… all acts transpired before his eyes, and he was the culprit every time. He fell Edgemaw and burned it to ash, capsized Highlind into eternal abyss, razed Elvernheimn and everyone within it to ground, lifted up his friends, family and beloved onto crosses and burned them alive… but, that faint ‘No…’ remained.

For two weeks now, Thalia was unable to settle down and begin her meditation. She stared at the small body before her which had already toppled over and wrung itself into a fetus-like position long ago. It was bleeding, trembling and wailing like a small child, yet she couldn’t help, only shed tears across her cheeks as she watched the love of her life climb mountains of knives and swim seas of flames.

“… endure,” she muttered in a faint, heartfelt tone. “Please, endure. Endure… endure…” akin to a chant, yet more like a prayer, over and over again, her weakened voice echoed throughout a small room.

Not too long after, within Lynne’s distorted, beaten and bruised mind, alongside the faint ‘No…’ he desperately clung onto, a slightly louder ‘Endure…’ appeared. He wished to smile, but his lips were already carved out. He wanted to laugh, but his lungs were already filled with his own blood. He wanted to do many things, but, in the end, he could only wreathe in agony and anguish… and endure.