Convergence Ch. 01

Manic fury heats my skin like a flame, and thoughts so dark and cruel bubble up like noxious sludge from some hidden spring deep inside a part of myself I didn't know existed. Mindless in my overwhelming animosity, I stalk across the clearing until I am towering over her slight, kneeling form. I crouch in front of her so we are at eye level. She meets my gaze defiantly, and when I raise my arm and crack the back of my hand across her cheek so hard she crumples to the side, she lets out a single pained grunt and slowly rights herself to meet my eyes again.

I seethe and snarl at her lack of reaction. For reasons I don't understand, I know I will not be satisfied until I can wring tears from her mercurial eyes or pull screams from her lungs.

Exasperated and weary, I walk away from her, toward the towering purple-barked trees. Intuitively, I reach for some buried skill. In past dreams, I've been able to fly, or move objects with a flick of my finger. Here, in this fantastical dreamscape, I open by senses to the wilds around me and become a part of this strangely familiar landscape. I see moss leading a meandering path that moves deep into the ominously quiet forest. I hear the quite gurgling of a small stream. I smell some creature's fresh kill, the metallic tang of blood sharp on my tongue. It brings an unexpected rush of pleasure, and my left hand grips a weapon that is not there. A spear? A crossbow? I look down at my hands, pale and soft from a tedious middle-aged existence as a widowed accountant. My own limbs are unfamiliar and strange. Where are the calloused pads from a life of handling weapons? Where is the bronzed skin from my days of hunting in the unforgiving mountainous terrain of my youth?

"What the fuck is happening to me?" I mumble, shaking my head in an attempt to clear the muddled thoughts and half-remembered dreams.

"You're asking the wrong question, Soren Thorne," a quiet, melodious voice sounds from behind my slumped shoulders and slouched back. I squeeze my eyes tight against the desire to reach for her and push her once more to her knees, to gather her wild hair in my fist, to feed her my cock until she struggles to breathe. I inhale sharply, drunk on her tempestuous scent, and turn slowly to face her.

"Then what is the right question? Hmm? What the fuck do you want from me, Aidan?!" My voice rises with each word I spit out, verbal arrows meant to pierce the calm veneer she wears like armor. Ineffectual, they fall, harmless, to gather at her feet. Viridian eyes, glowing with an inner fire, search my face, an expression kin to hope passing over her delicate features. After a moment, with a disappointed sigh, she steps back once, twice. She crouches low, scoops crystalline sand up into her palm, and with a soft whisper of words I cannot hear, a stormy wind accepts her offer, using the glittering earth held close to surround her and send her figure into obscurity. I cover my eyes with my forearm, hold my breath and crouch low against the punishing wind. When the storm abates, I glance back.

I'm back in that hateful old bedroom, facing an empty cradle and a pink-tinged dawn.

And she's gone.

..........................................................

Chapter 01

"That's it, nice and easy, Aidan. Take your time. There's a good girl. Ride it out."

The caramel smooth voice of House Thorne's most respected shaman grated on her nerves in a way that made her shift uncomfortably. The moment she tried to sit up, a heavy hand on her chest anchored her to the uncomfortably padded table at her back, and an admonishing "tsk" from above was accompanied by the application of restraints around her wrists and ankles. "Too early for that, I'm afraid," the Shaman, she had never bothered to learn his name, lightly tapped her cheek with an open palm. She supposed that was meant to be a comforting gesture. Instead, it made her skin crawl.

Her eyes opened slowly to a sterile medical room. Whitewashed walls were broken only by an observation mirror located directly across from where she lay. She supposed there was a door somewhere, but she was always unconscious or sedated when men in stiff white uniforms brought them into the hated room for their weekly trial. Bright ceiling lights dimmed the moment she began to look around, shrouding the room, and the three other occupants, in shadow. She didn't need to see the man on the slim, padded table parallel to hers to know who he was. Eight long months ago, she'd started the trials. Every week, twice a week, they were laid out next to each other, and she thought the ten years she'd been free of him was far too short. Despite his comatose state, her skin still prickled with gooseflesh to think of how soon she was to being placed back under his control.

