by Tyler Vance
Sheikoh clipped the Divider around wrist.
Then…
Nothing.
Was it a dud?
Sheikoh turned towards Camillio to ask whether the machine might be broken. He opened his mouth, just as the Divider turned itself on.
Sheikoh staggered to the side, having suddenly lost his balance. He could feel the connections between his brain and the machine shutting down one by one. He felt trapped in the prison of his remaining human body as his right arm and then his legs were wrenched from his control.
He had always thought of his right arm as a machine, never as a part of himself. Sheikoh’d had no idea how much connection there was between neuron and wire, until the very instant that they were cut from one another.
Frustrated energy raged through Sheikoh, rampaging around his insides. His sense of self bitterly resented its containment inside of his chest. The feeling didn’t hurt exactly, but it was absolutely unbearable to feel his right shoulder bend and stretch under the orders of another. The blacksteel’s movements grated against his skin like nails on a chalkboard bereft the muted sensations of the cyborgic limbs, feeling horribly necrotic.
Sheikoh forced himself to watch as the spindly, blacksteel hand protruding with white wires tear off the back of Emili’s shirt like it’d been made of cobwebs. The rip sounded through the room like Velcro. His insectoid hand tossed the material onto the ground, and then its blacksteel fingers curled around the hilt of the glass knife. Sheikoh saw it all without any of sensation of touch, not even the whisper that he was used to.
His arm raised itself to carve clinical lines of blood across Emili’s back. They quickly darkened into the strange, twisting shapes of runes. He had to force himself not to vomit. Every cut inscribed on her back slashed into his own heart twice as deep. His eye followed the lines of blood that dribbled down Emili’s smooth, white back.
Sheikoh bit his tongue and endured the torture that was more painful than any other he’d ever felt. He could already imagine the nightmares that were going to haunt the rest of his life. After every section he finished, Camillio bandaged in his wake so Emili wouldn’t bleed out. Finally, Sheikoh’s hand finished carving the last details of the runic patchwork onto her. On the other side of the table, Camillio wrapped Emili’s bleeding back, shoulders, chest and arms all in heavy linen bandages. Blotches of red flowered outwards, staining the white material with menacing crimson.
Apparently finishing Emili’s back didn’t translate to finishing the hellish job entirely. As Camillio turned Emili over to tie the bandages up, Sheikoh’s legs mindlessly carried him two steps up the table. When he was level with Emili’s peaceful face, his right hand went to work on her forehead. Guard down, Sheikoh retched violently, coughing out a mouthful of stinging bile. It burned his throat and nostrils. Luckily the motion hadn’t affected his right arm. He didn’t want to accidently cut Emili’s eye out or something. With his free hand, Sheikoh wiped the intermingled sick and tears off of his pale face.
Finally, it was over. The Divider clicked open and fell along with the glass knife, and Sheikoh stumbled a little. The device bounced against the floor with the harsh clack of steel against rock. Camillio’s eyes flashed blue and stopped the red glass blade midair the moment before it shattered. Shivering, Sheikoh leaned back against the hard wall. He felt as though he’d been drained absolutely empty. As his teeth chattered against one another, Sheikoh watched Camillio walk into the smaller of the two pentacles.
“Sheikoh, you’re going to have to carry Emili into the other pentacle for me. Please, please try to step over the lines rather than directly on them,” Camillio told him, cracking his knuckles. “Don’t take the amulet off until the instant I tell you, and then get out of the circle fast; we don’t want the Sycrarian to use the amulet to break out.”
Sheikoh stretched his hollow arms. Then he picked himself off the wall and shakily lifted Emili from the table. Sheikoh glanced at the silent life-support machine for a second and then carried Emili over to the larger pentacle, kneeling to gently rest the heavily bandaged girl upon the stone floor. He let out a quavering breath as his arms left Emili’s delicate frame.
“Just a warning,” Camillio went on. “I can only activate a couple runes at a time. If the process of containing the Sycrarian proves unfeasible, I’m going to have to collapse the pentacle to kill the creature… as well as Emili’s body...”
