The Dark Materials

by Amanda Churi

  The kitchen was absolutely repulsive. It was always organized—beautiful scents kissing the noses of many and flooding the castle while delectable foods were prepared at nearly all hours of the day. Now, however, the only smell present was a stench so potent that it singed Cecil’s nose—the fetor of decay. Shelves were toppled over, jars filled with herbs were smashed, and a layer of semi-puréed wheat coated the floor.

  Only a few people were in the room, all of whom hovered over the large dining table in the back. Daisy was one of them, a servant holding her close as the child bawled into their arms. Lucy stood off to the side, her eyes flashing up towards Cecil when the bang of the door shook the room.

  Lucy gasped upon seeing his eyes. Cecil quickly grabbed the latch of the door behind him, commanding the hinges to remain in place so that the door could not open; he was not leaving until he got what he wanted.

  The servants noticed the same thing that their queen had seconds later, immediately spreading to the furthest corners of the room. The servant holding Daisy tightened her arms around the young child, but Daisy refused to stop crying, oblivious to her mentor’s presence.

  Koral was sitting at the table, slumped over so that her cheek was smushed against the counter. Her mouth and eyes were open, a sickly gray film covering her corneas. Her dark skin was unusually pale, and the veins in her face were visible—a vile shade of blue protruding through her drenched skin.

  On her neck, there lay a huge welt. It was a sickly shade of purple and black, bulging from her skin by several centimeters—a growth so large that it resembled the size of a bunched fist. The surface was slick, and the veins surrounding it were much like the ones overpowering Koral’s face. An atrocious stench filled the air, a trail of contaminated green-black puss running down her back as it oozed from her neck.

  Except for Daisy’s wails, as she mourned her fallen friend, all was silent, and Cecil was most certainly the center of attention. No one moved, honestly afraid to. Cecil did not budge either, sorting out his next move in his head while he had the seconds to spare.

  The door rumbled beneath him. “Cecil! Open up!” a knight cried.

  He scoffed. No. Not yet.

  Upon hearing his name, Daisy raised her head, cringing when she saw her mentor openly showing the mortals exactly what he was. “C-Cecil…?” she rasped in a fractured voice, gripping the servant’s arm tighter.

  He took a daring step forward, stalking towards his prey. “I’m sorry, Daisy,” he began slowly, “but there’s been a change of plans.”

  “You stay away from her, demon!” one servant exclaimed, grabbing a butcher knife off of the table as a warning.

  Cecil calmly paused, focusing his attention on her. His already deceptive eyes grew brighter, and in the blink of an eye, the servant’s arm was twisted under his control, causing her to plunge the knife into her own gut.

  The servants screamed as their co-worker was struck. The afflicted gasped, staring down at her reddening chest with shaking eyes. Her body grew weak, her knees buckling as she glared at Cecil, realizing that she was at the hands of some terrible creation molded by the Devil Himself.

  “Not quite,” he chuckled, echoing her thoughts before redirecting his sight towards his target. “Now, Daisy, really, I suggest that unless ya want others to get hurt, ya listen to me.”

  “I should have guessed,” Lucy told herself, taking a solid step forward. “I knew there was something off about you right from the beginning…”

  “It be yar fault that ya didn’t listen to yar instincts,” Cecil shot back. “I am here to protect the child with my life.” He took another step closer, Daisy whimpering in response. “And I will not let yar manipulative, Returned mind allow her to be separated from me!”

  Lucy’s eyes narrowed, unintimidated. “You are dismissed from your current position; I hope Kevin told you that.”

  “Ah, he did,” he confirmed, his mischievous smile cutting into Lucy’s heart. “And I assured him that was a mistake.”

  “W-what happened?!” she demanded frightfully. “What did you do?!”

  “Ya’ll find out after I leave,” he replied smugly. He looked back at Daisy, who hustled her eyesight away from him. “But I’m leavin’ with her. We’ve gotta lot to do, yah?”

