Something that was the opposite of the evil within me and it smashed the shackles and hoisted me higher into consciousness.
It made me aware.
More aware and alive than I had been in weeks.
Eleanor!
I fought harder. I swam in muck and molasses. I kicked and crawled.
I opened my mouth and bellowed.
Eleanor!
Could she hear me?
Could she feel me fighting?
Could she see how much I wished to keep her?
I was trapped.
Trapped in this cranial cage with no fucking way out.
And I wanted out.
Fuck, I wanted out.
I wanted to make amends. To free those girls. To banish those guests.
I froze as sensation broke through the stifling silence of nothing.
Temperature.
I groaned.
I never thought I’d almost cry at the ability to differentiate between hot and cold. To know I had skin. To feel the body that hadn’t forsaken me. A body that I couldn’t manipulate or return to the helm, but a body that still fed me senses.
I gasped as it came again.
Coldness.
On my lips.
I groaned at the sheer delight.
Not just cold.
Ice.
Freezing snow upon my lips being pushed into the hot cavern of my mouth.
Stripped of every extremity and faculty, denied every pleasure receptor and passion within this vacuum of blankness, that single taste of sleet undid me.
I shivered with need.
I grew hard for a single sensitivity.
Hunger slammed into me with another sensation.
I had a stomach. I had muscles. I had an appetite that’d been denied for so fucking long.
The ice vanished on my tongue, melting into a non-distinguishable temperature.
I mourned it instantly.
I had nothing to break the monotony. Nothing to rip off my blindfold or pull out my gag or unplug my ears. I was empty without noise and sight and her. Empty and cornered, being pulled down into the blackness.
Things hissed and slithered. Nightmares rolled in. Numbness resettled over my awareness.
No!
Christ, no.
I wouldn’t survive if I slipped again.
That dungeon was my coffin. A coffin that would slam shut with a padlock that would never reopen. If I let the evil have me, I would never see Eleanor again, never talk to her, kiss her, look at her.
NO!
I went berserk.
I did my best.
I enlisted every weak skill and broken power to wake up.
Wake up.
WAKE UP!
Something cackled in my mind. The blackness thickened. And I—
Ice on my lip.
Oh, thank God.
It interrupted the suction; it gave me vividness to cling to. A violent tear in the never-ending ether.
I crawled toward the lighter grey.
More ice melted on my tongue.
More.
Please, more.
It came again, this time the frost didn’t just coat my lips but dribbled down my chin.
I felt that.
I tracked the slow-moving trickle. I relished in the intensity—in the sheer magnitude of survival.
I want to survive.
I want to wake.
I searched every crevice that I’d already searched before. I scratched at the blackened corners. I reached for the endless ceiling.
I lost myself to fighting and almost missed the gift that switched grey into red, granting the first blaze of colour in so long.
Colour!
I blinked at the blinding pigment.
Violent crimson and bittersweet scarlet.
Sanguine and vermillion.
Words spilled from my mind that’d forgotten speech and intellect.
A colour wasn’t just a colour. Colour was what painted the world with dimension and depth. It was what gave life purpose and precision—the honour of being alive to witness such saturation of self.
I inhaled with lungs I couldn’t see and bathed in the colour of red.
It felt warmer than black.
It promised to keep me awake, all while another sensation thunderstruck my anesthetized world.
Taste.
Sweet.
Sharp and fresh and perfect.
Berries.
I closed my eyes and allowed the third gift to wash through me. To grant another tear in my paralysis, to slowly bring me more aware.
So long since I’d tasted.
Just like colour, flavour gave meaning to the world. It made eating more than perfunctory but pleasurable. Flavour was a goal, driving us to cultivate and experiment, to create recipes and source new ingredients.
Flavour was another rung on my ladder, allowing me to creep higher from the darkness. To cling to the scaffolding. To have something tangible when the claws of darkness wrapped around my ankle and tried to claim me again.
I’d been reduced to nothing but three things.
Temperature, colour, and taste.
Three things that I’d always taken for granted but now were the three most important things to me.
My senses shook off their atrophy and craved more stimulation.
More!
Please, more.
I basked in the treasures.
I was grateful and in awe, but I was also greedy.
Greedy for sight and sound and touch.
For her.
Eleanor…please.
Slowly, the berry taste faded, the ice melted, and the redness around me snuffed out. The ladder I’d formed vanished from beneath me, sending me hurtling back into the starkness.
NO!
I couldn’t go back.
I couldn’t die down there.
I couldn’t detach myself from every precious gift that a body could give me.
I needed to touch again, laugh again, swim again.
I needed to marry the goddess I was fated to meet and get on my knees before her and offer her everything.