Sheikoh narrowed his eyes at the Celestial and began to rise in a dangerously smooth movement. Sensing danger, Camillio hurriedly added, “Chances of that happening are extremely minute. Just make sure to avoid stepping on the lines.”
Sheikoh hesitated for a second. Then he reluctantly nodded at Camillio and lowered himself back down beside Emili. The Celestial’s eyes sparkled blue, overflowing with the exact shade of power as the floating balls that lit the room.
“On my signal, take the Transcendent Amulet. You will then remove it from the constraints of the pentacle,” Camillio’s powerful double-tone ordered him.
Wordlessly, Sheikoh nodded as the Celestial’s double-voice resounded against the stone walls with an almost mournful echo. Sheikoh twined his fingers around the silver medallion at Emili’s throat. For a few moments, he watched Camillio’s solid blue eyes’ light steadily climb in brilliance, until Camillio double-screamed; “NOW!”
In a single motion, Sheikoh ripped the amulet over Emili’s head and hurled himself out of the circle. He flipped over the lines of the pentacle, twisting midair, to land lightly on his feet staring back where he’d come from. A still second later, tongues of white flame crept from beneath Emili’s eyelids. Sheikoh took an involuntary step back at the sight. Goose bumps skittered all over his clammy skin like the tickling feet of a million spiders.
Camillio raised his hands, and gestured. Three newly activate blood runes glowed blue through the bloodstained bandages covering Emili’s chest. An alien double-voice shrieked out a pain-rippled note, and a pair of flaming eyes flared with a sudden burst of multicolored sparks. Emili- no Khryzt scrambled backwards like a cornered rat. As Camillio pummeled Emili’s bandaged body with flashes of blue, Khryzt accidently allowed one of Emili’s fingers a glancing touch at one of the pentacle’s runed lines. A roar of power bashed the Sycrarian back to the center.
Khryzt tried to lift itself to Emili’s shuddering feet, recoiling back under a barrage of blood runes. Blue runes glinted through bloodstained bandages on time with the creature’s stumbles, as though the blue lights of the runes were physically slamming into it.
Sheikoh suddenly noticed that one of the magic-traced, blue blood runes had burned an imprint through the bandage over Emili’s shoulder. And then another shone through her chest. And then another, and another. As Sheikoh watched, one of the bandages, the one over Emili’s shoulder fell. Dancing with flames, the white cloth curled into itself and drifted downwards. Hungry tongues of fire quickly licked the bandage black. A few moments later, it was joined by another tattered, bandage.
Khryzt desperately stretched two clawed hands outwards. Sheikoh flinched, covering his face with an arm in futile protection against a burst of white flames streaking at Camillio. The blast pancaked against the air above the pentacle and rebounded, smashing Khryzt in Emili’s gut. The room shook and heaved under the power of the strike that knocked the demon backwards. Khryzt stumbled against the line and was knocked forward onto Emili’s knees.
Most of the bandages had burned away at that point. Sheikoh clenched his fists watching bleeding wounds glow with blue magic. The sapphire magic rapidly flickered over Emili’s skin, but even so, Sheikoh knew that Camillio hadn’t even finished half of it all. Khryzt’s eyes spurted out a burst of fearful sparks, and Emili’s mouth opened.
A massive pillar of blinding white power blasted into the air above the pentacle’s edge. The room shuddered and quaked, tossing books, pens and scattered papers through the heaving air. Sheikoh dodged a falling bookcase and grabbed onto a torch-holder attached to the wal
l. He watched as rainbow spikes bounced against the pentacle’s circular edge and flicker around the Sycrarian, inevitably striking its body.
Howling wind flung objects through the air in violent tantrum. Bookcases crashed onto the stone ground and sharpened pencils became lethal weapons. Cracks lined the stone floor under the tumult of Khryzt’s relentless beam of shattering white. Sheikoh’s eyes widened with shock, when he noticed that the point that the blast struck against slight blue haze of the pentacle was refracted into eight. He shot a quick glance at Camillio. The Celestial’s taunt hands just kept gesturing and forcing runes to glow with sapphire energy.
