--CHAPTER 1--

Deafening screams echoed through the burning landscape; damned souls drowning in the lake of fire. Their rage and misery clung to the thick air, suffocating any who breathed it in; ensuring that they did not suffer alone. A pit, half as large as heaven itself and twice as deep, growled louder the deeper it went. Its darkness grew ever more intense and at the bottom, there was nothing; growls and screams came to halt and even the weight of the dreaded souls lifted away and were replaced with a crushing emptiness. It was truly a void, depraved of not just life, but anything at all. Save for one being.
The darkness lifted from nothing. It was a strange sight to behold. Like light bending through a plastic, the void shaped its darkness. At first it looked like a chair --no, it was grander than that; a throne perhaps. The way the legs sit confirms that. Legs might be a curious word, they certainly gave off a vague semblance of what might be called legs; only because they were attached to something that gave off a semblance of a body. The body could have been a man’s; it sometimes looked like a man. It also looked like a woman. Though those might also be curious words, silly words even. After all, how would one even begin to know? It didn’t look like anything. Not anything you’d recognize. There was a gaze, one that burned and pierced; one that cooled and smothered. So it must have had eyes. It must have had everything, for when looking at it again, it was perfect.
“My child,” There was a voice. Could it be called a voice? It was certainly a sound. It was a low sound, so low it would rattle your bones. It was slow and creeping, like a dark miasma. It ushered fear into this barren void; but it was gentle, and it was warm. Like a strict parent. Perhaps it’s because of this that it could be called a voice. It is felt, and it is understood. If a voice can mean that to you, then this is what the voice said, “Never forget what you are. You, like me, are a perfect being. There is nothing you can’t do. But this… this is--”
“FOOLISHNESS!” There was another voice. At least, another sound. A sound of sounds. A cold cacophony of sudden shrill sounds. If the low rumble brought fear, this piercing screech dragged in pure terror by the ankles. Then it hid. It shrieked and it howled and it hid from all sight. “YOUR SOUL SHALL BE FORFEITED! FOREVER FORFEIT!”
“My child, forever shall you be--”
“A CURSE! A BLIGHT UPON REALITY!”
The sounds battle back and forth, like the ebb and flow of a riptide.
“Pride will pump your heart and tenacity shall flow through your veins.”
“SHAME WILL PIERCE YOUR HEART AND DESPAIR SHALL TAINT YOUR VEINS!”
“That is your destiny.”
“THAT IS YOUR DESTINY!”
“A grand soul glowing with the light of confidence.”
“A PATCHWORK SOUL REEKING WITH THE STENCH OF DOUBT!”
“That is your fate.”
“THAT IS YOUR FATE!”
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Diego woke up in a cold sweat and immediately sat up on his bed, panting heavily. His limbs felt numb. They usually did; he still wasn’t used to recognizing them. An arm, a leg, yes he knew those. He notices them even when he can’t feel them. He always has. To recognize them as his though, it’s still early. It will feel weird at first, that’s what he told himself when he first noticed his body; when he first recognized it as his.
His arms jerk suddenly as the sensation of pins and needles jolts them from their slumber. He’s been told it’s an uncomfortable sensation, painful for some even. It was never like that for him, however. The sensation reminded him of the dark he stayed in not long ago. Back then, that sensation covered him from head to toe. It would envelope him, hold him gently, wrap around him like a blanket. It was always comforting to him. That comfort disturbed him, disgusted him; and because it disgusted him, it comforted him. Like the low rumble. The sensation as his arms woke up has been subtly nostalgic to him lately.
Once his arms come to, he feels the tattered rag he’s been calling a blanket on top of him. Usually it’s so caked with dirt and grime, it’s propped up like a piece of cardboard. Many times, he truly believed it was one. He would have today too, if it weren’t for the fact that it was now limp and damp with his sweat; the feeling of it sticking to him brought him a disgust that did not comfort him whatsoever. Finally he noticed the thin sticky layer of sweat smeared across his forehead and made a noise that was a somewhat mix of a groan and a wince as he squirms his way out of the blanket and toward the edge of the bed.
He pushes his hair back and wipes his face with his hand. Wind whistles through eight air holes carved out on the wall next to him. Also spilling in through the holes are eight streaks of gray sunlight. For some reason they reminded him of when Xerena had once asked him about the sky in The City: “Don’t you have any clear days?” She asked. He thought the question was silly at the time. He had never thought of it much. The clouds are the sky and the gray is the sun; that is what has always been for him and that is what he told Xerena. “Well it’s drab as fuck, man.” She replied with a grimace. In return for his answer, she told him about the sky in Terra Magica; apparently it’s blue with no clouds and the sunlight is bright yellow! Can you imagine?
Tracing the streaks of monotone light across the room, his eyes land on Liv’s guitar hanging precariously on a nail jammed into a crack in the stone wall. He tried recalling the last time he had picked it up, let alone played it. It used to be red and black, with that swirling water pattern he liked so much. Now it was as gray with dust as the sunlight that poured in the room, rising higher by the second. It was a nice gift though —not to mention the only gift she’s ever given him— so in his long list of regrets, the guitar was spared.
Through still panting breaths, he dragged his gaze past the guitar and over the shelves lined up next to it. Then he froze, and his eyelids fluttered wildly trying to clear his vision of the swelling tears. Everytime he looks at this shelf, he feels his heart drop. So many trinkets from so many hobbies abandoned. The fishing rod, the decks of cards, the old telescope, the paintbrushes. All the simple lives he could have lived. Not that he ever had a choice as to what path he walked; well, perhaps he did, a long time ago. Perhaps that’s why he always cries on this shelf: it’s all he can do about it now. He had fought so hard to convince the wardens to let him keep all this junk, and for what? To remind himself of all the times he quit? To keep fresh the memories of every time he gave up? He looked away.
His vision drifted to the other corner of the room where there lay a pile of dark clothes. Black shirts, dark red coats, deep blue jeans, clothes of all kinds in all kinds of muted and desaturated tones.
After a while, he hadn’t noticed when, his vision had settled on nothing in particular and his sweat had dried up. One massive sigh had zoned him back in. “I told you,” His words were not spoken, but regurgitated. As if each of them tasted worse than the last and he had to spit them out. “Keep your damn memories out of my dreams.”
And I told you, There was a rumble, low and slow like the one from the dream. But this was not the voice from the dream. This sound was vile and Foul. It felt like a suffocating slimy sludge at the forefront of his mind and everytime it spoke and rattled his bones, his tongue tasted like bile. I have no influence on your dreams. That just happens when I’m up while you’re sleeping.
“Why are you awake before me?” He groans as he gets off the bed and begins rummaging through the pile of clothes.
It’s your fault. Your anxiety is too loud. Diego froze; so still you’d think time stood still. It’s today, right? The question is asked slowly and softly, as if it didn’t want to be asked. Yet asked it was, which caused his eye to twitch. The question wouldn’t bother him on most days, at this point in time it probably wouldn’t bother him at all. This voice, this putrid sound terrorizing his mind with trivial questions on today of all days; that’s what bothered him. He knows that it knows what day today is. He knows that it knows why it bothers him. And he knows that it knows damn well not to talk about it. He clenches his teeth.
More silence as the voice’s question awaits an answer never to come. A most chilling silence as Diego uncomfortably resumes his motion to fish out some clothes. His heart quickens as he plucks a red coat out of the pile. Each beat of his heart sends a cold pulse coursing through his veins. Grabbing black pants, he feels that icy gaze leering at him from within himself; his breath shivers. After digging out some dark shirt, he rushes to the other side of the room where a creaky rickety door hangs by its last splinter. Growing more aggravated each freezing second, Diego nearly kicks the door off its hinges to rush inside some kind of bathroom; Looking at his reflection in the smeared and cracked mirror, he casts an unending gaze into his malignant red eye, then his putrid yellow one, and can’t help but grimace at the sight of them against the pitch black sclera.
In his mind, this reflection has always represented the purest antithesis of all that is just and well. Every morning he wakes up and wishes to view a new sight in the mirror. A sight he could be proud to call himself. Every morning he wakes up and that wish is run through by the piercing daggers that shoot out of his miasmic eyes. Today was no different.
After getting ready, he grabs the doorknob to exit his room and pauses halfway through turning it, taking one deep breath to speak slowly. The air that exits his mouth is icy cold, seemingly freezing time itself so that his voice could be heard clearly in uninterrupted silence.
“From the moment we leave to the moment we get back, especially at the cemetery, I don’t want to hear a single word out of you.” He opens the door and slams it behind him.
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A young boy and girl await a younger Diego outside his house. Diego runs out of the house with a zealous spring in his step and a beaming smile on his face. He wraps his arms around both their shoulders and pulls them down in a huddle.
“I have something cool to show you guys. Come, follow your leader!” Before either of his friends could respond, he grabs the girl’s hand and pulls her along as he rushes forward, shouting behind him, “Close my door, Peter!”
The boy tosses his arms in the air and grumbles under his breath as he rushes to close the door and catch up to the other two.
“Hey, D?” The girl struggles to keep her balance as Diego pulls her along. Her lungs burn as the cold air rushes in. “Diego?” She says louder. Her feet stumble on the uneven sidewalk. With her breath shallow from the wind, her arm sore from being pulled, and her blood boiling from being ignored, she pulls her hand away and stops in her tracks.
“What’s up, Jess?” Diego asks, noticing her hand slip away.
“Shouldn’t we wait for him?”
“What for? He’ll catch up. Come on, let’s go.” He reaches for Jess’ hand again, but she quickly pulls back and gives him a stern stare. “Fine,” Diego says, rolling his eyes, “We’ll wait.”
Peter shortly catches up, already beginning to breathe heavily. “Sorry.” He says between breaths, “Thanks for waiting.”
“Yeah whatever.” Diego scoffs, already moving again, “Just stay close, okay? Don’t wanna have to keep waiting for you.”
Diego leads the two far away from the curbs and streets and into a nearby forest, steering off the main path. Diego looks over his shoulder to see the boy and girl trailing behind, enjoying a conversation of their own. He scowls at them and shoves a branch out of his way.
There was a feeling in his stomach. A feeling he was all too familiar with. It happens all the time when he sees them together. It starts as a small rumble. Stop it. It condenses into a ball that travels up his throat and sits there; it makes it harder to breath, harder to swallow. It makes him mad. Just stop. He knew it wouldn’t disappear. Not with Peter here. He’s our friend. He wants to say something, separate them, grab Jess and run. You can’t. He can’t. Not without reason. For him, the consequences outweigh the reward. She has no need for you. Every iota of his being burns as he resists the overwhelming urge.
“Are we allowed to be here?” The boy asks, pushing various vines aside with one hand and swatting bugs away with the other.
“I don’t know. Does it matter? Stop being so scared of everything.” Diego snarks.
“Your adventures do tend to be pretty dangerous. Can’t blame him for being cautious.” The girl interjects.
“Yeah, remember when I broke my arm climbing the tree for you last gale season? You said we could see the top of the Jungle from that tree!”
“And you were stupid enough to fall for that so-” Diego cut his snap back short and took a deep breath. “You didn’t break it, it was a hairline fracture at worst.”
“He got hurt, D. It doesn’t matter what it was.” Jessica aggressively chimed in.
Diego slumps his shoulder as he sighs heavily and turns around again. “I didn’t see any sign that said we can’t be here. So as far as we’re concerned, it should be fine.” He gives the boy a half baked smile, “Happy now?” Diego had already turned around before Peter could respond. “And you don’t have to coddle him all the time, Jess!” He shouts over his shoulder before leading the way once more. The boy and girl stare at each other and then Diego and hesitate before following him.
After a while of walking in silence, Diego stops in his tracks at the base of a hill, past the inner edge of the forest. Turning around, he rushes over to Peter and Jess with a smile on his face. “We’re here!” he grabs Jess’ hand and rushes up the hill with her, leaving Peter behind.
Peter slowly trudges up the hill, breath replaced with heaving huff and puffs, and sees Jess and Diego staring down at a mossy stone structure, about two feet off the ground; barely any gray rock can be seen through all the vines and moss. He comes up to it and stares down as well. The structure is hollow and leads to an underground chamber, too dark to see past the opening.
“What is it?” He asks.
“That’s the neat part.” Diego responds, “I don’t know yet. I wanted to discover it with you guys.”
“How are we even gonna get down there? It’s a pretty long drop.” Peter says with a slight quiver in his voice.
“There’s a ladder to the side.” Diego points without looking at Peter.
Peter looks over and sees a ladder bolted to the inside of the circle. It is black with rust, as are the bolts, which caused them to come out of their holes until the ladder was now hanging on just one. The ladder itself is peeling off layers from the slight breeze brushing past it and already missing some steps.
“Okay.” Peter says slowly. “And we’re all going down?”
“Well yeah, eventually. But you’re going first.” Diego finally tilts his head to look up at him, a large grin on his face. An eerie silence passes to allow the company to soak in the statement.
“Wait, what--” Peter starts.
“Why does he have to go down first?” Jess interrupts.
“Well, you can’t go first, you’re too fragile.” Diego begins explaining.
“Excuse me--”
“Which is why I’m going to go down with you to guide you and help you.” Diego turns his head to look at Peter again, “Once he maps it out and comes back to us”
“D, are you joking?” Peter motions towards the ladder, “I mean look at this thing, it’s ready to fall apart at any moment. I can’t go down there.”
“He’s right,” Jess begins, “We should get our own ladder or something, at least.”
The two continue to bounce pleas back and forth as Diego sighs and stands up. He ignores every word coming out of both their mouths and tunes them out as white noise. Perhaps it’s the way he walks, maybe it’s that look in his eyes, but as he approaches Peter, each step heavier than the last, his focus becoming narrower and narrower; to Peter it seems that their surroundings had disappeared, and there now exists nothing but him and Diego in a deep, dark, heavy

Diego places one hand on Peter’s shoulder and everything freezes. Peter’s body goes cold as all bravado scatters and flees down his spine. He swallows hard and loud, trying to avoid Diego’s unblinking gaze, feeling it burning away at his soul.
“Peter.” Diego’s voice has changed. No, not a voice. It doesn’t sound like words are spoken, instead there is a rumble. A rumble that shakes Peter’s very core. It is soft, but cold. It is devoid of patience and has filled that void past the brim with a heartlessness that burrows and lingers and echoes in Peter’s mind, giving it a meaning he can regrettably understand.
Peter tries to look Diego in the eyes, but as soon as he peers over he is enveloped in a dark embrace. For a brief moment, however, he swore he could see something like a purple cloud swirling around Diego and wrapping itself around him like some kind of snake.
“Peter.” Diego repeats. This time Peter had no problem staring into his eyes, in fact he felt nearly compelled to. “Go down the hole.” The command brings the world back around them. When Diego lifts his hand, fear comes flooding into Peter, and his knees buckle, nearly dropping him. He gulps and stares down the hole and with one deep breath, heads for the ladder.
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An older, present day Diego stands over a tombstone, holding a handful of small blue flowers. The harsh wind had caused his hair to come undone and it was now flowing wildly across his unfazed face. The dark clouds begin to give way to small droplets that begin to trickle down on the headstone Diego was looking at with his dark eyes, themselves beginning to overflow.
“Hey Pete.” The words barely come out of his mouth. “Sorry I’m late. These things are actually pretty hard to find.” He awkwardly chuckles as he waves the flowers. “But, uh, well I got them for you.” He crouches over to place the flowers down. “Your favorite.”
Silence. A deafening silence. Diego stands as a statue as he stares at the headstone. Carrying the silence with him, he sits down in front of it. And there he sat in silence, for what seemed an eternity. His breath was shaky as he struggled to break the loud, silent sea he found himself drowning in.
“I’m sorry.” His voice is cracked, and small. “I wish I had something to tell you. I wish I could say that I’ve been living my best life like you wanted me to. I wish I could tell you why that’s just not possible for me. The truth is, I’ve failed, Pete.” The words are barely coming out through his shallow breathing. “I’ve failed you, failed myself, failed everyone.” He brings his hand up to cover his eyes as they can no longer hold themselves back from spilling. His voice comes out in whispers. “It’s like fate itself has cursed me.” A moment of silence, save for the occasional sniffles. “You know,” He chuckles, “It’s funny.” His hand wipes the tears away and he sits upright. “I could really use your advice right now. You always were the voice of reason.” His slight grin disappears in an instant and his gaze lowers. “I just wish I had seen it sooner.” Another moment of silence. “I should get going. Hope you enjoy the flowers.” He stands up and wipes the dirt off his pants and gives a small wave to the grave. “Same time next year, yeah?”
Diego turned around and took one step before freezing. His eyes went wide as he stared at the person leaning against the tree behind him. The harsh wind barely affects her extremely short hair, its bright blonde hue still clearly visible even under the shade of the tree and clouds. Her oversized hoodie and even the scarf covering half her face can’t hide her identity from Diego.
“Hey Jess.” He says sheepishly.