"How are you feeling, my sweet?" The Shaman appeared in her line of sight as his fingers swept damp hair from her brow in mock tenderness. To distinguish himself from the silent assistants, his clean, crisp uniform was a deep shade of grey. Black hair, clipped short on the sides and a bit longer on top, bled wisps of silver at his crinkled temples. Beady eyes stared down at her with sickening intensity. She swallowed thickly. The last time, she promised herself, again. This will be the last time. As much as she dreaded the day she and Soren reached Convergence and he awoke, his mind and memories intact, his rage just as volatile and dangerous as it had been ten years ago, she dreaded this hour following her failed trials even more. "Fine," she finally answered, hating how weak and small she sounded. How defeated. "I feel fine."

The Shaman clapped his hands once, inches from her face, making her startle and jerk against her restraints. "Wonderful," he gushed in mock enthusiasm. "However..." he trailed off slowly, and she clenched her eyes tightly shut. She knew what his next words would be. What they always were when she was the only one to wake after a trial. "We were not able to bring our Soren back. You must be in the correct mindset, Aidan, to successfully Converge a lost spirit to his body," he lectured her condescendingly. She ground her teeth together to keep from lashing out. It would only make this part worse.

"I wonder..." he tapped a finger to his lips, looking into space as though he didn't know exactly what his solution to her supposed uncooperative behavior would be. He stalked around her, trailing a lazy finger over the curve of her breast, down the length of her torso, pausing when he reached the inside of her thigh. He cocked his head slightly, looking down at her with uncontained excitement before he turned toward the observation mirror and bowed low. She swallowed bile.

"Gentlemen," he began, dropping his voice into a low, respectful plea. "I believe we have time yet to continue our sweet Aidan's treatment, if it suits you." His arm swung back to gesture at where he had her tied down, only a delicate, transparent medical gown covering her to just above her bare knees. "Rehabilitated and repentant as our little princess is, she is still of Valkyn descent. It is a daily struggle for her to resist her more... creative dispositions," he drawled, drawing lazy circles on her thigh until the flimsy medical gown had ridden up to her center. "In a controlled, safe environment, I have been able to draw out those savage urges, exhausting our lovely girl until her mind and conscious are clear and quiet, and her bond to the Prince reinforced."

He was being especially malevolent today.

Some signal must have been given, for after a moment, the Shaman nodded his head in a respectful bow and turned his full attention to Aidan. "Essiah? If you would, please," he gestured to the corner of the room, where his apprentice, older than her but much younger than the Shaman, rushed forward to help his master position her to his liking. Rough hands tugged and pushed, twisted and adjusted, until her legs were spread and raised, her ankles strapped to hidden beams that extended out and slightly to the side. Her wrists remained restrained to the top corners of the padded table, the flimsy gown sliced neatly down the middle and spread to the side to expose her naked torso to the two men circling her like sharks.

When the Shaman had made two passes to check and double check that she was correctly positioned and restrained, he stood at the end of the table, her legs spread obscenely wide as he came to step between them. Essiah stood by her head, trailing thick fingers through her hair in what might have been a soothing way. The effect was ruined when she heard the telltale clink of a buckle coming undone.

Her stomach soured, and she fought back the vicious stream of curses and insults sitting on the tip of her tongue. It would do no good to thrash against her restraints, to scream or spit or sob. Her pleading and begging would fall on deaf ears. Her attempts at calm bargaining would be ignored. She had tried it all over the course of the last horrible eight months, and the only change she'd ever been able to wrangle out of these two grasfini was the occasional amused chuckle and the punishment of extra time added on to their fucking therapy.

The room afforded her little distraction from the four hands that were now slithering over shoulders and breasts, calves and thighs. An occasional dip of a finger into her core, the quiet disappointed sigh when they found her unresponsive. Closing her eyes against the sickening sensations they worked to illicit was not allowed. Instead, she stared straight ahead, counting sterile white ceiling tiles as she tried to control her breathing.

Ignoring the Shaman's crooned encouragements to her and the explanations he murmured to Essiah, who had done this often enough to know exactly how this farce of a treatment was supposed to go, Aidan allowed her mind to wander back to this last trial with Soren.

