2.1

 

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Next

Heat hit the back of my neck and then the side of my ear and then it was gone. Didn’t hurt. Just made its presence known and disappeared almost immediately. A flash of red-ish light accompanied it and around the shadow of myself it cast in front of me it coloured the dark dirt.

“Oi!” I tilted my head to shout in the direction the heat had come from. Stepped back a bit after the sound left my mouth. Dodged the dark and translucent arm that flung out to grab me soundlessly.

“Fuck, sorry!” Shannon quickly yelled back. It was cut off a bit with a huff I assumed was her dodging something as well.

Something else blew by me and I felt my hair and clothes get hit by pure force before they settled back. I turned to whatever it had hit and saw one of the wraiths go flying into a tree and dissipate and then I looked where it had come from and saw Ellie picking herself up from some pose and swinging back to face the shadow she was fighting. A save from her. Purposeful.

It was dark out already and that was making the wraiths harder to see. Last night we’d come around to this spot on our patrol when the sky was pink and red and orange. That had been a quick fight. Over in a few minutes, no one breathing hard. It had been a bit more than a few minutes now and I was starting to feel it. The wraiths were turning to face some strange angle that let them just disappear into particularly dark spots and my stamina was starting to deplete with all the jumping and small steps I was doing.

Ellie was keeping us afloat mostly. The last week had seen her harness her power a bit better now that she understood it wasn’t keen to be a direct source of damage like my lightning or Shannon’s fire. Combine that with her athletics background and she was definitely fucking carrying us.

The thing did some sort of gangly and awkward duck-and-spin-away maneuver from the my thrust towards it and then managed to clip my arm with a knuckle. I managed to stay away from the fingertips we had found out were somehow sharp after Shannon had gotten a cut on her leg the first night.

I was having trouble wrapping my head around them in some senses. I wasn’t disbelieving them or anything because I was jumping into this whole magi thing with both feet but the way they worked made it hard to fight them. They were almost intangible when touched physically, like parting dry mist, and only our weapons and powers could damage them. Whatever gave them their weird-ass properties made them fast and hard to hit and although a direct strike with lightning did kill them we ran into situations where it also went directly through them after. And then I almost get burned alive by my friend.

I backstepped again. The opposite arm swiped at me this time. I wasn’t really that graceful yet. Or varied. We’d been trying to practice a couple times a week now in accordance with Shannon’s new rules but it didn’t seem to be helping my abilities too much. I wasn’t cool or pretty when I fought. Felt like the sword was in my way sometimes. I’d rather just be able to punch these things at this point.

After another unsuccessful swipe I cursed and followed through with the rest of the swing until my weapon was down near my thigh. It disappeared as I sheathed it. When the wraith stepped forward to attack I clenched my fists and felt a trickle of my power run along my skin. My hands glowed and crackled as I held a bolt of gold in my fists like an old mob guy with a roll of quarters.

The shadow stepped in and I awkwardly threw myself to the left. It used it’s head this time and I saw a piece of it just vanish near the lower part of it’s face. Then it appeared again. A mouth. How the fuck did that work. It was hunched over like it had a bad back. I took the opportunity to hammer both of my fists down on the back of the things head. It dropped to the ground and was gone when I blinked.

Ellie had dispatched the one she was fighting and was turning to Shannon. Both of us stared as she ran a couple feet from where she’d been thrown or retreated and spun on her heel when she got close to her wraith. The momentum from the turn slammed her shield into the things body and then it was gone. We all took what felt like a very deep breathe and the other two sheathed their weapons. Shannon lit a flame in her hand to lend us some light as we gathered in the center of this little cliffside clearing.

“I don’t think I can do a fourth night of this.” Shannon said. I shrugged. Sighed a bit. Transformed back into the jeans and zip-up hoodie I’d been wearing. Dug my phone out of my pocket and saw the time was eleven thirty-six. Fuck. We had school in a bit more than eight hours. And we still had to get home sneakily.

Underneath the clock there was a text notification. From Nate. My stomach did something at that and I put my phone away without looking at it.