Jessica stares at him with eyes that, while brown under a certain light, appear as black as night under the shade of the tree as they throw cold daggers at Diego. Without answering, she walks her way past him and stops in front of the grave and kneels down to touch it. In a moment of silence as Diego was walking away, she called out: “You got it wrong.”
“What was that?” Diego asks as he turns back around.
“The flowers.” She speaks without facing him, not moving from her crouched position. “Forget-me-nots aren’t Pete’s favorite flowers.” She takes a deep breath in and painstakingly turns her head to stare at Diego in the eyes. “They’re yours.” Spoken begrudgingly through gritted teeth, the words stuff Diego’s lungs and throat.
“I’m sorry.” Diego struggles to speak through his shallow breathing. Jessica does not respond. “I’m sorry.” He whispers once more as he pivots and rushes away from the area.
He sits on a bench after exiting the cemetery gates with his face in his hands. The rain has subsided down to a drizzle yet the wind rages on even stronger. Through the spaces between his fingers, Diego keeps his gaze directed downward, at nothing in particular. He isn’t sure if the wetness he feels on his face is from the rain or the tears. Or perhaps blood from how hard he’s gripping. Amongst the sounds of the water droplets hitting the ground around him and the cars splashing puddles of water as they pass through, Diego hears a sound that accompanied him in his solitude: The pant of a seething rage.
“I knew the flowers were wrong. We knew it. You made me believe it was right.”
I--
“I TOLD YOU NOT TO SPEAK TO ME!” His voice shakes the incoming rainfall askew and makes the nearby puddles ripple. Even the trees and grass bent away from him.
After nature resettles, a feminine voice springs up, “I wasn’t really planning to. So…”
The voice shakes Diego out of his rage fueled trance and he snaps his head up to see Jess standing in front of him, just off the curb. Her gaze is cold and empty, and intensely powerful. He feels the familiar negative aura that surrounds her whenever she lays eyes on him. He can tell every single bit of her is telling her to run away, to get out, to flee as far as she can go. He can tell, because everytime he looks at himself in the mirror, every bit of him tells himself the same. However, this time, something differs. Same as usual, she can’t help but grimace and clench her fists at the sight of him. Yet now, to him at least, she seems ever so slightly less tense than normal.
“Jess--”
“Don’t talk to me!” She immediately snaps at him, and Diego closes his mouth and sinks into himself a little further. Jess opens her shoulder bag and rummages around in it for a while. She pulls out an object a small bit bigger than her own hand, wrapped in heaves of paper towels and plastic wrap, and tosses it into Diego’s lap. “You’re probably still skipping meals, right? You wanna start living your best life like you were crying about? Start eating something once in a while.” Her gaze follows a trail left behind by one of his tears. “That’s all.” She turns and walks away from him.
Diego keeps his gaze on her for a while until she gets out of view, then holds the implied food firmly in his hand as he slowly gets up and, still enveloped in his silence, walks the opposite direction back home.
The route he takes back is long, and quiet. Yet still, Diego easily manages to find solace and sanctuary in it. His barrier of silence is often penetrated by the chirping of birds or water from the trees falling into the puddles below. He doesn’t mind, however. Bit by bit, the sounds of nature break the silence he was cowering under and in its grasp, he feels welcomed. In the warm embrace of the sun and gentle misty breeze of the wind and the smell of the blooming flowers, he unclenches his fist for the first time today.
Finally reaching home, Diego heads indoors and shuts the door behind him, leaning his back against the door and smiling as he gives a deep sigh. A smile that faded nigh on immediately as soon as he heard a breath that was not his.
She talks to us now. The deep voice rumbles, shaking every corner of Diego’s mind. That’s a good sign. Each word makes Diego grit his teeth and shake. We might have a chance to sway her back--
“What are you doing?” Though only a whisper, the words had enough weight to drive a wedge into the demon’s speech. “I told you not to talk.”
Yes, that you did. ‘From the moment we leave to the moment we get back’ were your exact words, I believe. It pauses to allow Diego to sink in the information given to him, and once his eyes widen, it continues. We are back, are we not?
“You slimy little shit!” His voice begins to raise in volume. “How dare you--”
Diego’s rageful shout is interrupted as he feels a force upon him. His neck and throat begin tightening, and his breath quickly escapes him. The walls begin to smear and smudge, as if being washed away by a heavy downpour, and all around him turns to an empty black. As perilous as the situation seems, however, Diego finds within himself a sense of recognition, of comfortability.
As everything fades, the owner of the voice begins emerging; birthed from the dark nothingness.. Indeed, it was nothing. It was a coagulated, congealed, mess of nothing. It must be nothing, he thought, for how could anything look like that? It approached slowly, trying to amass some form along the way. Or perhaps, Diego was the one trying to come up with some form to perceive it as. The best his mind could offer was some grotesque amalgamation of flesh and eyes and arms and various extra bits and parts. It brought with it disgust and nausea. The sounds acclimating from its plethora of voices slammed into Diego’s ear, made him dizzy, his vision became blurry. The lightheadedness unintuitively helped clear his mind, and he could see this thing better; see it the only way his meager eyes would allow.
A bare, scaly body hauntingly similar to his own walks forward. A purple hue emanates from it, acting as a singular lit beacon in this deep ocean of nothing. Or was it purple? Purple was his mind’s first guess, but if he dared try to pass it over with a second thought, his eyes would ache and burn. Dark --nearly as dark as the void around them-- bat-like wings wrap around him like some grotesque coat. A long deteriorated hand creepily peeks out of the wing-coat; its long bony fingers seem to hold a gold chain connected to the shackle on Diego’s neck. From the peripheral, its face is a messy and grotesque amalgamation of mouths and eyes, always turning and shifting. Once Diego looks directly at it, however, it flawlessly imitates his own; like looking in a sick scaly mirror. What doesn’t ever change or shift are its two red eyes; always watching, always thinking. It tugs on the chain and Diego falls to his knees. It smiles, revealing vast, unhuman rows of fangs.
“I let you have your little moment. Your illusion of freedom. I sat quiet as you sniveled for that patch of dirt.” The being squats down to eye level. The smile on its face is gone, and now a large grimace lays in its place. “Do not think you get to unleash your emotions on me.” He squeezes on the chain, causing Diego to painfully grasp the shackles as they continue to prevent any words or breath from coming through. “This place --your heart-- is my domain. And all the emotions that reside here are mine to control.” With each word, it inches its face ever closer to Diego’s. “You do not get to raise your voice, to shout at me. You need to know your place. Do you understand?” It loosened the grip on the chain, and Diego gasped for air as his throat opened up again.
As Diego listened to the words of his soul partner, he found himself in a strange sense of familiarity. Very strange, he thought. Perhaps in some time long past, he would have been scared; he would have submitted. Perhaps, had this act of subjugation occurred sooner, he would have yielded. And indeed, he has yielded. So many times has he succumbed to this cycle of dominance, so many times has he had to endure this arrogant lecture. So many times has he wasted his time in this dark space; for so long he has wasted his breath and energy on this dark creature, wasted his life trying to escape. The solution came to him one day, one random day at some random time: There is no escape, there is no point of wasting so much of himself, there is no need to try any retaliation. This monster, this thing, it’s just a part of him; it’s as simple as that.
After some heavy breaths, he sits himself in a comfortable position and looks down, his eyes deep and empty. “I’ve heard these words before.” He speaks quietly. “And I will hear them again and again.”
“Excuse me?” The beast asked, bringing its ear closer.
“If there’s nothing I can do, then I will do nothing.” Diego lets himself lean onto the floor and lay there in a fetal position, eyes wide open, mouth shut closed .
“What are you doing?” Its question received no answer. “What are you doing? Answer me!” It squeezed on the chain, and though Diego let out a miniscule flinch in response, it was not enough to sate the being. “ANSWER ME!” Silence. “ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME!” Each command strengthened the grip on the chain, and its voice grew deeper and darker. Yet still he found silence as his answer. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO COMMANDS YOU?! I WAS SIRED BY PRIDE ITSELF! YOU, A MERE MONGREL, DARES TO IGNORE ME-- ZYTH, THE PRINCE OF ARROGANCE?! HAVE YOU ANY IDEA HOW HIGH I STAND ABOVE YOU?! ANSWER. ME. NOW!”
All through the night, and onto what can only be assumed as morning, did this continue. Yet somehow, Diego could not help but succumb to the alluring charms of his exhaustion.----------------------------------------------------------------Ch1 End----------------------------------------------------------

--CHAPTER 2--

X e r e n a

I don’t know why, but I was really pissed off that morning. Actually I do know why. I felt it as soon as I woke up. I wasn’t pissed off cuz my back hurt from sleeping on dirt so frozen cold it felt like stone; and it wasn’t because I woke up coughing since I slept a little too close to the Fence and inhaled the Oasis’ smog. Those aren’t issues that would piss me off, because those aren’t issues that would ever happen. Every rune on my body, every line of ink tracing me from head to toe, is specialized by me to deal with issues like these; minor issues. And my spells always work. So why aren’t they? That’s what pissed me off this morning. My Magic’s been fucked with. I don’t know what Kilquen put in those new inhibitors but apparently they work now. Shit, I knew I should have cheeked it.
I stood still for a while, my eyes darting back and forth and up and down, but focusing on nothing in particular. My mind has never raced so fast, nor has my breathing ever been so shallow. I don’t know what I was madder at: Failing my duty to protect my magic, or allowing myself to freak out like this over it. I won’t get any closer to a solution if I just stand still. I have to see what runes got affected. At the very least the ones I can see appear to be fine. I need a reflection. Mirrors are contraband here, and I doubt anyone here could ever get their hands on some shinestone. I need a set of eyes; Diego, he knows my runes just as well as I do. Thank the Lady he still has his room in the Edge.
First thing first, I have to move. Being this close to the Fence is hell on my lungs. Just a few feet away and the grass is already growing again. A few feet more and the space around me is clean and lush enough for people to start opening up shop. The Ring’s open air market is a labyrinth of shops with walls of people; navigating it is always such a hassle. And compared to the yellow smog and foul odor of the Oasis, this area is uncanny; more than that, it’s nigh unnatural. The sky is still grey and as dull as the Lady’s backside, but the ground beneath my feet is lush and flourishing with green grass and a bustling crowd. The atmosphere is joyous at its core --a stark contrast to the dreary miasma of the Oasis, or the tedious monotony of the City. The people that thrive here disgust me.
Kilquen said he intended for the Ring to help the do-gooders reintegrate once their time is up. Waste of time and resources, it will never work. I’ve explored our land and let me tell you, whatever society they’re trying to emulate here, it’s nothing like anything of what’s out there. Perhaps that’s exactly the point. Once they get out and experience the real world, they’ll be crushed and grinded to dust; the wind will scatter them along every edge of the land until they settle back within the confines of the City Damned. This is the curse of the Creatures: To them there is no world worth living in outside the Walls; to them it is the outsiders that are creatures. Sick, vile, awful, barbaric creatures. Ironic that that’s exactly how the outsiders view them.
The smog definitely wasn’t the only thing playing on my lungs. Zaginduru runs through and powers both the City and the Oasis, turning both into fountains of umun. I don’t know much about how it works, but I do know it feels wrong and it definitely interacts with me in some way. It’s kind of like the jungle’s munchata, but backwards --instead of boosting me, it’s hindering me. It probably hinders everyone. That would explain why smiles are endangered here. Anyway, recently I noticed myself getting more and more susceptible to it. No doubt that has something to do with how the inhibitors are suddenly working.
There’s no zaginduru in the Ring, everything is built primitively; by hand and with vague techniques. As such, there’s a space, a very small strip all the way around the Ring right between the Edge and the Fence, that is entirely clear of umun. The grass is greener, the people are livelier, and the shops sell more exotic goods. Most importantly, the air is clearest and the energy is purest. It’s here that I stop for a moment, just a moment, and take a breath. My first real deep and clean breath of the day. It’s nothing compared to Terra Magica, obviously, but it’s clean enough to provide my lungs a brief respite.
In this respite, this quick moment, my nose opened up and was invaded by a nostalgic smell. A smell that instantly reminded me of home and relieved me of any sense of urgency I was overwhelmed by mere seconds ago. A smell that doesn’t belong here. I slowly rotate my head, weaving my gaze through the crowd to locate the source. Surely enough, there it was, merely a handful of meters away, but I’d recognize it anywhere. One of the markets has their counter and shelves laid out with a type of fruit. The shell is dirty and rough, resembling a purple tortoise shell with needles scattered about. Once it’s pried open though, ay senora, it’s nature’s gift to us. The flesh is soft and golden, the juice is sweet and quenching, and the smell, oh that smell! That is donum, the best fruit in the world. The botanical treasure of Terra Magica. And it can only be found in Terra Magica. Yet here I stand, mere paces away from a stand selling them in bulk. Having gotten up close, I can confirm these are the real thing. Being this close to the smell of this many in one place is making me more nostalgic than I’d ever care to get. These smell too much like home. A chill runs down my spine. Bad omen, I think to myself.
The shop owner notices me eyeing his produce and begins his slow ascent from his seemingly handmade rocking chair. Thankfully he sees my two palms facing forward and passes a kind, acknowledging nod before getting back in his comfortable sitting position; I get back on my way and keep moving. There’s no money in the Ring, all trades are done through a barter system. Putting my hands up like I did lets shop owners know I got nothing to trade; I’m just window shopping, so to speak. With the ever moving crowd that passes through the Ring at any given moment, chit-chat is kept to a minimum. Talking only occurs in the case of negotiating a trade, but with the crowd getting larger each year, people have adapted to using more hand sign based language for trades as well. Most business is catered to inmates preparing for their one day out. Otherwise, business in the Ring is conducted through trades with City store representatives from the outside for better quality goods. So no matter the customer, business must be conducted fast and efficiently. But I am no customer, I have a place to be.
The Edge is what the people in the Oasis call the City’s inner circle. When Kilquen got appointed head gallu, he had it hollowed out and repurposed to house those on really good behavior. It’s anyone’s guess how Diego got housed there; it’s like ever since we got put in the Oasis he’s… flipped, or something. But that’s not my priority right now.
The wall is always impressive to behold. All of the City’s walls are. They are taller than anything on Tartarus. Even the Peak, before its destruction, would be dwarfed next to it. The entire ring is practically smooth, all the way around. It’s as if it is all one singular piece of rock. Cracks that are two, three, even four times the size of me pepper the smooth grey rock yet appear as no more than paper cuts on a giant. Even should a crack stretch the entirety of the wall’s circumference, it’d have to be half the size of the Peak in depth to even come close to bringing it down. Even magic wouldn’t do much damage, the umun fields permeating the City effectively negate any spell. The walls are something truly magnificent. Only second to Terra Magica, of course. As if a big rock could come close to comparing itself to the greatest font and feat of magic. But I didn’t come here to gawk at a rock.
Reaching the Edge heralds the most tedious portion of the morning. Jutting out from the base of the wall in regular intervals are small metal sheds. Nothing fancy, metal as cold and grey as the rock it’s connected to; one thin one-way mirrored slit at the top for the guard inside to see you, and a miniscule hole right below it for both of you to speak into. The metal cube is normally quiet and inert. Once I step a little too close, however, the edges of the box, and the perimeter of the small slit, begin to glow; the light isn’t blindingly bright by any means, but the shade of blue it takes on does nothing to help my eyes, for sure.
“Tenant or just passin’ through?” A voice --gross and gruff-- drawls out of the box through the small hole.
“I have to see someone in The Edge.” I say quickly.
There’s a long pause. I can just picture what grotesque smile he made upon hearing my voice. “Well, well… Lucky me, getting a visit from royalty. It’d been so long, princess, I was beginning to forget your face. Why not come up to my room instead, make sure I never forget it again? Gets lonely down in the Oasis, surely. Aren’t you itchin’ for a good time, your highness?”
A shiver crawls down my spine. I press my face right up to the slit so that whatever oozing slime is behind it can really see the disgust in my eyes. “First off, you do not have a room here. Second off, if we were to walk into a room together, I guarantee I’m the only one that’s ever walking out. Third, stop with the royalty talk. You are not my subject, so I am not your liege. I can pry this box open with the snap of my fingers so don’t fucking test me today. Just open the fucking door, ingrate.”
There’s a pause, then a subtle moan that makes me visibly and audibly shudder. “So feisty. You always know what to say to get a guy going, your highness. But are you sure you want to test me? I got a direct line to Kilquen, y’know.” The air suddenly dropped in temperature and it wasn’t so much a shiver, but a pulse of fear that shot down my entire person. I back up slightly from the box. His voice got real low, real fast. Kilquen’s name is nothing to be throwing around as a joke. “That don’t look like standard inmate attire you got on. Y’know how strict the big man is about his rules and such. I know tenants get more fashion choices, but you ain’t no tenant, princess. Your friend with the weird eyes, he lives up here somewhere, and that sure looks like one of his jackets, but I’d bet he don’t carry around no skirts or tights like what you’re wearin’. Which means you been hoarding your old clothes. Kilquen won’t take kindly to you abusin’ his gifts like that. Explains why you been sleepin’ out here. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure inmates ain’t even allowed to stay down in the Ring in the first place. Do I have to make a call? Your majesty? Or I’ll tell you what, let’s make a deal. I can let you through, won’t tell Kilquen not one peep. However, I’m gonna have to confiscate the clothes. Then you’re gonna have to be stuck with me for a while… for ‘processing’. Shouldn’t take more than, hmm, thirty minutes. Give or take. How’s that sound, princess? Sounds like a good deal to me. What’s thirty minutes of your life?”
