by Emma Hamm
“What is happening?” she whispered. “What are you doing to me?”
Her voice sounded warped. It was muffled as though she were attempting to speak through water.
“We chose to spare you the fight.” The male voice came from beside her. He was an unusually handsome man and shorter than Wren by a few inches. His hair was so black that it reflected the light as blue. Intelligence glittered in his eyes as he stepped to her side and looked up at her.
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
Wren turned to look back at her body as it still struggled against the restraints. “One of the Five.”
He nodded. “The second brother. You may call me Kairos.”
“Not your real name, I imagine.”
“I am not known to be foolish.” His reply confirmed her suspicion.
Wren thought for a few moments before asking, “So you’re Time?”
He looked at her in shock. “How did you figure that out?”
She gestured around them. “This.”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
“I know,” she answered before asking, “Where are we?”
“A place that is not a place. An In-Between if you will. You are with me, not with them.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s not very clear.”
“Answers rarely are.”
He had a point. Wren found that his presence beside her made the scene unfolding slightly easier to watch. Lyra’s eyes were massive as she stared at the struggle, and Jiminy was visibly holding onto the back of a chair to force himself not to move.
“Is it usually this violent?”
“Never before,” the man beside her replied.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Wren’s head was tossed back, her lavender hair flying around her. Her eyes snapped open and her jaw stretched impossibly wide. Out of her mouth crawled thick black smoke that erupted out of her body and into the glass container in a pillar of darkness.
“Name yourself,” Gaia said firmly.
A laugh echoed in the container. The smoke had finally stopped billowing out of her mouth. Now it hung above her limp body attached only by a thin tendril of black that disappeared into her throat.
“Name yourself, Demon.” This time Wren could feel a tingle of power that swept over her. She could feel the echoes of it without being inside her body. The words that came out of Gaia’s mouth offered no option of denial.
E growled, and the smoke slowly took on a form. Faces could be seen in the swirl of the smoke, but no face ever remained consistent. They stretched and warped the darkness that was her creature.
“Legion.” The word was whispered, but it sounded like a scream in Wren’s head. “Legion, for we are many and one.”
“Ah,” Gaia said quietly. “So you are a Myriad.”
“Myriad. Legion. Legend. Monster.” The words were each said with a different voice. “Many names, one voice.”
“I thought your kind had died out long ago.”
“The last.”
“You were brought here to help us,” Gaia said. “Will you submit?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“For her.” A face formed in the smoke and looked directly towards Wren. She didn’t believe that anyone in the room could see either she or the small man beside her. But E could see her. The face was not familiar, and she found herself desperately wishing that it was. She should be able to recognize the creature that meant so much to her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
The face nodded once and gave her a sad smile. Then it disappeared back into the swirling mass of faces.
“Your host? Helping us will only prolong her life,” Gaia said.
“Or end it prematurely.”
“No. Malachi will tear this world apart if we do not stop him. By refusing to help us you are ensuring her death.”
“Everything dies. We will protect her.”
Wren made a soft sound. She pressed her hand against her mouth, but E had heard her again. A few other faces formed in the smoke to turn and look at her. An older woman, a young man, and a middle aged man stared at her and all smiled at the same time.
Gaia was growing frustrated with the creature that didn’t provide her with the answers she wanted. Wren could almost hear the ticking in her head as she attempted to find a question that would force E to give her what she wanted.
It was Burke that finally spoke. When he did, his voice was softer than Gaia’s but no less powerful in its tone.
“Why did you hide what you were from her?”
All of the faces turned as the smoke began to agitate. “Do you question us?”
“I do.” Burke stepped towards the glass, his hands fisted at his sides. “You caused this. You kept yourself hidden from her. From the one person you swear to protect. Everything you have done has brought her to this point.”
“You do not know what I am.” E’s voice was one voice that echoed with hundreds of others, all overlaid with each other. “I am not one creature, but more than you can comprehend. I am souls gathered for many years and collected into one being. I am every creature that has ever existed and more.”
“And you still were too selfish to tell her what you were.”
Wren could see what Burke was doing. He was goading E into telling him its reasoning by angering it. However, she also knew that E was far too intelligent to fall into that trap. She had tried to do the same thing to it when she was just a child.
“You believe I have been selfish?” E rumbled.
“Yes. Without a doubt, you have been selfish and using her.”
“You’ve never stated this before, boy.”
“You’ve never given me the chance. Save her, watch over her, I’m the one to look after her in your absence. And yet, still, you selfishly use her. What kind of a protector are you?”
Wren hadn’t heard those words before. She could see Burke was visibly angered as his cheeks stained a mottled red. But since when had E ever spoken to Burke without her?
“Do you truly believe that the human mind has the capacity to hold hundreds of other minds within it? Do you know what that would do to Wren?” E remained calm. It was an even counterpart to Burke’s rage.
