"How many times has it been now, child? A hundred? A thousand? No. Not that many I think. Perhaps just a few falls short."
The voice rang out. All consuming. Grasping. The only thing he could focus on. The only thing that he could hear.
"You have ventured beyond the veil so many times. Felt the caress of my touch. Heard the song of my voice. So very nearly embraced me."
A long pause.
Eternal almost.
"But you pull back, each and every time. Is it a choice? Is it you?"
Edric took a sharp, sudden breath. He felt his lungs fill. He felt his muscles tense. Every fiber of his being suddenly jolt into life once more. The wound in his side burned with pain, the cut across his throat ached with agony. He felt every hurt that had been inflicted upon him. Felt every little jolt and needle of pain that had been dolled upon him within his body.
It was a torture, a press.
Yet it came second to the weight that he felt on top of him.
The crushing, horrid weight of cold flesh that lay atop of him.
Eyes snapped open, gaze, flickering around in panic. A hand, icy and dead lay resting against his side. An arm splayed over his face. A torso crushing upon his legs. Panic set into his heart, his arms thrashing, pushing, pulling. He threw away the weight that lay atop him, digging up and up in the sheer and utter terror that grasped his heart.
He pushed and pushed, until finally a flicker of light shone upon his head. Air pulled into his lungs, fresh but tinged with the scent of rotten corpses. His chest rose and fell, his eyes flickered around him...and finally he realized where he was.
"No...no it's something else."
The voice rocked within his mind, echoed within his skull as he looked around the grave which surrounded him.
He sat within a pool of dead. Dozens, hundreds of corpses sprawled within pit. Their faces were marked with horror. Terror. No absolution given to those who had fallen. No prayer offered to those who lay here. Edric had been tossed into a wallowing pool of carcasses. Cast-offs that were due to be buried within mire and muck.
And he had no idea how he'd gotten here.