The silence trailing behind his voice drags me into a vacuum that boils my blood. I can imagine his stupid shit-eating grin on his stupid fat fucking face; fucking pig stuffed in a uniform, damn thing is bursting at the seams holding in the tub of lard he calls a body. Disgusting fuck. Does he realize how fucking insignificant he actually is? Does he realize the severity of what just spilled from the putrid rotted cavern that is his mouth? I could crush this fucking tin can he hides in with the blink of my eye. Doesn't he fully realize who he mouths off to every fucking morning? Doesn’t he realize HOW FUCKING STUPID HE REALLY IS?! YOU STUPID FUCKING PIG, IF I KILLED YOU NOW NO ONE WOULD NOTICE, NO ONE WOULD CARE! THE ARROGANCE SPEWING FROM YOUR BLOATED INNARDS! THOSE INNARDS SHOULD BE RIPPED FROM YOUR BLUBBER AND SHOVED DOWN YOUR FUCKING THROAT!
“......I just need to go in to see D. Just open the door.” I speak in a voice as low and calm as I can muster. The juxtaposition between my mind and mouth manages to frighten me a little. I feel the veins in my neck throb as I’m answered with more silence. “.........Please…” I say slowly through clenched teeth.
“Shoulda just started with that.” He sounds genuinely disappointed. Too fucking bad. “ I need to see your visitor’s pass.” All the bravado and enthusiasm he just had the audacity to display is suddenly extinguished. What a fucking joke.
“I always have my visitor’s pass,” I reach into the pocket inside my jacket and pull out a laminated card. It’s small, surprisingly heavy, and most strangely, it’s blank. Not a single line or dot inscribed on the thing. When Kilquen gave it to me I assumed it was some form of a joke, maybe he’s just fucking with me. But no, this really is the real deal visitor’s pass. Every single time I hold it up to the camera, this pig responds with,
“Alright, go ahead.” Like clockwork. There’s a small click, so small I barely heard it, but I hear it every time. It must be that thing turning the box off, since that horrible blue light finally shut off.
After that, there’s more noise. A whole cacophony that assaults your eardrums. Some gears turn, some pistons shift, some machinery I’ll never understand. I've heard time and time again from other inmates that Magic is the land of the absurd. But these technologies that the creatures produce and hoard, these sciences that the City prioritizes; they are unlike anything absurdity has ever seen.
Before my very eyes, the metal box I was just talking to begins inching backwards. Slowly and smoothly, without jerking or hitting any single bump, it creeps away from me. As if the Wall was absorbing it in its entirety. Once the box is gone, all that remains is a smooth metal square on the Wall. A blue light lines the square on the Wall, and with a whirl of noises, it sinks into the ground. As if some monster were dragging it to Hell. Once the top reaches the ground, there’s a click and a droning hum. This is the invitation to step into the Edge.
All that’s before me now is an entrance. Stepping forward, the dim green hue of the Edge’s interior shows itself, and reveals the dilapidated state of the place. Stepping fully inside places me in a long, curved hallway with many, many doors. It comes fully equipped with creaky floorboards infested with termites, spiderwebs up every inch of every wall, a green light providing the barest of visibility above each door, and a smell that’s already giving me a migraine. Once I take my first step, the box rises back up from the ground and seals me inside. Like clockwork. Now I just have to find Diego.
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D i e g o

He opened his eyes and found himself still on the floor. There on the floor he stayed, staring at his sideways room. Even through his blurry vision he could see it was another cloudy day. He couldn’t feel his arms. There was no prickly sensation; no pins or needles, no sudden jolts or jerks. Just nothing. It sickened him; nausea began to take over. It got worse when suddenly the room turned upright. As he pondered the sudden change in orientation, he noticed his vision elevating. He is quickly turned around and faced towards a mirror. There, he saw his body, still dressed in the same clothes as last night. Suddenly, the reflection crouched at the same time his own vision lowered. He is brought closer to the reflection, and as he tried to command his legs to stop they continued stepping forward in resistance. He was now inches from the mirror, staring into his own vile eyes, his breath fogging the mirror.
“I gave you your day.” His reflection spoke. “Now I get mine.” His reflection growled its words in his own voice. The experience was not only jarring, it was sickening. His stomach churned as he struggled to decide which emotion was overwhelming him most. Whichever it was, however, it was the polar opposite of the face his reflection was making.
Slowly, Diego looked down at his feet. His soul went cold as he witnessed no floor beneath him. Bringing his head back up, the whole room seemed to have gone as well. He was back in that vast emptiness. Suddenly, he was plummeting. There was no wind nor debris to tell, but he could tell. Anyone can tell when they’re in danger. He was in no mortal danger, however, and he knew that; yet he feared nonetheless. He feared the danger of losing what he’s made of himself. All the progress he’s made, all the control he’s seized, it’s all getting wiped away like a smudge on glass. As suddenly as he began falling, he landed. There was no painful impact, because there is still no ground. In fact, beneath him lies infinite darkness still. This was just as low as he could fall. For now.
At that moment, the golden shackles on his wrists caught his attention; their chains glittering far into the infinite void that wraps around his feet like knotted roots. He heard him approaching; the demon in the darkness. Footsteps so silent that their only indication was the chill that ran down his spine; a chill that clashed badly with the burning ire of its gaze; a gaze that stared so loudly; so loud that the darkness split away and allowed it passage; a passage out of which it emerged from the cloak of the empty; the empty on which it seemingly floated, the dark, grotesque wings covering its lower half. It made its way to Diego and lowered itself to meet his eyes. It responded to his stone cold expression with a deviously playful smile that displayed its numerous rows of stained canines and incisors.
During this moment, something happened. Something they both noticed even when lost in the maze of each other’s gazes. Something that’s happened before; something that spelled out their fate in a new language. Upon realizing, their faces began to change. Their expressions swapped entirely. The newfound smile on Diego’s face catalyzed the frustration on the creature’s. It tugged its arms upwards and they stopped after just barely an inch of movement. The demon took a deep breath.
“This new trick of yours is proving to be quite the thorn in my side.” It tried once more to break free of its own handcuffs: two thorny wreaths of forget-me-nots with a thick, thorny vine that also descended into the darkness. “You know once I figure out how you do this,” It tugged at the binds some more, “It’ll never work on me again.” It looked at Diego’s smug smile. “What? You can’t hold this forever. I know you can’t, I always break out eventually.” Awaiting a response, its expression hardened with each silent second. “Even if you could, how long can you really keep us like this?” Its voice seemed to speed up. “You realize neither of us can move the body like this? We won’t survive past a week!”
Diego raised his eyes as he played that last sentence back in his head and pondered for a moment. As carefully as he could with both hands tied, he sat on the assumed floor. “Answer me some questions, will you?” He groaned as he attempted to get in a comfortable position. “Can you hold this forever?” Diego tugged his own chains.
Its eye twitched and it forced out a chuckle. “Give me the body.” It demanded as it looked down at him.
“I’ll take that as a no. Question two: If I die,” He looked up into its eyes, with an expression so sharp and confident, the being seemed to rear back an inch, “Do you?” A moment of eternity passed as they both stared deep into the eyes of each other’s souls. Something rapidly compressed around them as they waited. It weighed on their bones and teeth; it filled their ears and nostrils; it boiled their veins. The longer they looked at each other, the stronger it got. “Yea.” Diego smiled. “I don’t know either.”
“GIVE ME THE BODY!” It shouted as it pulled the binds over and over.
“Question three: Do you know why you can’t break those vines?” Diego waited for it to stop thrashing around and look at him again. When it did, Diego made a motion with his head to come down to him. Another moment of silent eye contact before it rolled its eyes and complied. After reaching eye level, Diego leaned closer to it. “It’s my body.” He growled through rage-coated teeth. “And I refuse to let you use it to hurt anyone, especially Jessica, again.” He began to stand up with no resistance.
“You insolent--” It got interrupted as it tried to stand up after Diego by the vine pulling back it down to the ground. It stared at its binds with bulging, bloodshot eyes. “YOUR BODY IS MINE! AND I WILL DO WITH IT WHATEVER I PLEASE! HOW DARE YOU DEFY ME, THE SON--”
“Yea yea, son of Pride blah blah. Question four, why didn’t you just fully take me over? You said my heart is your domain, but like why not everything?” He looked down and slyly smiled. “Twenty-something years in the passenger seat left me with not much to do except a lot of thinking. And my main question was always: Why keep me around? I mean if you want the body, why keep the competition sticking around? Now granted, I don’t know how demon magic works. Maybe you’re waiting for something, maybe this is step one of some weird ritual, maybe you were just born twisted and evil; really leaning toward that one. I don’t know. Or maybe,” He pointed down, “You messed something up, and now you’re stuck. You have no idea what you can or can’t control here, do you?”
It listened to every word through the sound of its blood pumping through the bulging veins on his temples, teeth clenched so tight they began to crack and bleed, breath so hot it came out as steam. It looked up at Diego, then at the chain that bound him. With a swift flick of the eyes, the chain was rapidly pulled downward and Diego was yanked down to the floor. Looking into his eyes, it says, “A contest of endurance, then?”
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J e s s i c a

“Come, I have a surprise for you.” Diego’s voice called out. Jessica felt his hand grab hers and with a rough tug, she was pulled along.
Dark shades of green and brown and blue began to come into view and swirl around and through each other until they settled into a clear picture: A forest clearing. The tree trunks and leaves are healthy and vibrant. The tree canopies above are so wide, it provides an adequate roof from any rain. Even in the middle of the day, with the already dark sky and the shade from the trees, it is enough to mistake it for night. The clearing, however, is illuminated by four lanterns carefully placed on each corner of a large mat. In the center is a woven basket.
“I remember you saying you’ve never been to a picnic before, and I know we live in some pretty shitty picnic weather, but,” His hand squeezed hers, causing the surrounding area to shiver. “Why let that stop us?” He pulled her to the area. One of the candles has gone out.
The colors swirled and the picture changed once more as she got closer. She was now lower to the ground, sitting on the mat. She could feel Diego sitting behind her, arms wrapped around her.
“You know I love you, right?” His hands grabbed hers and squeezed slightly. A breeze passed by them and blew out another candle. The trees surrounding them have begun to wither and shed their leaves. “I’m always here to protect you, you know that right?” His hand squeezed tighter. The third candle erupted into a massive flame and quickly died out. A massive gust of wind blew past and smudged all the colors. The trees are bent and twisted, and whatever leaves that remained have all been painted over with coats of gray and black. “You don’t need to rely on anyone else, okay?” His hand kept squeezing harder to the point of pain and the colors have begun to melt and sink into the everlasting nothing. They were now sitting in darkness, alight by a single candle. “So don’t think about ever going to someone else. Okay?” His hand gave one more strong squeeze and right as a crack could be heard and the last candle shattered, Jessica woke up, sitting upright in her bed.
Covered in sweat, she took deep breaths as she looked around the room. In the midst of the rapidfire earthquakes in her heart, she felt her eyes fill up as her vision became blurry. She wiped them as best she could, but they filled up faster each time. Through the small glimpses of clear vision, she managed to assess that this was in fact still her room.
Just as her heart stopped racing and her breathing slowed, a hand was placed on top of hers. With one sharp inhale, she thrashed her arms around, “GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF OF ME!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. Her flailing caused her to fall off the bed and she backed up to the wall and stared at the other person on the bed. A blurry vision of Diego at first quickly corrected itself. “I’m so sorry.” She said as soon as she saw the tan blonde man, staring dumbfounded at her. “I didn’t mean it, baby, I’m sorry. I--”
“It’s okay.” His hoarse morning voice spoke. “I startled you, I’m sorry. You had a nightmare right?” He cleared his throat as he moved over to her side of the bed and got off to sit on the floor across from her instead. “Want to talk about it?”
“I--” She closed her mouth as words began to fail her. Tears began forming in her eyes and she just shook her head while looking at the ground.
“That’s okay. We can just hang out on the floor. As long as you need, okay?”
Jessica tearfully nodded and held her head in her hands as she watched her tears fall to the floor.
The world slowly returned to her as the minutes passed. As her breathing and heartbeat returned to normal yet again, her thoughts became audible. She looked up to see the same man still sitting across from her. Seeing him smile, she felt a soothing wave pass through her; immediately followed by a shiver as she ran through her memories and gathered her thoughts.
“You know,” Jessica spoke up while looking again at the ground. “He’s only allowed to leave one day a year. He always spends it in that cemetery.” Through quivering lips and a shaky voice, she managed to bring out barely a whisper, “I see him there every fucking year.”
The man kept his eyes on her through every word. He furrowed his brow, and tilted his head slightly. “You- your ex? You see him there? You never told me that.” He leaned forward to make his way to her, but sat back when Jessica flinched in response. He took a breath. “Are you-”
“He never sees me.” She interrupted. “I always wait ‘til he leaves to go in. ‘Cept this time…” Her voice trailed off.
“Did he do something to you yesterday?”
Jessica shook her head and took a deep breath. She looked up at him, her eyes puffy and nose still red. “He was crying.” There was a pause as she lowered her head while struggling to continue looking into his eyes. “And I spoke to him.”
“Jess…” The single word carried with it a trail of disapproval as it snaked its way inside Jessica’s ears.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” She swept her hair back and sat on her knees. She inhaled sharply and looked at the man in the eyes. “But remember what my therapist said? About people changing?”
“Jess--”
“Alvarez, he’s never cried for anything. He didn’t cry at his parents’ funeral. He didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral, was basically a second father to him. I mean, I don’t know, what if--”
“Jess, she also said that your ex had the tendencies of a sociopath, and personally I agree. Look,” Alvarez looked her over as he took a deep breath. “Wanting to see the best in people is such an admirable trait, and you should never get rid of it. But you also need to be on the side of realism. People like him, they don’t change.”
“Right…” Jessica’s voice trailed off as she lowered her gaze back to the floor. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I'm sorry.” She shifted on the floor and hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in her own arms.
Alvarez sighed. “Hey, remember what we talked about? It’s okay to disagree with me.” Watching unsatisfyingly as Jessica simply nodded in response, Alvarez sat upright. “I’m gonna come closer.” He stated.
Jessica hesitantly and silently nodded and, shortly after, heard the shuffling of the floorboards and felt the massive presence towering over her. For a second, everything stops; her breathing, her thinking, she even felt her heart go out for a beat. “I’m sorry.” She kept silently repeating the phrase. She went into shivers from the chilling breeze of the aura in front of her. Hands entered her field of vision and after her heart skipped two and a half beats and her soul reared back, the hands clasped unto hers. Her blood immediately froze and time once again ground to a shrieking halt. Through the eternal moment, her vision began to fail her; spots of black flashed across her eyes and the room felt as if it was rotating. The hands gently placed themselves under hers so their palms were touching.
The hands were warm. She still wasn’t used to it. The warmth spread from her hands to her body and her blood thawed and began to flow. With it, time resolved itself, as well as her breathing and vision. The presence in front of her that was cold and hard, was now kind and soft. She finally lifted her head up and stared into the lavender fields staring back at her, listening intently at the words he spoke so softly to her:
“I’m not him.”
Those three words tore down the dam in her eyes; rivers of tears streamed down her face and around the corners of her mouth that spread in a grateful smile.
“I’m sorry.” She cried out as she leapt on him and buried her head into his chest, squeezing him with both arms around him.
“You have absolutely nothing to apologize for.” He said as he placed a hand on her head and held her close to him with the other.
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Z y t h

“Do you remember the night you first defied me?” It spoke low, while solemnly staring into the palms of its still confined hands that sat above its wing covered lap. “Never had I been bound before. Well, not with binds like these at least.” He sighed. “We had a perfect plan. We could have had such a pleasant life. Out there, with the noble and rich participants of society. Not picking for scraps with the dregs instead.”
“Are you kidding me?” Diego’s voice tore through the foundations of the zone of self pity and resentment laid out by Zyth with such primal animosity. The demon did not have to look up to feel the holes being bored into him by Diego’s searing gaze. Look up it did, however, and ever so slightly did it flinch upon meeting his eyes. “A pleasant life? That was never an option for us. You made sure of that the moment we were born.”
“What I made sure of--” It jolted up and tripped as the vine pulled him back down and growled as it sat again, “Was to try and acquire us a life of pleasures and luxury.”