She was getting closer. Equal measures of dread and excitement had lit her up like lightning when she had been swept away from the centralized clearing she had created from jagged pieces of memory and imagination, and into the scene her question had elicited from the murky waters of his consciousness. He'd had flashbacks before, but never anything so solid and complete, merely random bits here and there. A childhood friend's name, or some small detail from the invasion. The color of his half brother's eyes, and once, the sound of his father's fist cracking across his mother's face. The rage and violent impulses her presence inevitably provoked had become nearly unmanageable for the last several weeks, but this... this full sensory scene that was so complete, so vivid, that even she had been swept up in its wake, was something altogether different from anything that had ever occurred before.

That day, almost twelve years ago now, had nearly faded from her own memory in the shadows cast by events much worse than one of her many botched escape attempts. Startled to have found herself back in the familiar market square, she'd watched a younger version of herself weave through the dense crowds of midday shoppers. She'd observed Soren adjust the speed of his pursuit to match her own. How desperately she had run from him that day! And now, how defeating to understand just how hopeless it had always been, her panicked efforts amounting to nothing more than an amusing, juvenile game of cat-and-mouse for the Prince who had never truly lost control.

Buried deep into her own thoughts, Aidan's eyes traced back and forth patterns across the tiled ceiling as she focused her attention on what exactly had elicited such a strong response, why today had been so very different from any prior trial. The beginning was always the same. Simultaneous injections of a sedative mixed with what she had deduced must be a potent hallucinogen had been followed by the sickening sensation that she was falling through a darkness so thick, she could feel it staining her skin. When her stomach had settled, she'd opened her eyes to the familiar moonlit room, modest furnishings, so different from the luxury he'd surrounded himself with in life, covered with a filmy layer of stale dust. Sometimes, she found Soren still asleep in the four-poster cedar bed. Sometimes he was pacing restlessly back and forth, bathed in sickly yellow light cast from an unimposing bedside lamp.

She hated the nights she found him as he'd been tonight, collapsed against the cradle, those terrible, inhuman howls filling the small space with a sorrow so terrible and complete, she'd been brought to her knees beside him the first time she'd heard them.

Her understanding of the Somnolence he'd been placed in after that fateful day ten years ago was limited and vague, at best. Somnolence kept the mind active and engaged while the body healed. An expensive and complex process, it was limited to the ten Royal Houses that made up the Dawn Empire. Nine, actually, after House Valkyn, her House, had been decimated, her people slaughtered, by Soren's power-hungry father. How much of the world Soren was currently trapped in was fabricated by Convergence engineers and how much was created from his own fractured mind was unclear. Regardless, in his current manufactured existence, he was Kaian Storm. A strong name for an utterly underwhelming man.

In life, he was the epitome of strength. Every last decision, every single action, was entirely intentional and controlled. Fearless and self-assured, Soren was confident to a fault. In the end, it was his inability to view himself as vulnerable in any way that had brought his throat to her blade.

In the complex dreamscape of Somnolence, he'd become what he despised most about the world around him. He became weak. Soft and uncertain, Kaian Storm led an uncomplicated existence. He'd chosen the livelihood of some sort of cleric or scribe. What in life had been all sharp edges and rigid musculature had yielded to flaccid docility. During their first trial, she'd been amused to discover that he'd taken a wife, a skilled healer who took the lion's share of wealth and reputation. A light-haired beauty, Sloan was Aidan's opposite in every way. She was dominant and outspoken, and perhaps more importantly, free in every sense of the word. Free to make her own decisions. Free to experience love and triumph instead of the steady diet of loss and suffocating restraint Aidan had been fed since the invasion of her homeland fourteen long years ago. Free to find her own self-worth, rather than being reduced to a captive pawn in Soren's father's corrupt regime.