“It’s almost midnight. I already sleep like shit so I agree. We can’t have this be just a stop on our route anymore.” I said.

“What do we wanna do then?” Ellie asked. She had her arms crossed lightly over her chest. She made a face and then stopped crossing them and tried to adjust so she wasn’t getting a weird chest-squish situation she wasn’t used to yet and then just let them awkwardly rest in front of her eventually.

“Gotta figure out where they’re coming from before we do anything.” I responded. Ellie didn’t make a noise but her face seemed to sigh. She rubbed at her eyes.

“I don’t know if I can play detective tonight, considering I’m already fucking tired and I still have some studying to do.” Shannon said. She yawned and rolled her neck around. Ellie and me both yawned soon after that.

“It’s going to be the same thing tomorrow. Might as well get it over with.” Shannon actually did sigh at that. She reached her hands out to me and mimed a strangling action from a foot away.

“Fuck, okay, yes. So, do you have any great ideas to bestow upon us then?” I shrugged a little at that. Just a small rise and fall of the shoulders. Made a sound that could mean anything. She mock-strangled me again, dramatically clenching her jaw and widening her eyes.

“These things are just here when we arrive.” I said.

“Yes.” Shannon nodded and interrupted.

“That wasn’t a question. I’m thinking with my mouth.” Shannon raised both her hands to shoulder-level and shook them a bit in an exaggerated gesture of apology.

“They aren’t entities. They don’t have a branch if they’re hanging out where all the drunk college kids used to party and they keep coming back when we kill them.” I continued.

“And they aren’t nearly as powerful as the Beast.” Shannon said. I glared at her.

“Just helping.” She responded. Tilted her head and smiled a bit. I kept the glare on her as I moved on.

“This place used to be crawling with teenagers and twenty-year old’s and I’m thinking these things knew that. Maybe they’re wanting to bring back some warm bodies for an entity to do whatever with.” Ellie nodded at that.

“What do we wanna do?” She asked again. I didn’t say anything for a few moments. Shannon didn’t either thankfully. We couldn’t follow them. They’d already been here when we’d arrived multiple times now, at different times of day. No following where they came from. No following them back either. They didn’t run once they saw us. It was fight or flee at that point.

“We could start a fight and then run. Maybe they’d go tell their boss.” I said.

“And then we follow them back if they do?” Shannon asked. I made a noise of agreement. She moved her mouth in thought for a few seconds. Shook her head.

“We’d have to wait until tomorrow, and I was going to block that night out for studying, because exams are getting close.” I also should have been studying. Not for the same class as her. Hadn’t really been at the top of my priorities. Was a bit frustrated it was for her.

“Then we gotta figure something out now. I’m not going through another two or three nights of this.” And I also just wanted to figure this out. Natural curiosity or whatever.

“Bleh. If you don’t have a better idea, we may just have to brute force this.” Shannon said. She rubbed at her face like she was warming up her cheeks. Opened her eyes really wide before settling back to into a neutral expression. I made a face towards her, wanting her to expand on the thought. Made a rolling motion with my hand.

“We split up, search the woods around here. I doubt it’s across the creek, considering there’s barely any forest there before we hit town, so each of us pick one of the remaining directions and sets off. We’ve got phones on us.” She looked at us in the silence afterwards with a questioning expression.

“Yeah, okay.” I sighed. I wanted to just get this over with. So much fucking work. Ellie nodded and made a small sound of agreement.

“Can we make a time limit at least?” I asked as I let the sparks run over my body. I unsheathed my sword and swung it a couple times. More for the feeling than any real practice. Like when dudes slap things they built after they’re done or something.

“Yeah, I guess. Twelve ten? Would give us about forty minutes.” We all agreed and then we each fumbled a bit as we decided who was going where and then eventually set off. I went “down,” Shannon to my left and Ellie to my right.

I alternated between bouts of running and fast-walking. The cover of the leaves was filtering out the moonlight and making it hard to see where I was going. Or what I was going to step on. A cool magical-warrior and I was stumbling on rocks in the forest at night. Neat.

