*
Seteal watched in dismay as the unfamiliar old man dashed out of the room, the note he’d been given falling forgotten to the floor. The stranger had been her last hope. Now she was completely alone with this monster.
‘What are you going to do?’ Seteal asked shakily.
‘I’m going to strike you until you tell me you’re willing to speak the oath and sign this contract.’ Po-let frowned. ‘I don’t want to do this, you know.’
‘Your eyes say otherwise.’
‘Perhaps.’ The man forced Seteal over the table and tore open the back of her dress. He threw back his arm and brought down a leather strap.
‘This can’t be happening.’ Seteal winced as pain sliced along her back.
‘Oh, it’s happening,’ Master Fasil’s face appeared where Po-let’s used to be. ‘Will you sign the contract?’
‘Go to torrid,’ Seteal spat.
‘Have it your way,’ the man growled. Moments later, Seteal felt a second fiery bite landing in the middle of her back. Gripping the table hard in both hands, she pushed away from her body and sped over to the other side of the room where she analysed Po-let’s confusion as her body went limp.
‘Hey.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
Seteal’s temper flared in accordance with the long red welts on her back. Po-let glanced around the room as though he were making sure it was empty before making his way to the cell door. He opened it, checked both directions, and pulled it shut. What was he up to? Shouldn’t he have been getting help?
Po-let leaned against the door and exhaled slowly, a strange expression on his face. But it was not his expression that gave Po-let’s intensions away. Rather it was the sound of his belt buckle loosening as he began to fondle himself. Seteal’s soul shuddered and her heart rate increased. Not again, she cried inwardly. Never again.
Hatred filled every pore of Seteal’s being. She realised then that she should be thanking Po-let. Because of him, she was able to feel again, even if it was only hatred. Po-let slithered over to play with Seteal’s breast before racing back across the room to double check that no one was outside. On confirmation of his solitude, the man returned.
Seteal plunged through the ceiling, wishing to be anywhere, but there. She soared through strange rooms, passing people she didn’t know and through the top of the Dome of the Sixth. Still she didn’t stop, her ascension continuing until she existed some hundreds of miles above. There her soul screamed its fury and a deep rumble of thunder told the world of her wrath.
The Ways converged and Seteal sank deep into their fabric. She wrapped herself in the canvas and wore it like a gown. She drank in the Ways, tying herself to them, allowing them to flow through her. It was then that she decided to tamper with the stitching. She reached out to the sky and drew its moisture toward her.
From many thousands of miles, the clouds did respond, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. Fluffy white bits drew together, became darker. Seteal pulled harder, beckoning them, seducing them. The sky above the Sixth Cleff became a black churning mass like nothing the Frozen Lands had ever seen. But the great circular cloud was still too large. Seteal wanted its fury to match her own so she hemmed its edges, folding them over and over before stitching them into place.
When the darkness was so thick that no human could see more than a few strides in any direction, Seteal unleashed her rage. Streaks of lightning tore through the sky to rip apart the city below. Massive chunks of ice exploded up from the ground. People ran for their lives. They were ants taken by surprise, fleeing to their nest under the delusion that it would be a safe haven. She sneered at them. They deserved this. The Elglair were the most horrible people she’d ever had the misfortune of encountering. She hated them. She felt something. It felt glorious.
Seteal turned. The cord between herself and her body churned discord as Po-let’s fingers slid down to her genitals. Seteal pierced her way through the churning black sky, plunged through the ice and back into the room where her body was kept. There she dragged the energy of her storm and a thick white line of lightening exploded against the Dome of the Sixth.
Po-let loomed over her body, having given up on removing the dress and instead lifting it so that he could get underneath it. Seteal smiled with dark satisfaction. He’d be dead before he had the chance to violate that body. Po-let pulled off his pants and dragged Seteal closer, but froze when the lightning struck and a deep rumbling sound told of its occurrence. Po-let stumbled over his pants until he reached the door, once again checking to see if the coast was clear. It was. He returned to Seteal, but froze at the sound of a second explosion. This one was closer, causing tiny shards of ice to vibrate free of the walls.
Seteal reached out to her body and focused on making her lips move. ‘I’m going to watch you die,’ she whispered, her mouth turning into a smile.
‘What . . . what’s happening?’ Po-let fell against the wall. He wrestled with his pants.
The third explosion was deafening and was followed by the sound of breaking ice. Po-let stared at the wall as cracks slithered down its shiny surface. The final explosion was deafening and the entire room shook. Po-let’s face was filled up with the understanding that he was about to die and it was indeed the last expression he’d ever have. Chunks of ice began to cave in from above. One of them crushed Po-let beneath it, killing him before he could pull up his pants. Seteal followed the cord and sank into her physical form.
Her eyes opened. Her aches and pains returned. She ignored the suffocating sensation caused by returning to her body and quickly readjusted her dress, which was stained red in a few places and was tattered to strips around her ankles. Seteal hurried across the room, narrowly missing bricks of ice as they fell. Perhaps she’d been a little too forceful with the lightning.
‘Help,’ Seteal cried, slapping her open palm against the solid door. ‘Help!’
Seteal noticed an oddly familiar face dashing passed the tiny window embedded in the ice door. ‘Ilgrin! Ilgrin, help,’ she banged on the window frantically.
‘Seteal?’ Ilgrin’s bruised and beaten face appeared in the frame.
‘Get me out of here.’
‘Why should I?’ Ilgrin shouted over the noise, his eyes revealing fear rather than a thirst for vengeance.
‘Because I don’t hate you,’ Seteal cried desperately. ‘I never did. It was Far-a-mael. He got inside my aura and changed me. I believe your story.’
‘Step back,’ Ilgrin ordered, disappearing from view. A moment later the silt came crashing through the door with such force that he broke it open on the side of the hinges. ‘Come on,’ he said, reaching out a hand and helping her to her feet. ‘I don’t know what’s going on out there, but this whole place is coming down.’
The Inner Circle: The Knowing Page 59