Evanescent

by Carlyle Labuschagne

  “Ready,” said Troy, standing with legs and shoulders grounded, fixed, awaiting the onslaught. I nodded, and my heart leapt at the sight of the droids emerging through the bushes, breaking through the barrier of dark smog and onto the stretch of open land before us. They were giants compared to those who had raided the city. When two droids were struck by the shards of glassy ice, they staggered, forcing the enemy line to slow. This bought us some time to compose. One of the droids stepped forward, removing his helmet. I gasped. It was Enoch, he was here.

  Troy looked at me, read the horror on my face.

  “What, what are you seeing. Him?” he hissed.

  I nodded.

  “It is not him. Don’t be fooled,” Tatos warned.

  “Troy,” I whispered, unsure, unsure of what was happening to me and why I had felt that they were there to kill me. But as I was bound to them, their intentions sang to my blood a second later. This was the call of the blood-magic, and I had to find a way to sever the ties.

  He glanced at me, not saying a word. I looked down at his bleeding hand as he gripped the star blades too tightly in his fierce palm.

  I tucked my sias into my harness at my back, and drew some star blades from Troy’s belt. This would allow for a distant strike, buying me more time to mentally gather my powers, to separate it from that of the dark abilities of the Shadow-shift.

  “When I say go, you start flinging those stars as far and as hard as you can, think of them as an extension of your gaze.”

  “Guide them with my eyes,” I returned, seeking confirmation.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  I itched to attack while they hovered. “Not now, Ava,” said Tatos, his hand on my shoulder.

  “Focus. Got it,” I replied.

  Enoch boldly and confidently took another step forward, and then another. I tried to see past the push of Enoch’s mind.

  “He thinks we can’t kill him,” Tatos snorted.

  The android line grew into a dark and slick force, creeping closer.

  “We can take them,” Troy assured us.

  “We have no choice.” Tatos’ voice had grown thick.

  I felt it in the air, their pull on me. Enoch’s laughter pushed the air, his gravity trying to force my blood-shift.

  “He is trying to turn me.”

  Before Troy could say anything, the ground shook as droids increased their speed. The humming of their bodies became louder, a choir of metal and bloodlust echoing throughout the valley.

  Tatos let arrow after arrow rip, one after the other sliced the air with a blue glimmer. All too quickly his hand came up empty, unable to feed his bow.

  “Now!” Troy shouted.

  I took the stars and flicked my wrists, throwing a blizzard of them as we advanced forward. Stars shimmered and arched, gleamed blue then bright yellow as they flew through the gray sky. Troy released a dozen before I had released three, my hands fumbling for more from his harness.

  “Close your eyes!” Troy shouted, waiting.

  Enoch grinned, coming right for me. My panic kept me frozen and I was left blinded as the stars exploded into a white, piercing, starburst of light. By the time my sight had recovered, the droids were upon us. Troy slashed, spun and cut his way through the front line, he ducked as a droid’s arm flew over him and spun so quickly the droid lost balance and fell, where Tatos pinned a shard of metal into his throat. But the others droids kept coming and my mind stuttered, being able to feel the push of Enoch but not see him. Tatos kept low to the ground, striking the droids in their knees; one by one they dropped. His bow turned into a sword as he pierced it through their throats.

  “Come on!” I shouted, their bloodlust suddenly painting my needs. Sais burning in my grip ready to strike.

  Troy ducked a blow from an oncoming droid, somersaulted over his head and kicked into his back.

  “All yours babe,” he shouted as the droid came tumbling toward me.

  The robotic creature stumbled for another step, but quickly corrected himself and before he found his footing, I was upon him, blades piercing the metal frame. My sais hitched in the metal, and a quiver reverberated through the metallic bodice and into my palms. I had to kick myself into his chest to remove my sais, as the metal rippled upon the attempt at absorbing the blades.

  While the droid had trouble finding his feet, he extended his shooting arm; a ball of flame lit up the air around him as he drew in the energy, releasing a massive orb of fire. I spun out of the way before the flame made a U-turn, coming back to finish the job.