“No price too high, right?” Diego snapped at it, tugging his chain as he too attempted with no avail to get up from his sitting position. “All those people, pocket change for you. Xerena, that poor girl. Whether you tainted her, or she was always twisted, it hardly matters anymore. And Jess…,” His voice trailed off as he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Well, I think you know more than anyone what I have to say about that.” He shook his head as he stared into its eyes. “You’ve ruined too many people. Your path to luxury left behind a trail of misery. That’s all you assured us.” His face couldn’t help but flare up the longer he stares at the being’s monotone expression. The small chuckle was all it took to boil his blood. “What is so funny?”
“Just that after two whole decades, you still have not a clue how we function.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you aware of how souls work?” It awaited an answer, but sighed when Diego simply furrowed his brow in confusion. “Of course you’re not. Souls are composed of two very simple components: The heart," It gestures toward itself with one of its scaly clawed fingers. "And the mind;" It points the same finger toward him, "Both formed and fused upon the moment of birth. The soul is guided by both the primal, instinctual emotions of the heart, and the rational, more composed reasoning of the mind. In a regular soul, as often at odds as the two are, the heart always dominates the mind in the end.” It raised its binds closer to its face. A subtle whimpering sigh escaped its lips and its expression seemed to melt for only a moment. Another small chuckle and the familiar smug smirk reappeared as quickly as it left. “But we are no regular soul,” It looked at him, meeting their eyes. “And regular rules don’t apply to us. You’re right. It’s your body. I can’t make you do anything. All I do is offer up our options, then nudge you in the direction I believe benefits us most.” The smirk slowly morphed into a twisted smile as it watched its words transform Diego’s face into one of horrid realization. “The final decision of everything we’ve done has, and always will be, entirely up to you. So if you want to waste time pointing fingers and passing blame for ‘ruining people’, it would best suit you to do so in front of a mirror.” Standing up, the thorny vine raised with it, no longer pulling it back down. It stared down at the feeble boy, seeing him shake. Its smile widened even further, seemingly becoming larger than its own face, revealing its rows of jagged fangs. “Now give me the body.”
A moment passed. Then another. And another. The more moments that passed, the more its smile diminished. The boy had stopped shaking and has since been still, akin to a statue; more like a gargoyle, perhaps. It slowly descended itself back to eye level with him.
“How long can you keep this up?” The question subtly escaped its lips, as if rhetorically whispered to itself. “Why do you insist on continuing as you are?” Halfway through its crouch, it opted instead to simply fall forward and land on its shins and knees, staring at its human counterpart, a feeling it could only best attribute as ‘apathy’ smeared across his whole being.
They heard a knock at the door.
----------------------------------------------------------------Ch2 End----------------------------------------------------------

--CHAPTER 3--

A seemingly infinite hallway is dimly lit with loudly buzzing fluorescent lights. The faint, slightly green glow of the cracked bulbs overhead barely illuminated anything past the space just below them, leaving segments of pitch black darkness in this windowless space. Whatever pattern might have been on the wallpaper is now covered and caked in dirt and some form of mold, only in the sections that haven’t been completely torn off the wall already. Piles of dust accumulated along the edges of the splintering, rotten wood of the floor and doors dotting the walls of the hallway.
One such door happened to be the cause of a ruckus early in the morning as a young, tan, ink-covered woman banged on the door with her fist; the other on her hip, tapping her fingers in impatience.
“D, we should have left like twenty minutes ago, come on dude!” She shouted in a raspy but energetic voice. Her thick accent forced its way through every word. She sucked her teeth as another moment passed in silence. “Bro, you know I can pick a lock. Don’t test me, dude.”
A loud creak echoed across the hall as a nearby door was pried open from the inside. A much older man came out yawning, wrapped in a blanket that dragged across the floor.
“Quiet down, Xerena. It’s too early for all that racket.” He spoke in a voice as loud as his feeble self could muster. Within confines such as these, however, it came across just fine.
“Not all of us were born in the 14th century, Marvin!” The woman snapped at the old man. “Some of us can actually still work, and have to! Now fuck off back inside and mind your business!” She watched as the old man reared back at her outburst and grumbled to himself as he waddled back inside and shut the door with another deafening creak. She started banging on the door again. “Fine,” Her voice lowered to a self appointed whisper, “Have it your way.” She reached into her hair and pulled out a bobby pin. As she began to bend it and lowered herself to the lock level, she paused. “No, you know what?” She shouted at the door again, “I’ll just kick the fucking thing down!” She stood back up and put the pin back in her hair. She faced the door and began slightly hopping in anticipation and preparation. With one deep, but sharp inhale she lifted her leg up; the cryptic tattoos covering her limb glittered slightly when exposed to the dim light. Just as she thrust out the tall, thick sole of her boot, the door swung open. The momentum pulled her forward and she hopped on one leg for two steps before regaining her balance and landing her lifted leg.
“Marvin’s right, Xerena.” Diego’s voice spoke up as his crimson-gold eyes met her lavender-orange ones. “You should be quieter in the mornings.” He began walking past her, out the door.
“Yea, well, you should wake up earlier. Oh wait, wait, wait!” Xerena grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the room before he was fully out of the door. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“I thought you said we were late.” He called out with an exasperated sigh.
“That was just to get you to open the door faster.” She shut the door and immediately threw her jacket on his bed. “It’s actually so early.” She lifted her shirt and took her arms out so it hangs on her neck.
“Okay, what the fuck are you doing?” Diego asked, flustered as he shyly turned his head.
“Oh please, it’s just my back. As if you’ve never seen more.” She turned her head to look at Diego over her shoulder. “I think those inhibs are working, I need you to look at my spells, make sure they’re all there.”
“Oh. Wait, for real?” He turned back to face her and began eyeing her tattoos. “They’ve literally never worked before. You think he added something?”
“I have no fucking idea. Honestly I think it might be all the time I’ve spent surrounded by all this Umun. It’s messing me up, like, inside. Fuck, I don’t know. I just know I woke up coughing and my back hurt and I was, like, kind of freaking out, but like, a lot. And dude,” She turned around so fast she almost knocked him down, “That shit isn’t normal! Not for me!”
Her voice was quivering. Her face was flushed and furrowed; contorted in a way that Diego hasn’t seen that often. Her eyes were watering and she was shaking. It was as if all the panic and anxiety she was running from this morning finally caught up and hit her three times as hard.
“Okay well,” Diego stared into her eyes as he gently brushed the stray strands of hair away from her face and gave her shoulders a hardy squeeze. He often thought about how much she must trust him for him to not only let him see this side of her, but allow him to comfort her in the gentle way he does. He realizes he may be the only one that ever could, and that makes him equally grateful and sad. “Your tattoos are all there. Your spells are okay. Okay? Your Magic is still pure. You’re okay. Okay?” He kept looking at her eyes and holding her shoulders until her subtle tears dried and she nodded in agreement. “Cool. Now can you please put your shirt back on?”
Xerena looked down at her bare torso and failed to stifle a laugh, “Oh man, you’re such a pansy this morning.” She said as she pulled her shirt back down and plopped flat on his bed. A rumbling groan escaped her as she threw her arm over her eyes. “I’m so glad Kilquen lets us stay in The Edge. This would have been so fucking embarrasing if it happened out there.”
“Us? If I remember correctly, you’ve already lost your permit. Aren’t you on your ninth strike? Do you know what happens at ten, Xe?” The question escapes his lips smothered in mockery.
“You get kicked out of the Oasis.” She sighed, mimicking his talking with her hand.
“You get kicked out of the Oasis.” He repeats in unison.
“Can you relax, nothing is gonna happen to me.”
“If nothing was gonna happen, you wouldn’t have gotten nine strikes already.”
“Whatever. I’m taking a nap before work.”
Diego opened his mouth to speak in protest, but Xerena was already in deep sleep, snoring her stresses away.
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“I cannot believe you didn’t wake me up!” Xerena swung the door open so hard, it nearly ripped off its hinges while riling up a swarm of dust right into their faces as she stormed out.
“You seemed like you needed the rest.” Diego spoke calmly as he followed behind her, closing the door behind him. “Besides, we’re not that late.”
“We’re late enough for Georgie! And I do not want to end up like Pasco!”
They walked through the endless hall until they reached a door unlike the others; this one was larger and made of metallic material.
Xerena took out the laminated card from her jacket pocket and attached it to a thin chain necklace placed around her neck before rolling up the left sleeve of her black jacket to reveal an electronic bracelet and more cryptic tattoos all the way to the palm and fingertips. Diego rolled up his own red sleeve to reveal the same bracelet on his arm as well. They both hovered their bracelets in front of a small screen next to the door. After a short delay, a circular light flickered for a while before steadily glowing that horrible shade of blue Xerena hates. A voice meshed in static was heard through the light,
“Well, well. If it ain’t the Magic freaks.” A slow, gravely voice trudged its way out of the speaker to form its sentence.
“He’s not Magic, racist fuck.” Xerena spoke up, stepping in front of Diego to stick her face into the light.
“Good morning to you too, ‘Rena. Got your visitor pass?”
“I always have my visitor pass, dipshit.” She backed up and held up the laminated card in front of the light. “I’m here every morning. You let me in earlier.”
“Yeah, yeah. Talk my ear off, why don’t you.” A beep was heard through the light and the metallic door began descending; wind roared and whistled as it seeped through the opening, following the line of dim gray sunlight flooding into the hall. “Don’t hurry back.”
Stepping outside, Diego turned around to watch the door rise back up. He raised his head to trace his gaze along the wall of the Edge that extends up to the clouds that plague the City’s sky. Turning back around, his gaze ran past Xerena and the uncountable open air markets filling the space between the Edge and the just-as-massive gate that marks the border to the Center of the Oasis.
“Are you listening to me?” Xerena called out, bringing Diego’s attention back to her.
“That’s new.” He pointed at the blonde tips at the end of her long, dark hair.
“Oh, right! I got it done the other day. What do you think?” She gave a twirl as she asked the question; as she spun, her hair formed a golden ring that trapped her inside a dark circle.
Diego smiled after looking it over. “I like it.”
“I knew you would.” Xerena said in a singsong manner. She then hardened her expression and tugged Diego’s sleeve. “Now let’s go.” She gave him a hard tug and they headed to the gate.
The markets that flooded the open space between the Edge and the Center offer a vast variety of wares and spares; anything from fresh fruit to baked pastries to clothes and fabrics to live animals in cages. Blending with the walls formed by the lines of people and set up with seemingly no pattern or reason, the shops presented less of a path and more of a maze to get to the gate.
“Speaking of new,” Xerena’s voice peeked through the loud bustle of the morning crowd, “What’s that about?” She pointed at the flowery, thorny vine coiling around Diego’s right wrist and arm.
“Oh.” A moment of silence triggered as he drops his gaze upon the vine. The petals dancing in the wind delivered into his ears a pleading song and painted the slightest hint of a smile on his face. “I’m trying something new.”
“Yeah..” Xerena paused her trek to scan Diego with her eyes. “You sure are…”
Diego placed his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around. With a gentle nudge, Xerena continued leading them through the crowd; with the help of passably amicable greetings and pleasantries, they wedged their way toward the gate.
The gate to the Center of the Oasis was an amalgamation of various methods meant to provide a strict divide between the two sections of the Oasis. Barbed wire, live electrical wires, jagged sheets of metal and otherwise unrecognizable machinations haphazardly intertwined between and within each other to erect the gigantic barrier known as the Gate. In a way, it reminded Diego a lot of himself as a whole.
Along several points at the base of the gate are sealed doors, akin to the one from which Xerena and Diego emerged. Upon arriving, they again scanned their bracelets. After waiting for a few seconds, a beep is heard and the door sunk into the ground.
Immediately they are assaulted with the stench of the air. The thick smog pouring out quickly embedded them as they stepped in, and once the door closed back up, they could no longer see past a mere couple of yards. Their peaceful morning stroll was quickly dispatched by the uproarious noises of the Center’s amenities. The high pitch buzzing of the power plants and electrical towers rung and echoed in their ears, the low rumbling stemming from the factories and forges rattled their bones, the constant and tedious bustle of the denizens was, as always, a continuous annoyance. Such is the average welcome provided by the Center of the Oasis.
“Alright then!” Xerena clapped her hands, “To Georgie!”
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Dim, gray sunlight pooled in through the open curtains, laying out a monotone carpet across the bedroom. There was a piece of dust. It passed through the light, just barely, but it was quick enough to snatch her attention from right under her. Following the thief, her gaze cannot help but derail as a light blue butterfly landed on the windowsill, just on the other side of the glass. She thought it peculiar, a butterfly landing in such a place. Bare, painted stone. Not a flower in sight. For what reason would it land in a place that goes against its very survival? Was it compelled, maybe? Did it have a choice, truly? Did it even know the futility of its decision? Or will it be yet another fleeting memory once it flies off? How lucky it is, she thought, to forget so quickly; to leave your worries in the wind.
“What do you think?” Alvarez’s bass voice grabbed Jess’ attention. Right in the midst of getting dressed, his plain, but quizzically long, gray buttoned shirt covered his otherwise bare lower half. In each hand he held a tie, both similar shades of gray. He shook them to grab Jess’ attention once more as she took her time pondering the answer.
“The… left one.” Her eyes darted from one tie to the other as she spewed out her answer; it came out sounding more of a question itself.
Alvarez dropped his arms with a sigh. “You can’t tell the difference.”
“Of course I can tell the difference, Al.” She quickly deflected. “Women have a sixth sense for this stuff.”
“Alright. Which one is lighter?” He held the ties up again.
Jessica quickly studied the two ties once more. With a slight hesitation, she spoke. “The left one?”
Turning his hands around to inspect the ties himself, Alvarez rolled his eyes as he confirmed. “Lucky guess.” He tossed the tie in his right hand back into the walk-in closet from which he emerged and promptly retreated back into.
“Pretty sure you got more than one color in there.” Jessica spoke loudly as to be heard within the closet.
“We’re not allowed to wear colors during Die Exsiilux.” Al’s disembodied voice responded.
The raw unfamiliarity of the sounds and syllables stunned her so as to allow a moment, just one moment, to slip past her. “Oh. Right. Yeah, ‘course.” Another moment, this one was allowed to pass in peace. “Hey, follow up question. The fuck is that?”
Alvarez reemerged from the closet tucking his shirt into his newly acquired pants, with the tie tossed around his neck. The look on his face was quizzical. “I’ve never told you about Die Exsiilux?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Huh. Well, I guess that makes sense. I haven’t celebrated in a long time. Even longer for this traditional celebration. Do you want the long explanation or the short one?”
“Do I have to attend this as well?”
“Family only.”
“Short, please.” She said, snatching back those moments that ran away; one she tossed Alvarez’s way, the other she gave to the butterfly. Why did it stay, she wondered. What could possibly be offered that was worth sacrificing that which it needed most?
“My sister knows the full story way better than I do anyway.” He began fidgeting with his tie. “From what I recall, it’s the day Magic was revoked from the world as a Law and forced to walk as an exile, among a world that would always hate it. Magic, restricted to the form of the people, had been stripped of its name and purpose. Instead, the denizens dubbed it the old word for “devil”. As time passed, it came to know itself as that. Eventually, way way later, more and more exiles of the land would seek refuge with it. Over time, magic would imprint itself unto this first group and they would become the first magic users. After that, it stops being myth and more actual history, but that’s basically it. Although the day is a celebration of unity and our origin, it’s also a day of mourning for Magic. Such is represented by the lack of color. We’re also technically not supposed to use any spells, but no one really follows that. Take all that with a grain of salt, by the way. Like I said, I don’t really celebrate.”
“So why you going this year?” Even from being turned away, Jessica sensed how much the question had disturbed him.
“The Grand Scholar-Caster has requested all family members be present this year.”
“Your dad?” Before the question had ended, she had already swiveled herself to fully face him. Faster still was her transition from tired, expressionless eyes to a beaming gaze of intrigue.
“The family patriarch and leader of Terra Magica. Yes, him.”
“Been a while since you visited.”
Al tossed his head back with a groan. “It’s not a visit, Jess.” He brought his head back down as he finished with his tie. “It’s a mandated family gathering. We literally don’t have a choice, father will just teleport us anyway.”
“So, the whole family is gonna be there?” A gust of tense silence followed the question. They stood still as statues as it breezed past them. “Even your sist--”
“I’m heading to the Oasis before the time of the gathering to visit her. No doubt father has long since erased her name from the teleport rune, but perhaps I could convince her to let me take her with me.”
“Why?” A question more quick and sharp couldn’t be forged anywhere but the spiteful fires within Jess’ heart.
“She’s more magic than the whole country combined.” He made his way to a large vanity to inspect himself, all the while feeling the rising heat of Jessica’s wrathful gaze drilling holes into him. “She deserves to celebrate today.”
“She deserves to rot in the Oasis.”
“Jessica!” Alvarez raised his voice as he faced her.
“She’s psychotic, Al! A fucking murderer!”
“She is my sister!” The curtains ruffled from the mere volume of his shout. Though subtle, Alvarez noticed Jessica recoiled as well. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he sighed. “As abhorrent as her deeds are, her final judgment is to be dictated by the Grand Scholar-Caster. The least I could do as a brother is have her celebrate one last holiday with her family.”
“A family that hates her.” She said, barely under her breath.
