by A L Hart
If every second mattered, how long had I spent rejecting it all in the beginning, who I was and what I could do?
There wasn’t just a pixie on my hands or an entire race of faeries. My own incompetence had crossed over to my world and taken the lives I’d wanted to protect the most.
And it wasn’t going to stop. The creatures here, they had no morale. Everything born of the Maker was but one big mistake, pouring in like a ticking time bomb. One tragedy after the next. From the twins down to myself. We were all some part of the Maker and the legacy he left us was deadly one.
Jinxy wouldn’t stop. No moral compass, a heart full of rage, and both our worlds in his line of sight—I finally understood what it was Tathri meant. It had to be me who ended this because, like the other Imperial Beasts, it was my design. My fate calling.
This time, I would answer.
“That-that look in your eyes—I love it!” Jinxy moved with a morbid, almost serpentined fluidity, stalking closer as his smile spread. “It says, ‘This is it, I will be the hero the world needs me to be.’ I commend that look, but if I may, might I point out, you’re making a grave mistake.” His hand rose towards Jera, eyes on mine. “You underestimate me.”
Jera dropped to her knees, clutching her head, and my heart sunk as a horrendous stream of screams poured from her.
“What are you doing to her?!—” I took a step towards him only to stop as he wagged a finger and tsked.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he chided. “How tender the Maker’s creations are, their minds so breakable. Like dried timber, how easy it would be to remove this female you are so wholesomely infatuated with from existence.” A laugh bubbled up, but ceased abruptly. “Apologies, I do recognize this is no laughing matter. I mean, it must hurt, huh?”
Jera crumbled forward, head meeting the warehouse floors. Saliva dripped, tears stained, the sound of torment breaking me again and again. Her humanity, it peeled away, her features having become fully demonic, bestial.
“What are you doing to her?” I whispered again, pushing down the blaze of rage kindling in my spine, my wings. Like Jera said, emotions brought on mistakes. I needed to think.
“Oh, I thought she might need a little walk down memory lane.”
The nature of her screams, that of sheer agony, told me everything, just what memory he’d entrapped her mind in. The pit, that of eternal fire.
Black threatened my vision, a red fury threatening to consume me. It was all I could do to breathe, look back to Jinxy and keep my eyes there, even as my wings fluttered restlessly, dark energy burning throughout me.
“Jinxy, please don’t do this,” I said quietly.
“Ah, but it’s fun—”
“You don’t have to be what the Maker made you.”
Jinxy’s smile faltered, anger resonating in the gold-amber slates. Those features, so pale and angelic, so innocent and clear, pulsed with a pungent emotion. Something as tortured as Jera was this moment.
“I’ve seen your memories,” I said and at his creased brows, I forced a small smile. “You’re not the only one who can get in another’s head.” Even if it wasn’t in the same manner. “I saw what he did to you. It was wrong. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“Our father was a mad being.”
“He was, and he asserted this onto you in an attempt to heal the one he loved. He never took into consideration that even the Imperial Beasts, fragments of himself, could become something more, something all their own. And you have, Jinxy. You’re more than just a fragment of him. You’re more than the broken pieces he assigned you.”
He flashed his teeth then, perfectly white, yet the show of aggression, I’d learned to read this particular brand from Jera clearly. It was that cornered animal, feral because that was all it’d known.
Our secrets, they never stay secrets forever. All that happened in the dark came out in the light. It didn’t stop us from fighting to keep them in a tightly locked vault, inaccessible to everyone. All the same, these secrets . . . they typically corrupted us, drove us all to our own form of madness. To have it lain bare and analyzed was a vulnerability we feared more than the secret itself.
“You cannot do that,” Jinxy hissed, the sound unnaturally akin to that of the animal he took after. “You cannot lure me into your world of light and friendship like you do all the others. I am not so naive.”
“I’m not luring you, I’m only telling the truth.”
