Chapter 2 - Part X

Onion could feel the flames licking her fingers and the blood ooze from wounds caused by the glass shards still buried in her palms. Yet still her blood burned her insides and before Onion could instinctively retract her hands from the fire, her sense of self returned.

Halfway to the floor, Gregor was behind her now, holding her limp body up solely by the strength of his arms, now wrapped around her torso. The burning sensation coursing through her body had traveled further up her spine and exploded in fireworks of molten agony and pain trickled down her arms, radiating from her fingertips.

The searing heat engulfed her heart and she lost sense of herself a second time. Gregor had to adjust himself as Onion flopped like a rag doll and he again had to support the full weight of the small, but substantial Nü. Cradling the girl close to the ground, he was close enough to notice that the mahogany skinned mercenary had stopped breathing.

Once again Onion found sentience in a consciousness of another - if the congealing fog within her head could be considered consciousness. However, it was not Anita from whom she saw herself now. Blackness had enveloped her in a suffocating blanket and the stale stench of old blood and death accomplished hours ago permeated the nostrils. She was back in the dungeon.

The stone floor was cold and slick. Onion could feel the blood draining from the body, emptying every organ and flowing like a spring creek from the neck. The limp tongue had dropped into the coalescing pool of red and Onion could feel the life force essence coast the lips as it faded.

As Gregor began to set the motionless Onion on the floor, she gasped and returned to herself. She had just enough time to feel her boiling blood pump suffering up her neck and soon her face too was on fire.

Onion's body, blanched with white hot heat, was at a breaking point. For the last time, she left her body to its misery.

Her body was truly lost to her now, but the spirit roams on. Again, Onion became aware of her immobile existence in the decaying carcass, but the pain was muted in this incarnation. The body had ceased hemorrhaging blood, though it remained lifeless.

Constriction, not of the soul, but of the body, collapsed on Onion's existence like an olive press. She felt the corpse fold in on her, though never to the point of crushing. Cheek still flat against the unforgiving stone, she felt an unnatural sense of self when the pressure had ceased. If she could move she might even run her fingers through her hair one last time before...

Come Back! a voice called out to her, weak at first. Come back or you will perish! It pulled at her soul and tore Onion away from the rotting flesh and into oblivion.