08. Reckoning Read online

  Second Skin

  Reckoning

  By: M Damon Baker

  Copyright © 2020 by M Damon Baker

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9798665014272

  Interior design and ebooks by Booknook.biz.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  1

  Sitting on the small porch off my bedroom, I watched as the sun fell below the trees and gradually slipped towards the horizon. Above it, the sky was painted in a myriad of colors, a spectacular display ranging from deep red and orange to a dusky shade of lavender. It was a beautiful sunset, perhaps even perfect, yet it might as well have been pitch black for all the joy it brought me.

  I was at a point in my life where everything should have been picture-perfect, but an ironically disgusting twist of fate had ruined it all. Someone once said, ‘Life imitates art.’ Unfortunately, that asshole was right.

  Several years before, I’d had the sudden inspiration to write a novel. The words had practically formed themselves, flowing into my mind almost of their own accord. One had quickly turned into two and then four until eventually, I’d churned out an entire seven-volume series. My brief period of inspiration faltered after that, and while they didn’t make any Best Seller lists, the books had done well enough.

  That was the end of it, or so I’d thought, until the day the doorbell rang, and I found a police officer standing in front of me. From the expression on his face, I knew right away that something awful had happened, but there was no way I could have anticipated the terrible news he’d brought. I’d followed numbly behind as he led me to his car, and despite the officer’s repeated attempts to engage me, I remained silent during the entire ride towards the county morgue.

  Nothing can ever prepare you for the death of a child, let alone two; the only thing worse I can imagine is losing your spouse at the same time. In a single stroke of misfortune, my entire family had been ripped away from me, the tragic consequences of a ‘distracted’ driver.

  I’m not really sure how I made it through those next few weeks—most of that period is still a bit hazy in my mind. When I emerged from the fog I’d been in, I found myself completely alone for the first time in decades. Gone were the near-constant sounds of life that once filled the empty space; a deafening stillness replaced the everyday commotion that turned an otherwise meaningless building into our home.

  It was only then that I’d recognized the brutal twist of fate that had befallen me, the cruel trick of some vengeful God. My family had been snatched away in almost exactly the same manner that I’d victimized the apparent protagonist of my first novel. After suffering his devastating loss, the character I’d only referred to as ‘the dead man’ wallowed in his misery, slowly fading away as he lost his will to live. I’d considered his decline contemptible, yet now I was following in his footsteps, dying a slow, lingering death as I prayed for my end to come.

  Turnabout is fair play, I guess—I wonder if the expression was from the same fucking idiot who’d come up with that little ‘life and art’ gem.

  Ignoring the sunset while I stared off into the distance, I shrugged off the painful memories as I absently took a sip of wine. The alcohol didn’t really help—it never had—but these days, I only managed to fall asleep once I’d consumed enough of it. The red liquid swirled around as I spun the glass in a lazy circle, and a few tiny droplets spilled onto the floor, joining with the stains of countless others I’d never bothered to wipe up. The idle moment ended abruptly with the sound of a soft knock at the front door.

  The interruption wasn’t a welcome one; I hadn’t ordered anything, nor did I have any interest in some uninvited visitor. I tried to ignore it, withdrawing even deeper within my sorrows, but the knocking only continued, growing even more insistent until I was eventually forced to stumble downstairs and shoo away whoever it might be.

  The short journey was a challenging one; in my decline, the stairs had become somewhat difficult. I’d been in fairly decent shape before, but years of inactivity combined with the weight I’d put on left me barely able to get around. The stark reminder of my deterioration wasn’t appreciated, and as I huffed and puffed my way towards the door, I became increasingly angry with my unknown intruder.

  Despite the clear glass door, I couldn’t make out who was standing beyond it in the growing darkness. Finally, as I drew closer, I could see the vague silhouette of a woman patiently waiting for me. Thinking it was some sort of salesperson going house to house, I opened the door, fully prepared to give the pushy bitch a piece of my mind.

  “Hello, Matthew.” Despite her warm greeting, the pleasantry she’d offered rang hollow.

  I’d never heard the woman’s voice before, yet there was something oddly familiar about it, like an old melody tugging at your ear that you couldn’t quite remember. For a second or two, I peered into the darkness, trying to make out her features, but the setting sun had fallen behind her, bathing the stranger in a cloak of shadows.

  She turned slightly, and the fading light danced across her face, illuminating the woman’s features for a brief moment. All it took was one glimpse of her brilliant green eyes, and my jaw dropped open when I realized exactly who it was on my doorstep.

  Dreya?

  I knew it wasn’t possible, yet I couldn’t deny that she was standing right there in front of me. It had to be some sort of illusion; a cruel mirage conjured up by my intoxication. I tried to reach out, to feel the empty air where she was standing and put the lie to what my eyes were telling me, but my limbs failed to respond to the command.

