Pages of Pain — Troy Denning

SOME QUESTIONS ARE BETTER LEFT UNASKED...

There is a void in my chest where once had a heart, and from this emptiness springs all the suffering in the Multiverse. At first, the Pains are like a kiss, hot and breathy and welcome. They reach out with long, cajoling fingers and make my bones hum with delight. I warm to the touch and, though I know what must follow, yearn for more. My flesh tingles and flushes and shudders, and the more my ecstasy builds, the more the void pours forth until bliss rolls half a turn and becomes sweet agony.

Then my body nettles with a blistering-itch no ointment can heal, and the greater my woe, the more scalding the anguish that seethes from the empty well inside. I boil in my own sick regret, and I cannot staunch the flow. It billows up in white plumes and blanches my bones with sorrow. I burn with the shame of a thousand evils I cannot recall, and still the well pours forth . . .