“And what of it?! Do you think I don’t know what he did to me?”
“But Jera played no part in any of that.”
“Indeed, she did not. But this, this is for mere fun.”
“Jinxy, I’m asking you not to. Not with Jera. Please.”
He laughed, but there was a pain in his eyes, as if he wanted to stop but didn’t know how. “You’re asking me? And why should that mean anything to me?”
“Because you once told me you always wanted a brother. . . . And brothers don’t do this to one another.”
He was prowling once more, the wheels turning in his eyes. Walking a line of good and not knowing how to cross it. “The words I spoke in that coffee hub of yours was but a part of the grand act.”
“Was it?” I challenged. “Because when I visited that coffee hub of mine, I saw the string of mugs you hung in the shop, those from all the people we helped. I saw the light in your eyes everytime you laughed with us. A genuine light. But most of all, that Christmas morning, when it was clear you’d surfaced completely and it wasn’t just a ruse—you were reluctant to show your true self. You stayed in the form of Ophelia. You wanted to experience Christmas; you wanted the happiness to last.”
“I desire nothing more than to undo both worlds. We cannot fight our designs.” Yet there was little force behind his words, his eyes having fallen to the floors, Jera’s screams dying down.
“When you whistled that song to the pixie, the pixie recognized you meant her no harm. You wanted to help Breone as much as I did.”
“And yet you killed her.”
“Because I didn’t know any other way. I needed to enter the Shatters and if that was a prerequisite for saving my world, so be it. It’s my sin. If I was designed to heal and fix things, then how was it I did something so terrible?”
He made to speak, but only pressed his lips together, the frustration becoming something more. “I’ve planned my father’s demise for years.”
“Then . . . let me help you do it.”
His head whipped up, the stun consuming his face. “Why would you?” he asked, skepticism and hope warring in his gaze.
“Because.” I walked towards him then, and he stood frozen in his astonishment. “He hurt my family; he hurt my brother.”
Lips parting, the Imperial Beast appeared youthful, human.
“And you know best that that is something I don’t tolerate. So please, let me help you. Let me be there for you the way you were there for me.”
When he remained unmoving, I opened my arms to him, staring him in the eyes. “You hugged me once,” I said.
But the speechlessness seemed to have been etched into his body, immobilizing it. So I wrapped my arms around him anyway, surprised by how slight he was, frail, unexpectedly warm.
Behind him, I saw Jera, still crouched and heaving in pain but lucid. Her grey eyes through her ink curls bored into mine. Trust no one, they said.
Only each other, I returned.
The small dagger manifested in my grasp with ease, and as I thought about the faery-giants’ lives, Niv’s, I found I was without hesitation. I would be what I needed to be for my world, for the ones I cared about. The decisions that came along the way, they wouldn’t be a barrier for me ever again.
I plunged the blade with all my strength into the flesh of the Imperial Beast’s back, grimacing at the sensation, the pressure applied to break skin and muscles. But remorse wasn’t something I had a lot of as I shoved him forward and, conjuring another blade, I sent that into the creature’s chest with a grunt, dr
awing the bright ribbons of his dark energy into me.
Pain broken in his eyes like dawn.
“I want to say I’m sorry, brother,” I said, holding him up. “But I’d be lying.”
He opened his mouth but crimson came before his words, the blood trailing down the corners of his mouth.
I meant it. I wanted to feel remorse for this. I wanted to feel what was expected after bringing the death of another, but this . . . it was nothing like the pixie. This, it felt . . . good. I should have been concerned about that. I should have looked away, but as I felt his energy drawing into me, I found myself staring into his eyes, some innately proverse part of me wanting to see the moment the light went out.
“Ah, the thrill of witnessing death.”
I stiffened, blood running cold.
I sensed it, those yellow-pink ribbons, there behind me. But that couldn’t be right. Jinxy’s copy, it shouldn’t have been able to regenerate for at least an hour.