  A sudden flash of movement startled me an instant before her fist slammed into the side of my head. My vision blurred as I stumbled backwards and fell to the floor; the sharp crack of my skull against the hard tile ringing loudly in my ears for a second until everything went black.

  2

  I woke up with a pounding headache and the uncomfortable sensation of something hard digging into my back. Piecing together what little I could recall, my first thought was that I’d had some sort of vivid nightmare—likely induced by the consumption of too much wine. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d passed out drunk on the floor. I wasn’t looking forward to the hangover awaiting me as I pried my eyes open, but the darkness that greeted me only added to my confusion.

  The lights had been on when I’d gone downstairs, and I sure as hell hadn’t turned them off. At least I didn’t remember doing so. Realizing that the gaps in my memory were larger than I suspected, I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I’d
barely moved at all when my arms and legs came to an abrupt halt, and the sound of clinking metal echoed sharply in the air.

  I panicked for a moment, but pulling against the restraints only rattled the chains that were holding me in place. Glancing around in disbelief, I wondered if what seemed to be happening was even possible. The pitch black yielded slightly as my vision adapted to the darkness, revealing a thin sliver of dim light seeping in from beneath the room’s lone door. Rough stone walls hemmed me in on all sides, and despite never having been there before, I recognized where I was. I was trapped in one of the prison cells beneath the Imperial Palace—Dreya’s Palace.

  This was not good.

  I’d jumped into my writing career, almost completely ignorant of what it meant to be an author. As things progressed and I began to take it more seriously, I sought to learn about my craft, engaging with my fellow writers, editors, and others in the industry. The dialogue was truly helpful, and many freely offered their opinions and advice in addition to hypothetical questions designed to stir the creative process. One of those questions caused me to pause and reflect a great deal on what I’d written: how would your characters react if they ever got to meet you?

  As I’d considered it, my response varied a great deal. On one hand, I’d imagined that Dreya might be delighted to see me. After all, I’d made her into a Goddess and filled her life with a great deal of happiness and love. But it seemed as if my second answer to that question had turned out to be the more accurate one—the version where she wasn’t quite so pleased with what I’d put her through.

  Dreya’s path to ascension hadn’t been easy, and she’d suffered devastating losses along the way; losses that she might very well blame me for inflicting on her. Although she had a great deal of compassion for the innocent, as the Goddess of Justice, Dreya’s reserve of empathy for the guilty tended to run a bit… thin. The chains digging into the flesh around my wrists told me quite clearly which side of that equation she’d put me on.

  Of course, none of this should’ve been possible. Dreya was merely a creation of my mind. An extremely vivid one perhaps, but ultimately nothing more than a fragment of my imagination. There was no way for her to appear on my doorstep, let alone drag me off to some fantasy world in chains, yet I couldn’t ignore my surroundings—or the links of cold steel holding me firmly in place.

  “Look who’s finally woken up.” Although I couldn’t see her, I recognized Dreya’s voice coming from the corner behind me.

  I cringed as the sound of wood scraping against stone followed, and after a moment, it came again when Dreya placed a small stool on the floor and sat beside me.

  “Tell me, have you figured out what’s happening?” Despite the softness of her voice, there was no mistaking the sharp edges of Dreya’s words.

  “Please. I had no idea any of this was real,” I begged, hoping that she might see reason. “I never meant to harm you.”

  “Yet you have.” My heart beat frantically in my chest as the first hints of light shined from her eyes.

  “But I’ve already forgiven you for that.”

  The apparent reprieve had barely registered in my mind when Dreya’s hand shot out, her fingers clamping down around my throat as the room ignited with her rage.

  “What I will never forgive you for is the suffering you inflicted on others,” Dreya whispered in my ear as I gasped and sputtered, her barely audible words restraining none of her fury.

  Although I’d written about Dreya’s anger, nothing prepared me to have her wrath focused on me so intensely. Despite the bright green light of her eyes, what struck me most were the endless depths of darkness that resided there—a bottomless pit of hatred and rage that I was about to be thrown into.

  “You murdered Tási.” I struggled to breathe as her grip tightened around my neck. “You forced me to watch helplessly while Ella and Insleí died. For what? Your own petty amusement? You could have written anything, yet you chose to use your gift to slaughter millions.”

  I sucked in a huge gulp of air when she suddenly released me from her grasp, and the room went dark as Dreya shut her eyes for a moment.

  “Even after all that, I still might have let you go.” There was a sudden coldness in her voice when she spoke again, a quiet rage that was all the more frightening for its carefully measured notes. “But you couldn’t leave it alone; you just had to go after my daughter.”

  Oh, fuck.

  “She may have come back, but you killed her, Matthew.” Dreya rose slowly, the stool tipping over and falling to the floor as she loomed over me. “Seeing Ashíel lying dead on the ground ripped my heart out, so I think it’s only fair for you to experience that same pain.”

