A Psychic Videotape (I)

795.M31

Sigismund fell facedown into a river of blood.

Several seconds—or several centuries—later, he clenched his fists and pushed himself up.

He felt pain, and suffering—he thought it was like someone had driven tiny blades fitted with iron hooks into every inch of his skin, then bound them together with wire and tethered them to his three lungs.

Whenever he tried to breathe, those barbs began to torment him, and they were not inanimate things. Every time he breathed, they shrieked in jubilant delight, burrowing deeper into his flesh, scraping against his bones, turning the boundless pain into an endless tidal wave that swallowed him whole.

But if that were all, then to Sigismund, they would not deserve to be called suffering—remember? Those things were alive, and they could speak.

Every time he breathed, every time he moved, every second he forced his body to function, those barbs whispered to his heart.

Rogal Dorn is dead, they said.

Their tone was neither grim nor suspicious. It was certain and confident, filled with power.

Sigismund knew they were not lying.

He slowly rose to his feet, then bent over again and reached into the blood, which had already risen past his calves, searching for his weapon. He was fortunate; on his first try, his fingers touched a solid, dependable hilt.

Yet the sensation dazed him for a moment. Only when instinct moved his arm and dragged the sword free did he realize that the gauntlet on his right hand was gone.

His forearm was drenched in blood, a long and horrifying sword wound stretching from above his wrist along the outside of his lower arm, nearly to the elbow. Flesh and skin had been peeled back.

The bleeding had long since stopped. Pink-stained bone flickered in and out of sight within