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Saturday 27 May 2017

The Shattered Oracle - III - As Oracles are Wont to Do - Page 6


III

As Oracles are Wont to Do


- Page Six -




The first bodily sensation that Maenthrai could feel as her consciousness erupted into her body once more, was that of her lungs filling up with air as she prepared to scream. Her eyes tore open at once, taking in all of the whirling light from the city around her. Those familiar shades of reds, blues, and purples danced around the edges of her sight like taunting spectres. At the center of her sight was a great black chasm that seemed to gnaw away at the central part of her vision. The vertigo she earlier felt was intensified as she felt herself falling forward into that shadowy emptiness before her. The same darkness that slowly came into focus with more and more details within its abyssal form.

As her eyes adjusted to their mortal limitations with the speed that only the adrenaline shock of a deadly threat could provide, she could make out the silhouette of a railing as well as some rock debris being swallowed into the shadows ahead of her. Within a mere moment, a sound like rolling thunder made its way toward her ears as the first pieces of debris struck the darkened cobblestones far ahead.

The sensations of touch she felt were erratic, making her feel nauseous. Her arms were at her sides, held up and grasping at nothing. The chill wind that blew through the streets ahead and upward at her began to assault her face. Her bare feet from when she had been inside writing, were losing their purchase on the cold and rocky surface that was rising up behind her. With a start, her full faculties returned and she realized the balcony she had been standing upon had given way; she was now falling towards her end.

The last of her panicked inhalations filled her lungs as she prepared to give one long, last scream of mortal fear. She could feel the tensed muscles of her throat and her chest as they might burst at any moment. Moments began to slow down as the final shots of adrenaline coursing through her arteries heightened very one of her mortal senses to a fine razor's edge.

It was in this moment of deadly fear, right before giving into the nihilism of abandoning her life, that she felt two large hands grab the back of her robes. One seized around her shoulders, the other dug in around her thighs. These mighty hands gave a hard yank on the fabric around her body and on the captured flesh they dug into. She soon felt herself being pulled away from the precipice before her.

Her attempts at a last scream — more instinct-driven than a desire — were robbed from her as the breath in her lungs came out of her throat in a single hard aspiration rather than a final, shrill cry. Her stomach felt like it would erupt from her mouth right after the air from her lungs. She had been stopped in mid-air, hanging over what was left of the shattered bits of balcony strewn across the streets below. The same hard tug which seized her yanked her further back toward the balcony doors behind her.

As she flew through the air — half-stunned and entirely bewildered — her mind began to calm down almost immediately. Her senses were still flared up with animalistic focus, yet her cognitive senses began to return to her from her primordial state. Her mind switched into an emotional sense of anger and embarrassment with herself. Soon, a savage gravity took hold over her body as she saw a frightened face of a young woman pass by her, off to her right. Her faculties, still returning but not coherent enough to recall the finer details of the young woman's name. Despite this, a section of Maenthrai's mind wanted to give out a breathy chuckle at how dumb-founded the poor, young woman looked. 



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