  “Troy!” I screamed as I fell to the ground, the ball flew past me.

  “Use the rain!” Troy shouted.

  I kept my eyes on the flame coming for its unclaimed vengeance. It appeared it was designed to track me and only me. I lay supine on the muddy ground, studying the pattern of the downpour, and watched as a sheet of ice formed and enveloped the ball of fire only breaths away from me. Briefly, I heard Troy call my name in terror as a massive force pushed air from my lungs and scraped my body over mud and through a grassy patch. I coughed, swallowing smoke, soot, grass and blood. If not for the smell of burning flesh, I would never have known what had hit me. It seemed the flame was designed with a twin in mind. Lifting myself onto my elbows, I looked down into the black flakes of seared material, the mush of skin and red gory meat. For a moment, there was no blood and I thought I was in the clear, but when Troy leaned over me to inspect the wound, I yelled out in horror. His touch flared the pain, the sensation unbearable and beautifully blinding. I pushed him from me, screaming out as the blood-shift rippled and grew like a cocoon over me. I welcomed its numbing effects, but was afraid of its hungry eagerness to turn me.

  “Ava, no.” Troy held me, arms clutching over my chest, knowing full well his effects on my shift.

  His touch pulled the disease from my mind, replacing it with wicked shivers of pain.

  “Get off,” I shouted, “you are hurting me!”

  The look on his face was pure torture.

  What was he to do? Lose me through the shift, or cause me insane pain? But he chose to hold me down as my body quacked and coiled in protest.

  “Please, no, I can’t take it,” I begged.

  “You have to. I won’t lose you to the Shadow.”

  “You already have.”

  “What?” His tongue snaked out a hostile disbelief.

  “I can’t heal without it. You have to let me go.”

  “I’ll find a way.” He attempted to lift me, but quickly changed his mind when terror ripped from my lips, piercing the air with unadulterated screams of agony.

  “Troy! I need some help over here,” Tatos yelled out.

  “Give me a minute.”

  “I don’t have a minute.”

  “Just go,” I told him, coughing up the nasty ichor spilling its way into my mouth.

  “I won’t leave you. Not again,” he said, head shaking, fingers trembling over my jaw.

  I pulled his face toward mine. “I will never forgive you if you choose to save me and not him. He needs you more than I do right now. I can take care of this.”

  “I won’t let you turn, Ava.”

  “We can’t stop it anymore,” I argued.

  “Troy!”

  “Just go.” I twisted his fingers out of my shirt, pushing his hands from me. I was becoming tired of the eternal battle.

  I reveled in his release as the numbness crawled back in, the soft haze of sweet hunger taking me to the ecstasy of dark oblivion. I had been mistaken in assuming it would be that easy, because as soon as I healed, my eyes flung open and Troy had me cradled in his lap, wiping sweat, tears and blood from my skin. The pain had subsided but the ache spread, trying to find my heart. A hard blow against Troy’s back left us both sprawled on the floor. He was quicker on his feet than I was, wrestling the remains of a beaten up droid to the ground. My eyes caught the turquoise gaze of annoyance spitting from Tatos’ disgruntled face as one of the mechanical beings had his c
law pushed against his chin, attempting to twist his head from his body. As I moved closer to assist, I was held back. I tried to turn, but upon looking down, noticed my arms were held in a deadly vice-grip of metal arms across my chest. I kicked back, but it was immensely useless against the metal giant.

  “Tatos!” Troy yelled.

  “I am gonna need a minute!” Tatos yelled back from somewhere behind me, his voice lost in the clutter.

  “We don’t have a minute!” he bantered back from his wedged position between two steel giants. Troy ducked, and the mechanical creatures destroyed each other.

  Both Tatos and Troy came at me, simultaneously. I heard my bones crack. “I think he is breaking me!” I cried out.

  Troy stopped, held a hand out to Tatos in a gesture to slow down.

  Troy’s dark stare echoed in my mind, making me regret I had told him he’d caused me pain earlier.

  As my eyes closed, I felt the world ebb out with shooting stars blazing behind my eyelids.

  “Let. Her. Go!” Troy demanded.

