//Author Note: Try reading: Bloody Æther | Scribble Hub //
This sea of terrible darkness has become too familiar to me, in the same way as the memories of that day long past. No matter how much I try to leave it behind, the pain always finds me, and I’m always forced to return.
Fire burns through me, consuming my insides and my outsides both, but it tugs and pulls in different ways, and it’s that shifting changing aspect of this place that I have to focus on if I don’t want to be consumed. I drift along with the currents of the flames, searching for something to distract me.
“Did I do it? Did I heal her?” I whisper, though my voice doesn’t reach this world.
Remembering some of what Anna told me about her time here, I try my hand at magic, but… nothing. I look for demons and monsters hiding in the dark fires, but there is nothing. Nothing but more pain.
I don’t know what she was talking about, but she had to have been doing something weird. Or maybe, her darkness is a different place to mine?
While I swim aimlessly about in the strange darkness, burning alive, I turn my mind back to the things Ruby said.
The mercenaries were brought down into the crypt with us so that I could use their corpses to practice my necromancy. That’s what she said. That’s why she wasn’t worried about them finding out about me. It’s why she attacked them at the end.
She said something about them doing something to deserve it. That they were going to die anyway, but I still don’t feel happy about it.
Theo and everyone have been upset at me even playing with Crow, and they’re horrified at the idea of me using people’s corpses for my magic. They would hate me for trying this.
The flames that burn my soul flicker about as something moves near me in the total darkness of this place. Something big.
“Hello?” I call hesitantly, even though my voice isn’t real in this space. “Hello?”
The flickering flames move again and whatever it is moves closer, swimming all around me. I try to swim away, but I can’t.
“I… remember you.” The voice echoes through me, as light comes from nothingness, burning fiery light. “The elf girl… descendant of my enemies. Have you enjoyed my gift?”
Green flames burst from a mouth filled with fangs, curling up and dancing upon the scales that cover the being’s long face, larger than a mountain. Its deep yellow eyes stare down at me from above, as I settle on its massive paw.
The dragon speaks, and I reply. I don’t know what’s said to me, and I’m not sure what I’m saying in return. Everything is so distant, and I can’t focus on anything. The details I can understand are blurring together.
I know that we’re talking about something but I don’t know what. He chuckles, his green flames bursting from his nose, and I think I’m laughing too. While we’re talking in the flicking green glow of his fires, the burning darkness pulls away like shadows in the light.
Slowly, the conversation trails off and the green light gives way to something else. The prickling crawling sensation which consumes me just before waking. He says something else, a warning, I think, and then he’s gone.
I breathe in sharply, tasting rot and ash and blood. We’re in the dark, surrounded by rattling bones, and walls of hard, compressed earth.
Lothar stands over me, his sword and shield ready. He glances down at me as I shuffle about.
“You’re awake?” he asks, pulling me up into a sitting position to see the room.
Ruby is here racing about, breaking and scattering all the skeletons that come for us. Most were already severely damaged by the rusted knight, and all she’s doing is finishing off the job, leaving nothing to threaten us.
“Ruby is okay?” I ask, pulling at Lothar’s sleeve as I try to stand. “The poison is all gone? Shouldn’t she go and get a proper healer?”
“I’m all better,” Ruby says, appearing right beside me and messing with my hair. She has to readjust my light band after accidentally knocking it loose. “You’re even more impressive than I thought, Syr. Gods, I wish I could keep you.”
“You could come with us?” I ask hopefully. She’s trouble, but she’s not afraid to treat me nicely, and even help me with my necromancy.
“Probably not,” Ruby replies, shaking her head. “I’ll talk to Semi about it, but I doubt that she’ll change her mind on this issue. She doesn’t want to interfere with your life too much, and she doesn’t want to make you a target of her enemies.”
She wants to protect me.
Just like Theo and the others, but in a different way.
A deep warmth rises in my chest just knowing that I have people who care for me, but then why do I still have to feel lonely? Why can’t Lothar and Adeleya accept my necromancy? Why can’t Ruby and Rea come with me?
Why do I have to be alone?
“Cheer up,” Ruby says, pressing her lips together and standing straighter. “There’s still something here for you to do. You came down here to develop your necromancy, didn’t you? Well, you have a chance to work on it.”
She waves to the side where the three mercenaries lie, brutalised and broken, but still living. Thayne is praying under his breath, looking upwards as if to find his goddess, but I’m not sure that she’d find him down here.
