Chapter 53: Poison Pill (Patreon)

When Elliot opened his eyes to the dreamscape, the difference was palpable. A black miasma hung in the air, pressing, making him cough. It felt like aerosolized tar. 

The black clouds on the horizon were still distant, the shale undisturbed. What had changed was the statue. A long, thin shard of jet black stone sat lodged in the crystal. It sucked in light, and the point of entry was directly over the start of the hairline crack from before. A dark haze was leaking out, slowly but inexorably.

Oh, that could be bad. That could be very, very bad. 

Why was now the time that everything changed? The statue looked otherwise the same, still staring off into the distance. The dream itself seemed stable. Had something about the conversation with Speaker caused this to happen, or was it an inevitable progression after the energy he’d accidentally stolen?

Inching forward, he drew closer to the dark spear. It would be stupid idea to appraise it. If inspecting the Titan had been risky, then doing the same to something that felt as corrosive and antithetical to life as this counted as idiocy.

What else could he do? Was there any way to gain an advantage that didn't risk destabilizing this whole situation? He needed something. If abilities were too risky, he'd just use his eyes.

The weapon was shaped like a single shard of some dark crystal. It drew in all light, like a hole in the world, and no matter how closely he peered there were no other details to take in. It felt like destruction, and decay. And it was...pulsing?

Why was it pulsing? It was almost like a heartbeat. It was almost like---

He jerked backwards. It was pulsing to the rhythm of his own heart.

[Eye of Niamh] blazed to life without any input from him. Elliot tried to grasp the vortex with his will, limit its motion, but it was useless. The thing spun as if possessed. Images hit his mind like a sledgehammer. He tried to scream, but nothing emerged.

It was impossible to distinguish individual pieces of information. All that came through—outside of pain—was a sense of absolute decay. A force of entropy so profound that inspecting even the hollow echo in his dream eroded his sense of self.

WHY DO YOU WISH THE WORLD TO BURN.

Elliot reeled. It was too much. The voice, permeating the whole of existence, hit in almost the exact opposite register to the corrosion—wild growth and inextinguishable life. Yet both together were blinding, deafening, overwhelming. He blacked out.

When the world swam back into focus, he was shocked to see that it was still the dream. Whenever things had gone dark in the past it had led to a sharp wake-up. The shale felt rough under his back, and cracking his eyelids was almost blinding with the sea of stars above.

The miasma had faded slightly, although it was still stifling. Elliot looked over at the statue, and let out a startled huff. Its heads had shifted focus. Where before they’d stared intently off at the horizon, now only one maintained that perspective, the other two turned to look at the black spear.

And the spear, although not leaking nearly as much vapor, now sat over a much more significant crack. What had been a hairline fracture was now a jagged web of lines running down the entire back left of the statue.

“Oh my God,” Elliot breathed out, “that’s gotta be really bad.”

WHO ARE YOU TO STAND HERE?

The voice was softer this time. It resounded, but as pure sound, no longer gripping Elliot by the brainstem and shaking like before. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry.

“Um, hello? Are you talking to me?”

WHO ARE YOU TO STAND HERE?

Subtle differences in intonation told him that although the sound was almost identical, it was not a recording. Something was speaking. “I’m Elliot. And this is my dream.” He could feel his body trembling, the edges of his vision going alarmingly white. Do. Not. Faint.

THIS IS NOT YOUR DREAM.

“It is my dream. I’m sorry if it’s something else too, but I promise you I don’t know what’s going on, I just go here when I fall asleep.”

I AM STILL BOUND. HOW ARE YOU HERE?

The voice was different this time; more aware, more human. Like the speaker was slowly waking up.

“I think we….ah—” How to put this. “I think we’re connected, somehow. I have this,” Elliot held up the mark on his hand, “which I think has to do with you? Unless I’m completely off base.”

There was a stretch of silence, Elliot’s tension growing by the second. His visions of a waking Titan had been more dramatic, and destructive. Lots of explosions. This was surely a decent start.

THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE. I DID NOT MARK YOU.

Elliot made a sound somewhere between a choke and a cough. “I believe it may have happened when I inspected a little purple figurine of you, if that helps at all.”

IRRELEVANT. YOU BEAR MY SIGIL. YET DO YOU DO NOT HAVE MY TRUST. YOU HAVE STOLEN MY POWER, ERODED MY SLEEP. THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE.

A threatening undercurrent had been present there, triggering a more personal sense of danger than that born from the obvious raw power of the speaker. Stolen power sounded bad. That had to have been what empowered him to break the defenses on the husk. Elliot hurried on. “Um, yes, I hear that, I would probably be a bit unsettled as well in your position, but I think it might have something to do with what’s in my head? Can you look at that? Or, and I’m sorry if this is weird, but I could use my skill on you. I think it might demonstrate what I’m talking about. Unless of course you’d find that rude, in which case—”

BE SILENT.

Elliot obeyed, gritting his teeth to keep himself from babbling. The moment stretched.

NIAMH. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

“Yes!” Elliot’s eyes widened. “That’s the name of my skill. Does that explain anything?”

A shaking began, the shale under his feet quivering alarmingly.

GET OUT.

“I’m deeply sorry, and I promise you I’m not trying to be annoying, but I actually have no idea how to leave,” Elliot said, blinking rapidly in the hopes that might help him exit the dream.

Then, without an ounce of warning, he started awake against the stone wall of the cell. Sasha had been asleep next to him, and she jolted awake as he did.

“Sorry,” Elliot gasped, patting her on the shoulder. “Bad dream.”

