by Hal Emerson
Chapter Twenty-Three: Leaving
I remember flashes of light and pain that ripped through me. Shards of ice drove into the base of my spine with every beat of my heart and hot wire wrapped around and through my head. I tried to move and realized I was convulsing. There was sound, crashing noises all around me – shouting and then screaming – and then the noise was retreating and the golden light was disappearing, moving off, far away – and the light was silver and only silver and beginning to grow –
Pain slashed through the skin over my chest and my bones were pulled apart. I shouted wordlessly, feeling as though all I was, all I could ever be again, was a single nerve, stimulated past the point of endurance, over and over again. Something broke in my brain or in my eyes, and my vision went red, entirely and completely, a thin membrane pulled down over the world to separate me from it.
“She’s awake!”
“Arandil!”
“I know, Ionmar, I know!”
Stinging pain in my arm and at my neck, and then the pain was fading, and the light as well, until the only color I saw was the darkness inside my eyelids as I fell back into unconsciousness.