She woke up screaming again, bolting upright and immediately gripping hold over her mouth tightly, so hard that she pulled her cheeks while digging into them on one side with nails. Panting in and out of her nostrils, tears formed in her brown eyes, swiftly spilling over already sweat soaked cheeks. Her black streaked honey mane stuck to her forehead, temples, and the back of her neck along with the oversized spider silk shirt.
It was only the second day and so the experience was still fresh. Whimpering while her eyes squeezed shut, Vexademus cried. Turning over in her canopied bed, keeping those eyes shut and balling her body as much as she could, she bounced as she cried into her clutching hands. Trembling angry hiccups shook her shoulders, those too pulling close as she wept. Nausea twisted her stomach and that want, that need writhed like wet snakes in her belly. Dark circles shown under her eyes as she had gone without rest, peaceful sleep, since last Waterday.
No letters since the last summons. No contact. No voice in her head. Nothing.
Again, she shuddered. Her human mind couldn't wrap around the trauma. Was it getting worse?
Too many things had happened. An experiment gone wrong had left her irritated. A 'ground zero' attack: by her own command, loosed upon her at close range. The following attack on her physical person just moments after. And then?
And. Then.
The summons of her mentor. And it was all consuming. The aura. The epic overdose of being wrapped within it. Her mind shredded by what she felt and witnessed. The crescendo of snarls and power and himself; a virtual goliath.
His revelation and explanation she barely remembered, couldn't bring herself to remember. She was falling! Falling through a dimension where reason didn't exist and magic was as breathable as oxygen. Where it was within and without and there was never an answer to an unasked question. All viability of existence mocked her and sung lullabies of twisted lies and angelic promises of logic. What was the difference between the two? Her brain couldn't comprehend it. Especially when swallowed into the nothingness, place devoid of anything that ever existed.
Yet that wasn't what truly haunted her. The eyes. Those eyes! Halo'd beyond a bound book. The item was insubstantial when it came to what creature stood behind it.
Vexademus sobbed briefly behind the grip. Laying in her bed, gall taste in her mouth with bitter reminder of copper flavor and mocking her while she drooled in her weeping behind that white-knuckle grasp. A gag and then her own blurry vision rolled under soaked lids while her sore body remained painful, sensitively aware that something was missing. The emptiness inside her was overwhelming. Her mind tried to call out but stopped abruptly. The spellcaster couldn't. He was no longer human. The one reliance she'd had. And it was gone.
The gemstones! A joy-filled panic set her eyes to open ablaze and she sat up. Only to fall back down with hopes dashed, body wrecked and the answer a clear negative. Again, she wailed as silently as she could. *He* might hear her.
Snot and tears mixed, a gross potion of completed grief ran onto her bed, uncared for as the woman tried to contain the sounds of her affliction. The sweat was drying sticky to her skin and making her scalp itch.
Suddenly, she jolted to silence thinking she had heard something. The caster held her breath for what seemed like an eternity while she listened, only hearing the sounds of her pounding heart, the blood rushing loudly in her ears. Like the crescendo.
Lungs shivered after she began to breathe again. She rose from her bed, shaking violently. It was a humid evening and yet, she felt cold beyond belief. It was like warmth never existed. The woman trembled hard, her teeth chattering while she tried to clean herself up, stepping to the wash basin and pouring water in the dark. A few splashes later and she was down to her knees, gagging behind a hand, nothing coming from the empty retching noises.
Shielded by her lined locks, she smoothed a hand over wet face and slowly hefted her body to stand on weak knees and even more unstable feet, exhaustion dragging her to bed where she pulled aside the rumpled covers and crawled in, once more balling up as tiny as she could.
This whole process would begin again in another two hours.
And it would last for weeks.