My brain was trying to focus on where I’d come from and what I was seeing and also where I could go and eventually I realized it wasn’t working. Walking in a straight line in the dark with trees all around wasn’t giving me a good view. So I backtracked to where I started and came out pretty far to the right. Then I started over again. Walked all the way to the right and tried to move in a diagonal across my little swathe of forest. Tried to take in everything while also paying attention for details. I ended up in a weird almost-sleepy state where my eyes were roaming over everything and taking in nothing. Occasionally I’d fixate on something that looked out of place. A piece of stone or bits of metal. Just trash. Or broken structures.

After I don’t even know how long I stopped. Transformed back into my normal clothes. My phone said it was fifteen minutes to midnight. And the text was still there obviously. The air came out of me in a small sigh and I came to a full stop and leaned my left shoulder against a tree. It was incredibly dark out. We must have been given better eyesight in our other forms as well because I was able to navigate a few seconds ago. Get me to walk through now and I’d trip and die.

The contents of the message were hidden. I just saw the name. Nate. I swiped up and put in my PIN. Navigated to the messages app and tapped it. Didn’t look at the first few previewed words as I tapped our chat.

School’s been over for a while so I probably should have been back a month or two ago, but now that I know you’re almost out I guess that’s the kick in the ass I needed. Gonna head back in a couple weeks. Still gotta work out some details with dad, but just wanted to let you know.

I put the phone to sleep without responding. He wouldn’t really care. He used to do the same to me. We were bad at responding to shit like that. Easily forgetful.

I wanted him to come back. It was good. We used to be close. I kind of missed him. I think. I was worried I was just telling myself that because I knew everyone would want it to be true. Like the faces I put on. If someone told me something sad I made a sad face. If something fell over and made a loud noise, concerned face. But I never really felt like that during those moments. I just knew people didn’t like it when you didn’t act how they expected.

He may be coming back now but he left before. He’d have to leave again after the summer. His life was in Toronto. Mine was here and he couldn’t really do anything about that. He hadn’t really done anything about it.

My phone rang in my hand and I almost dropped it out of fright. Loud noise in a very dark and open space. I managed to catch and steady it without hitting the end call icon. It was Ellie.

“Hi.” I said. I could already hear her breathing a bit hard.

“Found it. Come back to where we split off and I’ll lead you guys there.” She hung up as she was taking a deep breathe and cut the sound off halfway through. I pocketed the phone and then transformed again. Noted the time before I put the thing away. Ten minutes to midnight. Lost in thought in the middle of a forest like a fucking idiot.

Shannon was running out of the forest at the same time I was arriving. Ellie was already there and resting on the balls of her feet. Catching her breath. She stood up as we got near her.

“What is it?” Shannon asked.

“Same thing as the Woodsman and the Beast. A doorway. It’s out in the middle of the woods but I think I can maybe remember how to get back.” That didn’t fill me with confidence. I was already tired and didn’t really want to manage a long trek out from the woods in the dark. Never mind getting home after that. None of us even had bikes. We just walked everywhere.

We started off with Ellie leading us. We all ran through the dark forest at different speeds and weaved a bit awkwardly around the trees and the roots and the clumps of stone. Both Shannon and I stumbled a few times and we collectively waited for the other person to catch up before we started again. We weren’t running across branches and jumping effortlessly between trees quite yet.

Ellie didn’t mislead us too much. We ended up maybe thirty feet to the left of it and she recognized an old fallen tree that she had seen initially. We made the small journey to the proper spot and stopped in front of the door.

It was two trees. If you didn’t know what you were looking for it would mean nothing. The one on the right was tall and strong. The one on the left had fallen, split horizontally a few feet above the roots. It leaned against it’s partner and looked like it’d been there for a while because it had grown and twisted into the other one. My ring began to get chilly as we got closer.

I took a few steps towards it. Shannon made a small noise as I came close and I heard some slight rustling from behind me.