The blast cut off, and the room suddenly stopped shaking. Sheikoh sighed his relief, letting go of the blacksteel table. He looked around. A tattered body, pockmarked with burns and splattered with blood, caught his eye. It kneeled upon the stone floor, wheezing, with white flames flickering over its eyes. Realization slammed his breath out; that was Emili. Scarred black and lying at the very precipice of death.
Shit.
Sheikoh watched in horror as Emili’s body staggered up to its feel, her arms hanging limp. Blue runes still glanced over its destroyed skin. This was worse than anything he’d ever imagined; did Camillio truly intend to bring Emili back like this? Sheikoh glanced at the Celestial whose face was taunt with concentration.
Apparently he did.
Sheikoh pulled out his electroblade. He knew that he’d rather her die than feel this, live jailed somewhere within her own mind. But something stopped him. He watched Khryzt straighten. His eyes widened.
Emili’s fire-blackened skin smoothed and lightened, charred flesh morphed back into skin. Blonde hair poured out of her healed scalp. All of the preactive blood runes that Sheikoh’d carved into her, the ones Camillio hadn’t gotten to, faded seamlessly into her pale skin.
Sheikoh clenched his fist around the blade’s handle.
This wasn’t good.
But Khryzt had only slowed Camillio’s progress. The Celestial could only mark Emili’s skin with one blood rune at a time, as he now had to simultaneously carve and activate each of them with magic. The Celestial’s and the Sycrarian’s faces were hard with focus as they battled over Emili’s body.
Emili’s body was hunched in on itself, flinching backwards and spitting white sparklets at each of the blue glowing runes. However much he knew that Khryzt deserved this, Sheikoh could hardly stand to look at Emili’s face twisted in unimaginable agony, flaming eyes or no. Khryzt seemed to realize that, at just about the same moment it realized the absolute futility of its actions. Emili’s face, arranged desperation, twisted to gaze at Sheikoh. He took a half-step back with surprise.
“Stop him now, or I’ll be forever bound to your Emili,” Khryzt double-confided in an urgent tone. “You’ll never get her back once the Celestial is finished with me. He wants to control my powers-
“Silence!” cried Camillio harshly, and Sheikoh swung to face him.
Sheik quickly realized that Camillio hadn’t been calling Sheikoh’s street name, he’d been shouting the demon down. Sheikoh turned back to face the Sycrarian; Khryzt was double-hissing again. The sudden sight of Emili writhing in pain struck Sheikoh right in the gut.
“You know that I’m right,” Khryzt went on, stuttering as Emili’s skin burned blue with blood runes. “The Celestial use people. It’s their way. He couldn’t wear the amulet so he got you to use it for him.”
Camillio opened his mouth furiously, but Sheikoh didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“What I know is the last time I took you at your word I ended up with my head smashed in,” Sheikoh responded quietly. His dangerous eyes held Khryzt’s twin white flames for a suspended instant.
“I trusted you, and you stole her from me. You’re lucky that this is all the pain you’re dealing with.” Menace shadowed his tone and his face.
Emili’s legs suddenly gave out, and Khryzt fell onto her knees, screaming its frustration and pain to the sky. The harsh, decadent scream cut off like at a deathly note. Khryzt brought Emili’s insane glare to rest on Sheikoh. It was full of unbridled, flaming hatred.
“I will make her hate you! I will invade her dreams with memories of you trying to stab her throat! Of every single way you’ve tried to kill me, and by extension, her!” Khryzt vowed hatefully, flinching under the ever-increasing barrage of blood runes. “And when I manage to break free from these accursed bindings I will kill every last one of you. The Celestial… Indigo and… and…”
Emili’s body suddenly toppled onto the ground, out cold. Camillio added a few more blood runes, waved some magic symbols in the air, finishing touches sort of things, and then that was that.
“And now we’ll see,” Camillio murmured, watching Emili’s fallen body.
Sheikoh cradled the sight of her within a pair of glittering, hopeful eyes and held his breath, as four and a half hours of stress and sweat, of Sycrarian against Celestial, of Camillio against Khryzt gave way before an endless graveyard silence.
Please, Sheikoh desperately prayed. If there’s a god in heaven, please give her back to me. I promise, I’ll do anything, I’ll never steal again, I’ll never… On and on, promise after promise, one compromise after another, as he watched her. The moment stretched itself out, longer and longer, until it could’ve easily been an hour and a half.