  “What?” Lucy exclaimed, her eyes falling on her daughter, who refused to look up. She gasped, running over to Daisy and kneeling down so that they were eye-level. Daisy reluctantly looked at Lucy, her eyes engrossed with repent. “D-Daisy?” Lucy stuttered. “Y-you knew he was…?” Her voice trailed off. Lucy cast a wary glance over her shoulder at Cecil, and her mind, having seen more than she ever wanted to, made the connection.

  “You were telling Kevin the truth…” she mumbled, standing up and shuffling back as her glare bore down on Daisy, whose eyes began to fill with tears. “You’re not a sorceress… You’re just another destructive supernatural… You’re with him.”

  “N-no, I’m not!” Daisy objected frightfully, squirming out of the servant’s hold and staring at her mother, begging her to listen. “I wouldn’t hurt people!”

  “Besides Laelia?” Lucy retorted, Daisy shrinking in fear. “Besides your father and I when the time was right? When you would overtake us and separate us once more?!”

  “Mommy…” Daisy pleaded, breathless. “That’s not true…”

  “It most certainly is!” Lucy snarled, the veins on her neck beginning to throb, and ever-so-slowly, Daisy could see them inching their way through more of her being. “I don’t trust you… With your father, with me, with our baby… I will never trust you or any supernatural!”

  Daisy could not speak; that ability was not available after the terrible onslaught of hatred that bashed her ears.

  Cecil sympathized for his young apprentice, but he did not let it show. “Come on, Daisy,” he urged, holding out his hand. “It be time.”

  Cold at heart, Daisy looked up at Cecil. He did this… It was all his fault! “I’m not going anywhere,” she growled in defiance, the depths of her pupils fueled by such hatred that they did not appear pink—but red. “I won’t leave Daddy.”

  Cecil frowned. “It’s a damn shame we can’t agree on that. But I hope ya know, that ain’t how this works.”

  He threw his arms out in front of him, his palms shooting a spiraling web of crackling, malevolent green light at Daisy. She squealed, the light colliding with her forehead and sinking into the depths of her mind. Her squeal of pain turned into a bloody cry of misery as she fell to the ground, paralyzed; all that she could do was look around and cry.

  “H-help!” Daisy wailed pitifully. “Help me!”

  “CECIL BUCOY, OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!”

  Cecil smirked. His eyes demanded that everyone stay put, and after having just a small taste of what his magic could do, they listened out of fear. Without any protest, Cecil scooped Daisy up into his arms, who would not stop crying. “Mommy! Help! Please!”

  Lucy turned her back on Daisy. “Why?” she mumbled darkly. “It’s best to just start over with a child who is actually mine—one who won’t turn against me.”

  “MAMA, PLEASE! I’M SORRY!”

  “Enough, Daisy,” Cecil snarled, swiftly turning away from the women and facing the door, which the knights continued to try and kick down.

  “No!” Daisy cried, trying to fight him but to no avail. “Put me down, Cecil! This isn’t what you want to do!”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” he huffed, closing his eyes briefly to block her struggles from his ears. He gathered as much focus and strength as he could muster before with one large grunt, he kicked the door down. A pulse of green shot out from his bare foot, launching the door across the hall and slamming it into multiple knights, crushing them between the timber and stone.

  With shrieks rising to incomprehensible levels, Cecil spun on his heels and raced down the hall into the foyer, pummeling people to the ground and flattening them with the massive strength congregated in his body. The portcullis was lowe
red, several knights standing in front of it with their spears pointed, prepared to pierce Cecil’s body the moment he charged.

  Cecil’s eyes quickly shifted from green to blue, and before Daisy or the others could process what had happened, a waterfall of blue overtook the supernaturals. Cecil bolted through the knights’ stunned bodies and the portcullis, running across the stone bridge as an invisible monster.

  The bell towers began to chime. Daisy shifted her eyes to the peak of the castle, watching a knight slam the massive bell with a hefty hammer, signifying an emergency. She didn’t know what to do… If there was anything that she could even do for that matter. How could she have been so stupid?

  “Ya ain’t stupid,” Cecil told her, his eyes fixed ahead. “Ya just ain’t enlightened… Yet.”

