Page 1 of A Soul to Embrace

I tried to fuck with a god, and this is what I get.

Coughing up another light spray of blood, Jabez fluttered his eyelashes against falling particles of debris. With his hands pushing upwards and his knees bent, he used his quaking legs and arms to hold back the weight bearing down on him. Cold sweat trickled down his temple, his neck, his chest. Darkness surrounded him, making it impossible to see through the thick shadows.

How long he’d been buried beneath the dirt, the rubble of his castle, and his own ego, he had no fucking clue. Hours, surely. Days, perhaps.

The last tendrils of his magic were draining from his body and threatened to weave out of him permanently. The pain prickling beneath his flesh was excruciating. It sparked through his veins like lava slowly trying to harden into crystals, and he felt it in the marrow of his bones, in the snapping fibres of his muscles, in every cold drop that expelled from him.

It couldn’t compare to the suffocating fear of his strength waning.

With all his might, he held onto the magic currently saving his life. The thick golden chain around his neck began to melt against his skin as he used up the last of its borrowed magic, and he let out a grunt through his clenched fangs. His skin blistered, but he fought against the need to scream.

The purple glow above flickered, his protective dome faltering. Every attempt at trying to teleport moved his dwindling mana in a different direction, and the rubble would creak and almost crush him – forcing him to reinforce the dome rather than escape.

Hissing through his fangs, the intense burns covering half his body, if not more, continued to ache. His melted skin felt tight, and his exposed bones drying was excruciating, but there was a numbness due to damaged nerves. Trying to heal his own body while keeping himself alive was proving futile – he couldn’t do both.

His mana flickered in its last ethereal embers.

The weight of his failures came crashing down upon him. The blood-curdling roar that escaped him was accompanied by pain no living creature could stay conscious for. Jabez instantly blacked out.

The first time he woke, claustrophobia choked at his burned throat.

The rubble above had created a pocket of room that allowed him to breathe, to thankfully keepliving.

A numbness rode his body, his mind. A sluggish hand slapped his own face as he palmed it of dust, so he wasn’t breathing it in. He attempted to move his other arm to assess the grainy ache in it, and felt his fingers twitch, the tug of his elbow bending at the command to bring it forward.

Nothing happened.

Jabez glanced down towards the unresponsive limb. Heat bled from his face before he tilted his head back.No,his mindwhispered, as he bashed the back of his skull and tapered horns against the cracked floor of his throne room.

No,he thought, bashing it once more, his eyes narrowing up at nothingness with utter spite.

“No!” he roared, tugging on his crushed arm until the fibres of his muscles, his tendons, his very skin began to rip. “I refuse! I didn’t do all that I have done just to die here!”

With his right arm, he reached above his head to clasp a piece of jutting stonework. He pulled with what strength he had left, and agony radiated around his knee. The pain informed him that his right leg from the knee down was also crushed beneath rubble.

No amount of pulling was going to free him.

“I have ripped myself from jaws,” he told himself, his eyes narrowing further into a tight glare. “Survive. I must survive.”

It’s what he’d always been doing.

With a snarl, he shoved the claws on his right hand into his left biceps, and sliced through skin, through muscles, through pain. He cracked his own bone, severed the few remaining tendons, and freed his arm from the wretched stone that kept him pinned.

Dizziness vibrated his sight when blood coursed from his severed arm, but he quickly placed his right hand over the stump. A red-and-black glow came from his palm, but it was weak and flickered.

A whimper of agony slipped from his blood-covered lips.

The use of his magic when it was already so drained was more painful than the removal of his own arm. Once he managed to stem the bleeding, he laid back against the ground to pant in short, shallow breaths. His vision blurred, but his eyelids flickered to combat it.

Don’t. Don’t fall asleep.Bile rose in his throat, his stomach wanting to punish him for going beyond the borders of his wretched Elvish abilities.

The thick, coppery smell of his own blood was sickening, but the repercussions of it being in the air were more gut twisting. He wasted what little magic he had left to boil it until it was dry, and a fever broke out across his cooling skin. He shivered.

But now that one limb was free, he reached above to grab the ledge of stonework once more. His arm shook, yet he pulled, and pulled, and tore at his own body until a high-pitched scream belted out of him. He didn’t stop, absolutely refusing to, until he tore away his leg from the knee down.

In the limited space, he couldn’t reach down to stem the bleeding. He bent his intact leg until he could place his left foot against the gushing stump, and concentrated. He saw no light this time, not with his eyes shutting against his will, but the wound thankfully closed.

I just need a corpse and to feed.He needed meat.Then I can regrow them.Or rather, transplant them.

---