“It’s okay,” she said, although he could tell she was still breathing rapidly.

Yolena was sitting in the corner, eyes closed and leaning up against the wall. She’d either stayed asleep or woken subtly enough to give no sign.

“Back to sleep,” he whispered, leaning up against the wall again. Sasha stayed upright for a few moments, glancing around, but then slowly eased back as well.

Internally, Elliot was screaming.

What the hell was going to happen. Were they all about to die? The sense of power had been cataclysmic when the voice first erupted, and Elliot kept expecting the world to devolve into whatever kind of ruin an unleashed Titan would be inclined to inflict.

But nothing happened. After a few minutes a faint snoring came from Yolena’s corner, and occasionally someone in the other cells would cough.

He took a breath. What should he do? What could he do? What could anyone do?

Had he even learned anything?

It’s awake. It doesn’t like me. Elliot winced. There’s a very big scary doom spear sticking out of it that seemed worse than the Titan.

If nothing else, he had learned that. The Titan was an individual. Not human, but not a beast.

What had it meant, about Elliot wanting to watch the world burn?

Thoughts chased each other around his head for what felt like hours, and when sleep took him again, he didn’t dream.

“Get up.”

The words woke him with a start, followed by the gray-cloaked guard turning a key in the lock. “Speaker wants you upstairs.”

Entering the Rose Room again, his attention caught on the paintings. They’d changed: simple scenes of flowers and pottery replaced with battlefields and bloody warriors.

“My apologies for the shift in decor,” a voice came from the near corner, out of Elliot’s immediate line of sight. He turned, and saw Speaker standing under the portrait of a gray-haired lady holding a red sword in one hand and a severed head in the other. The room’s scarlet shade served to bring out the shine of the blood.

“I felt it better approximated the thrust of our previous conversation,” he continued, staring at the woman’s face. “Particularly the justifications we tell ourselves for our atrocities.”

“I’m sorry you wasted your time,” Elliot replied, “because I don’t have any atrocities to bring up, so I’ll be a boring conversationalist if that’s where we’re headed.”

“You don’t have any atrocities yet,” Speaker replied, turning with a smile. “But it’s best to start imagining what lines you might cross now. It will allow for refinement before actualization. Sit, please.”

The same table from yesterday was in the exact center of the room, with the same two chairs and seemingly the same cups of tea. Elliot obeyed.

“Do you know my name?” Speaker asked, sitting down as well.

Elliot frowned. “What?”

“I still don’t think so. Interesting. Try the tea. You never had it yesterday, and it’s divine.”

Sighing, Elliot took a sip. There were simpler ways of killing him if that was the plan, and he was thirsty. It was a rich, grassy blend, with a hint of what might have been roasted chestnuts, as well as cherries.

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“It’s good,” Elliot admitted grudgingly. “A shame the merchant who sold it to you is probably dead now.”

“A terrible shame,” Speaker agreed. “Now, please hold still.”

“Excuse me?” Elliot asked, before an arm locked into place around his throat from behind. He let out a harsh choking sound and started to thrash, but then a knife point came into view directly over his right eye. He froze.

Speaker rose, and pulled what looked like a green pill from a pocket of his robes. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he approached from the side and placed the object gently over Elliot’s heart. “This will be uncomfortable, but I promise you’ll be fine in a moment.”

Then he pushed it through Elliot’s skin, and his body spasmed.

It passed with what felt like almost no resistance, and yet there was blood running down the front of his shirt. His eye was fixed on the point of the knife, and he shook with the effort of holding still.

“There, lovely. Thank you, guard.”

The knife, and the arm around his neck, disappeared. Speaker walked back to his side of the table and sat down, taking a sip of the tea as if nothing had happened.

“What the hell,” Elliot spat out. It dawned on him in that moment how much he’d let himself be taken in by Speaker’s act. No matter how vile he understood him to be intellectually, the casual viciousness the man just displayed had still managed to take Elliot by surprise. Some part of him had believed Speaker wouldn’t stoop to something as base as a direct attack. Stupid.

“I worried you would undergo more suffering if I explained the process to you first. Unfair, I know, but a correct assessment I think, even if it ducks the brunt of your reason for anger.”

“What was that thing?”

“It’s my lever,” Speaker replied, sitting back in his chair. “There are many threats I could level against you, from the deaths of your compatriots to your own torture or execution, but where I am going to bring you today requires your absolute cooperation. I find this method is more…compelling, even if it simply boils down to another form of ending.”

“What did you put inside me?” Elliot asked again, this time in a whisper.

“It’s a poison. I don’t know its name, and the Talessi have been remarkably closemouthed. But knowing that, I wonder if you can guess its function.”

“You put the poison that makes husks into me?” Elliot asked, eyes widening. “The one that erases your mind and takes over your core? The one with no antidote? That poison?” His volume was rising.

“I put it into you, yes. But you have not been poisoned. The pill acts as a barrier, and unless I activate it, the shell will remain quite robust for decades to come. It’s an assurance of your compliance. If I give you a command, the threat of soul domination is so much more compelling than simple steel. It's evocative. There is also the added benefit that I can activate it at any time, even if you somehow manage to run. And it’s quite impossible for you to remove without my assistance.”

“When will you remove it?” Elliot found his hand gripping his chest where the thing had entered, but there was no entry-wound anymore, just the blood stains on otherwise unmarked skin.

“Oh, we’ll discuss that in due time,” Speaker replied. “But now we’re ready for today’s main event. Come with me.” He rose. “I have something I want to show you.”