Burke appeared to be confused by E’s statement.
Continuing, the black smoke changed its voice from hundreds to one. An elderly woman’s voice that Wren knew very well. It had been the voice that rocked her to sleep at night and soothed her through every pain she had lived through.
“The human mind is like a house. A cup full of water does not affect it. One magical being is simply a cup of water. But if you fill that house with hundreds of cups of water that flood all the levels until the human mind is gasping for breath, then the human mind is the first to die.”
“Are you trying to say that if you had revealed yourself entirely to Wren, then she would have been overwhelmed?”
“That is not a strong enough word,” E murmured. “Wren’s mind would have snapped like a fishing line attempting to hold up an elephant. She would no longer be human, she would not be part of me. She would have fallen prey to the worst kind of insanity. Her own mind would have feasted upon itself until her soul ceased to exist. It is a fate worse than death.”
Burke’s head turned as his gaze speared towards Gaia. “Then what have we done?”
The blonde woman swiped her hand through the air. “Wren is perfectly capable of holding such a creature. There will simply need to be careful precautions taken. A few walls placed in her mind so that she remains separate should do the trick.”
“Walls cannot stop me,” E said. “My power is too great. She is aware of what I am, and the knowledge will constantly draw me towards her. It is in my nature to hoard souls.”
“You think I am not powerful enough to contain you?”
“No one can contain me. I have no physical form. Every wall has a crack that I can slip through. I have cheated death and swallowed life for
thousands of years. Even you are not capable of preventing that.”
Silence fell in the room as shock washed over everyone.
Wren couldn’t help but step into the conversation. She knew very well that no one but E could hear her and even then it might be questionable whether it could respond. But it was worth a try.
“E, are you saying when the Five put me back in my body I’ll die?”
The smoke twisted until more of the faces could look at her corporeal form outside of the glass. “I do not know what will happen. I believe the blackouts will be much more often. I have never had a host which shared my minds.”
“So what do we do?”
The question hung in the air between the two of them.
“There’s only one way to find out what will happen,” E said softly.
Burke’s hand rapped on the glass. “Who are you talking to?”
“So you want me to jump back in?” Wren said with a nervous laugh. “Just like how we learned to swim?”
“Just like that, dear one.”
Burke hit his fist against the glass once more. Time seemed to warp again for her, and Wren realized that Kairos was putting her back into her body. This uncomfortable feeling of not knowing where she was or who she was now became familiar to her confused mind.
The last thing she saw was Burke’s face twisting into rage. Slowed down to a fraction of a second, the sight was enough to make her question every decision she had made thus far.
CHAPTER 7
Sand was crusted in the edges of her eyes. Wren did not want to open them. She wanted to rub them fiercely until the feeling disappeared. She tried to lift one of her hands, but it was firmly held against the smooth surface of the chair she was seated in.
Slowly, she blinked her eyes open. It took a while for them to focus, and even then it was difficult for her brain to understand what she was looking at. She was staring at her own legs. That meant she must be looking down, but she couldn’t understand why she would be looking down at her own legs.
Why wasn’t she horizontal if she was sleeping?
Memories started to spark in her head like fireworks going off in the sky. E explaining what it was, the leap that tossed her conscious mind back into the vessel of her body. And then nothing.
She blinked harder. Her shoulders ached as feeling slowly returned. All of her weight was supported on her shoulders as her torso leaned forward and hung limply over her lower half.
Flexing her fingers proved to be difficult. In fact, moving anything appeared to be far more of a chore than it logically should be. She blinked her eyes a few more times.
“Everything working?”
She was unable to respond verbally. She had always spoken to E out loud, and though she tried to think the words at the creature, it didn’t seem to hear her. At least she was in control over her own body.
“I’ll take that as a no. Try to breathe, little one.”
The order wasn’t an easy one to follow. She continued to focus on forcing her body to breathe. Eventually, she was able to open her mouth enough to let out air. Her lips parted as a long low wheeze expelled from her body.
The movement was the key to the lock that held her body down. She shook her head hard and closed her mouth as drool threatened to leak out of it. Wren attempted the immensely difficult job of sitting back up, but the only thing she managed was a slight twitch of her fingers.
She heard a thump that sounded familiar but could do nothing other than shake her head. A soft clink of glass warned her just before a hand touched her shoulder.
“Wren?”
Jiminy’s whiskey-smooth voice soothed the ringing in her ears. He sank onto his haunches before her and gently pushed her weight backwards. He held her in place then and ducked his head to look into her open eyes.
“Is it you?”
She took strength from the warmth of his hand against her shoulder. Slowly, she inhaled again. A nod felt as though it required the remaining store of energy inside her. She managed the smallest of movements.
A breath of air whooshed out of Jiminy as he nodded slowly along with her. His relief was palpable.