Across the floors, I saw the copy’s corpse, still wearing Lia’s face but very much dead.
I turned, only to find my body disconnected, motionless, my muscles refusing to cooperate.
Panic rose with the bile in my throat, my thoughts falling apart.
“You lose,” he chuckled behind me. “Many tend to forget that Imperial Beasts are quite intuitive creatures. A shame you didn’t inherit this trait.”
Jera’s screaming started back, filling the warehouse.
My heart clenched, anger pouring through me uselessly.
“These worlds will always be broken, Peter, so why not allow Damnation to run his course?”
That was it. Of course.
Jinxy was composed of three of the Maker’s emotions. Three beings. Torment, Death and Damnation. That day in the Shatters when someone had hunted Jera and I down, I’d sensed three of them, yet in the arena, Jinxy had been the only one recognized as our captors. Why hadn’t I recognized his dark energy in the field?
“As I said, you should never underestimate me,” he spoke whimsically. “It becomes a bit insulting, wouldn’t you agree?”
I tried to speak, but not even my lips would comply.
“For a moment, you really had me with your whole family speech, brother. But you’ve forgotten, I’ve been around far longer than you. I’m older, stronger, and quite used to betrayal. I suppose you are the Maker’s child.”
Silently, he came before me, eyes capering with triumph, victory and tinges of an insanity I knew could belong to none other than the Maker. “What a pity your words were lies. I would have helped save your world, but now I’m all the more eager to destroy it. As I will you.”
Paralyzed, numb, I stared up at him helplessly.
“I want to say I’m sorry, brother.” His smile was that of the deplorable abyss he was born in. “But I’d be lying.”
“Don’t listen to him, Peter,” Jera grated, facing off with the copy.
But I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to know, needed to finally have understanding, and what he was saying . . . it made sense. Perfect sense.
“My birth,” I wondered. “I have birth certificates. I know my parents.”
Jinxy tilted his head, golden eyes blazing, melting into amber as he regarded me studiously. “You do not understand our father at all, do you? You do not understand he is without limitations. A being who called himself into existence—” A chortle, hand covering curling lips as the laugh became effervescent. “You do not think he could have willed you to be born of such a human couple?”
My mouth worked, words failing, thoughts colliding into more confusion as I considered the mere idea. The Maker, as his final deed before sentencing himself to an eternal slumber, made one last fragment. One last piece of himself he deemed good.
“One last piece of himself he deemed good,” Jinxy agreed, guessing my thoughts. “And why, you may be wondering. Why would he do such a thing—was it a meaningless bout of insanity? Vanity, a want for his image to never fade? Or was it a mistake, like myself?” The beast prowled back and forth, gaze locked with mine and the more I stared into their golden depths, the more lost I became in this world itself, sure of nothing.
“No, no, Peter. He made you with one hope in mind: that someday you would fix all in which he’d broken. And what. A. Fantastic. Job you’ve done! What was the body count again? Five hundred thousand and climbing?”
“Their lives were never yours to protect, Peter,” Jera said in warning, still circling and watching the copy who wore Ophelia’s face. “You did what you could.”
Her words, I heard them, but the truth of the matter was louder—I’d done nothing at all. All of those lives lose, had I been more adamant, persistent—had I been what Tathri and Graves expected me to be, would the body count have been lower? Would it not have existed at all?
If every second mattered, how long had I spent rejecting it all in the beginning, who I was and what I could do?
There wasn’t just a pixie on my hands or an entire race of faeries. My own incompetence had crossed over to my world and taken the lives I’d wanted to protect the most.
And it wasn’t going to stop. The creatures here, they had no morale. Everything born of the Maker was but one big mistake, pouring in like a ticking time bomb. One tragedy after the next. From the twins down to myself. We were all some part of the Maker and the legacy he left us was deadly one.
