Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated parts belong to J.K. Rowling, and I, needless to say, am not J.K. Rowling.

A/N: ...and so, six months later, I have produced part two. It was actually originally written around maybe October, but I rather kept it to myself as I wasn't fully satisfied, and so not until Christmastime did I send it off to the lovely Dutchy (Scion of Kushiel) to be beta-read. Following that, she and I were both terribly busy, so only now am I finally putting it up. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot to say about this vignette, except for the fact that you will find it to be drastically different than its predecessor – it's actually meant to be an antithesis of sorts. I expect that in the end this will be a four- or five-part story; it's a study in possibilities, and so...well, we'll see.

Lastly, I owe a tip of the hat to whitehound for the phrase "coiling, recoiling", which I have inadvertently stolen from her. I wrote it into my first draft of this piece without a second thought, and not until recently when I was reading the latest update of Giving Extras did I realize that "Coil and Recoil" was the title of its first chapter :)


TRANSCENDENCE

PART II

AD LETUM

- - - - -

"He who fights with monsters might take care
lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

- - - - -

He has never seen such blackness.

His eyes, he knows, are opened wide – he knows this because he has pressed his fingers against the fleshy whites, and his fingers have come away wet (with what? with tears? but he hasn't cried since – ). Yet he flounders in the darkness, desperate and blind, and –

It yawns up to swallow him, cold and dreadfully promising against his cheeks; he feels the earth lurch beneath him, and now his fingers scrabble to gain purchase in the grass that is turning to soil that is turning to gravel that is turning to slick, slick stone that is – where? Where is the ground? It has slipped so suddenly away, and he is falling, he is falling –

He falls.

He spills forth on a torrent of icy fear, swept up and away, limbs flailing –

He flies forward, a cannonball ejected from its berth –

He plummets. He plunges. He sinks like a stone, swiftly down through the murky waters of malefaction.

Severus Snape, the shadows whisper. They are frosty and hissing in his ears, and every hair across the nape of his neck is standing on end, and every nerve along his spine is tingling in panic.

He has never known such an outstanding and inscrutable terror.

Severus Snape, the wind shrieks again – a hundred voices now, each one distantly familiar in a gut-wrenching, guilt-seething way. He shrinks beneath the accusation laced so cruelly through each spectral throat; he squirms away, coiling, recoiling, as wraith-like hands clutch at his arms and ankles, tugging him, pleading him –

A blaze of fire explodes across his temple. His fingers crawl towards it, towards the thin new line of heat, and his fingers come away wet. His nose (oh, that trembling prow to guide his sinking ship through darkness!) knows the iron-sweet reek of his own blood.

And there is his name again (Severus Snape – as if he could forget!), born wretchedly this time from the lungs of the river beneath him, a scornful expulsion of geyser-like rage. He is tossed upwards and over, pushed down and under and through, little more than a bobbing vessel upon a sea of interminable wrath –

And suddenly, again, he tumbles, thrust abruptly through some crack, some crevice in this cavernous not-place so deep underground – and now he is falling freely through a shaft of endless hollow vacuum airless black –

The belly of the pit, unworldly and unreal, rises up to meet him, and man and earth converge with skull-shattering force. His muscles convulse, and the marrow explodes from his bones as they splinter and snap with the ease of wooden wands, and his organs rupture in a surge of excruciating agony.

And yet – still it is there, the mocking name in his ears: Severus Snape. Still he is there, crumpled on the ground in a fragmented knot of suffering. Surely dead, he thinks, but no, he must somehow be living – for he exists. Indeed, how can he die, when his life has already long been extinguished?

A face swims before him, scale-fleshed and serpentine, flat red eyes glinting despite the absence of all light –

Severus blinks, and the image is replaced by yet another face he knows, sunkenly beautiful between its folds of long dark hair, the haunting eyes hooded beneath a predator's angrily furrowed brow –

"Bellatrix Lestrange," Severus gasps-croaks-whimpers, and her pale lips wring into a hungry smile. Severus stares witlessly up at her. "You are a monster."

She laughs, a shrill raking caw that echoes loudly as it bounces up the vaulted tunnel of her throat. "And what, may I ask, are you?" she croons. Rapidly she leans in towards him, and before Severus can think she is kissing him full on the mouth. Severus coughs, and finds he cannot breathe for the darkness that is now billowing voluminously down into his lungs.

"His," Bellatrix spits, her face still less than an inch from Severus's own. "You're his. You've always been his, and so you shall remain. You tried to pretend, Severus Snape –"

"No pretending," he chokes out – and he is choking, he is choking on the thick black smog that he can taste between his teeth and along his tongue and down his throat, congealing on the insides of his trachea –

"It's right here," she cries: her fingers close around his limp wrist to yank his broken arm triumphantly into the air, and in the utter darkness his milk-white forearm glows like a beacon. Emblazoned on his flesh is the black skull, the darkest of all marks, branding him forever as an Eater of Death.

"Death," Bellatrix hisses. "What is death? Do you believe in death, Severus Snape?"

And she throws back her head, and her voice rips forth in a bloodcurdling howl: she is a jackal, jaws agape, teeth dribbling with venomous spittle as she readies herself to consume her prey.

Severus screams. His throat is raw and puddling up with blood, and he knows that he will never stop screaming.