“More of those things could come out at basically any moment.” She said. I nodded. Made a little noise of agreement, but didn’t move away. Another noise from behind me, metallic this time. I turned at the waist slightly and saw Ellie holding her spear in both hands. Shannon looked at her and unsheathed her shield immediately after. I did the same with my sword.

Another two or three steps and I was directly in front of it. I didn’t stare at it and slowly raise my arm or anything like that. Didn’t let the tension build. I stared at the thing neutrally to see if I noticed anything suspicious. And when I didn’t I raised my arm in one quick motion and stuck it through. Nothing.

“Okay. Not always unlocked I guess.” I said. Shannon didn’t make any noise but I felt some tension relive behind me. I turned to face them.

“Ideas?” I asked.

“It looks like the most normal doorway we’ve seen so far. An actual door shape, I mean, so try something like that.” Shannon said. I nodded and turned back.

If there was a doorknob it wasn’t in the usual place. I tried to mime grabbing and turning and opening and nothing happened. Pushed it like the doors in our school’s washrooms, with my hand to the far right. Nothing. Same thing on the left. Nothing. Tried it like I was pushing open a curtain instead of an actual wood door. I was starting to feel dumb. Probably looked dumb.

“Maybe it’s not one door.” Ellie said. I inclined my head to the side and widened my eyes and made a motion with my mouth. Not a bad idea. I went to the middle and put both my hands on either side of that invisible dividing line. The scene between the trees opened like a double-door made of two mirrors. I saw a walkway leading up to something and dark stone walls and purple-ish light.

I looked behind me. Shannon and Ellie came to stand single file, like we were lining up for a ride. I held my fist out to Ellie and she bumped it jokingly and smiled a little. Then I walked in and they followed.

The middle walkway was surrounded by empty floors and the walls around us were thick stone bricks stacked together, that rose twenty feet into the air and peaked into a roof of some material I couldn’t really tell. The path we were on led to an elevated, circular platform that had a stone archway sitting on it. It had a curtain draped over it that was blowing in a breeze that wasn’t coming from anywhere in this building. My hair was still.

All around us, where seats or benches or whatever would normally take up that space would be, were ambiguous gray bodies kneeling in prayer. They were set up in neat rows and all facing the stone doorway at the front. Th3eir hands were clasped together in front of them and their heads were bowed. They were all similar proportions, slim and bony and leathery, with decaying cloth draped over them like shawls and robes.

“Oh.” Ellie made a little noise as she entered. Her eyes were wide. It was dead quiet in here. A literal interpretation of the phrase. It felt like the silence of a sealed tomb or the inside of a buried coffin.

“Are these people those shadows we’ve been fighting?” Shannon asked lowly. We had all stopped two steps from the building’s doorway. It was a large set of wooden double-doors that had a bunch of complicated carvings on them. They were faded enough I couldn’t tell what they actually were.

“I don’t- They don’t look like them.” I said. I was aware I was keeping my face neutral now. My autopilot had turned off. This felt like everything I’d hated about church the few times we’d gone when I was little. Everything I didn’t believe in turned up to eleven with none of the good stuff. None of the friends you could make or the events that were kind of fun because of the food or whatever. Just worship. Enough that it took you over.

“I was hoping that wasn’t gonna be your answer, because now we still have to look for them. For where they’re coming from.” Shannon said.

‘Should we be talking this much in here?” Ellie whispered. We both turned to look at her. She was standing very still. Her hand was rigid on her spear. The butt of it was resting on the floor. She saw us looking and breathed and shook her head a bit.

“It just feels like something is listening, if that makes sense. I don’t know if I really want to meet that something.” She finished even quieter than when she’d started.

She wasn’t wrong. It felt like there was a presence here. Something undefinable at the moment. But maybe if we disturbed this place too much with chit-chat or tried to walk through the people or nudge one of them then it would make itself known. Get rid of the disturbance.

