by Amanda Churi
Not even Reeve…
Orione swayed on his feet at the head of the steps, overtaken by sheer exhaustion. His grapple was missing, as were large chunks of ice from his body, many of the abrasions filled with the blood that he had taken from his challenger as he crushed him beneath the water and stone, keeping him there until he stopped breathing and had joined the lost pool of lives around them.
But to his surprise, Orione dragged an item behind him that Desmond could not ignore. He had not seen one in so long.
“Orione…” Desmond started with a gasp. “Where… Did you get… A Noble staff?”
“I fell… Through the floor…” the Elite answered briskly, limping forward to stand beside Desmond. “Found… Some weird thing below ground. Lots of things.”
Desmond could not believe it. Azuré had sealed off any and all passageways to their laboratory prior to the final battle to keep it from falling into the rebel hands if they invaded their base; after all, the stronghold would have been history, along with the rest of the world, had Azuré got her way. Orione had graciously saved him the trouble of having to track down its location again. “Well, that’s good…” Desmond replied tensely.
Orione grunted. “Maybe…” He agreed. “But… Desmond… The more pressing matter… It is Reeve.”
Desmond raised an eye in regard to his statement. “Oh?”
“The storm… It… It is gone…” Orione elucidated breathlessly. “And Reeve is not back. Where… Do you think she could be?”
Desmond sighed, his shoulders falling as he looked back towards the portal of the escapee, frowning. “I don’t know,” he reluctantly conceded. “But… We are here, no? We are standing.” He looked over to his side at his beaten warrior, the scar on his face pulling back and, for some odd, inconceivable reason, bringing a sly smirk to his face. “We will find her; we shall fulfill not only her vision but all of ours.” He looked down, his beaten hands gripping a vial of blood.
Orione cocked his head to the side when he noticed the peculiar object. “What… Is that?”
Desmond raised the vial in response, popping off its cork as purple protons rose into the air like carbonated bubbles. “I think that little nymph dropped this while escaping,” he concluded with a cold chortle, relishing in the faint essence of magic knocking at the tips of his fingers. “And if I am correct, it appears to be the blood of Calla.”
Orione slightly straightened up, his body creaking. “But… You cannot be sure…” he warned.
“…No, I can’t be,” he mumbled, wafting the scent of her blood. “But this… This could change everything.”
“…Desmond…” Orione warned. “I would… Advise against. Even if it is… The blood of the witch… Being consumed by a mortal… It’s never been done! You… Do not know what will happen.”
“No, I don’t,” he agreed, flashing his black eyes to Orione. “Which is exactly why I have to try.”
Sharply, he poured the last remnants of Calla’s life into his mouth, disregarding the potential poison as he ingested destiny in one thirsty swig.
Immediately, his eyes embiggened. Desmond dropped the vial, glass shards flying across the moist floor as his hand cringed. His lungs proceeded to constrict, forcing him to double over, gagging on the consumed blood that fought with his own. Quickly, blood began to seep out of his gaped mouth, his pupils darting back and forth uncontrollably as his vision began to distort, his muscles and bones melting within, causing him to collapse onto the floor in a crumpled heap of failure.
“Desmond…!” Orione exclaimed, moving his aching body over to his successor, unable to do anything but kneel beside him and hope for the best.
Stomach first on the floor, heaving for his life as a wildfire sparked inside of his veins, Desmond thrashed and rolled about, his heart pounding at a rate so high that it nearly broke through his ribcage. He screamed unlike anything he knew, a sudden push of the wind knocking him on his back and pinning him to the floor as colors that he had never seen filled his eyes, swirling like a pool of ultraviolet tie-dye.
One could see where his heart resided as it pushed and pulled against his skin, causing it to bulge in a sickly manner. The veins in his neck swelled, blood continuing to race out of his mouth and coat both his chin and chest, all while his hands desperately groped the concrete, trying to anchor him to this world.
Laughter… Heinous laughter infiltrated his mind—a wicked laugh that he faintly remembered.
Before he could process whom it may have belonged to, a white wisp shot forward through the night towards his limp body, darting through his parted jaw and slithering up his spinal cord like a snake. It encircled the brain, making rounds faster and faster until it was just a blur, cackling joyously as Desmond’s fight slowed, allowing the wisp to gain access to the depths of his subconscious. With one last cry of victory, the spirit chose its third, and most certainly worthy, host, merging with their original soul as they activated the vital genes needed in the newly consumed blood, allowing the small quantity taken in to grow, replicate, and spread, consuming pieces of his own DNA and replacing it with that of she.
His breathing came to a near halt, his chest ever-so-faintly moving as he digested her laughter and presence, hundreds of other wisps suddenly dawning into his view, lurking over him and frowning in defeat when they acknowledged their missed chance.
Orione loomed beside him, for once having an expression other than anger or aloofness. He could not bring himself to touch Desmond; he could only kneel with the staff resting over his knee, watching to see what would be his fate.
His white teeth stained red, Desmond cracked a cheeky grin as he stared at the Elite, comprehending just what happened. The abyss forever present in his eyes finally came to life, replaced with the violet hues of the night sky and the universe that once took refuge in her own depths. “See what happens… When you decide to play with fire?”
