CHAPTER 7
The great stone door ground shut, its final boom swallowing all light and sound. Salazar stood in the void. Not just darkness, but an absolute negation of senses.
Suddenly, a gigantic hand clamped around his whole body. He screamed in surprise, in fear, in protest, in vain. The invisible force snatched him from the ground and propelled him forward at high speed. The travel was short and brutal, but he didn't feel any air or friction. How strange it felt…
Stranger was the place in which he arrived. A circular chamber, plunged in shadows, barely lit by a reddish gleam. It emanated from the center of the vault. An intricate dark stone made sculpture protruded from the ceiling.
From the tip of the protrusion, hung a single drop, glowing with the soft, internal fire of a dying star. A deep, pulsating rose-red that painted the immediate vicinity in hues of blood and twilight.
Looking at it, an inexplicable sense of dread crept over him. His guts whirred in horror, fearing the fall of that drop. Yet, he was also irresistibly compelled to touch it. But nothing was in his hands to do.
Below the ethereal tear, was a monolithic slab of stone, floating a few feet above the floor. Thick leather straps were fixated to the stone, they were dangling in the air, upside down, as if gravity had forgotten them.
Gravity has forgotten him too. He was still locked in the air, unable to see anything else around.
As he tried, a face bloomed from the shadows across the room. Valaar Morvid.
A shiver ran down Salazar's spine.
The archmage's skin was a sheet of stark alabaster against the gloom, it reflected too well the carmine glint of the room. His eyes dark, hollowed-out pits, were circled by black lines.
He looked terribly exhausted.
The archmage waved a finger. Salazar started to move again, his body turning in the air until he was horizontal. The force gently stripped him of his tunic and put him down onto the slab. The stone was surprisingly warm. But it didn't reassure Salazar.
His eyes, wide with a terror that stole his breath, locked onto the glowing bead above him. It threatened to fall, right on his heart. Salazar didn't know how to describe it. Its light alone seemed to pierce the skin like atomic needles. To pierce the soul.
His voice was a dry, broken thing that barely escaped his throat.
"Wh… What is it…"
He said, tensing all his muscles to move, to bend away from the liquid's range. In vain.
Valaar's voice drifted from the darkness, a weak and reedy sound, all its former power gone.
"A drop of Amaranth… An eternal Well of Power. Funneled here for me to harvest."
The archmage's hands began to move. They wove through the air, his long fingers tracing complex patterns that left faint, silvery trails in their wake. His lips moved, but the words were a sibilant whisper, a serpent's prayer lost to the suffocating quiet.
He passed a hand on his visage and a black mask appeared.
His voice sharpened, gaining a sliver of its old authority for one final pronouncement.
"May the Chaos accept your soul."
A succession of sharp cracks, like whips breaking the sound barrier, echoed in the chamber. The straps exploded into motion. One snapped tight across his forehead, slamming his head back against the stone. Two more cinched his wrists to the slab, followed instantly by others binding his arms, his waist, his legs, his ankles. The pressure was immense, pinning him with brutal efficiency. Only then did the invisible hand disappear. But he was still bound. He could not move. He could not even twitch.
Above him, the drop of Amaranth quivered. And detached from the funneling device. It elongated, stretching into a thin shimmering thread of liquid light. Beautiful and terrifying, a universe of swirling nebulae contained in a single tear.
And then it fell.
And struck Salazar's chest. Like a drop of hot ice. And disappeared, absorbed by his skin, plunging the sinister laboratory in pure darkness. He felt the drop diluting in his whole being. The point of impact resonated with concentric waves of heat.
It reached his eyes. And it was like a tsunami of light engulfed him entirely, blinding him. A white ocean of photons, bleaching his mind and thoughts.
He basked in this pure peace, like the boiling frog.
But each wave rose the heat. Exponentially. Without warning, the warm bath of light became a firefall from hell.
Salazar screamed in agony.
His body tried to curl, to coil, to explode away, to escape. But he was shackled. To the sun core. A stream of molten lava gushed on him, into him. He saw fire, he breathed fire, he was fire.
The heat was disintegrating him. He felt the matter of his body, dissolved, atom by atom, washed away into nothingness. Yet, still linked to him, by pain.
He felt each atom suddenly exploding, in a chain reaction of agony. Until it reached the critical point.
The whole sun erupted in a supernova.
And he felt the warp, the stretch, the tear.
His very soul, torn apart.
He became a nebula of screaming dust.
And then, an impossible crush.
His being collapsed.
Into the maw of a black hole.
Past the event horizon.
Time thinned, and stretched to the infinite.
The frost of nothingness.
The absolute zero.
The inexorable fate of the universe.
An eternity passed, and the matter of his being gathered back. His torment receded, and he woke up from the precipice of madness.
He was destroyed, yet he lived.
He was whole again, but he knew: the drop of Amaranth had left a gaping void in his soul.
Salazar felt his restraints loosen. His eyes opened on the darkness of the laboratory, and the face of Valaar Morvid.
"You are worthy."
Heard Salazar, as he slipped into oblivion.