Carve

‘I can’t fucking do it,’ Merrin hissed out as his hand trembled over Zane’s bared chest.

There was something to be said about the irony of it all, Merrin was so used to the blood and gore that it didn’t even phase him any more. He could look upon a corpse without even a hint of remorse, feel the blood on his hands and see nothing but the power surging through him. It was the magic tainting him, and he knew it, knew the fact that it was his undoing. It was unbecoming of him, pulling at the threads of humanity still buried somewhere deep within his chest.

It wasn’t healthy, and people saw that look in his eyes.

So why was it so hardnow? Why had his feelings gotten in the way of something so important.

‘You have to,’ Ryth said, forceful but fair. Always the voice of reason in his head no matter the situation, and this was no different. ‘What other choice do you have?’

It was true, like most everything else that came from his lips. There were only two choices, two sides of a coin. But the blade in his hand felt so heavy.

This wasn’t supposed to be real, this was supposed to be a never-ending nightmare that haunted the cold nights. It would claw away at his brain in a way that ensured the damage would be permanent, that every time he looked upon Zane he saw nothing but that dream, that nightmare.

Zane, pale faced and blue-lipped. Sodden and frozen, chest entirely too still as he lay on the chipped stone path beside the river. Merrin would be rooted in place, voice screaming from his small throat though no sound would ever come out. A terrified cry to someone, anyone, who would help him. His boots felt like they were full of lead, and Merrin would fall upon his knees and claw at the rocks until his fingers bled.

The pain in his chest would follow him to the waking world, the empty void like his very soul had been torn from his chest.

He’d find Zane no matter what, place a head against his chest to hear that mechanical thump of his heart and the soft sigh as he reassured Merrin that yes, he was breathing.

But he wasn’t. Not now.

Merrin didn’t even know how it happened. One moment they were talking and the next…

‘Merrin,’ Ryth warned and turned Merrin’s head to look upon the pallid, lifeless body laid out on the altar. ‘You’re running out of time.’

No, time wasn’t running out, it was already gone. The clock had ceased its incessant ticking long ago, back when Merrin first had that dream. Back when everything had started to fall apart, fall into the endless abyss of nothingness that seemed to stretch on and on and on.

‘Ryth, I can’t,’ Merrin said, the blade hovering over Zane’s sternum, tip scratching at the skin’s surface without making a single cut.

One slice, that’s all it took to start. One measly drop of blood that Merrin could weave into something else, to breathe life back into the stilled heart. But he was shaking too much, this wasn’t just another body he could carve to pieces without a care. This wasn’t a practice dummy that he could toss away at the end of the day.

This was Zane.

‘Then let me,’ Ryth said, his force on Merrin in a chokehold, the icy chill digging its way into Merrin’s chest and flickering dark shapes across his eyes.

‘How?’ Merrin asked, curling his left hand around the blade before dropping it back onto the stone altar. ‘You’re not real.’

‘Just let me take control.’

Merrin looked over his shoulder at where Ryth hovered behind, close enough that he could feel where his body intersected Merrin’s. He’d gotten so used to it that it was easy to look past, but there was a difference now. A strength to Ryth’s body, the power emanating from his core enough to make the world around them spin and swirl.

‘Okay,’ Merrin said, unsure of if the words even left his lips, but Ryth knew. Ryth always knew.

Ryth locked eyes with him, and the next thing Merrin felt was the weightlessness of it all. The heaviness of his body was gone, replaced by a tingling across his skin as the feeling came back in throws. He tried to close his hands around the blade once more, but nothing worked, his body was numb to his inputs.

‘Trust me on this,’ Ryth said, though Merrin could no longer see him.

Merrin’s head turned without his doing so, and he simply watched as his right hand reached for the slim scalpel. It was like a memory he couldn’t control, unable to do anything as Ryth pulled the strings.

Bile rose in his throat as the blade sunk into Zane’s chest carving one clean line down the centre. Blood welled to the top, and words spilled from Merrin’s lips in an incantation he didn’t recall learning. As the words hung in the air, the blood began to swirl up from the wound, wisps of dark red light sinking into Merrin’s hands as the blade turned to his own wrist.

One cut, one drop of blood.

Zane choked on the magic inside, crimson spilling from his lips as the incantation continued. It wasn’t enough, Merrin knew that, Ryth knew that. He would only collapse again within a day or so. He needed more, more than Merrin could give at that moment, more than he had on hand.

‘We just need him stable,’ Merrin heard himself say, the words sounding foreign to him. The warm blood trickled down his fingers, the wound almost too deep to close on its own. ‘Then we can deal with what comes next.’

‘What comes next?’ Merrin asked the vast nothingness of the room.

‘I think you already know.’