by M. Street
Twinkling, dimensional disco balls of light filling the room distracted me from Dev. “What is this place?” I asked, doing a meticulous three-sixty. I used survival protocol to scope the untimely diversion. Masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, and Degas rested on black velvet easels for hypnotic, intimate enjoyment. The impressionistic works created the most trippy auras.
Piercing worries of carrying more than just me sharpened my mind and body. Remembering what Safe taught me in the Black Forest, I walked over to the door. I placed my hands against the solid wood frame. Like a parched wick, the heavy old stones carried my inquisitive feelers, giving me a dimensional map of the palace and her occupants.
Thinking bees flew like flying fishes of light filtering the reflections of information carried on the grains. The pockets of unfriendly silver and bronze were negligible compared to the force of platinum coursing through the walls. A chunk of my attention crashed, mutely touching the Canite princess and the Avian prince first through the tiled veins of the palace. The reason for their emptiness and possible answers to Ozwald’s use of a lethal cast against Safe went off like a string of firecrackers in my superconscious. Raven and Ozwald were deep under high-charged Vampacoti control spells. The incantations forcing them into mindless puppets were so high in current they were slowly liquefying their brains. Junjari cast over Raven, Valbeth over Ozwald.
Another trap snapped, derailing more of my attention. A broken Jeremiah was lovingly held by the detonating Avian queen. My eyes welled reading the pains radiating from my Canite father figure. He was far down the trenches of helplessness. The brokenness from the loss of his Miguel and the capture of his daughter punched my gut. A soul-breaking sadness over the decimation of his race was crippling. Fear parasitically bound to my sadness, drying my throat. Dev quickened to my side, cupping me firmly.
I involuntarily coupled onto Sabina’s motherly fury, calling out to me like a bellbird. My pregnancy was shifting my perspectives and sensitivities in heaves. Her touchless hit of bravery traversed my skin, planting me into the present. I understood her self-sacrificing bravery to free her spell-chained child. She was out of her mind from her inability to shelter him.
Theia’s demeanor hit like a cracked tooth. Our family bond gave me a clarity and volume that overloaded my wits, causing me to pull back. Her anxious conflict felt like repetitively starting and stopping a huge diesel engine.
“What is it?” Dev asked, not knowing who was propagating such jarring discourse.
“Theia.” I fell into his eyes. My hopes dangerously rose against the berm of peril, skimming through Ahnah’s prediction. Hopes of my dad’s sister jumping sides this evening glimmered like sunshine dancing across choppy seas.
Valbeth struck radically different from the last time I felt her silver. Her true self was cold-hearted, crying from her heated addiction to power. Mad with lust, she was oblivious to what she was doing. The high need to fill her inadequacies was never going to be enough. Her sickness carried the conviction to pull off a perfect deception. Lying was her first nature.
Before I got lost in Junjari’s pure disdain for Valbeth, I put my hands against the palace walls looking for the person who I knew was running out of time. Safe hit next like a Texas-sized asteroid, despite his motionless form.
“Olo is down the hallway.” I converged all my threads, grimly excited. His systems were shutting down and his heart sputtered. My knowledge and intuition screamed a foreboding loss. “He doesn’t have long. I have to get to him now,” I demanded, feeling his consciousness and my confidence slipping away into the next dimension.
“Is this really what you want to do?” Dev asked, placing his hand on my tight abdomen. The intense contact spoke volumes through our masks. I reflected the pureness of concern and openness of his heart, making it impossible for us not to feel different sides of the same truth. “This is about so much more than your safety.” Dev broadened his selflessness into sails of gentle, universal strength. He vibrated with the focus of a future father, the faithfulness of a fighter, and the fearlessness of a fevered lover.
“I must follow my heart.” I shivered from the cuts of perceived choices. “Mom said to live simple, but she didn’t mean my life would be simple. The same heart that fell in love with you is telling me to save Olo. I could not live with myself knowing I did nothing to save him, especially knowing that I can.”
Dev blinked fast, valiantly experiencing my impetus. “I don’t know how to get us out alive,” Dev said, escalating his cause, turning to Haruz for help.
