Auryn the Crazed single handedly brought the Illuminari to its knees. She sundered Praxoenn, blasting the city with lightning and melting its walls with magma. Rains came after, flooding city streets and drowning crops in the surrounding countryside. The Lightblessed could not stop her when she turned the firestorm upon what was left. Nearly three centuries passed before Praxoenn came even close to its former glory.

Chapter 19

Hooking his arm around her neck, Eilic wrestled Trynneia out of the wagon. Two others jumped in, and it shook as they subdued Ditan once more. Eilic threw her to the ground, slamming her face into the sand, then stepping on her neck to hold her prostrate.

“You make things so very hard for me, Trynneia, and we still have a long distance to go," Modius said. Eilic spat on her cheek. “Honestly I’m surprised you healed him. You should have let him die, so he wouldn’t have to suffer again. I’ve been merciful, and we’ve only beaten you to the edge once. I didn’t think you wanted to experience that again so quickly.”

“I don’t deserve preferential treatment,” she appealed.

“You’re absolutely right, girl. Your mongrel friend is wanted for a different purpose, but I’m under no obligation to treat him well. If I cannot deliver, it’ll just come out of my pay. You on the other hand, well, if you insist.” Modius got down on his hands and knees. “But you know what?” he asked. “You were unconscious for four days after what we did to you. Ditan had no one to heal him. Think on that.”

She’d been patently avoiding that thought, but he’d as good as admitted it. You are responsible for Ditan’s continued suffering. You hold his fate in your hands. He will die if you do not comply. On the horizon, the sky began to lighten as first sunrise approached.

“What will you do?” she asked hesitantly.

“I will make you suffer. Then I will torture your friend ten times worse now. And I will let you heal him. If you can. We haven’t even begun to make your life hell.”

Eilic shoved her face into the sand, then smashed her hips on both sides with his club. Trynneia felt bones break and cried out in agony. His attention turned next to her shoulders, then back to her hips. She fell over and he continued for several minutes. Modius watched it all dispassionately.

“The sun’s coming up, and we need to dig out,” he declared. “Truss her to the stake, and let her feel Light’s judgement.” The same proclamation from her village, yet the implication sounded far worse.

Eilic silenced her screams by fiercely tearing her shirt off, wadding it up, and shoving it in her mouth, binding it with strips of cloth he tore from her trousers. Only a few tears soaked the binding, and as the suns rose even those burned off in the rising heat. The rest of her clothing was discarded in the sand. Consciousness faded in and out, and she struggled to keep her eyes on the wagon she knew Ditan was in. It was her focus as they dragged her away.

Binding her hands tight enough to cut flesh, Eilic and a few others dragged her to a stake they set up in the middle of the wagon circle, kept for no other purpose than torture. The men sweated freely as they hoisted her up, her feet clearing the ground by the span of two hands. Agony tore through her ruined shoulders, with her hips no better.

By midmorning their labors resulted in the beginning of her punishment. Trynneia attempted to focus on healing her body, but the pain felt interminable. Her body had been injured far worse before, and she’d managed, but this time the injury felt like it was a continued aggravation. Gravity pulled down on her shoulders, and her wrist bindings dug in harsher as the day passed. Sweltering heat cast down upon her, bringing dehydration, exposure, sunburns, and delirium. Starting from her already weakened state from healing Ditan, Trynneia had little left to work with.

Modius watched her for a while, and she babbled a little as she hallucinated. She had only the faintest awareness of these. Eilic dragged Ditan over and set him on the ground before her, then was dismissed by Modius.

“I want you to see what you’ve wrought here today through your disobedience, Trynneia,” he said calmly, setting out several wicked looking blades. She couldn’t identify any of them, and even his words lost meaning to her.

Hues in various shades and gradations flicked through her vision and she tried looking at those instead. A hum vibrated in her chest. Modius began to cut, but Trynneia was too lost to care.

Day passed into night, and into day again. Trynneia remained where they’d bound her, head lolled to one side. Pain, starvation, thirst, and exhaustion conspired together to kill her. The men and women of the convoy worked hard to dig out the wagons from the sand, but their progress was stunted by inadequate tools. Just as much effort was spent keeping the animals alive.

Eilic made it his responsibility to keep her hydrated. Trynneia appreciated the effort, even if it was the degradation of his own bodily fluids poured over her head at infrequent intervals, accompanied by his guffaws. It barely dampened her gag, but she took what she could get.

Her lips were cracked and her skin had begun peeling by late afternoon on the first day, and by midday of the second, blisters had grown and swollen all over her body. The Light’s judgement, she mused hysterically. Trynneia mustered marginal focus to heal herself, with the diminishing returns of weariness sapping her remaining strength.