  A quick flash of steel in the dim light was all the warning I had before I felt the sharp pain of her blade plunging into my side. I screamed out in agony as Dreya dragged the weapon across my body, carving a gaping hole in my chest. The pain was so overwhelming that the sound of her dagger falling to the floor barely registered as Dreya’s bloody hand held me firmly in place.

  She paused to stare into my eyes for barely a second before ramming her fist into the open wound. Fortunately, I was so far gone by that point that I’d nearly gone numb, yet I could still feel her hand rooting around inside me, and my body shuddered and convulsed as Dreya tore away at my flesh with her bare fingers. My breaths faltered, and the dim light was fading to darkness when I felt a sharp tug as she yanked her arm free.

  “There it is,” Dreya mused, my life dwindling away while she crushed the still-pulsing organ between her fingers. “For a minute, I wasn’t sure you had one.”

  As the end came, I considered myself almost lucky. Dreya’s penchant for vengeance and ability to inflict pain were both quite legendary. The death she’d given me had been merciful by that standard, which was something I’d been seeking for a long time. My own creation had somehow murdered me, but I let out a sigh of relief as my last shreds of life drifted away, knowing that I’d earned my fate.

  3

  “Welcome back.”

  Dreya’s gentle words greeted me as I rapidly blinked my eyes at the sight of the stone walls surrounding me. I should have been dead; I even remembered dying after she’d literally ripped my heart out, yet somehow, I was still in this prison cell.

  My confusion was cleared up instantly when she waved a dark rod in front of my face. Death’s Embrace was a powerful artifact, capable of restoring life almost without restrictions. Of course, in writing her story, I’d also used its one limitation to force her to choose between saving the woman she loved or the husband of her closest companion—a decision that I knew still haunted her to this day.

  That was when I finally began to understand the true nature of the sentence she’d imposed on me. Dreya never meant to simply kill me; she intended for me to suffer far more agony than any single death would allow.

  I’d written enough of those scenes to know exactly what sort of torture I was in for. Dreya’s capacity to inflict pain went well beyond mere physical means. She had all manner of magic at her disposal, including the ability to project threads of pure darkness within another. The havoc those tendrils could wreak was limited only by her willingness to be creative in their use. Unfortunately, in Dreya’s case, that was an almost non-existent factor.

  “I understand how angry you must be,” my trembling voice seemed quite pathetic, even to me.

  “No, you don’t.” Dreya sat beside me once more as she cut me off.

  “Do you even realize what you’ve done?” I flinched when she reached towards me, but Dreya’s fingers only grazed my forehead to brush a strand of hair aside. “The events you set in motion caused the death of millions, maybe even billions of people. Not only in this world, but others as well.”

  I hadn’t even considered that—I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Dreya was real and not just a creation of my mind. I’d devised a brutal world when constructing Arrika and its history, one where life held little val
ue. Millions had apparently paid the price for my ‘vision,’ but as high as that toll was, it paled in comparison to the havoc my imagination had wrought elsewhere.

  After finishing Dreya’s story, I’d delved into the origins of the Deathless, imagining my own world in a slightly futuristic setting. The story I’d wrought plunged my home into an apocalypse of epic proportions, hurling the entire planet into chaos and slaughtering nearly everyone when modern technology failed. My stupid musings hadn’t only caused Dreya and the people of this world to suffer; they’d somehow managed to destroy mine as well. Or at least they were going to within a few short years.

  “I’m just a writer,” I protested, refusing to accept what she was telling me as I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “None of this is possible.”

  “See, that’s the thing.” Dreya rose to stand over me as she spoke. “You’re not just a writer. You’re a creator of worlds, one with the power to turn his visions into reality.”

  “The penalty for murder is death.” She turned her back on me as she walked towards the thick wooden door. “It may take a while, but I’m going to make you pay for every single person you’ve killed.”

  The one death sentence Dreya had already imposed was more than enough; thinking of the countless others awaiting me was terrifying. The chains around my wrists rattled as I tried to turn towards her, but she only glanced back, filling the room with a bright green light as she left me with her parting words.

  “You really should’ve been more careful in choosing your Goddess of Justice, Matt.”

  With that, Dreya shut the door behind her, leaving me chained to the floor of the small room as the hollow ringing of her footsteps echoed down the hall.

  As I lay there in the darkness, none of it made any sense to me, but there was no denying where I was—the hard floor digging into my flesh, and the chains around my wrists wouldn’t allow me to overlook my new reality. I had no idea how long I had left to live, but however many days were left to me, they’d be filled with nothing but torment and pain. I curled up into a ball on the cold stone, realizing that the quick death Dreya initially offered me had only been an illusion; there was far more suffering ahead.