Chapter 23. Abandonment

endaran lay heaving upon the tiles at her feet, his every breath and movement pure agony. He stared blankly at Kiku’s embroidered slippers as he gasped for air, aware of his world becoming dark once more and begging for this to be his final descent. He had started the morning pleading for his life and come out the other side. Now as the distant calls of the city watch announced midnight he lay broken before her. He would do or say anything for it to be over.

She rolled him onto his back with an extended foot, withdrawing as if she had stepped in something disgusting. She gazed down upon him, a towering menace in her blood-splattered red wedding gown. She uttered a single word that he now understood to mean 'heal him' and the ritualist rose from his seat in the corner of the dim room and suffused Pendaran's trembling body with spectral energies, sealing up his wounds, stanching the flow of blood, mending ruptured organs. The pain faded, but its echoes caused him to sob and attempt to squirm away from her. He could not take any more. Mai Ling, having retreated to the perimeter of the chamber, came forth again, her livid scars and bone jewelry adding to her air of menace. The necromancer grimly clutched her flaying knives and prepared for yet another round.

"That's enough," Kiku said coldly, her dark gaze perusing Pendaran's face as he lay quivering and gasping, "Do you want to die, Pendaran?"

"Yes," he pleaded.

"Beg to die," she snarled and he did, wretchedly. She made him touch his forehead to her feet, his torn back bent as he crouched on his knees.

"You have learned that there are worse things than dying?"

"Yes," he croaked, "Please let me die."

"How unfortunate that you cannot lie," she replied, her voice full of venom, "and what a pleasant wedding present this has turned out to be."

"Let me die," he pleaded.

"Your training will have taught you a certain truths about the mind," she continued, ignoring him, "What is the source of despair, Pendaran?"

"The extinguishing of hope," he sobbed.

"The dead do not need hope," Kiku hissed, "and so you will live. What is the enemy of hope, Pendaran Caradec?"

"Fear."

"Tell me what it is that you fear?"

He struggled to remain silent but it poured out of him in a low mournful wail.

"Abandonment. To be alone, forever."

"And so that shall be my gift to you," Kiku replied coldly.  Pendaran closed his eyes, moaning in misery as the ritualist rose and stalked toward him.  Cold energies flowed from the earth, knitting his broken flesh and sinews until he was completely.  Shuddering in his nakedness, Pendaran crawled away from Kiku, hunched and terrified.  The heavy iron door was unbarred and a pair of guards were summoned.