“Can’t we…”
“They’re dying,” Ruby interrupts me. “That’s already decided, and it’s nothing to do with you. They murdered a man, not a warrior or a guard or anything like that, either. It was murder plain and simple and they must pay for it.
“Semi protects her own, but when she fails to, she ensures vengeance is done,” Ruby stares into my eyes to make sure the message is clear. “The only way any of them gets out of here at all is if they leave as your undead servants.”
“Was… was it bad?” I ask, biting my lip. “What they did?”
“The husband of a woman that dances at Semi’s club,” Ruby says. “They murdered him in a fit of jealously, I think.”
I… don’t want to think about all the everything in that statement. The dancers have lovers? The lovers and customers and dancers… what sort of relationships do they have?
No, I’m not thinking about all that.
“I’ll do the killing,” Ruby says. “All you need to do is take this chance to try and learn. Maybe you can try to capture a soul, like what that other undead was talking about. This seems a better chance than any to learn.”
I don’t reply, crossing the room to the three men. They helped me to get down here and watched my back, but Parker used a poisoned dagger to slash my throat, and the other two were going to try and kill me at the end there as well. Hoping to make it so that Ruby wouldn’t ‘win’.
“I ask only that you-” he heaves a heavy breath before coughing up blood. “Please, don’t do anything to our souls,” Thayne finishes, sounding incredibly calm, through his rough breathing.
“You were going to kill me,” I say, meeting his eyes.
He nods.
“You killed someone else. Someone who didn’t do anything to you. You acted like bandits?” I ask.
“Like bandits?” He asks, shaking his head and spitting a mouthful of blood. “Not like bandits. It wasn’t to steal anything from him. I just… What man lets a woman work in a place like that? Not a man at all. What we did was wrong, but he still deserved it. Ruby’s crew even told us that what we did wasn’t that bad. That we just owed them a favour…”
“He was a dancer, too,” Ruby shakes her head, looking down at the dwarf. “He retired to take care of their family, and we told you what we needed to to get you here.”
Thayne says nothing, and the others don’t seem happy to talk about it, either.
Who deserves what fate?
I don’t know.
“Ready?” Ruby asks.
“I’ll do it,” I say, drawing my swords.
I don’t hate these three, and I honestly don’t know what to think or feel about that other person that they killed. Still, if they’ve been brought to their deaths here for my sake, then I should be the one killing them.
“No,” Ruby shakes her head and pulls me back by the shoulder. “They’re here for your practice, but they’re still my kills. I knew the man they killed, and tonight I’m going to be comforting his grieving wife. I’ll kill them, you just deal with all the necromancy.”
“Okay,” I can’t say anything else in the face of her passion. “I’m ready.”
“No, you’re not,” Lothar interrupts me, pushing a potion into my hands. “You’re æther veins, what condition are they in?”
“I…” I didn’t think about that, but for some reason, I don’t feel like I’m burning up at all. I still feel itchy, and the bugs and numbness aren’t totally gone, but the fires have been stifled.
I feel normal as if I’ve had time to recover, but I know that I haven’t. Did something happen differently this time?
I sort of remember something strange?
Was there something in the darkness?
Something about green fire?
“I’m fine,” I reply, rubbing at my brow. “I can do it.”
Lothar seems worried, and a little bit angry, too, but he just nods and steps back, keeping the last of the crawling bones from reaching us.
Ruby glances at me briefly before drawing a dagger.
“Is there any particular way I should kill him?” she asks. “I have a few poisons that wouldn’t damage him too much.”
“Anything,” I say, shaking my head. “Just leave the head intact otherwise it’s difficult to move him around.”
“Understood,” Ruby says, pressing her dagger into the dwarf’s chest. He struggles, hardening his skin to try and resist the blade, but she still presses through against his efforts. Her dagger sinks deep into his flesh, before she twists it savagely, sending him into violent convulsions.
I don’t wait, using my magic on him.
The impenetrable shield remains in place, protecting his mind and keeping me from even taking his body, but it’s slowly slipping away. If I tried, could I create a cage to hold it in place? Could I create some nails to hammer it to the flesh, or use my magic like a thread to carefully stitch this strange power into his body?
I want to try. I want to understand, to get stronger, but is this really okay?
Would this be taking it too far? There are other ways to get stronger. Plenty of things that I still need to learn.
I hesitate, holding myself back until his soul drifts free, escaping from my reach. Instead, I take everything else. His flesh, his memories, his experiences. I can’t use them for myself. The way he swings his hammer isn’t something that I can use in my body, it’s something that he can use only for himself.
