Yethyr did not need to see Spryne to know he was there. Even asleep, he could recognize the slithering rattle that signaled his coming and I did not question his certainty. The sound that rang through this dreamlike hell was as powerful as Z’krel.
But so much louder.
No, not louder. Closer. Spryne’s music came as much from within as it did from the hellish tunnels all around.
Yethyr wanted to run and so he did, but in this dream that was not a dream, he ran in place. His feet were moving, but he was going nowhere.
The sound was closer. The sound was coming from himself and yet it was also from the forked tongue that caressed his ear.
“Yeth.”
The Prince jerked away, but there was no escape. He suddenly was surrounded by thousands of bones, constricting him with their weight, suffocating him with their screaming deathsong.
“I hear I just missed you,” Spryne hissed. “What a pity, leaving Hell in such a rush. I would have so dearly wished to entertain this conversation with your entire body, you fully conscious, you fully present.”
The endless bones squeezed tighter; their sharp edges impaling Yethyr. It was agony; it was torment; it was just a dream, but I knew with a certainty I felt down to my steel that it was more than that.
On some strange spiritual level, this was really happening.
“You’re a rotten thing to rob me of that pleasure, more rotten still to go visit Z’krel and treat poor Umbara so unpardonably. I’m disappointed in you. Such disloyalty. Such impudence. After all the extra attention I pay you!”
Yethyr did not speak; he did not have to. Every emotion and every potential response that flitted through his subconscious made itself known to Spryne all at once.
He cursed Spryne; he begged mercy; he shrieked in pain, all at once, without his control and in a confusing torrent I failed to fully understand.
Spryne understood though, and he simply laughed.
“If you wished for eloquence, you should come visit me when you are awake, my dear prince. Frankly, it is rude that I must always do all the hard work of our acquaintance.”
Yethyr snarled, but the words did not come or more that they came all at once in a soundless roar that Spryne silenced with a huff.
“I suppose I could be willing to hear input.” The wall of bones eased off and stopped squeezing. Instead, dozens of finger bones reached out from the wall and brushed against Yethyr’s chest.
They were soft touches, painless, and yet, they were arguably much much worse “What do you think, pet? Should I take from your clavicle, your mandible, or perhaps I should sample both?”
“Take from his hyoid bone, my lord!” Yethyr looked up and skittering on the ceiling was the spidery form of Umbara. She looked as she did when she chased him through Hell, but to Yethyr’s sleeping mind, she looked all the more frightening. She leered down at him, spite in her grin. She had not forgotten nor forgiven his tricks during their deathsong duel in Z’krel’s halls. “See how it feels to have one’s voice so rudely interrupted.”
“What an excellent thought, my dear.”
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Yethyr did not find it an excellent thought, not one bit. He made it known through colorful language that was more thought than spoken as he tried to writhe from the bones that threatened to crush him.
“Such disrespect,” Spryne said. “I am beginning to think you take for granted who slithers in your bones.”
The wall of bones moved and shifted and all at once, I realized it was not a wall at all. It never was.
Through Yethyr’s dreaming eyes, I saw a great wyrm made of endless white bones. It coiled around him; it coiled around the entire cavern. Seemingly infinite, I could not see its tail.
But I could see its massive bone-plated head, pieced together to resemble the skull of a dragon, much like the dragon on my hilt. But the dragon adorning me had rubies for eyes.
Spryne’s eyes were hellfire and they burned holes into Yethyr.
“You live at my pleasure, son of Felnae,” he said. “Be grateful I choose to treat you as a delicacy to savor. I could gorge you in an instant.”
And then he did.
He struck fast, swallowing Yethyr whole, but he did not die.
It would probably have been better if he had. Instead, he was smashed apart, body and consciousness, reduced to nothing more than bone fragments held in thrall to the demon’s slithering song. He became more bones added to Spryne’s length, brushing against others, a thousand thousand others just like him, all wailing in shared despair, in shared agony, in shared demonic unity.
Yethyr wailed too.
He was scattered and brittle; he was helpless and broken, and just as soon as that was reality, Spryne hissed in disgust and spit all his bone fragments out.
Yethyr was surprised, grateful, shocked.
Clearly, in all these dreams, that had never happened before.
Yethyr looked up. Spryne had coiled himself around the Prince’s regurgitated skeleton, preventing escape, preventing any action but cowering in terror.
Yethyr looked Spryne in the eye anyway and I shuddered. Those merciless pits bore straight through Yethyr and into me.
“Who are you?” Spryne roared. “This is my meal, my sacrifice. You have no right! No right at all! Leave and sully his flavor no more!”
Spryne spun a deathsong of expulsion, of exorcism, and I was thrust from Yethyr’s mind and back into the dark quiet of the tent.
I could hear Jaetheiri’s even breathing in the next room over. I could hear Yethyr’s ragged breathing far closer. It was still not enough to give any indication that there was a demon eating his bones from within.
And that was clearly what was happening, had been happening, for who knows how long.
This was the curse I had felt within him when he first took up my hilt. This was what ailed his body; this was why he couldn’t stand.
He was being eaten alive.
That truth only gave me more questions. What gave Spryne such free access to Yethyr’s body? When did this happen? Why did this happen?
How was Yethyr alive?
And yet, I supposed there was a glimmer of potential to be gleaned here. My presence had enraged Spryne.
It was a rage born of deep offense but also…of fear?
Did my bond with Yethyr endanger whatever meal plan Spryne had with his skeleton? Could I somehow disrupt it?
Did I even want to?
I stewed for hours, unsure what to think, unsure what to feel. I did not enter Yethyr’s dream again, frightened of what Spryne would do if I tried.
I was almost frightened Yethyr would not wake up at all. Spryne clearly could kill him and rob me of my vengeance, so it was a relief when I sensed the Prince fluttering to consciousness.
He felt weak, his throat was sour and the constant ache in his bones was ever so slightly worse.
Spryne hadn’t killed Yethyr that night, but he was killing him, slowly and painfully. Yethyr’s schemes had a fast-approaching deadline; any schemes I had involving Yethyr had a fast-approaching deadline.
The Prince was a dead man; it was only a matter of time.
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
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