#cilian

Salvation?

Thoughts crowd your head as your eyes struggle to perceive your surroundings. Your dazed senses slowly begin to come to you, as if you were being born again. The burning sensation on your wrists draws your attention first as you find them tightly bound to a chair, though you're not awake enough to fight them.

"What..," you groan low, instinctively attempting to move your hand as your blurry vision takes in what it could in the dark room.

"Take your time. You won't learn unless I have your full attention."

What?

"Come on, you're usually quicker than this."

How contradictory. Alright, think. Where were you before this? You recall being in the cathedral. Hardly home, but it is home. It's all you've known for as long as you could remember. There was a gathering, a meeting...mass. Yes.

Tonight was to be special, at least for you. Though you'd long since been promoted to priesthood, this was to be the first time you headed the ritual mass alone. You remember standing before the congregation, and before seven trolls upon their knees. You trained for this. It was a simple ceremony: lead the church in prayers, offer devotion to the goddess, preach the merits of suffering. You looked to the trolls before you, some willing in their presence and others not, letting the thurible pendulate from first to last, left to right and back. A clean sweep would end the misery of the frightened, and grant mercy to the devout. One clean sweep, and the congregation would have their acephalous effigies.

You trained for this. You were trained for this.

...

In your recollection your lips mouth the words that sealed your fate: I refuse.

You couldn't do it. It wasn't mercy, it's cruelty. It was a spectacle.

The familiar unease begins to seep into you. Slowly, your heart rate kicks up, faster, harder. You take a deep breath, though the constriction brings more light to your predicament. You were being watched, observed. He caught you. You don't want to be here.

"No," you protest. Your memory fogs your vision. You blacked out at that ceremony, but you distinctly remember your hand driving the thurible across those trolls' heads, as if your body had been but a mere vehicle you had no control over.

"Hm hm hm, it remembers," the voice taunts. You still haven't looked to your tormentor. Every fiber of your being is telling you not to bother, telling you to fight against the ropes binding you down. Fight against the bugs crawling over your skin that you're certain were not there before. You hear the cracking of bones under the sound of your own heartbeat, the sound that always accompanies the Cardinal.

"Ah- fuck!" you exclaim, the legs of the centipedes seem to dig deep into your flesh with each step they take. No matter how many times you've experienced this, it never gets easier. It's as if you're forced to forget the feeling, forced to experience it new, fresh, every single time. You know what comes next. You know it in how they slither towards your neck and your jaw drops open, despite your efforts to keep it shut.

"Ease, Cariral, oh-! I-," you plead in vain. You're already choking on them, feeling them stab into your throat as they make their way down one, two.. three. You want to vomit but you can't; he won't let you.  By the time you're able to control yourself you're already hyperventilating. Your throat is sore from the assault, your gut wrenches and you can feel one of them beginning to crawl its way back up.

"Agh, please make it stop I'm-," you choke on your words again. You'd hunch over in pain if you could, certain that the centipede in your throat just bit into you.

"Sorry? Right," the man finishes your sentence. He stands from the seat he'd been observing you from, and you feel his fingers press firmly against your face as he directs your focus to him. Directs your focus from the other bugs nearing your ear.

"W-wait... Cardinal Axeron, l-let me fix this," you begin to panic. You don't know what those are doing, where they're going. You don't know why he's so angry with you this time.

"I-I-I can do better I-"

"No. There's nothing for you to fix. Clearly, this is an error on my part," the Cardinal says odiously.

They're in your ears. You try to scream and thrash, but he's holding your head so tight you fear you may snap your neck. Even that would be a mercy in comparison as the sound of their legs and chirping fills your ears, as the pain rings throughout your head and tears run down your face. Your body convulses, and you can't stop the drool running from your mouth.

"I am so sick of you, Cilian," he says, somehow his voice echoing clear despite the pressure in your skull.

"What an embarrassment to me you are, and after I've been so reasonable," the Cardinal roughly discharges your head from his hold, and the sensations of all bugs disappear along with it. He drags his hand over your head to rid himself of the bit of saliva you'd gotten on his glove. Still frantic, your eyes look over every inch of your body that you could see, overwrought with anxiety.

"To think you’d be as much a thorn in my side as that other wretch was. So much wasted potential," he continues, stepping away behind you as you catch your breath. You come to realize it was all a hallucination, though the pain was very real; you still feel as though you've been stabbed internally, in every place those creatures touched. In every place he touched.

"But you see, I realize now  you simply lack the vision,” he says. You hear metal scrape against metal before the footsteps echo towards you.

“I’m going to fix your eyes, child,” he steps into your view.

“What do you mean you’re going to fix my eyes?” you interject, the sharp tone in your voice almost inciting you to feel guilt, even fear for its direction. You find yourself leaning away from the scalpel he draws near your face, and your hands shake as your eyes meet with his. 

“They’re clouded, I’ll have to make you see clearly. As I did with your ancestor.”

“I don’t… I don’t want that I don’t need-” your mouth closed shut and your eyes widened.

“See, this is why it’s important to not interrupt,” he smiles.

“I said. I’m going to fix your eyes, Cilian, and you are going to let me.”

Your chest aches as your heart races again. He’s hijacked your body once more and there’s nothing you can do about it, nothing you can do except yell and plead when he allows you agency over your lips again.

“Hold still, now,” he says as he leans down to you. As if you had any choice. The blade of the scalpel blurs the background the closer it gets to your eye, and you desperately try to regain control of your body to pull away.

“Cardinal I’m sorry please don’t-” your words are cut off by a visceral scream as the scalpel drives into your eye slowly. Slits are cut into you, one, two, deeply. Streams of purple run down your face and the pain makes you wretch. You’ve lost vision in that one eye, and soon after the process is repeated in the other. It isn’t easier the second time in the slightest. 

You try not to cry, you really do, but the pain and mental anguish is too much. Your tears do nothing to quell the agony, and neither does the hand that lifts your chin. 

“Let me see,” he commands. You try your best to open an eye, not wanting to feel him inside you again, desiring to hold on to some facet of control over yourself without making things worse.

“Attaboy,” he says. It makes you sick. He turns your head, inspecting you as if you were a mere object. You can’t see it, but he’s admiring the golden glow that now seeps from your eyes like sunlight through clouds. You’d thought you’d lost your vision but it slowly returns, painfully and…altered. 

You witness a form you’d never seen before, hovering over the Cardinal’s shoulder. Six wings and seven heads, all eyes on you. The words it communicates appear like runes within your recovering sight, chilling you to your very core..

And then you wake up, frantic, hair a mess in your hive. You’re an adult; you have been for many sweeps now. Right. You’d fallen asleep with your matesprit Vaughn…who should be next to you. As if on queue you hear the sound of his music from the shower, which puts your mind at ease. 

Everything is alright. It was just a dream. A frequent, terrible nightmare.