“Jessica, that’s enough!” Seeing Jessica flinch at his voice again caused Al to take a long, deep breath. “I have to go.” Before even completing the sentence, he had already rushed towards the door.
Jessica lowered her head in familiar disappointment. “Of course you do.” She muttered under her breath. “What was its name, by the way?” She shouted out when she heard Al grab the doorknob.
“What?”
“The new name they gave Magic. The word for “devil”. What was it?”
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“Miss LaSatanna!” A guttural, near bestial, growl of a voice shook the very foundation of the Oasis. The booming voice was accompanied with heavy, earth shaking footsteps. The old, handmade wooden tables and chairs bounced and splintered in rhythm with each tremor caused by the behemoth that stomped across the establishment; yet picked up any that should fall over. The dim, low hanging chandeliers swung violently as the giant beelined past them; yet clearly made movements as to purposely avoid running into them. The intensity of the march waned everytime the goliath slowed his pace to not stress the ancient support beams scattered around the room.
Directly at the end of his path was a massive wooden ring bar with tall, circular shelves stocked with bottles of various clear and colorful spirits. Wildly out of place, this modern centerpiece shone from underneath as a beacon in the dimly lit ancient dining area surrounding it. People behind the bar scrambled to prevent the numerous glasses and bottles from falling. The black and white motif of their undershirt-suit vest uniform painted a rorschach amongst the kaleidoscope from the glint of the liquor bottles.
In the center of the shifting inkblot of bartenders, one woman turned around upon mention of her name. The blonde tips of her long, dark ponytail flowed into a golden half circle as she spins. Each step the goliath took caused her to crane her neck ever more upward in order to meet his gaze. Once the mass of muscle, garbed in an extremely tight fitting, yet formal, suit and tie, reached the bar, the tremors stopped. Not only did the towering figure encapsulate the entire bar staff in shadow, his height far surpassed that of the low hanging lights, cloaking everything above his chest in shadow. Only the fire of his scornful gaze made it through the dark shadows of the roof. The woman remained unfazed, however, and merely pointed at a nearby clock.
“We’re on time, Georgie.” Xerena accompanied the words with a vain smirk.
“Barely.” The bottles clinked slightly as the low frequency of his voice passed through them, followed by a wave of shivers as it reverberated through the bones of each bartender under his shadow. “And I don’t see the other guy.”
“Right here, boss.” The familiar monotone, yet smug, tone climbed its way to Georgie’s ears. Diego stood behind Georgie, in a uniform much alike those of Xerena and the other bartenders. The only difference lay in his right sleeve, which has seemingly been torn off so as to allow his newfound, unorthodox accessory to pass through.
Georgie shifted ever so slightly to meet his gaze with Diego’s. Upon witnessing the state of the uniform, he sharply inhaled. “Do I even want to ask?”
Diego took a moment to inspect himself before looking back up at Georgie. “I wouldn’t.”
Georgie made a noise that started as what sounded like a sigh but then quickly transitioned into a low bellow of sorts. “Just get to your stations. We have a special guest coming.”
“Oh yeah, must be super special to come to this hole in the wall.” Xerena sarcastically called out, inducing a faint ripple of giggles from behind her.
“Kilquen is paying us a visit.” Georgie’s mention of the name brought everything to a grinding halt. Almost immediately, suffocating silence filled the space.
“The warden?!” Some voices shoued out from the blob of bartenders.
“The very one. So I need all of you to be on your best behaviors.” Georgie addressed all present, but his gaze remained on Xerena. “That means no frost runes to chill the glasses. We need him to think those inhibitors actually do something.”
Xerena raised both hands. “Can’t use magic today anyways. Holiday.”
Georgie stared at her while giving a quick snort. “You’re lucky you’re good at your job.” He turned around and placed one of his gargantuan fingers on Diego’s shoulder. “You lay low.” He tapped his finger twice, nearly bringing Diego down with each one. “Please.” As he took his leave, the tremors of his footfalls shook all the bottles and glasses and the bartenders once more rearranged themselves to keep them from falling.
“Maybe we can ask him about the inhibitors.” Diego said as he lifted a piece of the counter on his way behind the bar.
Xerena raised an eyebrow. “Sure, okay.” She said in an overly sarcastic tone. “Maybe you can ask him.” She eyed the vine wrapped around his arm. “Don’t think Kilquen will appreciate you ripping up his uniforms, though.”
“As if Kilquen has ever appreciated anything I do.” Diego turned his back to her to open a drawer under the centerpiece that the numerous bottles rested on; he pulled out a clipboard with some papers.
Xerena glared at his vine while he was turned away. She intensely scanned it with her eyes and furrowed her brow in unease. She quickly morphed her face into a smile when he turned around. “Come on, he likes you.”
“He tolerates me. Not the same thing.” He pulled out a pen from his pocket. “And that’s only because he likes you.” He pointed at her with his pen before walking away and began counting all the merchandise while checking things off or writing small notes on his clipboard.
“You just gotta get on his good side.” Xerena hesitantly followed him; she stared once more at the vine. “I thought you could charm anyone.”
“It’s not about charming him or whether or not I can. If he has a good side, he’s never shown it to me and he doesn’t plan to. He just despises me on a physiological level. It’s not who I am, it’s what I am. ‘Scuse me.” He addressed Xerena, who was glaring at him with wide eyes shaking with bewilderment. She was leaning forward on top of small, covered wells of various fruit slices and other garnishes.
Xerena broke her trance of puzzled excitement and anxiety, and noticed what she was leaning on. She turned around and took a seat on the bar instead, completely blocking Diego from counting the contents within. When Diego slumped his shoulders and sighed, she tilted her head and smiled playfully at him. She turned stiff and let out a small yelp when his hands firmly grasped her waist, easily lifting her from the spot and placing her down nearby. She pouted. “All work, no play, huh?”
He stood straight after counting the wells’ contents and pointed to the hatch under Xerena’s feet. “You checked the kitchen downstairs?”
“Yeah, we’re good on stuff.”
“Warden’s visiting, Xe.”
“I’m serious! I checked while you were changing. We got a big order while you were out yesterday. We’re still going through it.”
“Alright.” Diego wrote in the papers on the clipboard. “I trust you.”
“Now there’s a first.”
“Oh, come on.” He placed the clipboard on an empty shelf under the bar. “I’ve been trusting you for ten years.”
“Seven. We were lone wolves for a while when we met, remember.”
“Okay well, the point still stands.” As he spoke, his arms instinctively reached for a highball glass and bottles of vodka and juices and began building a drink. “Trust is what’s kept us alive all these years.”
“And yet isn’t trust what got us stuck in the Oasis in the first place? Or lack thereof, more like?”
“Xe please,” He garnished the drink with an orange slice and gently slid the vibrant orange cocktail across the bar. “That was a one time thing. Besides, our sentences are nearly…” As his voice trailed off, he noticed the prepared drink sitting between them; a puzzled look grew on his face. “…done. Did… you order that?” He asked Xerena while pointing at the drink.
“Ew, a Sex on the Beach? Have you met me?”
“Unfortunately.”
Dark, slim fingers gingerly clasped around the glass and lifted it into the air. The rim of the glass met a set of full, plump lips that left their mark on the glass as the drink flowed through. They curled into a satisfied smile as the drink was placed back down; the other hand moved a portion of her thick, curly mane away from her face so that her sapphire eyes could meet those of her favorite bartenders. “You still make it how I like it.” The voice that came out was raspy and deep, and abundantly sultry.
Everyone in the vicinity shifted their attention toward her. They felt the heat rising from within them as their hearts fluttered and their blood rushed through them; a combined result of simply being in the presence of such a beguiling figure and not being addressed by said figure. The sensation was exhilarating. Yet, as alluring and tempting as she was, in the back of everyone’s mind, there was a silent unanimous consensus that was visibly evident and could not be denied: this woman had business with Diego and Xerena, and to interrupt would be devastating.
“Um,” Diego stumbled with his words, face getting redder by the second. Even he was not immune to the winsome looks of the woman in front of him. “Sorry ma’am, we’re not open yet—”
“Do we know you?” Xerena interrupted, slamming a hand down on the bar as she shoved Diego behind her. Her cheeks were not flushed, nor was her demeanor at all indicative of having fallen prey to the charm that permeates the room.
“Aw, you’ve lost none of your charm, Xe. Don’t tell me you of all people forgot about little ol’ me?” She turned so that only one side of her face was showing and moved the ever flowing sea of hair out of the way. The smooth dark skin on her sculpted cheek tore itself an opening from which another cobalt eye surfaced and looked at them. It winked once before sinking back into the rip it came from. The skin closed back up and mended itself perfectly; no seam or scar in sight.
The redness in Diego’s face disappeared as quickly as it came as he watched the demonstration. He quickly became unamused and rolled his eyes with an exasperated sigh. “Liv.”

“Liv!” Xerena excitedly hopped over the bar and easily lifted the short stature woman into the air for a hug. The sequins of Liv’s skintight dress reflected the already beaming ground lights of the bar. “Oh you’re much lighter now.” Upon setting her down, her eyes began inspecting. “And shorter.”
“Among many other differences, yes. I’ve missed you too, Xerena.”
“D, look!” Xerena exaggeratedly waved her hand to catch his attention. “Liv’s back!”
“I saw.” Diego responded, monotone and unamused. “You’re alone?”
“Well,” Liv responded, leaning on the bar far enough for anyone to see enough, with her chin resting in her palm. “Depends what you mean by ‘alone’. I always have someone to spend the night with.” Her playful giggles and sly smiles quickly died down as she noticed Diego’s stern, unwavering expression. “Man, who sucked the fun outta you? Corvix isn’t with me, if that’s what you’re so concerned about.”
“Then what do you want?” He quickly snapped back.
Liv was taken aback by the attitude presented to her. She leaned toward Xerena. “He’s so mean now.”
Xerena leaned in closer and whispered something into her ear. As she spoke, Liv’s eyes drifted over to the vine of thorns and her face grew harder, colder, and more and more puzzled; until she was staring at Diego with absolute unfamiliarity.
“What did you do?” Liv spat out the question. Upon receiving silence as her answer, she swiftly stormed out of the establishment.
“Wow.” Xerena broke the silence. “That played out a lot differently in my head.”
“What the hell did you tell her, Xe?”
“Nothing! Just that something’s been up with you today.”
Diego scoffed. “What’s ‘up with me’?” He repeated her phrase in a far more annoyed tone.
“You’re different.”
“Meaning WHAT, Xe?!” He raised his voice.
“I DON’T KNOW!” She raised her voice back. “Woah.” Her face shifted to a more negative range of emotion; a blend of sad and offended. “Don’t yell at me, dude. Chill out.” Her voice remained stern.
Diego nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“That’s also different, you never do that.”
“What? Apologize?”
“No. Well, I mean, yeah, but no. I meant shouting.”
“We have shouted at each other so many times, come on.”
“But not like you just did. That was different. It’s like you’re… getting upset.”
Diego chuckled as he rolled his eyes and whole head. “Getting upset. Because that’s such a bad thing?”
“Not what I said. You know you’re always allowed to get upset. You just don’t.”
“I said I was trying something new.”
“And that’s fine.” She approached him. “But every time I’ve looked at you today… I don’t want to say it’s like you’re a different person,” Her hand traced along his arm and the vine that ensnared it. “because I recognize you. I remember you. It’s more like…” She brought her face close to his. “You’re trying to hide a part of yourself.”
“EVERYONE TO YOUR STATIONS! WE OPEN IN TEN!” Georgie’s boorish voice rattled the eardrums of every person present in the building.
In the time it took to flinch and cover her ears, Diego had disappeared entirely.
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“I remember bringing us here all the time.” Liv’s voice rang out from a colorful void. Deep blues faded into hot pinks which smeared out into burning reds and blinding yellows. The colors blended and coalesced around and within each other. The visions they created shifted and distorted until the voice that cried out within is felt amongst the vibrant myriad of fervor and sentiment. “We’d spend eternity here; enveloped, connected, coupled by our very essence. Our souls joined in passion. We’d paint such beautiful pieces with ourselves as we became one. Surely you remember too.”
“Take me back, Liv.” Splotches of monotonic dull gray spread out through the mirage like spilled ink as Diego responds.
“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO ADDRESS ME HERE, PARASITE!” Harsh, jagged streaks of red shot out in a blitz. “NOR DO YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO USE THAT NAME!”
“Well I’m not calling you Libidine.” The gray blots permeated the red slashes. “I have a bar to manage, so please, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be taken back.”
In the center of it all, a pinprick hole tore itself apart. Purple tendrils swam out and coiled around the other colors.
“Now, now.” Zyth’s dark timbre slithered out and began swirling around every corner of the colorful expanse. “Surely we can stay for just a moment. For old time’s sake, at least.”
Liv gasped. “My treasure!” Chains of blue and pink beelined towards the purple swirls and wrapped around them, like filament coiling around a rod. “Oh, can’t you lock the vermin up? Look at how he taints our paradise.”
“Would that I could, my nonpareil. My situation has taken a complicated turn.”
Their colors congealed in their own special corner of the void, leaving Diego’s grays floating in a void of pure nothing nearby.
“He does not deserve the pleasure I give you here.” The blues and pinks became more vibrant.
“Trust me,” The faintest, slightest, barest hue of green tinged the gray. “I want out as much as you want me out. Whatever you have to say to him, you can say in front of me. In fact, you have to.”
Just as faint -perhaps a notch less- as the green that spread over the gray, red began to ever so slightly creep along the blues and pinks like veins in an arm.
“I spoke to your mother.” A moment of silence is allowed for a response, but none arrived. “Your ajxthr is coming up. She wishes you the best of luck.”
Something quite bizarre happened next. Liv didn’t notice. Diego, however, not only noticed, he felt it. When Zyth’s bright and vibrant purple tendrils dimmed and flickered for just short of a blink, he felt it. When the purple altogether vanished and its presence was pure and transparent for even less time, he felt it.
Zyth gave no response. Shortly after Liv drew a second breath, it disappeared.
“—OPEN IN TEN!” Georgie’s monstrous roar of a voice penetrated Diego’s eardrums and shook him back to a more comfortable reality.
His ears began throbbing from the sudden attack on them. It’s no more painful than a sore muscle, however, compared to the searing hellfire he felt running up his right arm. The muscles and veins in his arm shifted to places they shouldn’t be; making room for an unannounced guest. The sensation subsided only after the pores in his arm split and tore themselves open as the thorns sliced their way to the surface. His arm was burning so much he almost didn’t notice the warm blood trickling down his arm.
Taking advantage of everyone’s instinctual response to flinch at Georgie’s voice, he rushed away from the bar and toward one of the marked restrooms.
Perhaps it was the creaking of the old floorboards when he stepped off of the brand new, squeaky clean tiled flooring that rests under the bar and onto the rest of the decrepit building, but Xerena had noticed him leaving. Her vision was more so focused on the sudden trail of blood he left behind him.
With no words and a swift motion, she swiped four curved lines upward with the index and pinky fingers of both her hands. After connecting the tops of all four lines to a sharp corner, the trail carved by her fingers faintly glows as every drop of blood on the floor boils and evaporates.
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The sound of the water gushing out from the faucet spout and slamming against the cracked, chipped ceramic sink gradually got louder as his ears stopped ringing. At around the same time, his vision started adjusting to the pitch black room he locked himself in. Slowly, and hazy, Diego began to piece together pieces of the bar bathroom. The rickety wooden stalls with missing doors behind him. The exposed pipe of a half broken urinal next to those. His vision hadn’t adapted enough yet to see the veins of black mold traveling along the cracks in the wall tiles, but his nose was not so immune. He saw the sink in front of him, filled with liquid that seemed way too dark for water, and piles of used paper towels oozing a puddle of his blood that spilled down into the basin of stained water.
After soiling the last paper towel, he sighed as he still felt the cold warmth of his own blood cascading down his arm. He looked up, at the mirror above the sink. After taking notice of it being the only object that remains unbroken, he looked at his reflection. The haziest thing in the room; a dark silhouette that vaguely resembled a humanoid shape. It swirled and jerked in an unpredictable yet mesmerizing way. It reminded him of a flame on a windy day.
“Who’s Arthur?” He asked as he shut off the faucet.
Ajxthr. It’s not a person. It’s an… event.
“Scares the shit out of you.” Diego barely had time for a single blink before his face slammed itself into the mirror. It fractured, adding it to the list of ruined junk in the room. As his face pressed against the shards of glass, he thought he felt hot, heaving breaths from his shattered reflection.
Nothing scares me. It snarled.
“Right.” Diego responded, peeling himself off the mirror. “You just ran away at the first mention of it out of… brimming confidence?” There were no stains on the mirror from what he could make out, nor did he feel anything wet from touching his skin, so he assumed he was not bleeding. “So what is it?”
Nothing that concerns you.
“Actually, in case you haven’t noticed, our lives are kinda intertwined. Whatever concerns you, concerns me.”