She'd been quite fond of this invented Sloan. In the beginning, when she'd dreaded Soren's return and refused to cooperate in the trials, she'd been content to watch the strange couple interact. Kaian was kind and gentle. He was creative and playful. As far as she knew, he'd never so much as raised his voice to his headstrong wife. His beloved illusion had been expecting a child. A child! The thought chilled her as much as it astonished her. Even more extraordinary had been the way he'd prepared for his daughter's arrival. Despite the muted strength of his hands, he'd used them to build beautiful furnishings fit for a little princess. A sturdy cherrywood cradle, positioned in close proximity to their own unembellished bed; a miniature rocking horse with thick strands of dyed amber spider silk as a wild mane; an exquisite oak cathedra placed close to a matching crib for soothing and feeding a growing babe.

So desperate to believe she might bring some version of this sweet Kaian back with her, she'd fallen into a false, complacent ease. She began to reveal her presence in the quiet moments he found himself alone. How he rationalized this vision of a strange woman invading his space, she did not know. During those trials, Kaian had accepted her specter with bewildered courtesy. She'd sat with him while he crafted wooden works of art beneath his capable hands, saying nothing. Occasionally, he'd ask her why she came to him, tried to guess at what she wanted from him. Nothing, she'd answered him in her mind. Everything.

Kaian was as much an illusion as his beloved Sloan, merely threads of control pulled taut between reality and Somnolence. Eventually, one of the strings would snap, and the rest would quickly follow.

It began when she arrived one day to find him studying his visage in the washroom mirror. She'd met his gaze in the reflection when she appeared behind him, and the sudden transformation struck like a heavy hand to her gut. Warm, hazelnut eyes darkened to a sinister umber, his relaxed posture snapped straight and rigid, and abruptly, she was looking at Soren's reflection. A cold dread had broken over her skin, her unsteady feet already beginning to retreat. Panicked, she'd ended the trial early, waking to find herself drenched in sweat and gasping for air.

The next time she'd arrived, Sloan and the unborn child were gone. His befuddled mind had elucidated her death differently with every visit. Sometimes, she had been killed in a terrible accident. Other times, she had battled a brief illness and passed in her sleep. Frequently, she'd been brutally cut down by some nameless villain on her way home.

Sloan's absence seemed at odds with the landscape of his Somnolence, and his varied explanations led Aidan to believe that her demise was externally orchestrated, perhaps an attempt of his Convergence handler to draw his psyche closer to the surface. And it seemed to have worked. Soren grew more incensed and thrilled by her presence with each new trial. Slowly, the Kaian she'd begun to care for was yielding to Soren's more dominant persona.

Coordinated twin jolts of pain brought her out of her contemplative speculations. She jerked once, having been so lost in her thoughts that she'd not anticipated the official start of her post-trial treatment. Essiah stroked a hand through her hair as he shushed her, the other hand still depressing the plunger of the syringe embedded in her neck. At the other end of the table, a long, cylindrical rod in the Shaman's hands was slowly penetrating her, an excess of slick medicated lubrication easing the way in. She shuddered, already feeling the effects of the viscous stimulating drug Essiah had injected.

One hand slowly fucking her with his hateful implement, the other gently stroking the inside of her thigh, the Shaman nodded once to his apprentice. Essiah's cold, clammy hands cradled her head, and with deliberately firm movements positioned her so that Soren's sleeping form was in her direct line of sight.

"Very good," the Shaman praised, although she was not sure if it was her or his apprentice who had pleased him. "Now, my dear, you will keep your eyes exclusively on your betrothed until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?"

The first of many tears was already drawing a salty line down her temple to the soft pillow of her hair. "I understand," she answered stoically, flinching when the Shaman's rod was thrust deep enough to reach her cervix. Shifting so that he was just in her line of sight without obscuring her view of the comatose prince, Essiah shoved two fingers past her lips, forming a hook that forced her jaw wide. His utterly unimpressive cock was growing rigid with each slow stroke of his free hand.

Where the Shaman was tall and reed thin, his apprentice was short and stocky. His hair was just a shade too light to blend in with the upper echelons of House Thorne, a tribute to his maternal heritage. A stubby, upturned nose gave him all the appeal of a pot-bellied pig. It was unfair to judge a person by looks alone, but Essiah matched his perversions to his personality, and it seemed that for once, inner cruelty matched outer repulsiveness.