Stuttering, Orione said nothing, baffled by what he was witnessing.
Desmond’s smile became all the more corrupt the longer he lay there, flexing his muscles and stretching his knuckles, embracing the powers now traveling their course through his bloodstream. “We don’t melt,” he lectured. “We don’t get burnt…”
Strength fueling his blood as that of his mortal body fell, Desmond snatched the staff from Orione’s hold, rolling onto his knees and facing the open sea, absorbing the breathtaking view of all that lay before him. “BUT WE DO BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND!”
Desmond thrust the staff into the air, snorting and bellowing with irate laughter as his dream of vengeance finally came true and a vein of purple lightning shot from his hand and through the staff, launching into the sky and signifying his authority over all.
“WORLD, I AM DESMOND REVERE!” he announced from his chest, pallets of blood flying from his mouth as his newly found powers raced through the low-lying clouds in the sky, lighting up miles and miles of what would now be forever his. “AND I AM YOUR LORD!”
***
The overwhelming electronegativity in the air suddenly jolted his heart, two gems of black bursting out of their hiding spots as they took in the waves of purple coursing through the puffs of clouds approximately a half-mile off.
The hairs on his arms quickly tried to rebuild their defenses, standing tall to expel the electricity and cold that wrapped around every pocket of air he lay in. Oxygen crept into his deflated lungs through the slight margin between his teeth, his skeleton stiff as his distraught mind accurately matched the magic before his dreary eyes to that of his old mentor.
But… How…? he asked himself, groaning in misery as his neurons tried to resort to their normal levels of activity. It’s impossible…
The scene bearing witness to him told another tale, however. Washed upon the shore of his fallen town, impaled, partially dismembered, flattened, and half-frozen he looked on, his heart gripping the sole remaining thread of his life with everything that it had.
He frowned as the sound of his we
ak heart echoed in his bleeding skull, trying in vain to move any appendage that he could. A twitch in his legs reacted to his desires, along with the slight curl of the fingers in a single hand, but for the most part, all communication to his non-vital muscles had been severed. He was just thankful that he could not see his legs or turn his head; the mass of blood washing up next to him in sluggish, greedy waves already gave him a good mental image of what he would have seen.
Guess Cecil was right… he mused in defeat as he lay there at the mercy of the ocean. I must actually be a supernatural again; otherwise, there is no way that I could have survived Orione’s bashing…
He sharply groaned, several sensory areas of his brain abruptly reacting to the pain signals coming in from every channel they could. Stupid… Inconvenient… Flawed immortality. Who the hell came up with this dumb system? Being able to survive any mortal injury?
Another stab of excruciating pain crashed over him. Kevin bit his lip, closing his eyes and trying to dismiss the agony devouring him. This wasn’t good… His legs and arms had all but been crushed; he couldn’t even tell if two were still attached due to the lack of feeling at such locations. And yet, his body refused to let him perish, magically clotting the most extreme wounds so that his link on life remained intact.
A growl burned inside of him, his throat constricting and eyes producing their own sea water as he wallowed in the current state of both himself and the world. After twenty plus years of fighting since the day he was born… Learning so much magic, skill, knowledge, and managing to actually develop a heart through it all, was this really how it would end? Lying here as a broken entity, waiting for the subzero temperatures to bring hypothermia upon him? At least one thing that could kill him was present…
He smiled with the thought of knowing that Death would soon come for him, the snow gradually building around his body as night transitioned to dawn. It wasn’t empty… Life wasn’t pointless… Everything had a purpose.
Even those like Desmond—Kevin just couldn’t understand it was all.
Shivering, he managed to drag his sole responsive arm into his chest, hugging himself as he relived his happiest moments before he fell prey to nothingness. Ironically enough, he thought of his days as a canine, catching squirrels and sitting beside the fire with Eero all those years, enjoying nothing more than the small slice of peace he had living on that farm. He prolonged Eero’s life—delayed his death that would have come had he not shown himself…
He exhaled heavily, perfectly aware of his own crimes… He had to lie to Eero by omission… He did so because he was afraid of the aftermath to come, but now, wondering just what he stumbled upon in the future, he wished that he had just told him everything: how the Essence really worked; his place in the prophecy that he suspected for so long; what he, Calla, and Azuré all desperately tried to keep hidden from him—his past life.
He shouldn’t have; he should have spoken up and just let him use the information how he wanted. But he knew of Eero’s frailty… He was so afraid that he would give in—that he wouldn’t be able to handle the truth and that he would fall because of it.
But now, none of that mattered. There was not a thing more he could do but die.
A strong wave pushed up against his pummeled body, inching Kevin’s slumped body farther up onto the bank. The movement disrupted his incoming peace, Kevin opening his eyes once more from agony. “God… Dammit…” he hissed with annoyance. “Can’t a guy die in peace—?”
His clouded eyes gained a sudden brightness, honing in on the object only centimeters before his face that had washed ashore.
Sagey.