The other two swear and cry as they see their friend’s corpse rise and dance around. He still remembers how to dance, it’s a surprisingly light movement considering his larger form, and I’m sure that he’d had fun dancing like this in the past.
What I need now, isn’t a way to hold a soul into place. It’s the ability to carve new æther channels into the body so that it can survive without me.
Ruby kills the others too, letting me have their bodies. Their souls I don’t touch, I’m not ready for that and breaking their souls without getting anything from it would be cruel in ways that I can’t accept.
Instead, I focus my attention on the way my magic moves through them while I try to find a way from my magic to control them.
It’s a strange thing to try and understand what I’m doing wrong, and even looking through the necromancer’s notes I can’t really understand it. I stare at the pictures while imagining burning a new path through them, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
After moving their bodies around for a half an hour, flailing my magic about in the same way I used to use my sword, I stumble on something that works. Something I’ve never done before because I was always too careful keeping them alive to risk damaging them with badly made magic.
By imagining my magic as something like a worm eating its way through a fruit and leaving behind a long tunnel after it, I create something new. Æther flows through their bodies, releasing energetic magic through their flesh even after I focus somewhere else.
I’m not sure if it’s the right thing, but it does something. I don’t think I can do anything more without first studying that book in more detail. I bite my tongue trying not to think of it as a waste of life.
They died so that I could try and learn necromancy, but this is the best that I can do with their bodies?
I’m not talented. I’m not a genius like Anna. All I can do is my best.
“I’m done,” I say, letting go of the bodies. They instantly collapse, crumbling into ash unlike any of the other bones or bodies here which seem almost immortal. I bite down a sigh, sorting through the piles of ash.
I find small lengths of muscle and bone that haven’t fully crumbled away. That’s new.
It hasn’t been completely worthless. I’ve figured out what I’m doing wrong, and I’ll do better than this next time.
“Let’s go,” Lothar says, pulling me into the crypts that will lead to the surface.
“Thank you, Ruby,” I say, as she hops alongside us. I think she’s keeping the new staff, but it seems to suit her well, and I hope that she gets some good use out of it.
“And thank you for healing me,” Ruby says, rubbing at my head again. Her smile is bright and warm. “I’ll be around, and hopefully we’ll get to meet again one of these days.”
“Can’t we send letters or something?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she laughs. “Let’s see if Semi has some way for us to talk without anyone getting in trouble, yeah?”
“That sounds good,” I say, climbing up through the long tunnels.
I’m not sure how I feel about all the killing we’ve done down there, or how she tricked us, but she’s not the first predator that I’ve made friends with.
When we get there and lock the doors behind us, someone rushes out from among the short stone buildings and speaks quietly with Ruby. Vael. What does she have to do with this? Why is she here?
Lothar tries to pull me away, but he’s too slow.
“Syr, your friend is waiting for you at Semi’s. It’s important, we have to go now.”
“Ruby,” Lothar glares at her, his hand reaching for his sword.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Ruby says, turning her attention to him. “That noble girl needs Syr’s help. If you feel uncomfortable letting her go alone, then come with us. Just understand that whatever happens, Syr is going to make it out of this city alive.”
“If Rea needs my help, then we have to go,” I say, not giving him a chance to say anything to stop me. He begrudgingly follows, and we move fast, slowed only because Ruby keeps me from running and making a fuss.
What does Rea need?
Why did she reach out through Semi?
It doesn’t take us long to get to the shop, and when I’m there Vael leads me up the stairs, we cross paths with Semi herself, but she doesn’t say anything. Simply nodding to us in greeting.
We don’t stop climbing until the top floor. If Rea’s asking me to come here, then maybe it’s not anything that I have to be worried about. Maybe she just wants my company again?
My anxiety blending with excitement, I open the wide doors.
Inside of a bright and colourful room sits Rea, she’s shifted around the soft furs on the floor to sit on the hard tile instead. Crystalline tears roll down her cheeks to shatter on the hard ground.
She meets my eyes and tries to smile.
I’m holding her before I even realize that I’m moving, kneeling on the ground and holding her tight.
“What happened?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispers over and over again, her voice twisted by her cold throat shattering and healing over and over again. She just keeps repeating those words.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
//Author Note: Thoughts?
If you enjoy this story, like it, rate it, leave a comment, and share it around!