I started walking forward. Ellie made another small sound. Almost a squeak. Shannon made a noise as well, that I think was the beginning of my name as a reprimand. I made my way very slowly and quietly to the front of the building. This strange and fucked up church. I was very intent on making my heels not clack on the ground as I went. I overexaggerated the action of my steps as much as I could.

When I was a foot in front of the thing I stopped. Stared at it for a bit. Even this close I couldn’t feel whatever weird wind was disturbing the cloth. The peeks I was getting inside the arch as the cloth moved gave me glimpses of a dark, dark purple light edged by a light hue. My ring was freezing now. Was afraid my finger was going to fall off.

I reached out with a couple fingers to gently grab the cloth and pull it aside. Only a little bit. To see what was beyond. I came into contact with the fabric and started-

“Pandora!” Lady said sharply from behind me. The sudden appearance of her startled me enough I took a few steps back in a hurry because I thought the immediately unfamiliar voice had come from the fucking archway. When I realized who it was I turned.

Before I could say anything but the start of a letter I heard footsteps. Far away. We all immediately turned and locked eyes on the general direction of them. A small door that was tucked away into the back-left corner if the Church. It didn’t open or even rattle but none of us stopped looking.

“Let’s go.” Lady said. She sounded scared. That worried me even more. I back up and turned in quite a fucking hurry and tried to be quiet but fast on my way to the door. Ellie and Shannon were out before me. Lady was out after. When her paws were on the dirt and leaves and sticks I reach back and closed the door. Then started fast-walking to the nearest tree to lean against it. Hoped the others followed.

 We had a moment of silence where the other three slowly walked over and grouped together around me. We all breathed. Took a moment or two. Shannon looked down at Lady almost exactly when I did. Lady’s tail was pretty still right now. No wags or swishes.

“So, how did you manage to find us like that?” Shannon asked. She sheathed her weapon. I did the same. Ellie gave a glance over her shoulder at the door before also disappearing hers.

“Your rings serve more purposes than just warning you. They tell me where you are, and I can also sense the danger they sense, regardless of my proximity to them.” Her tail was beginning to flick back and forth a bit as she spoke.

“They tell you where we are at all times?” I asked. She looked up at me and tilted her head. Shannon looked down at her with her lips pursed.

“No. Only when transformed. The rings don’t technically exist to me in the same form they do right now when you’re wearing them then.” She paused and I imagined someone thinking with their mouth open, trying to think of what to say next. The feeling went away.

“That’s a whole complicated topic we don’t need to touch on for today. Your privacy is otherwise safe if that’s what you were worried about. I can’t even really hear or see you through them. It’s more of a general sense of your location on the world tree.” Her ears moved a little and she seemed to perk up. “However, if you need me, you can call my name while transformed and I’ll try to arrive as soon as possible. It may take a couple tries for me to hear it or do anything about it, depending on what I’m doing, but I’ll be there eventually.”

We all stood in silence for a moment. That had brought a bit more levity to things after the quiet of the Church. Shannon stretched with both hands over her head then and the atmosphere was broken up. We all seemed to realize the time. That we had places to be.

“I’m so fucking tired.” Shannon said. I nodded. So did Ellie. She rubbed at one eye and then transformed back into her long-sleeve and cargo pants. Shannon noticed the little bit of breeze and did the same. Back into a sweater and jeans. I gave my eyes and face a rubdown and then followed their lead. It was probably smarter to just run back in our much more powerful forms but I was feeling the magic use from the last three days. It was exciting and much cooler than just being me and I would have fucking slept in it if I could but the constant fatigue was a bit of an issue.

“Home time now, please. Into my bed.” Shannon said, then started walking without a response from us.

“I think I remember the way back.” Ellie said. Me and Shannon groaned at that.

“I’m going to murder you if you get us fucking lost.” Shannon responded. Ellie furrowed her brow and pursed her lips and turned to give Shannon a look. She opened her mouth to retort but Lady got to it first.

“I can take you girls home. I know exactly where we are.” That earned her a very tiny chorus of appreciation and thank-gods. I felt a bit of a smile come from her afterwards and she fell in step ahead of us.