When she did not speak, he began to grow worried again. His hands reached for hers and gripped them a little too tightly. Her hands looked delicate inside his, she noticed. She had never noticed before. Wren’s hands were calloused from work and tiny scars decorated the tips of her fingers from mishaps in her Juice making. His were even more worn by the world than hers.
“Your hands are freezing,” he murmured as he leaned closer to her. “Are you alright?”
She didn’t know if she was alright. She felt as though she was still a little disconnected from her body. But at least this time she was the one holding the controls.
“Just-” She tried to speak and had to pause for a few moments. Her fingers flexed within his grip. “Just feel odd.”
“I’m not surprised.” Jiminy’s expression darkened. “They never should have done this to you.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“They should have let you know what would happen. They should have known that this would be a risk.”
She swallowed hard and nodded in response.
The sound of heels clicking against the floor resulted in Jiminy swearing viciously before looking over his shoulder. Gaia stood behind him with her hand on her hip.
“That proved to be highly successful. Thank you for your cooperation, Wren. I believe we have enough evidence to be certain that you are part of the prophecy.”
“At what cost?” Jiminy’s voice cut through the air around them as though this words were made of steel.
“Excuse me?”
“At what cost? We don’t know what breaking through E’s barriers has done to her. You might have killed the first piece of our puzzle.”
“Then we must hurry to find the others.”
Gaia turned and left the room. Jiminy’s eyes did not stray from her back. If looks could harm, then Gaia would have been left in ashes on the floor. Wren was glad that Jiminy was a Dream Walker and not the kind of creature that could do bodily harm easily.
“I’m fine now,” she whispered. Although it still sounded as though her voice was distorted. She raised a hand and marveled at the movement. The hand was in front of her, and she had not felt it lift. Strange how the mind could be twisted into not realizing that it was moving itself.
Whether this was the dreaming world or reality was another question she did not know if she could answer.
“You’re not fine.”
She stared into Jiminy’s angry gaze. For a few moments, she thought she might agree with him. She wasn’t fine. In fact, she was anything but fine. But Wren didn’t have the luxury of not being fine. She didn’t have the luxury of a lot of things in her life.
“I will be,” she said and squeezed his hands as hard as she could.
“You’re too cold. We need to get you warm.”
She could see the gears turning in his head. If he was threatening to put her in a bath again, she wouldn’t argue. But he was far too concerned about her for his own good.
“It’s unlike you to be worried about me, Jiminy,” she said with a half smile. “I can take care of myself.”
“You can’t.”
“E has always taken care of me.”
“E wanted me to help.”
She arched a disbelieving brow. “Now that will happen only when Hell freezes over.”
“You know so much about Hell of course.”
“I do have thousands of creatures in me apparently. One of them is bound to know something about Hell.”
Jiminy shook his head at her but left the argument there. He stood slowly and drew her up from the chair. The ties which had previously bound her slithered to the floor with a thump.
As soon as she stood, her head swam. Blood rushed towards her feet and sparks danced around the edges of her vision. She had never been one to faint so easily, and it was discouraging
that she had become so weak. It did not bode well for her future.
“Jiminy,” she murmured. “I think I’m going to pass out.”
“No you aren’t,” he responded as he pulled her body against his chest. “You’re going to be fine. That’s what you said.”
She pressed her forehead against the wide expanse of his chest and inhaled slowly. Her head swam all the more as the warm scent of his soap filled her senses. His heat sunk into her skin as his hands swept up the length of her back.
The fleeting memory that had been so difficult to remember she now saw clear as day. The cliff. The feel of his body against hers. The low press of his lips against hers and the blush that had swept up her toes and into her cheeks.
She had kissed him. Or… she had in a dream. But he was a Dream Walker, so it was entirely possible that he had been there. Strange how her reality had been bent so much in the past few days.
Slowly, she drifted out of her mind and back into reality. He was murmuring nonsense in her ear and continued to hold her weight easily. Her fingers flexed against his heart as she stirred.
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
“No, you’re not.”
“We’ve already had this conversation.”
“I believe I was right.”
“I’ll never admit it.” She pushed away from him as she said it. Standing on her own two feet made her confidence raise at least a little bit.
“Wren.” He reached out for her before thinking better of it. She watched as he curled his hands into fists and stuffed them into the front pockets of his pants. “I’ll show you to your room.”
They walked together in silence down the winding hallways. The lights were too bright against her eyes, but she squinted through the pain. Wren refused to appear weak even though her knees were shaking.
Her hand remained solidly upon the walls as she walked. The soft sound of skin sliding against plaster was the only sound between them. Jiminy remained stoic and silent until he opened the door to one of the many rooms.
Wren was completely lost. There were too many turns for her stressed mind to keep track of in addition to the pounding of her head.
“In here,” Jiminy said quietly.