  He stormed into the town and ran down the street, everyone oblivious to their presence and staring at the bell tower instead. Daisy recognized the road they traveled on but could not remember why or how she did.

  Cecil quickly turned a corner, racing into a house and throwing the door open.

  Sam stood over a small bucket, slicing an apple with a knife and nearly cutting her finger when she turned her frantic eyes to the door blown open by an ominous force. She did not move, Cecil breathing hard and Daisy keeping silent. She was afraid to warn Sam… She didn’t like her, no, but she didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

  Sam focused on her surroundings, sighing. She carefully placed both the apple and the knife down, turning towards the doorway and staring ahead. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Cecil,” she claimed tiredly, realizing that his presence was among her.

  “No,” Cecil grunted, a growl filling the air. “But see, I’m a purty spontaneous guy, and the funny thin’ about plans is that they’re always changin’…”

  Quickly, he raised his hand, a pulse of green light launching from his palm and colliding with Sam’s chest—a light identical to the one that struck Daisy, only Sam did not scream. She did not even move. She just collapsed like a doll, her eyes closed and heart barely beating.

  “What are you doing?!” Daisy screamed as Cecil grabbed the child, throwing her over one of his shoulders. Cecil lifted Sam up off of the ground next, transferring his invisibility to her before throwing her over the other shoulder, his captives now tallying two.

  “Makin’ sure she can’t screw this up as well,” Cecil answered gruffly before turning out of the home he had spent so long building and into the dense forest, running as far and fast as he could so that no one could find them and interfere with his plans that were now in full swing.

  Twenty-five

  The Hollows

  She remained one with the toxic haze that smothered Aphrite from top to bottom, crouched on one of the highest perches. Her heavy cloak thrashed and flailed in the strong current flowing above the rooftops, two sharp, all-seeing eyes honed in on the large group of Players and Bots forced to kneel in the middle of the street. Her face fixed straight, she looked down, fluttering her fingers across a small screen to record her observations. She did not understand the importance of this little task that the queen had given her; so the Lord was being a bit more whacked up than usual and ordering many to their deaths, alright, but he did ridiculous things on a daily basis? The queen had been a thorn in his side for a long time; stuff like this shouldn’t have even caused her to raise a finger by now.

  …Then again, there wasn’t much use to being Seek’s bodyguard anymore, so it made sense that she should be reassigned.

  Still, Kaitlyn could not deny that something was definitely strange about this execution in particular. Players often perished at the hand of the enemy simply because they remembered the old ways and, many a time, resisted the Proxez in some form. The Bots were Lord Gannon’s ideal vision of humans, however. Each Bot on Earth had been in the Proxez’s workroom at one point; they were designed to serve without question, so what could possibly be the reason to destroy so many at once?

  They were corralled by both Elites and Haxors. Hundreds lined the walls of the fractured abodes, while a dozen were forced to their knees in the middle of the street. Their hands were bound behind their backs with electric cuffs, giving any that resisted a nice jolt of juice.

  The subjects screamed—called for help, even though they knew none would come. It was only their instincts kicking in, their hearts pleading any who heard to do something—to save them from Death and give them the courage to fight as they waited for either a surge of ice or plasma to tear their heads from their bodies.

  Unlike they usually did, the Haxors did not line up in front of the accused with raised guns. They stood off to the side with the other traitors and Elites, perfectly composed.

  Several minutes dragged on. Kaitlyn groaned and looked back down at her tablet, scrolling through the notes she took out of boredom.

  A horrendous storm of bloody screams and shrill cries stabbed Kaitlyn’s ears, causing her to lurch forward in shock and nearly fall off of the exhaust pipe she crouched on. Frantically trying to regain her balance, she looked up, her blue eyes consumed with red as the quickly receding figure of a humongous, metallic, automatized snake zoomed down the street, a graveyard of torn limbs, crushed bones, organs, wiring, and blood coating its traveled path. Kaitlyn quickly closed her eyes, cupping her hand over her mouth in a desperate attempt to block the gruesome scene from her head. Never, ever, had she seen subjects slain in such a disgusting way.