Thoughts faded, and her coherence became a wisp of humanity. Instead she watched the colors heighten and darken, similar to the auras but altogether different. Hints of vibration thrummed in her thighs and chest, a resonance not unlike the one she’d felt...when? It seemed so familiar, yet lost to her memory. It comforted her and calmed her nerves.

Evening came, and they dragged Ditan back out. They travellers built a great fire, and then Sariam was there, skyclad as well. She took a knife from Eilic and made several cuts along her flesh, chanting the whole time. The old woman’s creaking voice rose above the jeers and hoots of the crowd as she smeared her blood upon Ditan’s wounds.

Ditan’s aura shimmered, pulsing before Trynneia’s vision, and in wonder she watched his skin heal, closing up the wounds carved in his flesh. What manner of healing is this? She idly wondered, more interested in the aura and how the hues imbued within it matched in overlapping tones.

Eilic came close then and took Sariam’s knife. He knelt over the goblin and began carving away flesh once more in larger strips than Modius had done before. Ditan’s screams echoed far into the night. Each of these pieces of flesh, Eilic laid in Sariam’s outstretched hands, and when enough had been removed, she took them over to the fire, where they were set out upon rocks and began to cook.

Trynneia sniffed weakly at the scent, wondering again how long it had been since she’d last eaten, and desired food greatly. Something triggered in her body, a sense of grappling, a clasping between herself and Ditan as hues and auras aligned. Sariam smeared more blood on Ditan, healing him again, then collapsed from weariness. Someone dragged her away, and Modius was in front of Trynneia again with a bowl of soup.

“Here, I'm not heartless,” he proclaimed as he removed the gag and held her head up, spooning soup into her dry mouth. The tart liquid felt welcome, its moisture relieving her parched torment, yet it was a thin soup, with small stringy bits of meat within. She couldn’t remember a more heavenly meal, and it revived her spirits somewhat. But the meal was too small, and the gag returned.

The night progressed, and Ditan remained where they’d left him. The others all went to sleep, with the lone exception standing watch over the encampment. Every hue and aura and vibration dimmed or vanished. A new roar filled the air just after midnight, and the watchman cried out moments before another sandstorm blasted through.

Eilic and Modius rushed out and retrieved Ditan, bodily throwing him into the nearest wagon. Modius returned alone, staring up at her while shielding himself with a cloak that the wind and sand threatened to rip away. She watched him through slitted eyes as he mulled something over in his mind.

His aura was deep purple tonight, cut through heavily with blackness that dampened light. Trynneia couldn’t puzzle out what it meant. Overlaying his aura were the streaky hues that whipped by him, whites and greens and oranges, browns and blues. The very sand seemed to be carrying a vibration of its own, separate from the storm.

Even as the sand scoured her flesh, Modius reached a decision, and abandoned her. Trynneia’s perception picked out Ditan’s aura and that same connection as before gripped the pit of her stomach, filling her with a strange sensation of energy. Harmony flowed around her as her runes began to glow for the first time in two days. Abrasion diminished as the sand found ways to avoid her, passing harmlessly over her skin.

She bled from a thousand cuts, but compared to the fire in her hands, shoulders, and hips, she felt none of it. All her attention focused on the pit of her stomach, and the fire that built itself there. Ditan’s aura flared in return. Trynneia pushed outwards, her intuition driving the energy away from her. Her runes turned gold and metallic, illuminating the ground and air all around her.

Resistance turned to her, and a fight ensued between her will and the storm. Dead calm surrounded her as the wind grew in intensity. Trynneia screamed into the gag and she began to feel the blood trickling down her naked body. Lashes of hues whipped uncontrollably around her, yet she reached out with her aura, creating channels in an attempt to divert them. Her ashen gray skin rocked in waves of energy, thrumming to the pulsations around her.

Her amber eyes flitted in every direction, her body too weak to move her head to follow everything she tried to observe. Channels coursed and arced around her, some of the energy feeding back into her undesirably. Pure instinct flowed through her, absent conscious thought. Her will contended with the storm, carving a safe space for her as nature raged.

A wagon tipped over nearby, spilling its contents in the sand. Drifts billowed up and over it, burying it completely. Trynneia felt the storm continue to increase, and an urgency from Ditan. The vibrating hung in the calm air about her, seeming to be almost words, yet not words. Her safe space expanded to just beyond the circle of the wagons. Blood poured out of her ears, nose, and eyes, dripping onto the sand below.

Each hue felt different, like a taste, or texture, but she could only tolerate so much at a time. Trynneia lost herself chasing colors, wrangling them, bending them to her will. Pain became ephemeral as her corporeal body ceased to have any meaning to her.

“Tryn, come back!” she heard from the thrumming around her. All about was a swirling vortex of color and shade flavored by the subtlety of those incomprehensible voices of ethereal beauty. Something wrenched inside her, and all that elegance crashed into nothing.