Left a mark

TW: for death, pain, loss of control of one's body
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Nel's memories of the battle were fragmented and disjointed. She fought, her friends fought, the Devourer fought. There was searing pain, then darkness. Then light and searing pain again. Sometimes she was on her feet. Sometimes she was twisted and folded at unnatural angles inside a creature's sharpened rib cage. The pain and fear would fade to dark nothingness, then air would fill her lungs again and she'd awaken, barely alive, to agony and striking out with frenzied claws until impossibly large clawed hands dug into her in turn, ripping out flesh, muscle, sinew, and bone. More pain. More darkness. A feeling like floating on a dark ocean. Then a mad glee worse than pain. She was on her feet again and the pain that rippled through her fed a bloodlust she was powerless to stop. She looked at the faces of three beloved friends -- with whom she'd fought side by side and who had tried to save her--and she felt a hatred and a hunger for their pain, their deaths, and to make them like her. She wanted to glory in her agony and in theirs. She wanted to drown the world in it.
 
Then Nita death the Devourer a killing blow, and with its death its link to her and control of her soul stopped. She knew that it was its will, it's bloodlust and twisted glee that had pushed aside her own will and soul and filled her. But she also knew that she could never again go back to a time before she understood the mind of that creature--and she was terrified to think about what kind of mark that knowledge might leave.
 
She was alive -- sort of. She was present. She was herself. She got to go home from the adventure to her family -- something not everyone got. She knew she should be grateful for the chance to go on living -- or at least existing in this world -- and she was. But she hated the red eyes, the cold body, the silent and motionless heart that would all serve as reminders of the Devourer and the demon it served -- forever linking her to them.