Pet: Torment - Chapter FortyFive (Patreon)

Remus

It’s all a lie. My life, my purpose. All of it. I wasn’t born to help Xyrannis become an untouchable empire. It was never my purpose to protect my siblings. I was born heir to the Celestivine throne. And my mother, sick of the life she was forced into, took me from that—took Xion while she was still in her belly from that.

From the moment we set foot on Xyrannis, her manipulations began. The visions I was having when we returned were of my life before. My life so many different times before. The vision of me killing Leviathan wasn’t a vision. It was a memory. It was my initial awakening, and my mother locked me away for years after that to protect her precious new home. That is why I have no memory of my childhood. I never had one. That is why, in Leviathan history, she "went away" before reappearing to release her children.

She only released me when Ezra was born, and this star system turned against Xyrannis. She released me to protect the home she had come to love, and the son she always wanted, as Xion still wasn’t old enough to do so. She released me to fight her wars. She created the rings to hide our energy, and trapped mine so that our father could never find us. When she realized weaker beings could not mask our power once bonded, she killed Ezra’s father and put it in our heads that we are never to bond.

But I did. Which set this all into motion.

Time feels nonexistent in this moment. I don’t know what time is. I don’t know what up or down is. It’s overwhelming. It consumes me. A door has been opened that has kept everything that I am in the dark. I have spent centuries of my life, roaming mindlessly to do my mother’s bidding. She has manipulated my mind, my memories. She has embedded intentions within me. She is… wicked, just as Iris warned me.

I choke on a gasp as the name comes to me so clearly. Along with it comes every single moment we’ve had.

Iris.

The human who stood up to me. The human who questioned me and made me question myself. The human I admire everything about. The human I bonded with, who set this all in motion. The human I brought with me to my home. I see her and every moment we had. Every moment, her trust deepened. Her smile, her curiosity, her determination. I see it all, and I feel bitter resentment that it was taken from me. She was taken from me.

Pain flits over my head as I see everything I did to her after my mother took my memory. I can’t stomach the fear, the pain I see in her eyes as I torture her again and again. And yet… she continued to fight for me. My stomach twists and knots as I see myself touching her in my lost state, understanding all the damage done to her body.

“No,” I sob.

I sensed the loss of life at the time. But it meant nothing to me—she meant nothing to me. Her final moments with me were filled with venomous words to make her cry. And her final moments…

I open my eyes as all the information converges, and I find my mother immediately. I release my pain in the form of a howl, lunging for her. The desire to kill is… too much. And the energy beams are nothing compared to the pain in my chest at this moment. I see the same fear in my mother’s eyes that I saw each and every moment she resorted to wiping my mind and manipulating my memories. I finally understand it, however. It is fear for what I am. And what I am capable of.

“You should have killed me!” I seethe at her. “I will take everything you have ever loved, and make you watch as I destroy it!”

Her eyes are wide, and she doesn’t respond to me. Tears spill down my face, accompanying my rage. My memories continue to return to me at a mile a minute. But I ignore them as I focus on Iris. She was the only real thing in my life out of all of this. She was the only thing I was able to choose for myself. She was the only person I was ever able to love fully. She shared a bond with me, a bond that my mother ripped out of me painfully. Everything I have ever cared about is gone. The life I thought I knew, Ezra, Iris, the unborn life we will never know. It’s all gone.

She’s gone.

“You should have fucking killed me!”

Iris

I jolt awake, my chest burning as I heave water from my lungs. My throat stings, and my eyes burn. My skin feels like it’s on fire from how tight and dry it is, my clothes freezing as they stick to me. And as my brain connects with the rest of my body, my arms fly to the wound in my side, the pain unbearable as it tears a scream from my throat. It feels like someone is holding a lighter to my skin, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“Iris, calm down!” I grunt in panic as hands quickly grab me, pulling my hands away from the wound. “You can’t touch it!” 

I recognize the voice. It’s Sky. It takes me a moment to come down from my adrenaline-induced panic, and I have to blink several times for her to become clear enough that I can not only see her, but I am aware of my surroundings.

We’re in a cave.

The mouth of the cave opens up to the ocean, and there’s still water around us, but we’re on the slightly elevated ground with rock and sand beneath us.

“How—” I break off into a coughing fit, my throat angrily punishing me for speaking so soon after I obviously drowned.

“Shhh,” Sky murmurs. Her voice is eerily soothing, and I note that as I focus more on her, she looks terrible. There’s dried blood near her forehead, her hair is wild and filled with dirt and sand. And her eyes are tired and bloodshot. The dress she wore is dingy and torn, and she has multiple scrapes along her body. Despite that, she is somehow conscious.

“H-how?” I whisper.

The last thing I recall is the cliff crumbling into the ocean with us as its victims. And this was after Remus’s mother stabbed me and left me for dead.

“Noah,” she murmurs, lowering her head. Tears drip from her eyes and she trembles from saying his name alone. My stomach dips as I look around the cave. Ezra’s body lies a few feet from mine, but Noah isn’t here. It’s just us.

I look back at Sky, and she shakes her head, confirming for me. Tears spring into my eyes as well. This is what happens when humans get caught in the crosshairs. I slowly roll over, grunting in pain as I try to sit up.

“You shouldn’t move,” Sky says.

“Is Ezra…?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“He’s alive…barely. Their mother did something, but I don’t know if it’s enough,” she says. I shudder as I recall her presence.

“Help me up,” I murmur to Sky. She hesitates, obviously not wanting me to move. But I need to see for myself where we are. I wrap my arm around her shoulder, and she helps me to my feet.

“Agh!” I cry out as pain radiates from the wound, settling in my veins. My breath hitches as we both limp to the mouth of the cave.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

“It’s been hours. And Ezra hasn’t stirred. He’s breathing, but even that is low,” she says. I don’t know how he could have survived something like that. Each time I close my eyes, I see Remus and that Celestivine fighting like it’s nothing as they destroyed their surroundings. Ezra’s survival is only thanks to his mother.

“Where’s Xion?” I ask in confusion. I can’t recall anything after being stabbed. But I know she was with us. There’s no way something like that could have taken her out.

Sky shrugs.

“All of them are missing,” she says.

We finally make it to the mouth of the cave. It’s barely light out, so I can see that we are somewhere at the bottom of a cliff. But I see no way out. Or up. I shift my attention to the sky, my eyes widening.

The rings are gone.

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I flinch as pain radiates from my injury, my legs giving out.

“Iris!” Sky calls my name, but my body feels paralyzed as I collapse onto the edge of the water. I glare into the sky with wide eyes, the sound of my heart beating in my ears. My hands try to find the wound, to stop the pain, but Sky grabs them, shouting at me not to touch it.

She talks me through breathing, telling me that the pain will pass and everything will be okay. But I hear the uncertainty in her voice. I hear the tremble as she fights tears. There is no one coming to save. Remus won’t be appearing out of nowhere. He’s either been taken or is dead by now. We’re all alone on this alien world, our desperation to survive unable to help us this time around.