A short moment of silence passed. In that moment, Diego felt his heart fill and swell with a surplus of anxiety. Only for a moment, however, as Zyth eventually responded.
I suppose you could call it… a rite of passage. Or rather, a rite of ascension. Every one of my kind must go through it.
“And what exactly are you ascending to?”
My birthright. Superbia.
“You don’t sound so scared when you talk about it.”
It doesn’t scare me!
“Sure thing.”
I just rather avoid it altogether. The weight of the silence that followed was light as three strands of hair compared to the one that followed its next phrase. That’s why I left.
The silence gnawed on him like a pack of zealous fleas. Every inhale, waves of chills rushed down his spine and his muscles shook and locked up. He instantly regretted having pried into the subject. Something started brewing inside of him. He didn’t know what it was, but he felt it harden and fold into knots: one in his stomach, one in his throat. It made it hard for him to breathe, similar to when he was shackled in the dark confines of his heart. It swelled up in his eyes, making the pitch black room even harder to see.
His mind was speeding away far too fast for him to catch up. All his thoughts left the station without him, and so he waited; embedded in silence both inside and out. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, letting out gusts of air in place of words. As if forgetting how to speak, his tongue curled around in his mouth and, with tremendous struggle, it finally conceived words.
“You ran away.” Diego wondered to himself if he meant it as a question or a statement. Either way didn’t matter, as through the dark blurry mirror, he saw the reflection nod in acknowledgement. “So that you —”
The train harboring his thoughts had looped around and hit him dead on at full speed. All his thoughts landed in perfect placement like a jigsaw puzzle. The reality he pieced together was too upsetting to accept. But he knew it was the reality he existed in, so to accept is his only choice. The impact loosened the knots and whatever had been concocting within him was finally let out. He laughed.
At first it was a chuckle, if even that. A loud exhale is more like. Then came another. Then more. Each one louder than the last. As quickly as it started, the short giggling exploded into full out laughter —if it could be called that. Something more akin to a mangled hyena’s last cry came out of his mouth. The acoustics of the dark bathroom produce echoes that stretched and distorted the laughs, submerging the whole room in a cascade of horrific screeches. The sound, combined with the sick smile and the rivers of tears, made even Zyth back away from the reflection.
Zyth’s face got slammed into the mirror as Diego pressed his own against it. The impact turned off the laughter, leaving behind an eerie calm quiet.
“Let’s get one thing straight.” Diego spoke slow, low, and soft. As if trying to soothe a child. “Fuck. You. Fuck you and your mother and anything that has the misfortune of sharing your blood. Fuck your people and fuck your culture. I don’t give a fuck about your home issues and whatever stupid events you need to attend. You don’t pull the reins anymore. You wanted to run away, you wanted a new life. This is what you got. It’s not my fault you grew up fucked up, and you don’t get to take it out on me anymore. This is your new life now. Shut the fuck up and take the back seat. That’s your goddamn birthright.”
He braced himself. He knew full well the repercussions of speaking to it like that. The muscles in his body tensed up until he moved as a statue, expecting to be pushed into the mirror again, or his head to be slammed into the sink. So much focus was put into preparing for physical and emotional damage that he never noticed nothing happening. Through the blood pumping in his ears, and the chattering of his teeth, and the creaking of his muscles, he never noticed nothing happening. Only when nothing happened did he notice nothing happening.
For a moment, only the briefest of brief moments, a crack formed through the thousands of thick and tense walls he had put up. From the crack gushed out a warm soothing sense of twisted relaxation. In this brief moment he even convinced himself that he had finally snapped back to reality. That he was his own self, at long last. Only for a moment, however.
The air tasted fake; the air felt fake. Everything about this moment felt wrong. Not only did it perplex him, it sickened him. Diego’s stomach churned and his lungs burned. His body started feeling light, like when he’s stuck in a dream. He stared at his reflection so long, he forgot himself. In this dark room, the fragmented silhouette was the only reference he can rely on. The arms and hands that began to cramp from gripping the edge of the sink felt more like long gloves affixed to his body, even when they morphed and molded to shapes unsightly and wobbled like cheap plastic under the weight of his dreadfully dreadful body.
Then it stopped. By the time he had just gotten comfortable with the uncomfort, it all subsided. Still, Zyth remained silent. Slowly and carefully, he let go of the sink, and straightened his posture. He tiptoed to the door, like a child sneaking out in the middle of the night, watching his reflection follow him until out of sight. Grabbing the doorknob, he took a final moment to gather himself; ears were no longer ringing, arm was no longer bleeding, heart was beating normally, mind was emitting a constant nerve-wracking silence.
Right after he turned the doorknob, but right before he opened the door; during the silence between the click of the surprisingly still functional unlock mechanism of the old knob and the deafening creak of the rustic door, Zyth spoke. Just a simple phrase, only a few words long, but one so disgustingly baffling that his mind nearly forced itself to refuse to hear it. A phrase that shook the very foundation of his reality, so much so that the very idea of fathoming it as real was inconceivable. So he didn’t. He chalked it up to background noise and, without even acknowledging that there is a room behind him, he opened the door and walked out.
The lights that dotted the roof of the dining hall were bolstered by rusty and flaky chandeliers that had not fallen only due to some benign miracle. The bulbs that nestled in them emit a light so faint they barely illuminated past the confines of the light fixture. Still, compared to the void of light that was the bathroom, it was blinding.

Diego’s vision was immediately smeared in a dull, low, orange light. For the first second, through the painted vision, he could make out blurry figures just a few yards in front of him. He recognized the black mass covering the right side of his view as Georgie. Xerena was next to Georgie’s leg; the gold tips of her hair might be what was blinding him most. He didn’t recognize the tall, broad person next to her until he spoke.
“Well, speak of the devil, amirite?”
Diego stifled a growl and clenched his jaw as he recognized the decrepit, sickly voice. He should have recognized him from the rhythmic wheezing escaping through every breath and the miasmic pale green skin. His vision cleared to reveal Kilquen’s wide burly figure wrapped in his gray, fur-lined, medal adorned coat. Even in his peripheral vision, Diego felt Kilquen’s gray, glossy gaze leaving its slimy trail all over him behind the curtain of thin oily hair.
Kilquen extends a gloved hand. “Just who I wanted to see. Come with me. You two have visitors.”
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--CHAPTER 4--

“WE OPEN IN TEN!” Georgie’s voice tunneled through the moldy, crackly walls. Bits of dust broke off and seamlessly blended in with the thick smog as the wind snatched them up.
If it weren’t for the wheezing being off beat with the rhythm of the city, Georgie would have nearly stomped over Kilquen, who stood patiently awaiting his attention. Shivers ran down Georgie’s back as —despite being four times his height— he felt those distant, foggy eyes looking directly at him.
“Sir!” Georgie exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting you till much later. We’re not even open for business yet, I’m sorry to say.”
“You’ll find, old friend, that my business and yours adhere to vastly different schedules. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Of course. Million apologies, sir. You wish to enter?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Never, sir. Please,” With a gentle nudge of a finger, he opened the door. “Come in.”.Hearing the footsteps that precede the presence, Xerena looked to the other bartenders with pleading eyes to no avail; they all stood in line facing Kilquen, heads down. She felt his eyes piercing through her, and --with her head still held high-- quickly lowered her gaze just slightly as she turned around. She didn’t dare look Kilquen in the eyes. Instead, as she does with every visit, she focused her attention on the one eyelash on his lower lid that had turned white.
“Kilquen.” She smiled. “We were expecting you to come by later. Much later.”
“Feli Die Exsiilux, Xerena.” Kilquen bowed slightly.
Xerena inhaled deeply, storing whatever patience she could scrounge. “Feli Die. Would you like a drink?”
“No thank you, my dear. Not until the celebrations have commenced, at least.”
She furrowed her brows. “Not really a celebratory day, but suit yourself. What can we do for you?” She inhaled again, her patience running scarce, when Kilquen simply stared at her with a tilted head. “Sir.”
The tight, dry skin sealed to his cheek bones audibly cracked as his mouth shifted into a smirk. “Actually, I came for you.”
“Me?”
“You and…” His smirk dropped as he pivoted his head. His gaze soiled the entire bar and staff. Still he met no one’s eyes. “The other one. Where is he?”
Before Xerena had a chance to make an excuse for him, Diego emerged from the bathroom; the creaking of the door brought everyone’s attention to him.
Kilquen’s smirk returned. “Well, speak of the devil, amirite? Just who I wanted to see. Come with me, you two have visitors.”.Kilquen walked abnormally fast. Even at their fastest pace, Diego and Xerena struggled to keep up with him. The thick and dense smog of the City pushed back on their every step, making them exert even more force to not lose sight of their warden; he, on the other hand, moved through the tainted air with such ease and swiftness, it’s almost as if it split just to make room for him. Not to mention his flawless side steps to swerve out of the way of the stampede of denizens pouring through the ground cloud. Navigating the City Damned is no easy feat. Newer inmates have been known to lose their lives wandering into the wrong areas of town or by simply being trampled by a crowd that can’t be bothered to check the ground they step on. Even after having been here for four years, Diego and Xerena still lose their way or bump into a few people. Kilquen doesn’t. Kilquen showed no signs of struggling or doubting. He moved as if being guided by the city itself.
So much focus was put into following him, they didn’t notice the people around them quickly looking to the ground as Kilquen came into view. Only one was too slow to avert their eyesight. Xerena caught a glimpse of the poor man plopped on the ground in a fetal position, shivering and whimpering. His hands were clutching his hair so hard, handfuls of locks kept getting pulled out. She wanted to feel bad for the man. However, no amount of pity nor amends will repair the damage done. So she walked past him. And for his sake, she never gave him a second thought.
Kilquen stopped on a dime and barely moved when Xerena and Diego bumped into him. Three arched doorways protruded out from the smog in front of them. The grout between the bricks have been replaced by moss stained black with the tainted air, and all the cracks were filled with a bizarre plethora of overgrown weeds. One of Kilquen’s wrinkly yet husky arms stretched out and pushed one of the doors open. With his other hand, he pointed at Xerena.
“You first.” His voice scratched at the air like nails on a chalkboard.
Xerena craned her neck to see inside. All she saw that awaited her was a long, well lit, well maintained hallway; so clean it sparkled. Taking a look back at the city, her mind entertained the idea of the door being some kind of portal. She then shrugged off the silly thought and waltzed in. Kilquen quickly slammed the door once both her feet were through.
Diego could feel the cold gray gaze slithering all over him. He tried to control his breathing as Kilquen’s eyes drilled through every layer of confidence put up. Stuck between the thick smog and the mindless crowd, Diego had no one to rely on but himself in this predicament. Right as his final layer was about to crumble, Kilquen offered a most unorthodox helping hand.
“Are you excited?” Kilquen’s dreary voice dragged out the question, almost as to allow Diego time to think of an answer.
“Well, yeah, I guess. It’s been a while since I got a visitor. I just wonder who--”
“For your axjthr.”
Everything screeched to a standstill. All the noise of the city was swiftly robbed from Diego’s ears. His blood froze in waves of chilling pulses as he swallowed his heart that had found itself in his throat. For as horrified as he was, he was equal parts baffled. There should be no reason why he heard that word come out of that mouth. He began questioning: Did he hear right? Was he misunderstanding? What did this mean? Was it even Kilquen who said that? Was Kilquen even here? Where is he again? What’s happening?
In his shock, he couldn’t help but lift his head up. He had to make sure of his surroundings. He had to make sure what just happened was correct. The urge to know nagged at him like a raving child. He had to know why. “Why do you—” He couldn’t get the question out before he locked eyes with the murky abyss.
Kilquen’s face was already in place, waiting for Diego to look up. Mere inches from each other, they locked eyes. Diego had felt afraid before; he had felt lost, confused, panicked. These were familiar feelings. But looking in Kilquen’s gray eyes, for the first time in his life, he felt small. The clouds blocking Kilquen’s view peeled back to reveal a boundless cosmos. Hidden in those eyes was a chasm whose bottom was met at the end of infinity, just past eternity; beyond the blanketed layers of dread lay the misery of an unfortunate past. It all coalesced to a point, a singularity of endless yearning, that ate away at Diego like a swarm of fleas on a matted mutt. The sear irritating Diego’s eyes erupted in a volcanic torrent as a path was carved into his own woeful soul. Kilquen swam gracefully through his lakes of fire and sulfur; prodding through the recesses of his soul. Just as Diego drowned in his murky oceans, lost and afraid. For both, a vile experience. And what a terrible sight, for any miserable soul who happened to gaze upon them; a putrid painting from a dark renaissance.
Slowly, Kilquen straightened his posture. As he raised himself, Diego could feel his eyes soothe immediately. He rapidly blinked to make sure he still could. A wave of cold fright spread from his spine and he started shaking, but subtly.
“You have nothing I want. Go in.” Kilquen expelled everything in one disappointed breath, willing to waste no more on vermin. His arm pushed open the door next to the one Xerena went through.
Diego wondered if his mind was still put together enough to walk. After a shaky first step, he managed to march quite competently and, with his head faced down and his arms tucked in, briskly marched through the door. As Kilquen slammed the door behind him, he displayed a modicum of relief.
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Xerena couldn’t help but smile when she reached the end of the hallway. The hallway was so clean, she had to squint her eyes along the way as the already bright lights were amplified by their reflections. Immediately after the door closed, she noticed the silence. The sounds of the city cannot penetrate the walls of the hall. No sounds could, she surmised, as the silence threatened to burst her eardrums. The walk down the hallway took so long, she was tempted to disable her balance rune just to allow her legs to give out by the end. She inferred that the nigh infinite hallway must be some unorthodox torture device. Yet still, she smiled at the end. For at the end of the grueling walk, right on the other side of the clear reinforced glass that blocks the door at the end of the hallway, stood Alvarez; his palm was pressed against the glass, and a smile plastered on his face that complimented that of his sister’s right now. She placed her hand on the opposite side of the glass from his. Even through four feet of glass, she could feel his warmth; and he, her chill.
“Feli Die, carifrat.” Xerena pressed her forehead against the glass.
“Feli Die, carisoto.” Alvarez pressed his head opposite hers.
With their eyes closed, they stayed like that for a few minutes, reveling in the dearly missed comfort one brought the other.
“It’s been too long.”
“Too long, Alejandra.”
Xerena dropped her smile and quickly opened her eyes, their joyful spark rapidly funneled out by that name. “Yeah.” She pulled her hand away and took some steps away from the glass. “So what brings you here?”
“Father has called all family members to the palace.”
“Has he?”
“I wanted to see if you--”
“No.” Xerena crossed her arms, and stared hard at Alvarez. “I don’t.”
“You deserve to celebrate with your family, Ale--”
“There’s nothing to celebrate.”
Alvarez sighed. “It’s a day of unity.”
“It’s literally called the Day of Exile. All it celebrates is Lady Satanna’s ego and how it came back to bite her in the ass. And our family is just a pale echo of that ego.”
“Are you of all people really going to complain about ego?”
“My ego is fair and justified. Never once have I gloated about a skill I couldn’t back up a hundred fold. And never once have I ever feared something greater than myself. Not one person in Terra Magica, let alone the family, can say the same. Certainly not father. My name alone serves as proof.”
“Ale--”
“A moniker I now wear with pride. If you would do anything for me today, you'd respect that.” Xerena glared at Alvarez with a frustration she felt annoyed even having to feel towards her own brother.
Alvarez harbored some moments of silence to fuel his thoughts. After a while, he opened his mouth. “I cannot. You are brilliant and special. You are powerful and unique. You are my sister, majestic and beautiful. I will always respect you far more than I could ever respect the name given to you by simple minds who cannot comprehend your splendor. If you wish to call yourself something that separates you from our people, have it be something that truly represents you.”
Xerena sighed, and in that breath the room flooded with heavy disappointment. “I expected you to get it, but, I suppose it makes sense that you don’t. I’ll just say this once: I refuse to go anywhere near those lesser braggarts. But you go enjoy yourself.” Once her vision becomes wet and slightly blurry, she quickly pivots on her heel. “Give amita Maria my regards.”
“You still talk like her when you’re upset.”
“Yeah, well, she raised me, so…” She said through multiple sniffles.
“You’re free to make whatever decision you feel is right. I will never stop believing in you.” Alvarez reached for the door behind him. “I like the hair.”
“Wait.” Xerena turned back around, her eyes now magically dry. “Was that seriously the only reason you came? ‘Cuz father asked you to?”
“He didn’t ask me. He only told everyone that all family members are to attend. I chose to come here on my own. Since you’re family.”
“Al,” She took a deep breath and furrowed her eyebrows. “Do you--” She interrupted herself and took a second to think her thoughts through. Her finger began scratching her temple, as if she could dig up the answer to the question in her mind. “So… if father never said anything…” She gave a pause to check his face; to see if Alvarez was putting together her thoughts in his own head. “…Would you have still come?”
He took a much longer pause than she wanted, or expected. “…Of course I would have.”
She wanted to believe him, so badly she wanted to, but his eyes spoke to her well before his voice did. Those eyes betrayed him.
