Final Truth

Chapter 68: Free

Julia's point of view:

I'm falling.

Falling and screaming as my stomach tries to claw its way up my throat from the descent, the darkness swallowing me up and robbing me of sight.

This is it, I think to myself through the terror. There's no way I can focus through this. I'm going to hit the bottom and die. Splatter on impact like spilled ink on a piece of parchment.

The only thing I can make out is the doorway that grows further as I fall, a beacon of light that leads to the previous part of the test growing smaller and smaller with each passing nanosecond.

My stomach is going to push my heart out of my throat once I'm done screaming, that much is sure, and I'm flailing and clawing at nothing to stop the fall in vain. I'm going to die, I will die, I'm going to shatter like glass and someone will pick up the shards and make a mosaic, a testament to what happens to people who can't be bigger than their own fears.

I become fixated with that image of me in a mosaic, and I hope they get my look of terror just right so that everyone will know what Henley has done, and what I have done to myself. I hope they get my scream in the image, soundless to them but endless to me, get my green eyes that have grown dim with hopelessness and defeat. I hope they get the position of my crumpled and broken body right, see how I fell on my back like a beetle, unable to get back up.

The whistling in my ears has become a shout, an almost auditory protest at what I'm thinking. I seem to disappear from my own body again and see myself from above, a falling and screaming mass that shrivels in the face of terror like any other fool.

Pathetic, I think. Get a grip. You've been through worse. Save yourself.

I try to focus, try for the life of me to understand where I am so I can stop myself from dying when the bottom comes. Beg and plead with my own powers to come through for me one last time.

Ever so slowly, a static-filled picture enters my head of my surroundings, too blurry to understand at first before clarity bursts through in mercy.

I'm falling through a rather narrow cave, but it will open much wider in a few seconds to a cavern at the bottom. There's stone rocks waiting for me, but next to them, a small pool of water deep enough to handle a fall from this height.

Fear seizes me at the idea of being in water again, but I must quell it, for my only other option is death on the stones.

I have but seconds to make a choice, and so I call upon the rushing wind surrounding me to submit to my will, to carry me away from the rocks at the bottom.

The cave is opening up now, and I have one final thought before I force the wind to blow me away from the stone floor and into the small pool:

I don't want to be a mosaic.

I hit the water flat on my back with such a blunt force that I'm sure I'm paralyzed for a moment, unable to feel anything except the stinging licking away at my skin and the frigid cold numbing me.

I want to panic, for again I'm underwater and unable to move, but I can't let myself do it, can't be weak again. The only thing that's going to save me is myself.

By sheer power the water around me becomes a willing servant to my hands, and I move them through the pain in a manner that causes me to rise from the bottom to the surface in blinding speed.