“My lady, our first concern is disrupting the domes so you can leap to safety. You are carrying the only chance for the future for any of us,” Haruz said toughly but lowered his head respectfully.
“Haruz,” I said, intimately looking into his eyes adorned with caterpillar brows, “the same devotion you have for Raven, Jeremiah, and me, I instinctually feel for you with the force of all my light. There has been too much loss. I’m not leaving any of my family behind.”
I put a hand on Dev and Haruz. “Please help me,” I urged softly. I surged behind my mask with the earnest cry from my heart. The qualities I needed to be a queen were beginning to grow inside and out. “Besides, the Vampacoti tracking us has started to scale the wall.”
“Are you prepared to take life again?” Dev hit low, unfairly knowing exactly what to say. He felt my private struggles every time I birthed someone to the next side. Nothing was hidden between us but using my angst as a weapon was another thing.
“We’ll debate that later.” I built up my charge to the brink of breaking my mask. Luja’s braided metallic chains enhancing the gems were still keeping my storms a shadow, despite my blooming state. Not only was I becoming stronger, my senses and skills were whittled with art-form accuracy.
“Nearly everyone is downstairs,” I said, fixing a last glimpse before I set something into motion I didn’t know how to stop. “There are two Guardians outside Olo’s door and three Vampacoti are in the room. Even with my mask on, I could take them all out before they could conjure a wisp of light.”
As the encroaching orange leopard’s silver light crested the windowsill, I picked up Dev and Haruz, eliciting grunts, and moved fast. I opened the door into the long hallway, welding the doorknob locked behind us. The corridor walls were decorated with works of art, casting a visually deafening show of color and lifting stimulants. Undistracted, I leaned into strike speed, pulling Dev and Haruz behind me.
I thrust with loosely controlled power so savage it frightened me. The black panther mother lingered in my light. I wasn’t in total control. A multifaceted fierceness took first chair. Fighting for a love that was bigger than me, my chance to be a mother, and for the life suffering in my name, I shifted hard into the fast lane.
Nebulas of light funneled around my wrists, banking around the corner and capitalizing on every ounce of surprise. I fired two mind-numbing Vampacoti spells. Both of the platinum guards’ heads twitched to the side, going under before realizing they were hit by a cannonball of my silver charge. Before either Guardian fell to the ground, Dev and Haruz cast lethal incantations. The platinum men quietly burst into vapor and light. The silver spells of circling doves around my left wrist fizzled away.
Disturbed by the fatal force, I glared at Dev and Haruz.
“We cannot take chances with Guardians and you cannot be encumbered by a spell. You must be free to leap at any time,” Dev said without negotiation, sounding like a military reprimand. I closed my eyes, doing a fast scan.
“Let’s go,” I said, not feeling a spike in any band of light.
With ropes of light, I sprang the last barrier between my platinum Guardian brother and my eager eyes. We blurred into the room with flickering speed. Casting with tailspin, I fired three punches of light, knocking the Vampacoti guards incapacitated.
“They are down,” I said to Haruz and Dev, negating any reason to take more life.
Dev was partially formulated with sharp ears and teeth wi
th killer instincts. He closed and locked the large boudoir doors from the circus of colors decking the hallway. Haruz crouched on all fours, closely sniffing the unconscious Vampacoti. Frozen in the air above Safe, my insides quivered wildly. The pregnancy had increased my capacity to feel inner worlds I didn’t know existed. Despite the sensations of fire and ice racing over my body, I forced myself not to look away.
Safe was critically broken: physically, mentally, spiritually. Dark congealing clots oozed from his nose, ears, and busted lips. His beautiful, planet-sized eyes were swollen shut. The repercussions of Ozwald’s spell left welts of purple and black under his inflamed ebony skin. Junjari’s silver spells had torn through his brain. No dream flies circled his comatose, failing form.
Led by nature, I placed one hand on his forehead and the other on his solar plexus, entering him. Breathing around my mask, I bled into his fractured, exposed platinum. Every aspect of his being was bombed into rubble. I contracted, sequestering a labored scream. Holding his shrapnel like my own was horrifically painful. Our touch began to glow a reverent celestial blue.
“Be careful, Piper.” Dev held my hand, taking my foot off the accelerator.
