Do you have two alters named Dessin and Kane?
How could you know that? How have you invaded this mind?
“Sapphire!” Niklaus reaches for me as I’m thrown to the snow while he is tied to the trunk of a tree.
“Wait!” I say to the soldiers digging a hole next to my head. “P-p-please!”
Cricket! I need your help! I can’t explain now, but your system must be close by. The Vexamen Breed is going to…I stare at the grave being dug at an impressively fast rate.They’re going to bury me alive!
And why should we trust you?
I cough hysterically as my back hits the bottom of the hole, wet dirt and snow sprinkle down into my eyes. Niklaus yells my name through grunts. They’re beating him. I smell smoke. I smell an arctic death waiting our arrival.
DaiSzek and Skylenna are my friends. Please!
Cricket pauses. Shovels throw dirt over my body and face. I cough and gasp, thrashing and trying to break free of the ropes around my wrists. I thought I was too weak to do anything, but I was wrong. When you’re about to be buried alive, something else takes over.
Scream. He will come for you. Scream.
The choking, gagging scream barrels through my throat, bursting through the piles of falling soil. I keep screaming, desperate to be loud enough to get my father’s attention. I simultaneously try to tap into the Nightlung, reaching for it in my mind with a voiceless plea to take us anywhere but here. Take us home. Take us somewhere safe.
But it’s as if I’m reaching for the top of a mountain from the ground. Inside, I’ve lost the spark I need from lack of food, water, and sleep. I’m dying, and now, all I can do is scream.
My teeth grind against the gritty texture of ice and earth. It is scratching my eyes and burning my nostrils. I throw my head side to side, grunting in fury.
Now, calm yourself, strange feminine voice in our head.Cricket instructs.
How?! I’m being buried alive!
I feel the weight of the oncoming piles hit me hard. There is no panic quite like what I’m feeling now.
Breathe through your nose and turn your face to the side. You must create an air pocket.
I pinch my lips together and turn my face, unable to avoid the clouds of dirt wafting into my nose. I choke and screech again.
Can you cover your face?
No! Please! I’m going to die!
Niklaus screaming my name dissolves into the background of the wind scattering the thrrough the crisp tree branches and the grunting of the men killing me.
With a combustion of starlight, a source of heat and dark fur appear next to my head. The animal nuzzles against me, pushing her neck and head over my face.
“Dellilian protect Miss Sapphire.”
I gasp in relief, quick to bury my face into her warm chest to avoid inhaling anymore of the dust.
Stay calm. Conserve your air,Cricket reminds me.
I let Dellilian’s soothing heat pass over my shot nerves. And as the hole fills up, I remind myself that my parents have to be close by. The Vexamen Breed was targeting them. Watching them from a safe location nearby. My father would have heard my screams.
The weight is suffocating by itself. The blood supply to my hands is cut off as my bound wrists are smashed under my tailbone.
My burial eats up any remaining light.
And Dellilian and I are left to die here alone.
I count the seconds. I recite the lord’s prayer. I call for Krimson. I recall brief moments in my childhood that stand out. Uncle Warrose kneeling in front of Aunt Ruth and resting his head in her lap after finding Niklaus when he was taken. My mother telling Krimson funny memories from her time in the prison with our father to make him laugh after crying over never getting to meet him. DaiSzek bringing a dead raccoon into the house and leaving it at Grandpa’s bedroom door. DaiSzek carrying the carcass out after we all screamed because Grandpa stepped on it with his bare foot.
