Darkness is not Always the End
Meredith has an awful dream she can't quite remember.
“Face me yourself, and show me what you truly fight for!”
The world is dark, and your body is numb. You might as well have woken up a corpse.
Those words kept echoing, bouncing all over your mind like a bullet ricocheting through an empty cavern. Words that spat like fire, and cut like a clean blade, from a voice so familiar yet has never been heard before.
Let me...show you…
Your throat seemed to be sealed shut, thoughts being trapped in there, unable to become speech. Thoughts that fled there because your mind was inhospitable, filled with endless, billowing smoke that slips through the fingers that grab at it.
Who...am I…?
In that moment, the world was white. Green and blue eyes fluttered open to a world of white. Ceaseless, overwhelming white blinded them even as they slammed themselves shut again. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Just float and feel the throb of your head overtake you. Something was hidden behind the smoke, if only you could push your way through-
“Stay with me!”
Another voice, another bullet hitting the cave wall. You wince, but it continues.
“Meredith! Meredith, you can’t fall here!”
A cry, a scream, a roar is slamming against your teeth, fighting tooth and nail to be let out of a mouth clenched shut.
I don’t know where you are..!
“Don’t go!”
Suddenly, there’s heat. It’s unlike anything else you feel, warm, soothing, like a blanket after a day that refused to end. You make the mistake of letting yourself breathe, and that’s when you can feel the blood pouring out of your head. The heat turns to fire, taking your arm and the back of your eyes and setting them ablaze in an instant.
Your eyes snap open, and you grab out at nothing. There’s nothing but the fire you can’t see, and the light you can’t feel. ‘
“I’m coming!” You finally shout without thinking, and the fire catches your throat. You try to run, but your foot has nothing to hit, so rather, you fall. As you beginning to hurtle to the abyss, you swear that you can see color- a picture. A dragon, soaring above a burning sky, a man, standing in the midst of the ashes, and you, collapsed in the scorched earth.
“You can’t stay here, Meredith. Promise me, promise me that when you come back, you’ll continue to fight for us. Fight for the ones who need saving.”
You don’t know who’s speaking, and your throat hurts to much to dictate it, but you take an oath in your mind.
I will... I’ll find a way out of here, and when I do, I’ll find my way to your side again…
A futile oath to make, but before you can think it over, the fire is put out, and you meet with the invisible ground, and are greeted once again with the darkness. As your consciousness flees, the voice sounds little more than a breath.
“I’ll be waiting for you, then.”