Snarling, he wound fingers in my hair close to my scalp, pulled my head up, and bound it in that position, stripping even that small freedom of movement from me. With a gesture, he lifted me completely off my feet so that my chest was at his eye level, yet he kept me in the sheath so that the strain on my arms and shoulders wasn’t as great as it could have been. He placed his left hand in the center of my chest. “We begin with the first sigil here,” he said in a cold and unwavering voice that told me that he was not fucking stopping. He dropped his hand and placed the tip of the blade against my skin. I let out another scream at the touch of the blade. I thrashed and struggled to no avail—his power held me immobile, though my muscles fought to respond.
A low hiss that sounded like pleasure came from him as he began to work, knife biting precisely as he carved my flesh. I cried out as pain seared through my chest, every bite of the blade like a window into the depths of hell. My vision began to gray, and I didn’t fight it. If I couldn’t escape through death, at least perhaps I could find a temporary oblivion.
Rhyzkahl looked up into my face as I began to pass out. “No!” He said, clenching his teeth as he yanked the oblivion away from me. Full awareness returned like a slap, and I let out a low sob.
He continued to work methodically, precisely. Occasionally he would look up into my face after doing a section, as though looking for something. At times it almost seemed as if the blade led him.
I trembled, panting in ragged gasps of breath. Finally, he lifted the blade from my skin and passed his hand over the incisions. I shuddered in relief, whimpering at the pain in my shoulders, wrists, and chest. He stepped back, eyes on the sigil he’d just carved, and spoke a few distinct words in demon. With a flick of his left hand, he removed the encasing sheath, allowing me to fully sag in the bindings with my feet still far from the floor. Another keening scream escaped me as I kicked my legs futilely, struggling for nonexistent purchase as my shoulders shrieked in agony. The diagram flared in eager response.
The red flame coiled around his arm from blade to shoulder, arcs shimmering with a discordant potency that I knew was far different from what I’d always worked with. “It is beautiful.” His eyes dropped to the sigil. “And now, together, we bring it to life,” he said, voice unspeakably scary in its soft intimacy, as though we were actually working together.
Tears streamed down my face. I shook my head as much as I could. “No, please…no…”
Rhyzkahl moved close to me again, laid his left hand alongside my face. “In the pain, dear one,” he said in the same scary intimate voice, “is the true connection made. Without it, all of this,” he gestured vaguely with the knife, “is for naught.”
He stepped back two paces, lowered his head. He inhaled as he brought the knife upright before his chest, gripping the hilt in both hands. I shook in the bonds, knowing he didn’t mean simply the pain from my shoulders and the carving he’d made in my skin.
“NO!”
He lowered the blade and pointed toward my feet, wrapping each in roiling sheets of viscous black shot through with flickers of brilliant red, burning like fire that did not consume my flesh. I screamed, thrashing, desperately wanting to pass out but utterly unable. His face settled into intense calm as he drew the fire up my legs, and I shrieked in agony.
He brought the dark fire up to the level of the sigil, hissing as ruby lightning leaped from the blade to connect fully with the ignited sigil. I couldn’t even scream anymore, could only jerk in the bindings. He held it for ten heartbeats of eternity, then dropped all the arcane pain instantly, leaving only the ghost of its memory. Yet I wasn’t burned. It didn’t seem possible that such unspeakable agony could leave no physical damage in its wake.
He wrapped me again in the sheath of potency, taking some of the weight off my arms. My breath wheezed, and I twitched. I could barely think, but I knew I needed to be able to think, to remember myself. He’d told me I would forget, forget who I was, forget my name. I wanted desperately to lose myself; it was my only possible escape. But I also knew once I did, I would never come back.
“Kara…I’m Kara,” I managed to whisper.
He closed the distance between us, stroked the back of his fingers down the line of my jaw in a move that was more possessive than tender. “You will have a new name soon, and a new life.”
Licking dry lips, I fought to focus on him, barely able to believe that I’d endured such pain only seconds before. “I’m Kara…”
He placed his hand on the right side of my chest, just below the collarbone. “For now, yes.” My pain faded more with his touch. “And I will ever remember you as you were.”
I wheezed out a breath. “Fuck you…hate you.”
“That serves well for now.” He removed his hand, brought the blade to the base of my throat. “And so we begin anew.”
My tears fell as he began to slice. “Kara…I’m Kara.”
We went through the cycle again. And again. Carve the sigil, fire it with a new form of pain. Begin again.
I lost track of how many times we’d gone through this. Maybe it was only three…or seven…or thirty. Eventually I began to wonder if there was ever a time when I wasn’t here, wasn’t a canvas for sigils, wasn’t in agony. I tried to remind myself who I was.
I tried to remember who I was.
“You are Rowan,” Rhyzkahl said, helping me. He lifted my lolling head, looked into my eyes. “Rowan.”
I dragged in a breath, feeling the name. He brought the pain, but then he stopped the pain. Perhaps he was right. I tasted it on my tongue.
He put a hand to the side of my face, cool and smooth, easing the pain. “Yes, say it,” he said voice soft and soothing. “Say your name.”
Kara…Kara…
A name. Felt more than heard, as if from an incredible distance. I tasted it, found it more right than the other. “Kara,” I managed to rasp.
He took a long deep breath, lifted his hand, allowing the pain to return. “No. Rowan.” He moved around to my left side, began another sigil, ignored my keening wail of a scream.
Kara…
“You are Rowan,” Rhyzkahl said, returning to stand before me. Once again he laid his hand on my cheek, once again gave me numb refuge from the pain.
I heard him. Heard the name. Heard the distant call.
Kara…
“I’m…K-Kara.”
He pulled his hand away, allowing the pain to flood in. I spasmed in the bindings, vision going red as my shoulders dislocated.
“You bring the pain upon yourself,” he told me as he brought the blade before me. “Speak your name—Rowan—and end it.”
Kara…Kara…Kara…
I moaned, unable to say either name.
Stepping back, he gestured, pulling my arms out to my sides, though keeping them twisted enough to maintain the searing agony in my shoulders. Another gesture pulled my legs apart until I was stretched in a vicious spread-eagle about a foot off the ground.
Once again he bound me in potency to keep me from twitching and marring his work. He set the blade on my upper back, slowly parting my flesh in the complex pattern.
Once again, he brought the pain.
I hung limp in the cruel position, twitching within the imprisoning sheath as he began a new sigil. A thousand times we’d been through this. Surely it had been that many. Yet other than the carving of my flesh and the ruin of my shoulders, I was undamaged. Each bout of agony was only that, yet all of that.
I couldn’t pass out. That way was closed off to me. But another way beckoned, shimmered with a promise of ease, of a different sort of oblivion. All I had to do was relax my grip on myself. Let go, and the pain would fade away. I could drift there and be nothing.