Chapter Thirty-one
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Between Dimensions
Eynochia and Xeila clawed, slashed and bit; Cinder twirled, kicked, punched, ported to dodge an attack and repeated the pattern; Sven had a crossbow in one hand and a spiked mace in the other, knives and blades flashing around him; Jeremiah took out dozens at a time with one fist; Wynne put to use for the first time his most potent slumber, sweeping his assailants with black sand, which peacefully took them into death; even Nero proved his worth this battle, though he stayed close to Sven, firing a borrowed machine gun with great skill. Meanwhile Dacian, in desperation, exhausted of his lance, had found a new way to utilize his gift of changing the state of matter.
His hands were clamped on an enemy’s shoulders. The Ardaran was weaponless, already on the verge of defeat, when he started to reel and writhe and twitch in Dacian’s grip.
Like the table so long ago had been reduced to a puddle of table-colored liquid at his touch, the man he held, screaming, became shorter and shorter until he burst into human-colored fluid, ending his life as a puddle in the dust.
Dacian gulped, very disturbed by it, and made sure to breathe. No one else approached him, the Ardarans slowly backing away from their ex-superior, extreme fear in their faces.
“There ‘ya go, Ace!” Sven encouraged, blowing them all down with a bazooka.
Just then, a stray Ardaran crept up behind the fourteen-year-old, and bashed him in the head with the butt of his spear. Nero collapsed dizzily but held fast to his firearm, pulling the trigger and killing his assailant. Then the machine fell from his grasp and evaporated in summon-dust when he fell limp, unconscious from the blow to his head.
Jeremiah witnessed the scene, and came in a flash to the boy, heaving him onto his rock-hard shoulder with ease, and nodding assurance to Sven.
At that moment, Eynochia froze in place, staring upward at Ardara’s tower.
Her eyes widened in terror and she exclaimed, “Orphenn!! Orphenn, Get back to your body!”
Sven felt his mood improve slightly, no longer so deep in the battle-state solemnity, when he saw Orphenn rush into the battle with the pistols he had given to him, eons ago it seemed.
Sven’s mood changed completely when his blade clashed with another’s. Beyond the crossed blades, the face that stared back at him was one he never thought he’d see again.
His own face brightened, eyes wet, brows turned up with emotion. Time seemed to stop for Ira and Sven to search each others’ faces.
“Ardara’s on the tower! Ardara’s on the tower!” Someone shouted.
Then time really stopped.
Wynne, staring intently with eyes like fire at the tower’s peak, hushed first, “This is the moment!” Then after a second he howled, “I want her to see her world, crumbling around her!!” He raised his arms high, and Time followed his command.
Every Ardaran froze, every single remaining soldier motionless as every clock stopped ticking. Even Ardara, miles above them, was paused, looking down on her land. The Enma were left unfrozen. Immediately, they all took to slaying each Ardaran soldier one by one.
Sven’s sword burst into dust, sparkling through his fingers. Ira’s clattered to the soil. Both their faces dripped with tears. Knowing there was no time for embrace, Sven’s head hung low, emotionally exhausted. His eyes clamped shut to push out the tears, and he hummed a melody, chin quivering. Shaky words followed in the same tune, and their eyes met as Ira joined in.
“I never saw the light
I never saw the sun…”
They sang louder, and Sven summoned two long swords, handing one to Ira.
Their song boomed across the time-frozen battlefield and urged the ending of the fight. They continued to sing as they walked side by side and slashed every congealed enemy they passed, taking their sweet time and sending their voices into the melody, harmonizing exquisitely.
“Knowing you has changed me
When loving you begun
No tale can be told
Without a word from you
No question can be answered
Without telling what to do
When all seems lost
I’ll hold you to the sky
No matter what the cost…”
The brothers turned to face each other, stabbing the last soldier together, and relinquishing the blades.
“There will always be you and I.”
It was over.
Cinder no longer had to touch a person to port them, and so, as the White Herons and their three companions turned up their heads to the tower, lightning stilled in place all around it, they were thrown into darkness and taken wherever Cinder willed, which at this time, was the tower’s faraway peak.
One second, Ardara was staring bleakly down on the scene in her wasteland, noise everywhere, inescapable.
The next second, it was dead silent, but for the wind in her ears, and now there were eight pairs of mismatched eyes staring right at her.
For a moment she glanced beyond them at the evidence of her defeat. Every one of her soldiers had been cut down. She closed her eyes. Her hand tightened around the bundle of cloth she carried in her fist.
“So. It’s come to this.”
When she opened her eyes, she stared straight at Cinder.
The Drifter stepped forward.
