Cas' Memories

Sometimes she believes that she died that day, that she woke up as someone else. Cas is still sleeping there on the cold ocean floor, and she’s just a shell of what’s left.

Seeing that place ripped straight out of her memories, it all washes over her again. She’s drowning. She’s dead. Her brother disappears, his ash blown away by the wind, but this time she goes with him.

“You remember this place, right?” His shadowed face is too twisted to call anything on it a smile, but she can hear the mirth.

“Stop,” she hisses before her throat closes up. She can’t succumb here. She has to stay alive.

He just laughs at her. At how broken she is, at how much it’s taking just to barely hang on.

But Kadoren is fighting though he’s terrified, and Vela is just plain pissed off. And she has to stay standing through the nightmares that warp and shift around them. In the mountains of Lor with the world burning, Kadoren roars as his hammer strikes true.

For a moment they’re consumed by neverending nightmares, plunged into flickering memory fragments torn straight from their souls. She wonders if this is it, if her existence is now nothing more than a thousand terrible dreams.

And then they’re back in the stone hall again. The Watcher lays dead on the floor, the trapped souls screaming out of him until the last one seeps out, leaving only a trickle of darkness.

Cas drags herself towards the nearest pillar, ready to pull herself up and fight again. But his body is still as the grave, Kadoren standing silent over it with a look of contempt.

Finally he mutters, “I told you I’d kill you,” then turns and walks away.

Vela is fine after all her healing, so he goes to Cas. Seeing her beat-up condition, he doesn’t waste any time pressing a paw to the worst of it. The magic that washes over her and seals her wounds is soothing, and it’s enough to quell the panic.

With her in a little better condition, he exhales heavily. “Are you okay?”

Maybe. Maybe not. One bad thing about getting her emotions back: Fear is one of them. She was so far gone before that she didn’t care about anything. When death doesn’t matter, you can face anything.

But it’s over now. It’s all over.

Taking his paw, she pulls herself to her feet. “I will be.”