The Great Silence

There is a reason we are called Shadowbinders, especially the ones who were obdurate in their training, like Joshua. They must face the shadow, their inner void, if you will. The thing that walks out of there is not the same as its pitiful previous form.

—The Shadowbinder Khronim Wellspring

Joshua stood outside of a great door, wracked with fear. There was… someone… cloaked in terrible color and with the marks of evil on their face, holding him by a shackle.

“I will release you now, and you will enter this chamber,” the figure commanded. “You must face your shadow.”

Joshua could not respond. Nervously, he simply complied, having a dread that could not be shaken well up around him. The shackle was released, and he faced the door.

Dredging up what little bravery he had left, he took one step closer. He began to walk through the door like it wasn’t there, like an amorphous material. However, when he proceeded fully through, it shoved him out of the doorframe.

It was solid.

Inside the room was nothing. No light, no sound. The only thing he could hear was his heartbeat.

Joshua walked in a direction he assumed to be forward, trying to find a wall.

There was no wall. However, he found something he couldn’t walk through, so that meant he also couldn’t feel anything here. He jumped, finding no ceiling. He sat down, finding no floor. No matter what he tried, he was still confined to the great nothing.

He stood in place. He wept, he cursed, he did anything, but nothing ever responded. He could only feel his tongue moving, not even his vocalizations.

For ten thousand years, he stood! There was no way to tell the time, so he could have been in there for ten seconds or ten thousand years! So there he stood, waiting for anything, anything to penetrate the nothing. Dreadfully, slowly, and enigmatically, he began to picture something.

A whisper could be heard. The faintest, most delicate whisper, and Joshua jumped at it.

The sound appeared somewhere else. He once again lunged at it. Slowly but surely, it began to get louder and louder. It got so loud he could not hear himself, now lunging only to stop the noise.

But there was nothing there. Not a single thing. Only noise.

The noise became a laugh, a roaring laughter like a drunkard hearing a joke at a bar. Joshua plugged his ears, but the laughter went on, louder, louder, louder!

“Stop!” he called out.

It did stop. For a moment, or a century, it stopped. However, the noise became a voice.

“Your form is weak,” it told him.

Joshua, bewildered, could not reply.

“Your form is weak,” it repeated.

He tried to form a response, but couldn’t. Now, it kept repeating, the laughter returning as well. Joshua ran to what he believed was a corner, curling up into a ball, weeping and sobbing.

As he stood and turned, he saw a light. The light was weak, but it approached him slowly. It doubled, like a pair of neon eyes. It still approached.

A primal sense of survival washed over him. Those eyes were something that would kill him! He had no other response than to freeze.

“Go away,” he told the neon.

The noise continued! That dreadful noise while that thing approached.

“Go away!” he shouted.

The noise went on, louder, louder, louder still!

Joshua gave a war cry before charging at it. He felt himself ram into the thing! It fell over, giving a terrible scream.

“Gods damn you!” he shouted to the neon thing.

He began to beat it until he could no longer see the light. The noise stopped. The noise! The noise! No more would he hear it!

But the noise returned, and more neon things appeared. Joshua felt something tugging at him. He knew this thing’s name: Khronim Wellspring. Joshua screamed curses at the neon things, beating them one by one, but they kept coming back.

“It’s useless to fight yourself, Khronim,” Khronim told him. He never called him Joshua, and usually he was a parasite tugging at his mentality. Now, though, he gave good advice.

“Let me in, Khronim,” Khronim pleaded.

Joshua still had his primal fear, so, involuntarily, he complied. Instantly, he felt a new thing flow into him: calm. Using the calm, he threw his hands out and made all the neon things disappear. The noise stopped.

The darkness was gone! Like he was never in the room, he appeared outside.

“I know you, Ylkran,” Khronim told the Shadowbinder.

“Three hours you were in the Chamber of Silence,” Ylkran replied.

“And three minutes it has been for me,” Khronim refuted.

The door was no longer there. The Chamber was never there, Khronim realized. The Chamber was his own weaknesses.