“It’s all over, isn’t it?” Ardara asked, almost innocently.
“Looks that way.” Cinder replied lowly. “Knowing you, though…I bet there’s a trial to endure yet.”
“You know me well.” Ardara took the black cloth from her bundle like the lid of a gourmet dish, and held the metal mechanism to display. “But do you know what this is?”
Instantly, Wynne made to rush forward; he’d seen it before, watched her build it-he knew its purpose.
Ardara only looked at him, and he froze. They all did, save Cinder. The other eight were terrified to find they could not move their bodies, not a budge-they could not even speak. Her power stilled them in place, and they could do nothing but watch what unfolded, Wynne trapped in the frame of a run.
“This. Is my affair.” She told them, then transferred her harsh gaze back to Cinder. “This is a device with a function quite similar to Dacian’s diffusion ability. It extracts the mutations of the Enma it attaches to, and if I will it, takes their life. Do you know why?”
“Why what? You’re not making sense…”
“Because moments ago,” she blurted, “I had a vision. I will do anything to keep it from happening. Anything. I realize now that I was wrong to search for any other power but yours.”
“Mine?” Cinder’s face took on a look of concern, pity and sorrow for her psychopathic sibling. How had it gone this far? Where was her only living sister now, the sweet one that loved chemistry and lemonade? Far away from here.
“You will live forever!!” Ardara screeched without warning, giving Cinder a terrible start.
“What?” She cried, eyes brightening with hopeless tears.
“At first I thought you were merely unable to die by injury, but I was mistaken! My visions have shown it to me, you will never grow old! You will never die!” But I can change that. “I may be defeated, but I’ll be damned if I let you win!”
Screaming, Ardara wrestled with her sister, trying to affix the device, exerting herself to the point that lightning flickered around her, and both their wings unfurled, feathers flying. Fire ignited on Cira’s plumage, the flames spreading down her arms, catching the trench coat that Cinder wore ablaze. Cinder shoved her away to hastily rip it off her arms and tossing it to land softly on the tower’s metal roof and burn out. She was left wearing nothing but the revealing leather strap suit. She took a few steps back.
Ardara snickered. “Look.” She flung away her billowing gown to flaunt an identical suit, in deep burgundy. “We match.” Just like we used to.
“I won’t fight you, Cira!” Cinder bellowed.
Just as Ardara was about to throw a punch, Cinder leapt to her and they were hurled through a door of twisting, writhing nothingness. With the device, they disappeared, to somewhere no one else would ever know. As soon as they did, Ardara’s psychic hold faltered, and Wynne fell forward. Nero awakened and hopped off Jeremiah’s shoulder, rubbing his head.
“Cinder!”
Orphenn, whose power had been welling up, pent up inside him, ready to burst while he was trapped in the telekinesis; now he trembled and shuddered on his knees, snarling and growling like an animal.
“Orphenn!” Eynochia fell to him and clung to his arm, shaking him. She could feel his withheld power and rage. She saw him changing. The golden feathers that fletched his skin, and covered his wings were dripping with black. It was like Cinder’s darkness, and yet, entirely different….This blackness had a wickedness to it she couldn’t describe, something menacing. It frightened her as it spiraled around his body. It was pressing on him, possessing him.
“The essence!” Dacian reveled. “It’s taking him!” He ran to the boy, and said to Eynochia, “Move, I can diffuse it before-”
“GET AWAY.” Thundered a strange voice that came from Orphenn’s mouth. The words were not his own, nor his actions; he rose and waved his arm. The power sent a gush of wind across the roof. They all went sliding across the metal. Dacian slid off the edge, only just catching the ledge to stop himself plunging to his death. He cried out, but Jeremiah was there to pull him to safety with one mighty hand.
When they looked back to Orphenn, he had changed almost completely. He cackled and wriggled painfully, driven insane by tainted mutation, as it took him into its raging hatred. The thing that stood there had Orphenn’s face, but his eyes were nothing but two flaming orbs of yellow, and the black hugged to him like a cloak. He moved with his head bowed lowly and tilted nefariously to eye them all with a horrible bloodlust. He looked at least two feet taller. The blackness trailed like dust behind him with every movement, and it had formed two horns that floated above his temples, his inhumanly wide smile bright and fanged. His breath rasped.
The scene was haunting. The breeze blew over them, an almost tranquil moment before he attacked the closest person to him, with a frightening scratchy cry, like something straight from Hell.
“Jeremiah!” Dacian shrieked.
Before Wynne was crushed beneath Orphenn’s careening blow, Jeremiah did as Dacian willed, using his amazing speed to bring Dacian between Wynne and the demon that was Orphenn.