If you really like it and want more chapters join the Patreon, I need all your support to keep this going.
www.patreon.com/formlesschimera
//Author Note: Try reading: Bloody Æther | Scribble Hub //
This sea of terrible darkness has become too familiar to me, in the same way as the memories of that day long past. No matter how much I try to leave it behind, the pain always finds me, and I’m always forced to return.
Fire burns through me, consuming my insides and my outsides both, but it tugs and pulls in different ways, and it’s that shifting changing aspect of this place that I have to focus on if I don’t want to be consumed. I drift along with the currents of the flames, searching for something to distract me.
“Did I do it? Did I heal her?” I whisper, though my voice doesn’t reach this world.
Remembering some of what Anna told me about her time here, I try my hand at magic, but… nothing. I look for demons and monsters hiding in the dark fires, but there is nothing. Nothing but more pain.
I don’t know what she was talking about, but she had to have been doing something weird. Or maybe, her darkness is a different place to mine?
While I swim aimlessly about in the strange darkness, burning alive, I turn my mind back to the things Ruby said.
The mercenaries were brought down into the crypt with us so that I could use their corpses to practice my necromancy. That’s what she said. That’s why she wasn’t worried about them finding out about me. It’s why she attacked them at the end.
She said something about them doing something to deserve it. That they were going to die anyway, but I still don’t feel happy about it.
Theo and everyone have been upset at me even playing with Crow, and they’re horrified at the idea of me using people’s corpses for my magic. They would hate me for trying this.
The flames that burn my soul flicker about as something moves near me in the total darkness of this place. Something big.
“Hello?” I call hesitantly, even though my voice isn’t real in this space. “Hello?”
The flickering flames move again and whatever it is moves closer, swimming all around me. I try to swim away, but I can’t.
“I… remember you.” The voice echoes through me, as light comes from nothingness, burning fiery light. “The elf girl… descendant of my enemies. Have you enjoyed my gift?”
Green flames burst from a mouth filled with fangs, curling up and dancing upon the scales that cover the being’s long face, larger than a mountain. Its deep yellow eyes stare down at me from above, as I settle on its massive paw.
The dragon speaks, and I reply. I don’t know what’s said to me, and I’m not sure what I’m saying in return. Everything is so distant, and I can’t focus on anything. The details I can understand are blurring together.
I know that we’re talking about something but I don’t know what. He chuckles, his green flames bursting from his nose, and I think I’m laughing too. While we’re talking in the flicking green glow of his fires, the burning darkness pulls away like shadows in the light.
Slowly, the conversation trails off and the green light gives way to something else. The prickling crawling sensation which consumes me just before waking. He says something else, a warning, I think, and then he’s gone.
I breathe in sharply, tasting rot and ash and blood. We’re in the dark, surrounded by rattling bones, and walls of hard, compressed earth.
Lothar stands over me, his sword and shield ready. He glances down at me as I shuffle about.
“You’re awake?” he asks, pulling me up into a sitting position to see the room.
Ruby is here racing about, breaking and scattering all the skeletons that come for us. Most were already severely damaged by the rusted knight, and all she’s doing is finishing off the job, leaving nothing to threaten us.
“Ruby is okay?” I ask, pulling at Lothar’s sleeve as I try to stand. “The poison is all gone? Shouldn’t she go and get a proper healer?”
“I’m all better,” Ruby says, appearing right beside me and messing with my hair. She has to readjust my light band after accidentally knocking it loose. “You’re even more impressive than I thought, Syr. Gods, I wish I could keep you.”
“You could come with us?” I ask hopefully. She’s trouble, but she’s not afraid to treat me nicely, and even help me with my necromancy.
“Probably not,” Ruby replies, shaking her head. “I’ll talk to Semi about it, but I doubt that she’ll change her mind on this issue. She doesn’t want to interfere with your life too much, and she doesn’t want to make you a target of her enemies.”
She wants to protect me.
Just like Theo and the others, but in a different way.
A deep warmth rises in my chest just knowing that I have people who care for me, but then why do I still have to feel lonely? Why can’t Lothar and Adeleya accept my necromancy? Why can’t Ruby and Rea come with me?
Why do I have to be alone?
“Cheer up,” Ruby says, pressing her lips together and standing straighter. “There’s still something here for you to do. You came down here to develop your necromancy, didn’t you? Well, you have a chance to work on it.”
She waves to the side where the three mercenaries lie, brutalised and broken, but still living. Thayne is praying under his breath, looking upwards as if to find his goddess, but I’m not sure that she’d find him down here.