“He is really hurt.” I sniffed back tears, fingering into every cell in his body. Mindful not to draw energy from my surroundings, I triggered pulses of rapid mitosis fed by my charge. Sweat beaded from concentration, throttling energies high and low while listening for alarms.
Lime-green photons funneled from my belly button into Safe’s. I traversed his soft tissue and bones, weaving and mending inflamed ruptures.
“Your mask is overheating.”
The gems danced, wildly reconfiguring in the silky mesh bag. Like fanned coals, the metal chains labored infrared. Although the enhanced mask erased my presence, I knew my girth could pop it like thin chalk.
“Come on, let’s go.” Dev squeezed my hand. It didn’t take long for his hurt over Valbeth to catch into backdrafts of anger.
“He isn’t stable,” I said, painfully restraining myself. Blowing my mask would turn me into a strobing siren. I would draw Eli and our end in a blink. I let up, knowing the twirling gems were shadowing more than just me.
“We don’t have much time.” Dev raised every hair on his body. Haruz retracted onto his hindquarters, dangling on the precipice of formulating. The orange leopard Vampacoti trailing my scent was in the viewing room. It was only a matter of time before my human presence was detected. We were in the fractions of seconds in between the bomb triggering and the resulting obliterating explosions.
“Not much longer,” I huffed. “Then Olo won’t die. Once he is stable, I’ll disrupt the Guardians on the roof. It should give everyone a chance to get the hell out of here.” Blowing up the magical palace filled with irreplaceable works of beauty was sacrilegious, but there was no alternative.
Dev perked up at the impending fight. He put both hands on me, embracing me with love. The comfort of his soul lifted me. Love was the greatest catalyst for healing. I chanted exhales until Safe emanated a blush, platinum sheen. He was weeks away from opening his eyes and chaining thoughts, but he would make daybreak.
With my mask searing, I let go, unhitching my hands from Safe’s skin. I fell back into Dev’s soft strength. A sweet relief sprang from my eyes and heart, seeing my Guardian brother’s fissured aura go smooth into a continuous membrane. The swirling umbilical cord of light joining us together dissolved, returning me to my corporal, individual existence.
The instant his platinum flowed together, a tiny pop went off like a tipping point had been reached. A platinum impulse shot off, broadcasting Safe’s miraculous improvement. Silent to Dev and Haruz, the notification backfired like a sawed-off shotgun to my Guardian senses. Safe was being monitored by something I had missed. Instincts to run flooded every angle of my awareness. My intuition rang banks of alarms, rocketing my pulse and breath.
“Oh no,” I shouted, jumping out of Dev’s shelter. Everything was about to come undone.
38
Beauty in the Chaos
T
he depth of the red night penetrated through the thick-paned windows, intensifying the sprung trap. Eli’s strike of hateful delight to slay gated game sliced through my mask. My balance weakened, but my fight fortified. Safe lay still in restorative sleep with his life out of danger, but it was for naught. “My lady, what’s wrong?” Haruz pleaded, not yet sensing the pressure changes of the onslaught. Neither he nor Dev felt the invisible snare woven into Safe’s aura. I was so preoccupied by the possibility of losing my Guardian family that I didn’t notice the seal placed on his life.
Dev received partial insight to the numerous triggers hammering at us through our masks. He knew from the sick feeling in my gut that Eli was on his way.
“You petulant child,” Theia’s low, chimney-smoked voice bellowed from across the room, amplifying the startle into advantage. My aunt was already in the room and in the air, burning into a red nova. Her aura was fully polarized against spells, shadowing her intentions.
Time stuttered to increasing stalls, creating a sensational singularity. My intuition and instincts diverged, leaving me in a forked void of frozen shock. I couldn’t punch through three domes carrying Dev and Haruz. Kicking off an Equuian space-time blast would disrupt the cages of light, but the magnitude would wipe out the palace. Everyone inside, including Jeremiah, Sabina, Raven, and Ozwald, would be reduced to vapor.
With the speed of a lightning crack, I positioned myself in front of Dev. I pushed Haruz behind me with protective thoughts.