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The vine squirmed and shivered, painfully shifting the thorns through his flesh; it was begging him to turn back, pleading him to retreat.
Diego ignored the pleas all the way down the hallway, even through the burning pain of the restless thorns. Only once the end of the hall was reached did he regret that choice.
“This is interesting. You aren’t who I expected to see.” A monotone voice came out of a gray face. His very presence would have gone unnoticed if not for those eyes. So intense, they could glow in the dark. Those yellow eyes; like pools of acid. Under any other circumstance, seeing another Creature would be given no second thought. This is their land, after all. However, the neatly dressed businessman on the other side of the glass was not what he appeared as. This was a monster in Creature’s clothing.
“Yeah, well, join the club.” Diego kept his apathetic demeanor, even as the hands hidden in his crossed arms clenched and twisted, threatening to tear off cloth and flesh. He figured the only thing that would give away his facade was the throbbing vein on his neck. “You have twenty seconds to explain why you’re here.”
“Can’t I just visit my--”
“Nineteen.”
“Fine. I’m sure you’ve been told, our axjthr is coming up.”
“Of course you’re part of that stupid thing. Look, I went over this with him, I don’t care. You’ll have to ascend or whatever on your own. I’m not going.”
A state of shock passed through the man’s face for only a brief moment. He then let out some air that sounded almost like a chuckle. “It seems you haven’t been properly informed. This is not some sort of invitation or request. This is a courteous reminder. The axjthr will happen. You do not choose when to attend your axjthr. Your axjthr chooses when you attend.”
With an unblinking stare, and unamused expression, Diego leaned toward the glass. “Twenty seconds are up. Please leave, Corvix.”
“Very well. I shall see you again soon enough.” He turned around and reached for the door handle.
“And tell Liv she’s on thin ice after lying to me about you.”
Corvix stopped himself in the middle of him swinging the door open, like someone had hit pause on him. Slowly, he turned his head. Suddenly, his plain, unmemorable presence had morphed and mutated; bent and twisted until it tore apart and from the cracks leaked out fiery rage, its burning embers kept fed in the furnace of his eyes. “Liv is here?” Even the voice had shifted to a growl. “This visit was not in vain after all. Thank you.” With one swift motion, he walked through the door and disappeared as it shut behind him.
What was that?
“Don’t care.” Diego pivoted and marched out.
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Do not be mad at Liv. The voice echoed within the chambers of his mind. I know what you’re thinking. You think she betrayed us, she tricked us, all those ridiculous notions. It continued to plead as Diego marched down the hall of blinding light. She didn’t kn--
Diego let out a grunt that reverberated along each tile of the polished wall as he slammed his own head into it. After his skull stopped vibrating, he could stare clearly into the feeble eyes of his reflection.
“Prove it.”
What?
“Prove that she didn’t know. For as long as we’ve known her and for as long as she’s clung to you like a lost goddamn puppy, she’s always had one person above even you on her list. She has always been Corvix’s right hand woman.”
He was mad at her.
Diego widens his eyes. Though Zyth hopes it is spurred from some sense of realization, it soon realizes it is more of a frustrated shock.
“Are you a child?” The words struggled to find their way out of his mouth, lost and confused; reflecting the state of their speaker.
What are—
“Or are you just fucking stupid? He’s always mad. That’s kind of the entire fucking point of him.”
Not yet it isn’t. Do not assume Corvix to be similar to its parent. Axjyitk such as Corvix and I are born as clean and simple as your kind are. We learn as we grow. The purpose of the axjthr is to prove that we can harbor the aspects of our predecessors while also displaying enough willpower and control to mold them within our own image. Liv is a perfect example. As a fully ascended axjpy, her libidine is entirely unique; entirely hers. Corvix’s ira shall not be its parent’s. Just as my superbia shall be my own. But it and I are unique, we have always been fated to share an axjthr. If I am not superbia, it cannot be ira.
“Is there a fucking point you’re trying to get to?”
The point is that one’s axjthr is their own. To allow another party in would be to sully all those that came before. Corvix is vastly above tarnishing our tradition. Even if it weren’t, it would not involve an axjpy. Liv and Corvix came on their own separate accord.
“Well, when she finds us next, she can tell us that herself.”
Diego peeled his face off the shiny wall and continued marching down the blinding hall. Once the exit door came into view, he took a deep breath; the scent of such clean air is so nostalgic for him. Tears almost overflowed as he opened the door and got hit with the gloom that is The City’s trademark. Dirty clouds crawled across the land, speeding towards the door as it opened; excited to corrupt its newfound prey. All of his senses got violated as the ravenous smog covered his eyes and rushed up his nostrils, soiling his tongue on its way to the lungs. His ears stung as the city roared in its mighty metallic fashion. It all made him flinch and cringe upon stepping one foot back into the beast’s stomach.
“Who was it?” The voice was lower, maybe even sadder, but Xerena’s raspy accent was easily recognized.
Diego turned his head to see Xerena leaning against her door, keeping her gaze right on him; vibrant, delicate strands of golden hair fluttered as the wind tried to pluck it from between her fingers. Her other hand held a kind of thin joint between her middle and ring fingers and brought one end of it into her mouth. When she took a deep breath, the end facing away from her sparked and lit with a dim orange glow for a few seconds. As embers detached, they quickly got snatched by the wind and fluttered out of sight.
The darkness of the smog allowed for even the low, dim glow of the burning end to act as a spotlight of sorts. Its light wrapped around Xerena’s face in such a way, it almost seemed artificial. After one blink of the eye, the orange glow wrapped around her own orange eye, enunciating its irrational hunger. After two blinks, it was not just the light; the embers, even the wind, were all circling that ravenous pit at the center of her iris. She pulled the joint away from her mouth, and in that instant all returned as it was.
A few seconds after removing it from her lips, she expelled a cloud of smoke; its gray hue contrasted heavily against the yellow smog of the Oasis before fading as it got dragged out of view.
“I thought that was your last one the other day.”
“Sam gave me this.” She jerked her chin toward Diego’s door. “Who was it?”
“Interesting fellow. Think he said his name was ‘Noneya Biznis’.” Diego retorted as he extended his hand out, with a space between his first two fingers.
“Oh, Noneya came back! We haven’t seen him in so long!” Xerena inhaled from the roll one more time before placing it in the space between Diego’s fingers. She eyed his vine as she exhaled another gray cloud. “What is that?”
Diego gazed at her quizzically after taking a deep breath of smoke. He traced her line of sight. “Now you care?” He exhaled a cloud far larger than the two Xerena let out.
“I don’t care. I’m curious. There’s a difference.”
“Hm.” His feet dragged him forward as he took in more smoke. He heard Xerena following close behind and passed the joint over.
She snatched it from his hand and quickened her pace to pass in front of him, where she turned — the golden tips of her hair once more flowing into a perfect radiant semicircle — and walked backwards to keep facing him. “I hate that you’re hiding something from me.”
“What, are you my girlfriend now?”
“Ew.” She puffed. “I’ve never kept anything from you.” She struggled to speak as she held in the burning smoke, yet the frustration in her voice was painfully obvious. “Anything.” The smoke sprinted away from her lips, leaving a blurry trail as it went. “The barrier between us is a window, not a wall. Remember?”
“I can’t close the blinds every now and then?”
“No. You can’t.” She produced another cloud from her lips. The roll had gotten much smaller. The burning part was now up to her fingertips. One solemn gaze was appointed to it before it was tossed to the side, where it will be forced to forever drift in that dirty smog.
Diego reared back, barely a millimeter, as Xerena looked into his eyes. Much like the moment he had in the bathroom, this felt unnatural. Xerena’s eyes had never shown such genuine sincerity; such legitimate curiosity. It sparked an uncanny interest within him. “Do you really remember me?” His mouth had blurted out the question before he even knew what question to ask. Such a question could only be asked through a clear venue. He could feel his walls crumble with a thundering crash, almost drowning out the question. He worried, for only a second. His shoulders slumped and his jaw unclenched as he basked in the warm smile of one who would have tore those walls down themselves.
“How could I forget you?” Her hand snaked up his body, just barely hovering over it, until her fingertips reached his temple. With his walls down, a selfish smile slithered across her face. It’s a simple rune. “You were bright.” Two circles and a line. “Talented.” It would let her see. “Unique.” See everything he’s hiding. “Then you hid.” She set it in place. It quickly started faintly glowing. “And for some reason, you’re still hiding-- No. You’re more… covering up.”
She expected to see it in his eyes. She didn’t know what, but she expected it to be in his eyes. She knew the spell was completed, so the thought of it failing never entered the realm of possibility in her mind. Instead, a rapid flash of a shadow entered her peripheral vision. She rolled her gaze to an empty space above his shoulder. Her eyes widened as the air began to darken in the area she looked at. Something unknown coalesced into a gaseous serpentine shape; it wrapped around Diego’s neck, torso and arms. Xerena slowly traced its shape with her eyes. She followed its form all the way to Diego’s vine, which it seemed to be fusing with; perhaps emerging from it, most likely, along with an absurd abundance of malice, resentment, regret, and shame. So much shame. At the other end of the misty snake were two red lights, staring back at Xerena’s soul. When looking into these lights, Xerena thought she could feel just a little bit of fear. Just a little bit. “I remember you too.” Her hand tried to caress it, but seamlessly passed right through it instead. She reared her hand back in surprise.
“WELL WELL WELL.” A new voice rang through the smog. Xerena turned to find three red haired men in street wear emerging from the fog. Their skin was pale to the point of being nearly transparent; the flow of blood within their veins almost completely visible to the naked eye. The clash between their skin and their hair always managed to bring goosebumps to any who have to look at them. Though the men behind him had buzz cuts, the leader sported a long braided ponytail. Their eyes were pitch black, no matter which way they roll one would be hard pressed to find where each part of the eye begins or ends; like one giant pupil. The eyes bulged out of their sockets like a frog’s. “If it ain’t the Magic freaks.”
“He’s not Magic, you fucking moron!” Xerena quickly retorted, pointing a finger at Diego. “He doesn’t even look Magic!”
“He looks like a freak! That makes him just like every other dirty mage.”
“MAGIC!” Xerena shouted in an angry fit. “Not a mage. I am Magic!”
“Aww, guys,” The leader slightly turned his head to look at the two behind him, who were already snickering to themselves, “I think we hurt its feelings. Funny,” Two of his fingers reached into one of his pockets and came out covered in some blue powder, which he promptly proceeded to smear all over his gums. “I wasn’t aware you genocidal war-mongers had any of those.”
“You watch your fucking mouth, nebulo!” Jerking forward, she was fully ready to run towards her target; Diego’s one hand clamped down on her shoulder while the other grabbed the hand clawing at the air, effectively holding back a storm.
“You watch yours, you dirty mage!” The leader pointed his finger at Xerena and took a large step forward. “How dare you! How dare you defend your cesspool of a nation! The war was barely two generations ago!” He took a step forward. “Your father led the final battle! The battle that decimated the Peak! Obliterated my home! My people!” His finger retreated back into the rest of his fist as it clenched. He took two more steps towards Xerena. “Your kind are murderous mongrels! Filthy savages!” He was now mere feet from her, his fist reared back. Right before it swung forward, Diego shoved his hand in his face and pushed him back while simultaneously doing his best to keep Xerena at arm’s length.
“Back the fuck up, Nabo!” Diego barked the order with a commanding tone that shocked even Xerena. What took her aback the most was that the smoke snake bellowed the same command. “You made your point!” In one motion he pivoted back to Xerena. “And you!” He pointed at her. “Just don’t. We don’t waste our time..”
“..On those beneath us.” Xerena nodded, and closed her eyes as she allowed herself a few deep breaths. “I’m surprised you remember that.”
“I’m surprised you remember that. You good now? Let’s just get out of here.” He used one arm to gently usher Xerena ahead of him, while keeping an eye on the man called Nabo.
“See that, boys?” Nabo called out to the men behind him, loud enough for the two adversaries to hear. “They run away. Like a pair of dirty, shameful mages. They know what they are; they’re foul.”
That word brought about a chill that raked through the goosebumps forming in everyone’s skin. “Why the fuck did you say that?!” Cried out one of the goons. The winds stopped, all sounds ceased, even the smog seemed to have spread out into a clearing just for them. The already gray sky darkened even further as everyone’s blood ran cold and their hearts leapt into the pits of their stomachs; the air around them suddenly became chock full of a tense anxiety that drowned and burned everyone’s lungs, making it quite painful to breathe in this anticipatory environment. “I’m getting the fuck out of here!” Said the other goon.
“Aww shit.” Diego dragged out his words in a whispering tone, as if afraid to further disturb the already erratic nature of the scene before him. “Xe…” It was too late. By the time he called out, she was nowhere to be seen.
“HEY!” Nabo shouted. His eyes widened even further than they naturally do, and his lanky legs rattled in waves of shivers. “Where— where did—” His voice quivered. “Guys, where—” He turned around to find no one. The two goons he had brought with him have vanished without a trace. In one quick pivot, Nabo’s expression changed drastically. Tears began forming as he noticed Diego gone as well. Even more horrifying to him was the sudden realization that the noise of The City had stopped. The silence rushes into his ears as if he had just dived headfirst into dark waters. His chest lifted from his body every time he took a terrified breath. The smog of The City began retreating; the filthy curtain pulled back to reveal a sight that plunged Nabo’s heart into a deep darkness: Nothing. The buildings had all gone. The people were nowhere to be seen. Just him and the hard barren ground. And once the smog fully receded, Nabo was left alone in miserable emptiness. Even his racing breath and pounding heart couldn’t be heard. Fear overflowed as beads of sweat coalesced on his forehead. The sight before him, or lack thereof, grew blurry as dizziness hit him like a bag of bricks.

The darkness that had swallowed his heart bursted out from him and quickly swallowed up the barren landscape before him. Even the ground was taken and he was left floating in a sea of absolute nothing. The heavy pressure of it brought him to his knees. He could feel it squeezing his limbs, trying its hardest to crush his bones. Through the fear, pain, and tears, Nabo managed to barely lift his head up and scanned around for Xerena.
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO BITCH?!” As he finished shouting, a single point applied pressure on the center of his forehead. He felt a hand pass over his face, and he suddenly saw Xerena crouching in front of him, one arm extended to place a thumb on his forehead. Her eyes were passionately empty.
“You want to see foul?” Her other hand slowly made its way to his chest and placed the tip of her index finger over his heart. “Then see.” With one swift motion, her respective digits drew a perfect circle over both spots.
At first nothing happened. The situation, dire and bleak as it was, had not changed. Then something beautiful happened. In a flash of purple light, Nabo became inundated with blasphemous divinity which quickly engulfed and replaced the crushing nothing. What was weighing down on him now provided a crushing comfort. It injected his mind with thoughts and visions of majestic terror. He realized as nothing but silent air escaped his gaping mouth that the corrupted splendor of what reached into his soul and touched his very essence cannot be explained in words. So he didn’t. As tears began streaming down his cheeks, he screamed. A scream to reach the heavens above and echo into the deep hells below. A scream that could not dream of expelling even the smallest fraction of the beautiful terror that drowned him. Alas, it was his only option. So he screamed.
Diego faintly heard a spark next to him among the insatiable screams engulfing him. He turned his vision away from the screaming Nabo, now long abandoned by the companions he had brought, to just barely catch a small flame leaving Xerena’s finger to be absorbed by the end of another paper roll held by her other hand. As she inhaled the smoke, she looked up at him.
“It’s his. Figured he wasn’t gonna be using it.” She retorted before allowing him the first word. Her words were barely heard through the incessant screaming.
Diego allowed it to fill the air as he stared at Xerena with a surplus of censure. “Fix him.”
“Relax.” She struggled to speak while holding in the smoke she just inhaled. “The spell wears off.” She puffed out a large cloud.
“After how long?”
Xerena stared blankly at him. The ceaseless screaming continued to fill the silent gaps. Her eyes unlocked from Diego when she inhaled another cloud of smoke, and rolled slightly upward as she held it in and tried to pick through the back of her memories. The screams at this point had fully shifted into disturbing gurgles as Nabo’s vocal chords shredded, teared, and flowed out in a stream of thick and chunky blood. “Huh.” She released the cloud. “Actually, maybe it doesn’t wear off.” Her feet pivoted and began scurrying away as she took another pull.
“Xerena!” Diego chased after her. It’s only after they left the screaming range that Diego noticed the slight snickering coming from his soul.
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The dim green lights of the tattered hallway made the yellow air of the Oasis seem like a bright, sunny day. As soon as the metallic hunk of a door rose up, Liv noticed her lungs stopped burning. The air in this hall wasn’t stale and spoiled like it is outside. The comparison was night and day. As she followed the massive green mass leading her, she allowed herself a long, deep, clean breath; she hasn’t had one since she arrived.
All the doors were mangled and decrepit, and the cracked floor was caked in a bed of dust with two strips swept clean from tenants dragging their tired feet. The patches of pure darkness between each lit door frame brought about a sense of unease that she didn’t quite like. Not fear, not caution. It was a kind of uncanny calm that can only be achieved through a position of inevitable peril; of knowing what will come but not when. That was exactly how Kilquen made her feel. Everytime they passed through each spot of dark she could feel a glossy gaze looking back at her, begging her to look into it. She did not.
