the well of moons and souls

??/??/20 - Wrote this sometime last year. I actually don’t remember what story was attached to this, but the document only had this fragment.

Hands slide down the length of my arms, my calves, my back. Its fingers probe at the soft skin beneath my jaw, pulling at the pulse at my throat. Darkness surrounds me, so thick it clogs the senses – filling the lungs, smothering sight – and each swallow brings with it a plume of silver and rust. It is the smell of time, of things long dead.

As I wake more, I get the sense that the hands are only spirits and ghosts, whispering as they pass. Each touch burns, and I imagine shadows sloughing away at my flesh, cutting through until all that remains is blood and bone. With each strike, the numbness parts for pain. The dark begins to lift.

I hear voices. Garish, loud, undivine. Voices of the undeserving. Humans. A familiar anger wells up from the pit of my stomach, chasing away silver and rust, purifying the death within me. The embryonic fluid bursts. The darkness is chased away. My eyes flutter open.

“Shit!” Someone says, followed by the unmistakable sound of steel hitting stone. “He’s still alive?”

I twitch when something nears my body. The putrid odor of man swirls above me – hot and humid like a fever.

“Sylvain you should back-”