Hellfire - Autonomy

Chapter 3-2

Drake was back in his cabin, gazing at the strange crystal he’d taken from the Dark Acolytes. It glowed with an inner light and as Drake looked at it he could almost feel it reaching out to him. Cautiously he made use of his link to the Azimuth and through that reached out to the crystal. Almost immediately he felt a link establish, felt the crystal merging with him on some level.

After a few moments it felt as if the crystal was starting to tug at his consciousness, trying to pull him in a particular direction. The longer he held the crystal the stronger the pull became. He started to sense it was more than a direction, it was pulling his mind toward a location.

He pushed himself further into the link, strengthening it, and felt himself drift further into the crystal. That continued for a few seconds more until the link abruptly shattered in a flurry of bright red sparks. Drake jerked back, an almost physical pain striking his mind then fading as quickly as it had come.

He frowned, struggling to understand what had gone wrong.

‘It was a trap,’ sent the Azimuth, its voice feeling oily and dirty within his mind as it always did.

‘What do you mean?’ Drake sent back.

‘You were being drawn deeper and deeper into the crystal and it was stretching you further and further. Your mind was being drawn in and would have been scattered to oblivion. If I hadn’t stepped in you would have been left as a mindless husk.’

‘So I shouldn’t try that again?’

‘Definitely not!’

‘And yet… wouldn’t having me as a mindless husk suit you? Wouldn’t it give you control back?’

‘I have no idea. It might just leave me subject to the whims of a mindless husk, which is to say no whims at all. I could be trapped here doing nothing, being nothing, the rest of your natural life. I won’t say being rid of you is something I don’t crave but not at that cost. Especially as your life might not be…’

The Azimuth trailed off into silence.

‘Especially as my life might not be what?’

‘Well, judging by recent events it may well not be as long as might otherwise have been expected!’

Drake could sense the Azimuth was being truthful, but he wasn’t certain it was telling him what it had originally planned to, or the whole truth.

At another time he might have tried to force the issue, to pressure the Azimuth into telling him what it had originally been going to say, but he still had a splitting headache from the abrupt severing of his connection with the crystal.

All he really wanted to do for the moment was turn off the lights and lay in the dark until his head stopped throbbing.

Still… the crystal was something he would need to return to in the future. He added it to the ever-growing mental list of things which needed his attention.