The dark thing ran right into him.
Dacian grabbed at it, and began his attempt to diffuse the tainted essence from the monster, to filter it out and abolish it, and to bring back the heart inside.
Wynne had tried to stop time to aid them countless times before this, but failed. His gifts were acting up again, curse it.
Dacian shouted with the pain and the effort, his hands burning. Orphenn screamed in an angry fit, like a child’s tantrum.
Here, Eynochia knew she could help. You’re like her. She heard her father’s words again clearly, and she felt her mother was close to her when she pressed her hands on top of Dacian’s.
Finally, her power, the strength of her mother’s and hers added to Dacian’s efforts and refined them. She was intensely pure, and it fortified them both, brought Orphenn to his knees and sucked the dark poison from him. The flames of his eyes went dark, burned out, and his squirming ceased. They let go of him, stepped back carefully. His head hung low. The darkness fell away, purified, hissing as it went. He dropped to his side looking utterly spent, exhausted. He sighed.
Eynochia kneeled by him, and hefted him onto her lap, touching his face, stroking his hair, now free of feathers. His pearly eyelids lifted to see her beautiful face. Stunning, even after battle, her silver hair tangled and dusty, covered in soil, and scrapes and blood, uniform torn, about as beaten as they all looked by now.
Orphenn frowned. “I’m so tired.” He griped, brow furrowed peevishly. “I’m so sick of the pain…”
“I’m sorry.” Eynochia whispered.
“You don’t care…”Orphenn whispered back, trailing off.
“I do!” She countered bluntly. Her next words she whispered as if it was the greatest secret. “If I didn’t, would I be here holding you? This isn’t like you, Mr. Optimist!” She spoke so soothingly, that Orphenn nearly drifted as she did. “I’m always by your side, always will be, partner. Know why? You’re my best friend. And I love you more than anything.”
Hearing this, he was no longer tired. He squeezed her hand, eyes big, hopeful lights. They shared a short smile.
It would be a long time before they could do so again.
It was then that the portal returned.
“Where have you taken me?” Ardara demanded.
There was nothing but endless black, though they stood on solid ground, like a room with no walls. Fathomless, yet still somehow contained.
Cinder watched her sister for a while, as she argued and muttered to herself, pulling at her hair and shaking her head. Then she spoke, though it did not seem that the other was listening. “This is the space between dimensions. The very darkness between the worlds.” Cinder answered, thinking, she’d never stayed so long in between portals. She didn’t like this unwelcome feeling, but she set aside her paranoia. “You have no power here.”
Ardara turned, the parasitic new device falling from her hand to the solid darkness. Those eyes could have cut Cinder apart, had they been knives.
“How dare you?” She spat.
Cinder unexpectedly gasped and choked. She knew she should have heeded her first feeling of foreboding. And now, something was threatening to consume her altogether.
They were both shocked at this, Ardara already aware of what was happening.
“Your own darkness will consume you! It seems you can die after all!”
Fear gripped Cinder like cold strangling hands, and in an act of last resort, ported back to the tower.
But once there, the portal did not close again. It grew, and it wanted to absorb her, and keep her forever.
She clawed the metal trying to escape it, but hands clawed at her. She looked back to witness the frenzied face of her sister.
Wynne went to help her, but Orphenn stopped him with a firm hand. “No, you’ll be taken too! She’ll be okay!” I hope…He shivered. Please…
“No!” Ardara squealed, grabbing and tugging at her back, pulling her back into the darkness. “You will not leave me to die!”
From the shadows, Cinder created a long abyssal mallet and swung it backward. It connected with Ardara’s skull, and knocked her backward benumbed, stolen by the oblivion, where she would stay.
Cinder still tried to make for escape from the terrifying abyss, but it would not release her.
Now Orphenn was the one to leap forward, regardless of his own words of caution, and no one stopped him. Cinder’s fate, had he done anything otherwise, would have been infinitely different.
Cinder was almost swallowed entirely, when strong arms held her, more unwilling to let her go than even the darkness was.
Orphenn had pitched right into the darkness to take hold of her, and it twisted and seethed in protest, knowing its end was near-for from the boy came the brightest kind of light, growing larger and mightier than any nothingness, and pushing it back into its place. It grew so bright that it filled everything in sight, so blinding it might have been the sun itself, and the others were forced to look away, shielding their eyes.
To those below on land, it looked like a falling star had taken rest atop the tower, burning white.
Like a supernova, it stayed bright until its own power burned it away and fizzed itself out.
The light receded, and the White Herons slowly showed their faces again to look upon the boy and his sister.
Orphenn had saved her, but even still, Cinder would be eternally different.