wildnight | Memory 22

The arena. (trivial negative)(ref: THK 258-270)

Description: Yeine's PoV. You know the drill.

So Scimina decides to torture Sieh to strong arm Yeine. Night falls, and Naha shows up quite in a rage about the whole... torturing his son thing. It seems like he'll crush everyone, but the power that binds him to serve the Arameri is too strong, and he takes Sieh's place as the victim. Scimina explains that the Enefadeh are difficult to damage since they heal immediately, but they have weaknesses, etc, etc,

Light blazed down from the ceiling, as if someone had opened a colossal window at high noon. There was no opening in the ceiling, though; this was the power of the gods, who could defy the physical laws of the human realm and create something out of nothing. After the relative dimness of Skys soft pale walls, this was too bright. I raised a hand in front of my watering eyes, hearing murmurs of discomfort from our remaining audience.

Nahadoth knelt at the lights center, his shadow stark amid the chains and blood. I had never seen his shadow before. At first the light seemed to do him no harm—but that was when I realized what had changed. I hadn't seen his shadow before. The living nimbus that surrounded him ordinarily did not allow it, constantly twisting and lashing and overlapping itself. It was not his nature to contrast his surroundings; he blended in. But now the nimbus had become just long black hair, draping over his back. Just a voluminous cloak cascading over his shoulders. His whole body was still.

And then Nahadoth uttered a soft sound, not quite a groan, and the hair and cloak began to boil.

"Watch closely," murmured Scimina in my ear. She had moved behind me, leaning against my shoulder like a dear companion. I could hear the relish in her voice. "See what your gods are made of."

Knowing she was there kept my face still. I did not react as the surface of Nahadoth's back bubbled and ran like hot tar, wisps of black curling into the air around him and evaporating with a rattling hiss. Nahadoth slowly slumped forward, pressed down as if the light crushed him beneath unseen weight. His hands landed in Siehs blood and I saw that they, too, boiled, the unnaturally white skin rippling and spinning away in pale, fungoid tendrils. (Distantly, I heard one of the onlookers retch.) I could not see his face beneath the curtain of sagging, melting hair&mdashbut did I want to? He had no true form. I knew that everything I had seen of him was just a shell. But dearest Father, I had liked that shell and thought it beautiful. I could not bear to see the ruin of it now.

Then something white showed through his shoulder. At first I thought it was bone, and my own gorge rose. But it was not bone; it was skin. Pale like T'vril's, though devoid of spots, shifting now as it pushed up through the melting black.

[...]

The arm wrenched its way out of Nahadoth with a sound that reminded me of cooked meat. That same juicy, popping sound when one tears off a joint. Nahadoth, on his hands and knees, shuddered all over as the extra arm flailed blindly and then found purchase on the ground beside him. I could see now that it was pale, but not the moon-white I was used to. This was a far more mundane, human white. This was his daytime self, tearing through the godly veneer that covered it at night, in a grisly parody of birth.

He did not scream, I noticed. Beyond that initial abortive sound, Nahadoth remained silent even though another body ripped its way out of his. Somehow that made it worse, because his pain was so obvious. A scream would have eased my horror, if not his agony.

Notes:
+So this is a painful one, obviously. It's trivial negative mostly because it's not extraordinary for Naha at the time it happens. It will be pretty extraordinary for Naha in Aather, and the normalcy of it will not actually make it better.
+I am totally a ho and prioritized this so I could link it in heart game. I'm that cool, aw yeah.
+NOT SAFE FOR SHARING. On the scale of mildly mindbending to total insanity, it's not Naha's worst. And it does take place in the mortal realm. But still... not safe for mortal consumption.

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