Kevin’s heart dipped, hardly suppressing a devastating sob. She… Dropped her… Daisy dropped the only thing that he had ever personally made for her.
Mustering up his reserved strength, Kevin withdrew his arm from his chest, fumbling his fingers across the ground as he struggled to take the puny doll into his slashed hand.
His palm collapsed on top of it the moment the two made contact, Kevin sighing in exhaustion as his eyelids attempted to permanently close. His fingers latched around the threads tight, the old king keeping the small toy secured against his pulse, holding it until the end.
Another bashing of water slammed him from behind, the sudden intensity startling Kevin and causing his fingers to flinch. He grunted in surprise as Sagey left his hand and was washed up a tad farther onto the bank, settling there and mocking him.
“No…” Kevin mumbled, struggling to move his hand once more to reach the last piece of his daughter. Ever-so-slightly, he rolled his head to the side, tracking his hand on its endeavor before he paused, a puff of air lodged in his throat.
The houses around him were leveled to the earth, nearly all of the trees belonging to the forest before him uprooted as well from the tidal waves.
But at the base of one of the closest trees several feet off, entangled in the roots, the lid of a small coffin no larger than a shoe box was exposed in the soiled earth.
His jaw set, teeth bared in determination as his last wave of adrenaline served its course, Kevin screamed, throwing his functioning arm above his head as he locked Sagey in his clutch. Using his shoulders and semi-responsive leg, Kevin used every last molecule of energy at that moment, shimmying up the bank and sobbing with need as he approached the overturned tree, never releasing Sagey.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, he collapsed next to the upturned coffin, lifting the lid and revealing the deceased.
Nestled in the small piece of a white blanket to comfort them on their journey, a tiny fetus, not even the length of a finger, resided in the middle of the coffin. They had no features; they were simply a pink, partially degraded blob, but even so, this… This was Kevin’s only legitimate child, and he would never deny that, regardless of who the mother was.
His body began to relax, his blue lips and white skin turning black in some places. Straining himself, he placed Sagey in the coffin with his unnamed child, closing the lid before pulling the box into his chest and wrapping his arms around his children, the last tear falling from his face and into the soil as the frigid wind howled on, showing him no mercy.
His eyes drooped, Kevin forcing himself to smile as he shielded them both, releasing his final breath. Consciousness was over for him, as was life…
But there was no other way that he would rather leave this world and enter the unknown—because in his arms, he held all that he had ever truly wanted…
A family.
Thirty-nine
Crossroads
I was a statue; I was not living… I was not existing… I was stuck in the past, my chest forgetting to expand as my brain parted way, making room for the new horrid images that it would now forever hold—the frames of time that she had shown me that stretched from the night that I had left for the future all of the way to the day that her life fell apart at her feet.
The dull luminance of the Memory Box died down as Pinion slammed her hand on the center, the collapse of the world pulled back into its magical confinements, returning us to the cold, desolate, and hopeless land that so many had been forced to call home for centuries.
She had cried throughout reliving the entire thing; the majority of her white paint was washed off, settling into her clothes and trickling down her neck as she slowly placed the Memory Box down on the ground beside her, slightly rocking her body back and forth before the traumatic events could engulf and ruin her.
“…Daisy…” I whispered, taking a single step back in disbelief.
She inhaled deeply, yearning for a stable breath as her scarred blue eyes found mine. I don’t know how I never saw it—perhaps only because I openly assumed that she would be gone with the rest of them, especially after all this time.
Judging by the way that her eyes flashed at the mention of her birth name, I could tell that it had been an eternity since she heard it. Her body had stopped growing around the physical age of twenty-five years, but despite all of the pain
and death that she had both witnessed and been a part of, her face was trapped in the frame of childhood as she was forced to truly look back on the events so long ago.
I was born to end the world… And even though I always fought the path in front of me since I first discovered its destination, I had pushed everyone out to the front lines while I took a gigantic leap and landed at the end, skipping every horror along the way. Daisy, however, had traveled the entire course, and she had fallen, stumbled, crashed, suffered, and burned. No wonder she hated me…
“I’m so, so sorry, Dai—”
“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” she ordered viciously, screaming as her hair flew back and her eyes flashed green. “Daisy was the old me—the me that lasted mere months before I had to take up the responsibilities that were asked of me!” Exhaling powerfully, she stood up, smoothing out her dress and resituating Kevin’s crown atop her head, trying to build her walls back up and regain the form of a hardened queen. Regardless of what she did, though, I could never look at her the same way again; in my eyes, she was an abandoned, broken child standing in oversized shoes and a dress that she did not want.
Daisy—er, I mean, Pinion, turned her back on me, facing her decorated and cluttered walls, silent for an ungodly amount of time before she finally decided to speak once more, caressing the leaf of an ivy plant on her shelves. “I am happy that I was so blessed to have the best mentors in the world,” she conceded through a forlorn breath. “Had it not been for Cecil, I would never have been able to achieve flight, nor access my powers like I have, and without Kevin…” She sighed. “Without him, I would have died… Inside and out. But I dare say… What I have become, I know neither of them would be proud of…”