“Thank you…” I muttered, screwing my eyes shut against the pain again, and she shook her head, a gentle laugh coming to her lips.
“Oh, Eternal, you’re very welcome. If you can survive this, and bring back my brothers and sisters, you’ll have earned my help a hundred times over. Again, I am sorry for hurting you before…” She said, her voice tinged with sadness and regret.
“I was an asshole.” I whispered and she laughed again.
“You are an asshole Jax, but not a bad person, for all of that. Now hold on and push forward. I’ve opened the pathway, but only you can walk it…”
I grinned at her weakly, and the world dissolved again. I found myself on my back on the floor of the cave. My team, my friends, all clustered around me. Lydia, Bane, and Miren were next to me, and the others were all facing out, weapons drawn.
“It’s all right…” I whispered, forcing the words out through a blinding pain in my skull. “I…just need some…time.” With that, I closed my eyes again, feeling the wash of pain flowing through me, back and forth, building again like the sea crashing against the shore. With each wave, it grew higher, the pain threatening to overwhelm me, as I searched frantically.
After a minute that felt like it lasted a year, I found it… a single thin line that pulsed and beat along with my heart. It was inside me, and at the same time it lay behind the crashing waves, a single hair-thin line of golden light that pulsed faster as I focused on it. I reached out, and inwards…
I could feel it, it shook with my heartbeat, power flowing through it in the same way blood passed through my veins, and I followed it with my mind, looking for a blockage, a problem, a weakness…none of them were there, as far as I could tell, and as I flashed along the length of it. Another wave of pain hit me, and I was back on the shore, catching my breath, watching another wave build.
I tried again and again, feeling myself becoming weaker by the second.
I threw myself at the pulse of power, rushing blindly down it, hoping against hope that I could travel far enough along the golden thread that I’d find the end, before…
When I could see again, I panted, forcing the air out through gritted teeth and I looked at the thread, really looked at it.
I kept thinking of it as a vein, and I was trying to get far enough along to find the blockage, or whatever was stopping the pain from draining away through it, but what if…
I shifted my perspective in an instant, not looking at the far end of the vein, but instead the beginning…
I looked back inside myself, realizing that if I could feel it inside and way, way over there…then there had to be a connection, a point where the two met…It only took a few seconds of searching, tearing through my mind frantically, until I found it again…
It was the wall I’d visualized before, and the door in it. My vision changed, and the pain/water began smashing into me on my island, and then retreating back to smash against the door, making it creak, before rebounding and heading back to me.
I watched it for a second, then gritted my teeth and pushed. The flood seemed to batter against it harder this time, and less so when it flowed back to me, so I did it again, pushing harder, faster.
I bit down on my fear, and I imagined the assholes. All of them. Pricks like Barabarattas and my father, the slavers, and that freak Toka… Lorek, and the asshats from the ship, all of them were on the other side of the door, eating fucking cupcakes and drinking cold beer.
The bastards had a goddamn burger from ‘Five-Guys’ and they were using it as an ashtray… they were pissing on my fucking cornflakes and calling it milk, and I… WAS… NOT… FUCKING… HAVING… IT!
I gathered myself, all my anger, all my hatred, and I shoved so hard, I almost passed out.
The door didn’t just open, the entire motherfucking wall was smashed into pieces. The floodwaters of my pain carried the world away with them, and as I sagged backwards, I saw the sun rising over the water. It was beautiful. The first warming rays of the rising sun made my skin tingle, and I drew a deep breath, sweet and invigorating, before closing my eyes and sleeping.
When I opened them again, I was laid out on the floor, the shitty stench of animals, kobolds, and corpses filled the air, and my face felt wet. I shifted, feeling a rock under my shoulder blade move, and I tried to sit up, only to be immediately grabbed by Bane.
He helped me to rise slowly, and I frowned around the room. The insane pain that had filled my world seemingly only seconds before was gone now, and instead, there was a feeling of… relief.
It was like I’d only ever taken half breaths before now, but suddenly there was more, like a belt that had been wrapped around my chest had been moved. It had been shifted only slightly, a millimeter or less, but the air I could pull in… It felt… better.
My mind felt clearer, and as I shifted, my muscles felt smoother, like I’d unknowingly spent my life with a restraint clamped to me in every way, only now, it was releasing. Like an elastic band that’s been stretched too far, it was slowly losing its grip.
“I’m all right,” I whispered to Bane’s questions, and I heard the others breathing relieved sighs as I explained distractedly about the manual