Sheikoh clenched his fists together until his nails dug into his palms, as silent tears dripped down his cheeks. He knew that it’d been too good to be true. It looked like he’d expected too much. Once again, everything he’d hoped and fought for had been in vain.
Sheikoh thought back to Emili’s cloudy eyes, horribly similar to those that Sheikoh’d killed. Death had punched another, identical hole into Sheikoh’s chest, straight through the hope that Emili might live. Its tattered edges of his faith and conviction lay around Emili, dying alongside her. It was time to admit that it was over. They’d failed.
Sheikoh wordlessly glanced over at Camillio to see how the Celestial took the disappointment. Camillio’s attention was still fixed upon the girl lying within the intricate lines and runes of the pentacle.
What more was there to see?
However long you watched it, death never changed into anything worth seeing. It was always exactly the same cold, dead choking at the end of your hopes. Nevertheless, Sheikoh’s neck turned and he took one long, last look at Emili, lying there on the ground. One of his fingernails punched through the skin of his palm, and a cool trickle of blood ran down his hand. He looked down at his fists, anything to distract him from the awful truth and forced them to unclench.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sheikoh caught a flicker of movement. Camillio gasped quietly, and Sheikoh swung back to stare at the girl lying on the cold, stone ground. His jaw dropped in shock.
Emili had opened her eyes.
Epilogue
Back from the Beyond
Nothingness. . .
Emptiness. . .
Timelessness-
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
Her throat choked itself into a tight knot. Desperate gasping sounded harsh against her ears, the surrounding blackness melted away to reveal colors and blurry shapes. Vision blinded her eyes and burned through her forehead. Skin and muscles made themselves known with aching and shivery prickles like spiders, crawling and biting and searing. Sensations ripped through her like she wasn’t there; she was drowning in their storm. It was utterly overwhelming.
This wasn’t right…
Why wasn’t this right?
What had happened?
She looked around wildly. Then she caught sight of a familiar face. She looked closer. Her thoughts stuttered on a name… Sheikoh…
Sheikoh..?
Who-
Then her mind was viciously wrenched to the sided. Sickening coils and tendrils wrapped around her. They latched onto her skin by a layer of slime. She tried to scream, and the substance oozed into her mouth. She couldn’t cough it out. It slithered down her thr
oat, into her lungs. She could feel her heart pumping it into her veins, dispersing it throughout her body. It coiled into her muscles and began tearing and burning.
The unimaginable, horrible pain sent her staggering back deep into herself. She wrapped herself into a ball and numbly watched from a distance as the pounding window of sensations was consumed by dancing white flames. The boy’s voice gave way to silence. She rolled over and went back to sleep.
She was jerked back awake. She clenched her eyes, but didn’t do anything to alleviate the ache all over her. Her skin felt like it was burning. The harsh stone floor scratched at her skin. The rasping sound of breathing dug into the tip of her spine. She let her eyes blink open. She squinted against the glaring, blue light silhouetting two dark faces. Her sight was slow to adjust, but she was eventually able to make out a few details as the overwhelming sensations drained into background.
She gasped at the sight of one, the younger of the two faces staring down at her. His intense, dark eyes, one of them lined with a scar, held hers steadily, half obscured by a mop of shaggy raven bangs. His angular face and high cheekbones were framed by locks of black hair. He looked sharp and strangely innocent like an angel fallen from a stormy sky. His gaze was one of wary hope. Memory jolted over her eyes. There had been four of them, sitting at a booth. There were chips in the center of the table and a little girl wearing a pink shirt, made dark under the faintly blued lights and neon tubes of sparking light above… and…
It was gone.
She grasped for it, but all she came up with was the memory of the memory; a bunch of indistinct colors, and faces that were frustratingly blank. She found herself longing for the sight of the boy’s smile. He had been smiling in the memory, she was sure of it, if he smiled again maybe she could retrieve the memory.
That’s what she told herself at least.
“Emili..?” he asked her, his voice low and controlled, edged with a hint of desperation.
Emili?
Was that her name?