Discordant Note | TBATE

Prologue: A Gamble

???

I sagged against my irons, the strength required to hold myself upright too precious to waste on something so trivial. The cold metal bit into my sallow skin, my wrists raw and aching from my time spent lashed to the deep dungeon wall. My state was undignified. I couldn't see my body: hadn't for what felt like an age. But I knew I withered like a rose left in the sun without water or care. My power and will ebbed away more with each day I spent chained.

But all of my strength, everything I could muster, was focused on a far more pressing fight than maintaining a facade of dignity.

The invading tendril of mana dipped and weaved through my mind, seeking and probing every which way. Every place it brushed sent sharp fear through my body, like pressing a thumb into an open wound. I couldn't let this force subsume me any more than it already had.

It was a constant struggle. Whenever the probe got close, I desperately pulled my secrets deeper. I was like a child desperately holding onto their belongings, clutching them close for fear their parents would rip them away.

I pulled aside, fearfully watching the tendril slither ever closer to me. The same game had been played hundreds of times before, all with the same outcome. But I couldn't let myself lose without a fight.

My concentration slipped, the strain of holding every puzzle piece that made me whole too much to bear. I let out a breath, something that I only distantly registered.

My lapse cost me. Cost me dearly.

The tendril suddenly swerved, lurching toward a memory I had been too slow to recover. It surged after the retreating knowledge like a wolf that had caught the scent of blood, hounding its target with all the tenacity of a predator seeking its prey.

Panic rose in me. I pulled at the memory, hauling it along back with everything else that made me me. I couldn't let him have more. The strands of emotion and everything it meant to me retreated quickly at my command, dipping and weaving back toward the deepest bulwarks of my mind.

The chase continued on: my pull dodged and weaved through the recesses of my self, whipping and turning around metaphysical walls and barriers. I pulled every trick I could muster to the fore, doing everything in my power to get it away from the hounding evil.

A wall of solid thought barred the way, cutting off the tendril's path with a mental thud. The tendril didn't stall for a moment, burrowing through my defense like a worm through the soil. It burst through the other side, having not slowed down at all.

My determination didn't waver any longer. Another wall covered my retreat. Another. Then another. And another.

The bastions I had set down in my mind, fit to thwart even the most stalwart of asura, were bypassed with contemptuous ease. The snakelike extension of mana burrowed through one, wove out of the way of another, and eliminated some in a burst of power.

Switching tactics-even though I knew it was for naught-I dug pits in my mindscape. I ravaged the 'land' behind me, carving out tracks and creating ravines to bar the way forward.

I could almost feel my pursuer's amusement as they bridged each and every gap, circumvented every obstacle, and closed the metaphysical gap with each passing second.

I wasn't fast enough; wasn't strong enough. The tendril pursued with dogged determination, stretching on and on with a surety I lacked. It knew-he knew-that my moment of weakness had cost me. It was a crucial error.

And soon enough, the disgusting smokey black tendril caught up with my memory. It wrapped itself around the retreating form, attaching itself like a parasite as I tried desperately to erect another pointless wall. A scream rocked my mindscape as sundering pain lanced through my everything. The tendril pulsed with mana, sucking away my memory as a leech drained blood.