Jinxy wouldn’t stop. No moral compass, a heart full of rage, and both our worlds in his line of sight—I finally understood what it was Tathri meant. It had to be me who ended this because, like the other Imperial Beasts, it was my design. My fate calling.
This time, I would answer.
“That-that look in your eyes—I love it!” Jinxy moved with a morbid, almost serpentined fluidity, stalking closer as his smile spread. “It says, ‘This is it, I will be the hero the world needs me to be.’ I commend that look, but if I may, might I point out, you’re making a grave mistake.” His hand rose towards Jera, eyes on mine. “You underestimate me.”
Jera dropped to her knees, clutching her head, and my heart sunk as a horrendous stream of screams poured from her.
“What are you doing to her?!—” I took a step towards him only to stop as he wagged a finger and tsked.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he chided. “How tender the Maker’s creations are, their minds so breakable. Like dried timber, how easy it would be to remove this female you are so wholesomely infatuated with from existence.” A laugh bubbled up, but ceased abruptly. “Apologies, I do recognize this is no laughing matter. I mean, it must hurt, huh?”
Jera crumbled forward, head meeting the warehouse floors. Saliva dripped, tears stained, the sound of torment breaking me again and again. Her humanity, it peeled away, her features having become fully demonic, bestial.
“What are you doing to her?” I whispered again, pushing down the blaze of rage kindling in my spine, my wings. Like Jera said, emotions brought on mistakes. I needed to think.
“Oh, I thought she might need a little walk down memory lane.”
The nature of her screams, that of sheer agony, told me everything, just what memory he’d entrapped her mind in. The pit, that of eternal fire.
Black threatened my vision, a red fury threatening to consume me. It was all I could do to breathe, look back to Jinxy and keep my eyes there, even as my wings fluttered restlessly, dark energy burning throughout me.
“Jinxy, please don’t do this,” I said quietly.
“Ah, but it’s fun—”
“You don’t have to be what the Maker made you.”
Jinxy’s smile faltered, anger resonating in the gold-amber slates. Those features, so pale and angelic, so innocent and clear, pulsed with a pungent emotion. Something as tortured as Jera was this moment.
“I’ve seen your memories,” I said and at his creased brows, I forced a small smile. “You’re not the only one who can get in another’s head.” Even if it wasn’t in the same manner. “I saw what he did to you. It was w
rong. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“Our father was a mad being.”
“He was, and he asserted this onto you in an attempt to heal the one he loved. He never took into consideration that even the Imperial Beasts, fragments of himself, could become something more, something all their own. And you have, Jinxy. You’re more than just a fragment of him. You’re more than the broken pieces he assigned you.”
He flashed his teeth then, perfectly white, yet the show of aggression, I’d learned to read this particular brand from Jera clearly. It was that cornered animal, feral because that was all it’d known.
Our secrets, they never stay secrets forever. All that happened in the dark came out in the light. It didn’t stop us from fighting to keep them in a tightly locked vault, inaccessible to everyone. All the same, these secrets . . . they typically corrupted us, drove us all to our own form of madness. To have it lain bare and analyzed was a vulnerability we feared more than the secret itself.
“You cannot do that,” Jinxy hissed, the sound unnaturally akin to that of the animal he took after. “You cannot lure me into your world of light and friendship like you do all the others. I am not so naive.”
“I’m not luring you, I’m only telling the truth.”
“And what of it?! Do you think I don’t know what he did to me?”
“But Jera played no part in any of that.”
“Indeed, she did not. But this, this is for mere fun.”
“Jinxy, I’m asking you not to. Not with Jera. Please.”
He laughed, but there was a pain in his eyes, as if he wanted to stop but didn’t know how. “You’re asking me? And why should that mean anything to me?”
“Because you once told me you always wanted a brother. . . . And brothers don’t do this to one another.”
He was prowling once more, the wheels turning in his eyes. Walking a line of good and not knowing how to cross it. “The words I spoke in that coffee hub of yours was but a part of the grand act.”