  The taste of blood was a familiar enemy as the vice dared to tighten further.

  “Let her go,” Troy requested once more. “I can kill you before your next move.”

  “Ava, I know you want to come with me. It’s the only place you don’t have to hide. A place where there’s no pain.” It was Enoch’s voice talking through the metal talisman.

  “Shut up!” I shouted.

  “He’s trying to get into your mind,” Troy reminded me.

  I tried to squirm free, then rested my head back. “You idiot! If I die, so do you,” I whispered to the thing holding me, remembering our blood connection.

  Instead, it spoke in Enoch’s voice. “Tell him, Ava. Tell him what you did. Tell him what you are. Tell Troy about the disease, how you want it, how you call for it, how you crave it. You are calling for it right now. Just like that night, lustful and deliciously…”

  “No!” I screeched

  Troy’s eyes pierced mine, just before the black flash took me. His guilt and pain were consuming him as much as it was me. It was happening, the eruption of fire all over me. The thunder in my ears. My screams and a loud bang echoed throughout the valley, deafening everything around us. In the hurricane of the shift, of being influenced and corrupted by the Shadowing, being pulled by my instinct, pushed by Enoch and his disease – I was caught between the crossfire of my light and my dark. My guilt and my need. With an agonizing twist to my gut, my pulse erupted. I took the pain of my actions as it ripped through me, breaking and bending everything inside me to its will. Moments later, the ripples faded and I stood, eyes raking over the droids and drones as the metal bodies melted into the seething earth. Rain and heat collided, white steam bellowed in the breeze. Through the rising mist, I searched for Troy’s, and Tatos’ bodies. My lips, hands and feet started to shiver; the quiver was felt in my bones. My skin, however, remained numb.

  I fell to the ground, wiping tears that never came. The numbness spilled back in. I stared at a pool of water reflecting the gray world around me. Then it all came rushing back, the calmness that came with a hot sensation to my skin. Troy’s arms were around me, pulling me into his chest. His heart, his rhythm, his beat, swallowed mine. His torso rose and fell deeply with a soothing effect against my withering body. This was the only way to still my pulse, to steady the chaos, to disband the Shadowing effect, so I could go back to him. In his embrace, he was telling me the truth through saying nothing, just holding me until the sorrow that fogged my mind lifted and I would fall into his gravity.

  Her appetite for the Shadow had become insatiable, and aggressive enough that it had consumed her. She felt the need, the hunger to feed her fevering addiction. But the more she borrowed from it, the more it took from her. I shook my head in disbelief at how quickly things didn’t make sense anymore. But, it was not the Shadowing disease so much as something else that had altered her in more than one way. We had seen her connection to those droids, felt it with palpable distaste. I had felt the evident change each time I held her. Losing myself in her kisses became harder suddenly – it was all the evidence I needed. Either she was pushing me away, or she never wanted me the way I desired her. I’d seen her change before my very eyes, heard it in the rhythm of her heart, breathed it through her touch. But, something inside me was refuting it with my entire existence. The reality of it was a sick one. I am sure she felt resentment toward the fact that I was her soul guide, that I was the only thing that could push back her shift. I understood it, because she wanted me to be with her – because I wanted to, not because I had to, for the sake of a prophecy.

  “I am certain that my touch is the only thing that keeps it at bay, but for how long, Dad? It’s getting stronger, and…” I trailed off, but had to say it at some point. “And, she wants it, she’s not fighting it at all anymore. She has fallen prey to her insecurities, and I don’t know if there is anything left for me to do, but ignite her.”

  “She is fighting it to some degree.” Dad was pacing, ignoring anything else I had said after my first sentence. He was still not convinced that we were meant to ignite, he wouldn’t accept that the prophecy could have been so wrong about me, about us.

  “Before it becomes a part of her permanently?” Anaya let out a deep sigh, twirling a diamond pendant between her fingers.

  I frowned at her. Why was she hesitating to give that to Maya?

  “We need to take her to Legentium,” Dad said.

  “No,” I interrupted my father. “What we need to do, is find the rest of the Circle members.”