“Can’t we…”
“They’re dying,” Ruby interrupts me. “That’s already decided, and it’s nothing to do with you. They murdered a man, not a warrior or a guard or anything like that, either. It was murder plain and simple and they must pay for it.
“Semi protects her own, but when she fails to, she ensures vengeance is done,” Ruby stares into my eyes to make sure the message is clear. “The only way any of them gets out of here at all is if they leave as your undead servants.”
“Was… was it bad?” I ask, biting my lip. “What they did?”
“The husband of a woman that dances at Semi’s club,” Ruby says. “They murdered him in a fit of jealously, I think.”
I… don’t want to think about all the everything in that statement. The dancers have lovers? The lovers and customers and dancers… what sort of relationships do they have?
No, I’m not thinking about all that.
“I’ll do the killing,” Ruby says. “All you need to do is take this chance to try and learn. Maybe you can try to capture a soul, like what that other undead was talking about. This seems a better chance than any to learn.”
I don’t reply, crossing the room to the three men. They helped me to get down here and watched my back, but Parker used a poisoned dagger to slash my throat, and the other two were going to try and kill me at the end there as well. Hoping to make it so that Ruby wouldn’t ‘win’.
“I ask only that you-” he heaves a heavy breath before coughing up blood. “Please, don’t do anything to our souls,” Thayne finishes, sounding incredibly calm, through his rough breathing.
“You were going to kill me,” I say, meeting his eyes.
He nods.
“You killed someone else. Someone who didn’t do anything to you. You acted like bandits?” I ask.
“Like bandits?” He asks, shaking his head and spitting a mouthful of blood. “Not like bandits. It wasn’t to steal anything from him. I just… What man lets a woman work in a place like that? Not a man at all. What we did was wrong, but he still deserved it. Ruby’s crew even told us that what we did wasn’t that bad. That we just owed them a favour…”
“He was a dancer, too,” Ruby shakes her head, looking down at the dwarf. “He retired to take care of their family, and we told you what we needed to to get you here.”
Thayne says nothing, and the others don’t seem happy to talk about it, either.
Who deserves what fate?
I don’t know.
“Ready?” Ruby asks.
“I’ll do it,” I say, drawing my swords.
I don’t hate these three, and I honestly don’t know what to think or feel about that other person that they killed. Still, if they’ve been brought to their deaths here for my sake, then I should be the one killing them.
“No,” Ruby shakes her head and pulls me back by the shoulder. “They’re here for your practice, but they’re still my kills. I knew the man they killed, and tonight I’m going to be comforting his grieving wife. I’ll kill them, you just deal with all the necromancy.”
“Okay,” I can’t say anything else in the face of her passion. “I’m ready.”
“No, you’re not,” Lothar interrupts me, pushing a potion into my hands. “You’re æther veins, what condition are they in?”
“I…” I didn’t think about that, but for some reason, I don’t feel like I’m burning up at all. I still feel itchy, and the bugs and numbness aren’t totally gone, but the fires have been stifled.
I feel normal as if I’ve had time to recover, but I know that I haven’t. Did something happen differently this time?
I sort of remember something strange?
Was there something in the darkness?
Something about green fire?
“I’m fine,” I reply, rubbing at my brow. “I can do it.”
Lothar seems worried, and a little bit angry, too, but he just nods and steps back, keeping the last of the crawling bones from reaching us.
Ruby glances at me briefly before drawing a dagger.
“Is there any particular way I should kill him?” she asks. “I have a few poisons that wouldn’t damage him too much.”
“Anything,” I say, shaking my head. “Just leave the head intact otherwise it’s difficult to move him around.”
“Understood,” Ruby says, pressing her dagger into the dwarf’s chest. He struggles, hardening his skin to try and resist the blade, but she still presses through against his efforts. Her dagger sinks deep into his flesh, before she twists it savagely, sending him into violent convulsions.
I don’t wait, using my magic on him.
The impenetrable shield remains in place, protecting his mind and keeping me from even taking his body, but it’s slowly slipping away. If I tried, could I create a cage to hold it in place? Could I create some nails to hammer it to the flesh, or use my magic like a thread to carefully stitch this strange power into his body?
I want to try. I want to understand, to get stronger, but is this really okay?
Would this be taking it too far? There are other ways to get stronger. Plenty of things that I still need to learn.
I hesitate, holding myself back until his soul drifts free, escaping from my reach. Instead, I take everything else. His flesh, his memories, his experiences. I can’t use them for myself. The way he swings his hammer isn’t something that I can use in my body, it’s something that he can use only for himself.