  “Oh, then you really don’t know much, do you, Spear?”

  Upon hearing her code name, Kaitlyn stood up, spinning on her heels and facing the direction the voice approached her from.

  All of the training in the world could not help her keep her cool, and it certainly could not restrain her screams. Her nerves went ablaze with panic, and her survival instincts took over, ordering her to step back and create some much-needed space.

  The concrete vanished beneath her as Kaitlyn fell off of her pedestal, crashing down back-first onto the crumbling rooftop nearly ten feet below. She exhaled breathlessly as the wind was painfully knocked out of her, her eyes spinning as she stared up, knowing that Death had come for her.

  He smirked slyly, the wind causing his potent, deadly gasses to fly off of him like a smokestack. His purple hair swirled in the intense gusts, his red eyes beaming as he bunched his glowing red hands into two vicious fists, analyzing his next meal with hungry eyes.

  “T-Typo…” Kaitlyn rasped, her aching body refusing to rise.

  “Didn’t expect me back so soon, did you?” he snickered humorously, gracefully leaping down from the pillar and landing lightly on his mystified feet at Kaitlyn’s side, taking his time looking her over.

  Kaitlyn took a shaky breath. “No, I did,” she countered boldly. “Just not right now.”

  “You always need to remain alert,” he informed her. “Nightmares of the past can creep up on you when you least expect it.”

  Kaitlyn’s eyes narrowed, her heart swelling with determination. She looked him straight in the eye, showing Typo that she was brave enough to accept her fate and die at his hell-borne hands. He would never succeed with his heinous plans; Seek was someone worth dying for—Kaitlyn knew that the moment she took her under her wing.

  “Do what you may to me,” she growled arrogantly, Typo smiling innocently and cocking his head to the side, “but I’ll never give you any information about Seek.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, no?” he said, his voice seething as he dropped into a crouch and looked into her eyes. He ran his bony fingers across the length of her cheekbone, Kaitlyn shuddering at his touch when the coldness emanating from his non-existent heart tried to pierce her skin. “You see, Kaitlyn,” Typo began slowly, “I actually did not come regarding Prysm, for once; the Lord has moved her down on his list of priorities.”

  Kaitlyn cringed. “Then why are you here?”

  Typo lightly grabbed Kaitlyn’s face, holding her cheeks and lowering his head so that his lips hovered above her own. Kaitlyn swa
llowed, her eyes roaming Typo’s ghostly face as the pull of his eyes gained intensity. She could feel the ice flowing from his breath in small wisps, burning her skin and petrifying the young warrior’s heart. “I heard you have a demon in your care… No?”

  Kaitlyn tried to hide the terror that inflamed her stomach. She forced her face to remain placid as though she was oblivious to this information.

  “Don’t lie,” Typo warned, snarling as his sharp teeth grazed Kaitlyn’s soft lips. “I’ve seen him… The Lord has seen him. Your base’s security has been breached; we’ve witnessed both he and the prophesized fire mage in action.”

  Not knowing just how much of a hold they had on the situation, Kaitlyn refused to say a word in case she gave away more details.

  “Perhaps you don’t understand the situation clearly,” Typo tried again, pulling away from her and staring into her pupils with sharp, unmerciful eyes. “If you want a chance at keeping this rebellion of yours alive, you will hand them over.”

  “Why?” she spat, struggling to hold her frustration back. “They can stop you… They can bring down the Lord and give this world new light! We would never give away what we have been waiting decades for.”

  Typo sighed, shaking his head. “I hoped you would be a bit easier to convince than this, but fine, if you remain so persistent…”

  In an instant, he was down on Kaitlyn, pinning her to the roof while his misty form distorted with rage and bloodlust. Kaitlyn screamed and writhed, but she was still too feeble to fight. Typo pressed his forehead to hers, a spine-cringing growl rising from the depths of his evil soul. Kaitlyn forced herself to take a shaky breath, clearing her mind and hoping for her passing to be a painless one.