“Thank you for doing this for me, Kil.” Liv spoke with her usual confidence, though the slightest quiver had managed to slip as they passed another dark spot.
“No problem at all, my dear.” Kilquen spoke between his rhythmic wheezes. “Anything for an old friend.” Though the words themselves sounded innocent enough, Kilquen’s tongue covered them in a perfidious slime that made Liv cringe slightly as they smeared her ears.
Kilquen abruptly stopped walking, and became a brick wall that Liv promptly rammed straight into.
“Ow… Is this it?” She winced as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. She watched as one of his old, muscular, green arms pushed open the door in front of him. The arm dropped back to his side and he did not move nor respond. The wheezing of his lungs bounced against the walls of such a narrow space, and with each unmoving second the unbearable noise intensified. An agonizing amount of time passed before Liv uncomfortably walked around the broad mass of muscles and wrinkles. As she did, she could feel his tainted clouds of vision tracing her, waiting for her gaze to turn his way.
“Enjoy your stay.” The words slithered out of his mouth as Liv passed the doorframe. They clasp on to her just before she could pass the threshold.
Slowly she turned around and quickly bowed her head to not get caught in his gaze. “Thank you for this favor.” Another uncomfortable moment passed as Liv tried to drown out his miasmic breath with the grinding of her own teeth. “Sir.” She painstakingly muttered.
She waited unmoving for a while before she dared to peek up. The hallway she saw before her was barren and empty. She had never noticed the wheezing stop. With a heavy sigh she rolled her eyes and slammed the door shut, leaving her within the room.
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The labyrinthine path back to the bar presented the pair with something they were all too familiar with since staying in the Oasis: people. Tons and loads of people clamored the streets, each one raising their voice to be louder than the previous; a necessary action to hear anything over the metallic roar of the factories. Diego and Xerena each in their own learned way weaved through the crowds of people moving from the scrapyard to the forges, from the forges to the smiths, from the smiths to the factories, and to complete the arduous cycle, whatever the factories messed up went to the scrapyards. The ebb and flow of the sea of people truly never ended in the Oasis.
Though rare and few in between, places of luxury are littered throughout the grounds of the Oasis. Those on good behavior got to maintain such establishments and indeed Diego and Xerena have found themselves with such a privilege. For as many people that flowed through the cracks of the city, it seemed twice as many were packed within these luxury buildings, seemingly perpetually awaiting service.
The bar the pair worked at is no exception. As they arrived, they found the mound of imposing, sweaty, hard faced inhabitants of the Oasis clamoring at the door, each screaming for a drink with what little breathing air still remained in their lungs. For a newcomer, the aggressive shouts and menacing aura of the crowd might have seemed unsightly; Diego and Xerena smiled as they entered, however, as this type of energy meant only one thing: good business.
“Thank god you guys are here!” A feminine voice called out in a calm panic. A pale woman behind the bar pivots; her red braided ponytail nearly cracked the air as it whipped around her. She’s dressed in the same black-and-white suit vest uniform sported by Xerena, Diego and the rest of the staff. Like Nabo, her skin was almost translucent, with the very flow of her veins visible even from a distance. Her obscure black eyes fixated on the pair as they walked. Her eyes didn’t bulge out as much as Nabo’s and they’re framed within a much gentler face, making them easy and quite pleasing to stare back into. It’s rumored people will put themselves in the Oasis just for a chance to speak to her. Her loyal regulars will often say in bewilderment it’s as if speaking to a friendly ghost. “It’s been packed all morning, where have you been? Are you guys alright?”
The bar is filled floor to roof with bustling patrons yelling over each other; complaining about the warden or their job at the factory. “Shut the fuck up and deal with it like the rest of us, you pussy!” Some uninvited speaker butted into an overheard conversation mere seconds before being replaced by multiple screams and cheers as the same speaker got tossed and pummeled.
Near the main bar the main sound was the chatter of the guests sitting and the shouting of “Behind!” from the bartenders followed by the clattering and shattering of glasses anyway. Yet through all the chaos, the woman’s question was heard plain and clear. Her voice molded her words out of pure compassion and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all the hollering. When she reciprocated Diego’s smile with twice the kindness, the room became just a tad less dim.
“Pour me something, Naki. Anything.” Xerena trudged to a miraculously empty stool and plopped herself down on it as she spoke.
Naki’s eyes hardened once they landed on Xerena. In one inhale, her brows raised and her veins bulged out. The one on her temple beat extraordinarily fast as her face flushed red. Her face morphed as if made of plaster, or clay, and by the time all the air had left her lungs, realigned to its kind version. The smile now was false, though cleverly deceiving; as were the gentle hand movements and easy going body language. It was all fake to cover up something that clawed its way out when Xerena asked her question. Diego saw it, and he knew what it was. It was something everyone in the oasis has. Perhaps everyone in the City, but he was too naive then to notice. Definitely everyone in the Oasis. It is embedded within them the moment they arrive, and it never leaves. He saw victims of it everyday and has even fallen victim to it himself. No one notices so no one does anything about it. And when no one does anything about it, it grows and it ferments and it bubbles. It sits there like an old casket of ale. But just like a fermenting ale, the pressure must release, or the container will burst.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” There it was. The gift of the Oasis. The thing everyone has within, finally bursting free. Naki’s ale can ferment for a long time, but Xerena seems to always loosen the cork a little. “Are you dumb and blind? Do you not see how packed it is, dumbass?”
Xerena threw her hands in the air in exaggerated disbelief. “Why do you always have to have this fucking attitude when I talk to you? You never talk to D like that!”
Naki jabbed her arms out in front of her with such speed and aggression that Xerena flinched a little. Her hands grabbed the edge of the counter and dragged her body over it so her face was much closer to Xerena’s “Because you’re a lazy bitch! You’re not a fucking customer, get back here and help us!”
A sweaty anxious bartender twirled around, juggling drinks, glasses, and mixers. “Behind!” He shouted as he passed Naki.
“I KNOW YOU’RE BEHIND!” Her braid nearly missed Xerena’s face as she pivoted around to yell at the bartender.
“Naki.” Diego had slipped his way behind the bar counter to join the bartenders, beside Naki. His voice seemed soft -as soft as it could be, at least- almost in an attempt to mimic Naki’s friendly nature.
“Diego, please-” She stopped when she saw the bruise on his forehead and grew concerned when she saw the thin lacerations that strangely never bled on top of it. What made her pause, however, was his arm; covered fingers to elbow in flowery vines that extruded from his own flesh, the thorns relentlessly ravaging his skin and muscle as they clawed their way through. Her blood went cold. She blinked multiple times, hoping one of the blinks will reveal what she saw as just a trick of light. “Are you-”
“We’ve had a day. A long day. We both know it's easier and faster to not argue with her. Pour her anything, please. I’ll pay for it.”
“Are you okay?” She asked anyway. The gentle round eyes and soft movements became real again and her warm aura returned.
“I’ve been worse.”
Naki opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by two echoing thuds as Georgie’s shadow loomed over between her and Diego, painting a dark streak over the luminous colorful display of bottles. Right as her gaze rolled up to meet him, his massive finger -nearly as wide as her- flew past her. As it landed on Diego’s shoulder, the updraft of air trailing behind it threw everyone’s hair up.
“You’re going back to the Wall.” Georgie’s booming voice rattled in everyone’s ears.
“Wait, what? Me? Why?” Diego protested. He attempted to slide from under the finger but was held firmly in place.
“Kilquen’s orders. Didn’t bother asking. Probably the uniform.”
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Some people say the halls of the Edge are so quiet, you can hear the spiders crawling up the walls; their footsteps echo, people say. While the Edge can at most time be painfully silent, it was not when Diego made his way to his room. The hall that housed him shook and vibrated to a rhythm. A soft, yet exotic, melody played muffled through the decrepit hallway. Strums from a guitar blew dust out of the corners and loosened some rusty nails in the floorboards. The song was peaceful, it was gentle. It reminded him of a time he never lived, yet the warm memory was so vivid in the back of his mind. Like seeing a crystal clear picture from your peripheral. The song was from a home not his, and so, the peace it brought only heated his veins. For the comfort he could not help but relish in was a luxury he was never meant to fathom. It was not that that irked him however. What had him gritting his teeth was what was being used to produce the melody: His guitar. As if he could mistake those scratchy strings for anything else.
The fire in his blood fueled him. He marched down the hall at such a pace that the cobwebs got dragged along to follow him. Once his door came up, there was no hesitation, he swung the door wide open. The melody came to an abrupt end, and there sitting on his bed playing his guitar was none other than the one who gave it to him: Liv.
As soon as their eyes met, she immediately perked up. She carefully set the guitar aside and stood up with a smile, “Hi, I’m--”
“Get out.” His voice was cold just like his demeanor.
“Just wait, I’m not--”
“Now.”
“Oh wow.” She whispered to herself, taken aback. “She said you’d be difficult but, wow.” She eyed him carefully, then turned around, “I can’t leave. I live here now.” She took the guitar into her arms with the care of a mother holding her newborn and tenderly placed it back on its spot on the wall. “If you don’t like that, take it up with Kilquen, he’s the one that set it up.” The door slammed shut as she was still inspecting the guitar hanging on the wall; thinking back on it and coming to realize the memories it carries are as dusty as itself. The slam distracted her from the pitiful reminiscence and she saw Diego standing with the same angered stature only now in front of a closed door.
“What do you want?”
“Well to start, I’m not Liv, so I’d like you to calm down.” It took a moment, and for a while nothing seemed to change, as if the words went straight through his ears. However, Diego had lowered his shoulders slightly at some point, and she took that as his sign of acknowledgement. “My name is Kara.”
It wasn’t until she said her name that he noticed; this was not Liv. The differences were minute, but they were there. Her eyes bulged out a bit more, similar to Naki, just a tad more sunken and hollow. Her irises were hard to see, they were as dark as night instead of the blue Liv loves to sport. Her hair was more mangy and unkempt. Her skin was rougher, drier.
“But you know Liv?” Diego asked, still maintaining his defensive stance
“Well, yes, but--” She stopped herself. For a moment she groaned and winced while scratching the back of her hair. “It’s hard to explain. Hmm… I guess… I’m to Liv, what you are to Zyth. I guess?”
The uncertainty in her voice did nothing to alleviate his emotions, if anything the words themselves only served as fuel to the fire in his heart. As his muscles tightened, so too did the thorny vine.
Don’t do something we’ll regret. Control yourself.
“She really wants to spend time with Zyth, which I guess now means having to spend time with you. But see, she really doesn’t like you, so she figured having someone that ‘gets’ you would help ease things.”
“‘Get me’?” Diego let out a malicious whisper.
Easy…
“You think you can ‘get me’? You thought we were, what, gonna be friends?”
Calm down!
Immediately, Diego grabbed the vine, piercing his hand in multiple spots. With a pained grunt, he yanked the vine and with a terrifyingly disgusting squelch, it ripped out of his flesh and extended as he pulled, like unwinding a tape measurer. Kora yelped in pure shock and held her hands to her mouth when Diego approached her with his bloody hand holding the vine only inches from her face. She could smell the iron in his blood, and it only got worse as more and more blood rushed out of his arm like a corrupted waterfall.
“Do you know what this is?!” Surprisingly Diego still had energy to raise his voice. “This is the fruit of my suffering! It’s proof I exist! It’s watered by blood and fertilized with spite and resentment! Zyth stole my life. And for decades all I could do was watch, all I ever got to do was live with it. You couldn’t understand what I’ve lost, what Zyth took from me! He did it because he could, because that’s what he does, that’s what he is! That’s all he is; just this mass of evil. That’s all any of his kind are.” Diego let go of the vine and it snapped back like a rubberband, splashing more blood along the walls. The silence was loud as he took a few deep breaths. “You’ve bonded with the monsters I hate. So no, you don’t ‘get me’. And for as long as you’re Liv’s friend, you can never be mine.” He left his boots marinating in the red puddle as he took them off and laid on his bed, facing the wall.
“Do you hate Liv?” For a while, only silence filled the room. It was tenderly broken by soft footsteps and some shuffling noises and a few thuds. “Is it because she’s an axjyitk? Like Zyth is?” More silence. Diego did not care enough to turn around. Not until he heard the guitar string being tuned. He didn’t turn around, but he shifted his head enough for Kara to take it as permission to keep going. The notes she played were similar to the ones he heard when he was walking down the hall, but these were more somber. They were more drawn out. They were more tranquil. They filled the room with a melancholic reminiscence. Then when she sang, with that soft and blissful voice, he nearly wept; the emotion of her song amplified tenfold as it rode along those notes.
[The stars, O stars, snuffed out
One by one, all plucked
Where have they gone, if not in our heads
To join that white hot light
Stars, O stars, our stars, O stars
Once we're down to three
That white light will fade
And then we'll be asleep]
When she was done, the song still lingered in the room; like a dewy morning fog. “That was an Orokana lullaby. The camp I grew up in, they used to sing it every night. For us lil’uns.” She paused for a while, overwhelmed by the flash flood of memories. “You know about the camps, right? The ones built after the war. The ones built to stuff whatever remained of my people into. The ones where they work us literally to death, the ones where moldy bread is a luxury meal, the ones where miasma spreads rampart, the ones where no one has a single speck of light left in them. The ones built by filthy mages. Mages that were itching to violate our minds, our souls, our bodies. Mages that just couldn’t help themselves from extinguishing any sparks left in our eyes. They made us work every hour of day and night. If we rested, we were beaten; if you were lucky the beating would kill you. On the rare occasion they decided you did a good enough job, you got to take a break in a cage crammed full of more prisoners than you could even imagine to count. The bars were so bent from the mass of folk, I swear they were one bone away from snapping. In there, Death was our best friend. At least the survivors of the war had already lived a full life. They got to experience the wonders our world offers before their lives were shattered. But the next generation, my generation. We were born into all that shit, and those fucking mages, they’re fucking impatient. They like to suck the innocence out of us early. They itch at the neck just thinking about getting the opportunity. Some of the older people in my camp used to say me and the other kids were the lucky ones. By the time we came around, ‘hope’ became a dead word; foreign, meaningless. We never even got to know the life they stole from us. We have no concept of it. We wouldn’t even be able to imagine it; the mages never let us.” She paused to let silence fill the room. Once it had, she sucked it all in with one sharp inhale, “I hate them. I hate every single one of them, I always will. Even your friend, Xerena. Especially her. Devil’s spawn brandishing tainted blood, bearing the audacity to claim separation from it all. The gall, the fucking cowardice of her. I hate her. Even though I shouldn’t. The war was not her fault, neither are the camps. Yet she parades around like it has nothing to do with what she is. She runs from her heritage, from herself. Like every other mage. So, like every other mage, I hate her. Even though I shouldn’t.” Silence fills the room once more. Diego had slowly been turning over to his other side, and was now at a position to look Kara in the eyes. “I think something similar is going on with you and the axjyitk. You hate Zyth, so you hate them all. Even the ones that have nothing to do with you, or the situations you face.”
He was still angry, he wanted to argue, he wanted to say how their situations aren’t the same, how they couldn’t compare. When he heard her words, however, all the anger diminished to virtually nothing. As he looked into her eyes, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of camaraderie, and a somber pity. He no longer wanted to argue, he just wanted comfort; for both of them. After a while of silence, he opened his mouth, “I’m sorry that happened to you.” That was all he could say, all he could think to say. In that moment, those truly were the only words in his mind. Silence once again filled the room and after receiving more silence in response, Diego turned back around and tried his hardest to drift asleep.
Of course, he couldn’t. After a few hours, or perhaps it was only truly a couple of minutes, the room filled with the smell of rusty iron coming from the puddle of blood Diego left to marinate the floor. “I had a friend.” He found himself speaking before he even realized what he was saying. “His name was Peter.” The story of his past escaped his lips with little to no resistance. The story he could barely bring himself to think of on some days, the story that broke him. “He was the best of us. The only good Creature ever born. Never angry, never resentful, never spiteful. He was kind, he was caring; the voice of reason. I’ve never met anyone I was more honored to call my friend… Even if the feeling wasn’t exactly mutual. He would’ve done great things. If we just gave him a chance.”
“What happened to him?”
The question swung through his mind like a wrecking ball, thrashing about the foundation of his self before striking the vault in the back of his mind. The smell of iron became exponentially more pungent as his mind hemorrhaged with dark memories. The darkest memories that he’s ever had to remember. The silence was so loud, but not enough to drown out the sounds of that night; those screams, his screams, his pleading for help. The scraping of bones. The last thing he ever felt. The rushing water. The last thing he ever heard. All that blood. The last thing he ever tasted. The smell of iron. That putrid smell of rusting iron. The last thing he ever smelled. Darkness. The last thing he ever saw. Scared. That’s the last thing he ever was.
“Zyth killed him.”
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