The other two swear and cry as they see their friend’s corpse rise and dance around. He still remembers how to dance, it’s a surprisingly light movement considering his larger form, and I’m sure that he’d had fun dancing like this in the past.
What I need now, isn’t a way to hold a soul into place. It’s the ability to carve new æther channels into the body so that it can survive without me.
Ruby kills the others too, letting me have their bodies. Their souls I don’t touch, I’m not ready for that and breaking their souls without getting anything from it would be cruel in ways that I can’t accept.
Instead, I focus my attention on the way my magic moves through them while I try to find a way from my magic to control them.
It’s a strange thing to try and understand what I’m doing wrong, and even looking through the necromancer’s notes I can’t really understand it. I stare at the pictures while imagining burning a new path through them, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
After moving their bodies around for a half an hour, flailing my magic about in the same way I used to use my sword, I stumble on something that works. Something I’ve never done before because I was always too careful keeping them alive to risk damaging them with badly made magic.
By imagining my magic as something like a worm eating its way through a fruit and leaving behind a long tunnel after it, I create something new. Æther flows through their bodies, releasing energetic magic through their flesh even after I focus somewhere else.
I’m not sure if it’s the right thing, but it does something. I don’t think I can do anything more without first studying that book in more detail. I bite my tongue trying not to think of it as a waste of life.
They died so that I could try and learn necromancy, but this is the best that I can do with their bodies?
I’m not talented. I’m not a genius like Anna. All I can do is my best.
“I’m done,” I say, letting go of the bodies. They instantly collapse, crumbling into ash unlike any of the other bones or bodies here which seem almost immortal. I bite down a sigh, sorting through the piles of ash.
I find small lengths of muscle and bone that haven’t fully crumbled away. That’s new.
It hasn’t been completely worthless. I’ve figured out what I’m doing wrong, and I’ll do better than this next time.
“Let’s go,” Lothar says, pulling me into the crypts that will lead to the surface.
“Thank you, Ruby,” I say, as she hops alongside us. I think she’s keeping the new staff, but it seems to suit her well, and I hope that she gets some good use out of it.
“And thank you for healing me,” Ruby says, rubbing at my head again. Her smile is bright and warm. “I’ll be around, and hopefully we’ll get to meet again one of these days.”
“Can’t we send letters or something?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she laughs. “Let’s see if Semi has some way for us to talk without anyone getting in trouble, yeah?”
“That sounds good,” I say, climbing up through the long tunnels.
I’m not sure how I feel about all the killing we’ve done down there, or how she tricked us, but she’s not the first predator that I’ve made friends with.
When we get there and lock the doors behind us, someone rushes out from among the short stone buildings and speaks quietly with Ruby. Vael. What does she have to do with this? Why is she here?
Lothar tries to pull me away, but he’s too slow.
“Syr, your friend is waiting for you at Semi’s. It’s important, we have to go now.”
“Ruby,” Lothar glares at her, his hand reaching for his sword.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Ruby says, turning her attention to him. “That noble girl needs Syr’s help. If you feel uncomfortable letting her go alone, then come with us. Just understand that whatever happens, Syr is going to make it out of this city alive.”
“If Rea needs my help, then we have to go,” I say, not giving him a chance to say anything to stop me. He begrudgingly follows, and we move fast, slowed only because Ruby keeps me from running and making a fuss.
What does Rea need?
Why did she reach out through Semi?
It doesn’t take us long to get to the shop, and when I’m there Vael leads me up the stairs, we cross paths with Semi herself, but she doesn’t say anything. Simply nodding to us in greeting.
We don’t stop climbing until the top floor. If Rea’s asking me to come here, then maybe it’s not anything that I have to be worried about. Maybe she just wants my company again?
My anxiety blending with excitement, I open the wide doors.
Inside of a bright and colourful room sits Rea, she’s shifted around the soft furs on the floor to sit on the hard tile instead. Crystalline tears roll down her cheeks to shatter on the hard ground.
She meets my eyes and tries to smile.
I’m holding her before I even realize that I’m moving, kneeling on the ground and holding her tight.
“What happened?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispers over and over again, her voice twisted by her cold throat shattering and healing over and over again. She just keeps repeating those words.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
//Author Note: Thoughts?
If you enjoy this story, like it, rate it, leave a comment, and share it around!
If you really like it and want more chapters join the Patreon, I need all your support to keep this going.
www.patreon.com/formlesschimera