“Please … help us,” I pleaded openly to my dad’s sister, holding my shaking hands with palms up. Dev and Haruz unmasked, starting to formulate, but I held them still and human in jackets of light. My mask heated, incapable of clamping my building, anxious desperation.
“You have your father in you.” Theia softened slightly, easing to coral. Conducting on her churning riptide emotions, I tapped into our blood-light connection. Before I could link to her heart, Eli leapt outside the castle with an army of Arbitri. The sheer number of platinum threats drove crashing shivers through my body. Theia kicked at her nephew’s presence, souring her platinum into a ripe cherry.
Dev moved close, touching his chest to my back. We knew everything was going to change forever. I dipped through his beastly attack impulses and into his pools of pure love for our family. With so much that I loved captured, I reared my animalistic side.
The impending fight laser-sharpened my senses. Our odds and futures darkened with each moment screaming by. My hope in Theia helping us stalled uncomfortably.
“Give me your mask now!” She scowled, flaring in saturation. The weird request halted my storming escape planning.
“No,” Dev growled aggressively, extending his teeth.
“This does not concern you!” Theia belted back at Dev, vividly blaring her disdain for him.
“But it does,” I replied, floating my mask off my skin. Pearlescent swirls dimensionally mushroomed, exposing the fledgling twins in my belly. Simultaneous connections inundated my unleashed, aroused antenna, galvanizing me with high feelings from both friends and foes. Eli penetrated first, overwhelming my wits with premeditated, violent intentions. He knew I was pregnant, and I knew his grandest fear of coming to an end.
Aggression from Eli and the gathering Guardian force rocketed my pulse and breath. Sabina and Jeremiah clanged with shock at my unexpected, exposed, and close presence. Theia honed in on the green and violet auras protruding from my abdomen. She gasped loudly. My aunt’s feelings were totally open to me with our raw light mingling. Abhorrent shock, impossible conflict, ancient hurt, and fresh fear painfully ground her heightened state.
More domes were cast, sandwiching Eli and his army between the three domes holding the castle secure. “Hurry!” Theia yelled. “They will drop the inner domes next. Give me your mask now.”
Dev pulled me into him, infusing me with his distrust for Theia, but Ahnah’s prediction co
untered his fiery emotions. With the hourglass out of sand, I ran inside for clarity in the chaos. Although history told otherwise, a whisper was telling me to trust her. I placed all my hopes in my unknown family member. I began to float the necklace with emeralds, pearls, and ivory over to Theia before she snatched the mask with a fast fly-cast.
Hesitating for brief moment, she penetrated her eyes into mine with riveting force. Her sadness for me cracked my heart, concentrating the realness of what was going down. The glass was already falling. I geared up, rejecting the prospect of unfathomable loss.
Before another word could be uttered, my ears popped as the inner domes around the palace dropped. Only a stone-tiled roof stood between Eli and me. My heart stopped, realizing the stage was set for a final battle with so many I treasured trapped in the epicenter. Before I could voice a second plea, Theia, along with my mask and hopes, abruptly vacated the room as a hideous crash filled the air.
The roof of the priceless palace splayed open like broken ribs. Blaring white, platinum auras filled the heated, haloed sky against the walls of light so thick they looked like pepper jelly. An army of Guardians swarmed into pods, consuming the confined space. Not far behind, Eli charged into density. His intensity flung shadows into the late night.
I involuntarily lifted off the ground. The hair on my body rose like a hissing cat. Taking from the night, I burned into brightness. I knew this was it. A mythical, animal mother, graced with the wild convictions of love, was made flesh.
Contrary to my green age, my ancient brother was withered, wrinkled, and weak. Eli’s missing soul spoiled his magnitudes of magnificence. Hoods of spotted skin obscured his blue-gray eyes, chillingly devoid of connection. Rushes of his anticipated kill pulsed through me, churning my stomach.
I broke into primal instincts, gushing with protection and vacated of all fear by pure love. Before any shots could be fired, I spun upward. Flowing with unknown grace, I discharged a hybrid Guardian-Equuian disruption. The pearl-bronze space-time warp did not radiate indiscriminately like a bomb blast. The annihilating force was cast with precise focus. Waves of compressed time, charged with funneling lightning, shot out of my glowing hands, aimed squarely at Eli.