  “We can only do that through Ava.” He was pacing a little slower now as he inhaled the ashes of the tree of good and evil through his pipe. The nauseating smoke teased at my annoyance. The smoke called to me, but it was a life I had turned from. I needed a clear head. It was hard enough to subdue the para-human side I inherited from my mother. There were many things now that I had pieced together since reading Mom’s journals, and I had secretly read Ike’s, too. Ava’s mother and mine had written the journals to accompany each other, like puzzle pieces. The one held clues to the other, which was inherently strange as the two had never met. I had not told Ava what I knew. I had my orders from the head of the Truth Seekers. This time they would not budge, I had overstepped my boundaries too many times. The Shadow. She had become the Shadow, it played over and over in my mind. I shoed Dad away with his sweet, smelling smoke stabbing at the walls of my throat. It reminded me of that very wretched day I wanted to forget forever. If only I wasn’t who I am, it would have been much easier to be her guide, and to see this imprudent prophecy through.

  The smoke reminded me of the day I had become her guide. I had been living under the general’s roof, there to infiltrate the Council. What better way than to pretend to be one of them? I had finally turned nineteen, was ecstatic, as it was finally then that I took my place as a Truth Seeker, a warlock warrior; gaining magic, not to mention the opportunity to change our lives forever. Finally, I could be with her. Gray smoke twirled around the low hanging LED lights, reminding me of the foggy night that had changed us forever, changed me forever. During initiation, I had to inhale from the smoking pipe, the ashes of the tree of good and evil. Once I smoked of it, there would be certain passages that opened in my mind. With the tree of good and evil comes certain knowledge, and magic from those places hidden to certain beings, like humans or even half-humans. Yeah, well, turns out the magic I was going to use to save a girl from the Council’s tortured interest, was not allowed to be used on my assigned soul. As a Truth Seeker, some understanding strikes you, like your purpose for being a warlock. Mine was to be her guide, an honorable place for some; not for someone who was in love with his assignment. I didn’t believe it at first, I had to go to her that night – it was entirely my fault that Enoch knew of her – the key to the archaic weapon, the White Divine. He had a piece of knowledge we didn’t possess, the use of his father’s dark and twisted resources once unknown to us. H
e knew I would be the assigned soul-guide to the White Divine, but little did we know he knew of her bloodline, and that it carried the Shadowing disease. We played right into his little twisted game. That night after my initiation, I went to her, to confront her, test her, see if it was really so. How did I know she was the one the prophecy foretold? Her presence scared me, because I knew then I could never be without it. At first, I thought it was because of my soul guardianship. But that night, I knew I would never be able to be without her. I tried, you know, by pushing her away. Instead, I hurt her. It was hard if I was to be her guide. I was not meant to intrude in her evolution under any circumstances – ever. That is why I cannot use my magic around her, because by doing so it will dampen her growth, her potential. My yearning drew her close, my mere presence changed her, and Enoch saw all of this. There were times I could have saved her from him. I tried, but it was impossible, and that is why I hate being her guide, why I hate the prophecy. I nearly died because of my interference, it would have been too easy otherwise. I was stuck in a near impossible situation, being her guide drew me to her in many ways, but what I felt for her, between us, was so much more; it devoured me, haunted me and it would certainly kill me. Loving her would be my mistake forever. Existing as the ignited one was also so far from the Truth Seeker’s path I was meant to lead. Being the ignited one was something we had no idea about, but I had the gut-wrenching, unmistakable feeling that this was my destiny and hers. How else could I explain what I felt for her? It was more than feeling – it was being. Arriana said it was practically impossible for a guide to feel this way toward his assignment. But then, everything about us was impossible. We would be the first – the link – and the last. I stared at the smoke twirling around my head, smothering my thoughts. I knew she felt the same and was running from it. If I ever had the chance to show her, I would never hesitate ever again. I could have listened to my father, to Arriana, to stay away from those feelings as her guide. I could have found a way to use the drugs they used in the schools to shut my emotions down, but it was impossible for me. The meds never worked on me. I sank to a chair. I couldn’t stand being her guide. It was a cruel fate.