Picture a world of Sepia—not exactly colourless but void of creation; bleak; a place of nothing new or evolving or artistic. Otikka. That was the land between our worlds. It was dull and boring, but stable.

Our love broke that.

This is the story of our story:

Asra

It was a stony place where I stood; an untrained eye would think it to be pitch black. Maybe it was. Colour had not come into creation back then; it was not a thought we knew to have. So perhaps I was born in blackness. Even if there had been colour, it was still a world with nothing to see. Maybe no one there knew how to look. Their desires—if that’s what they were—were only to stay in their spots, to stick to their habits. To be lone vessels of the dark.

I did not know if people died in that place because no one really lived. Nothing changed. No one was taught change; how to want things or feel things.

I wish I could explain to you why I chose to walk when no one else did. I do not know. Maybe I was just the first to grow a desire. Maybe some greater creation out there decided to put change in me. But I walked. I sought out something new.

I learned the ground was hard and cold on feet I learned were bare and mine. Without the vocabulary to describe such things, I saw other creations, learned other vessels were not the same. I touched their faces, enjoying the different molds, but they were all trapped in their stagnant ways and I learned I did not want that.

So I kept going… and going, and I learned, through experience, the pain that was time. It might have been seconds or centuries, but to me, travelling through that place was a kind of forever. Not knowing what I was searching for made the journey all the more brutal. But I found it; the type of 'different' I’d desired.

And when I did, I climbed towards it.

Fos

It was a cloudy place where I stood. Everything was white and everything was there. All the world had to offer dwelled in that scratched out space. Everything: carried in our hands. Every receptacle held their part and every part was shared: the very pieces of the world. We carried them in our arms like babies. Forests, canyons, fire, snow, oceans, and emotions. We held them in clear spheres like crystal balls, whilst diamonds of light revolved around their frames, blinking from one set of arms to the next. The world’s belongings were ours to hold, ours to bask in. We saw everything there was to see without realizing how blind that made us.

Sensibly speaking, we should have been happy, but happiness was merely something we held not something we felt. We had everything and knew nothing.

I think what I was meant to do was not what I did. In this place of light and shine and all the things that were, I was not supposed to strive for anything more, because, in theory, there should have been nothing more to gain. All I had were things to lose.

And I lost it all. Willingly.

I made the choice to let go. I couldn’t tell you why.

Why drop all that you could ever have? Maybe some weaker part, of whatever I was, had finally felt their weight. Maybe I’d sensed that something out there needed the things I held so much more than I could ever understand. I simply did what no one else did, and took on the consequences.

It was when everything fell—when I had nothing left to hold—that long tendrils of black light had reached up from the clouds to hold me. They slid across my silhouette and tugged me down through what once was my only ground. And I accepted it.

Asra

After falling and falling and falling again, I finally sat at the peak of my climb, and placed a palm above me, on what had felt like a brittle border of the world. The moment my claws grazed the surface, the blackness gave way, dots of it sprinkling down my arm and drawing hair on my scalp. Then, for the first time in history, I had witnessed something that was not covered in shadow. The ‘new’ of which I’d searched for; bright things like white-golden shawls draped down from the cracks in the world. I clutched onto one, feeling warm emptiness in my palm, and with a huff and a shudder, the entire border showered over my people.

Otikka—the world of sepia—opened up to us. ‘Change’ in its rawest form. It was there I discovered air and took my first breath of it. I drank the stuff like water and never stopped drinking. I saw the sky and its bronze-like beauty, felt the wind and watched the many bubbles of things raining down from far above.

I felt hope. As strange as it may sound, I realized I was alive and felt gratitude to life itself. There was an abundant overload of beautiful feelings and I couldn’t get enough. I pulled myself out of the Dark and took my first step on the new world. With my step came a—

Boom!

Fos

I landed hard upon Otikka’s grounds. The shadowy things had dragged me through clouds, pierced me through skies, choked me the whole way down. I felt pain for the first time in history, too much of it—as if pain itself had found its first target. I felt sorrow, I felt rage, I felt regret, and hate to all that surrounded me, and all that I was. It felt so easy— so necessary to slip into these feelings. And when I had finally hit the ground, it was like I was still falling. I realized: I was a being that could die. I should have died. If the land and its magic had not been trying to figure out what I was, I would be dead—and all because of a foolish choice.

I abandoned the one task the world had given me and for what? This copper-coloured place?

I cried out—roared my everything out—and struggled against the agony of the fall, pushing myself away from the ground. My mistakes raining down around me: Trees and their leaves, mountains with their ice, volcanoes, lakes and lava, and lightning fields; Otikka’s power had warped their sizes to its liking.

Old magic had filled that place. It was potent in air that was as new to magic as it was to being breathed. Mixed together, no one knew what these equations could do.

This was the stuff fate was made of; reality; physics; the art of creation. And we were the intruders.

It felt like another phase of eternity would have to pass before change would strike again. I was convinced I would have to sit there in my agony and face the punishment of setting a definition to ruin. But it was during this vulnerable time of doubt and hurt that I saw her: a being so different from me or my people or anything I’d known to be, that it was incomprehensible just to look her way. I thought our people held everything, but her presence negated this. Blackness clung to her in sheets of soot and ash, as if the very same tendrils of black light that had dragged me down had formed her dress—thinner tendrils made her hair which cascaded around her in waves. Then her eyes: black abysses—like staring into nothing.

She walked towards me—with little bits of things I’d dropped snuggled in her arms—and it felt like my pain had lessened by more than half its weight. All my woes seemed small. All my mistakes were no longer mistakes, for seeing her stand there at the edge of the crater I’d created: it felt like this was what the world truly meant for me to do. My entire being was made for meeting her.

Asra

When I’d heard the boom, I’d wanted to catch the sound in my hands, to feel its dance in my eardrums again. Sound was a magnificent concept to me. How could something so far away be so suddenly and wonderfully inside you? I hugged my ears, traced its pointed frame with my fingertips as I journeyed towards the sound’s source. The journey itself was ethereal. Otikka was swimming with magic and grand creations falling from the sky. The sky was a wonderful creation all on its own. I tried to put my handprint on its strange shade.

A bubble with stringy somethings inside descended slowly towards my hand and I followed it down with the backs of my fingers. It popped, releasing uncoloured grass in a patch that grew from under my feet. I picked some strands, some similarly fallen twigs, fragrant-less flowers, rocks, and leaves. I heard his cries of pain all the while, without understanding what the sound meant. Until I found him.

The same white-gold shawls I’d tried to grab before seemed to be gathered around his body in a tight, majestic formation. His hair was a long scatter of star-white constellations funneled together through a bubble at his back. It gave the impression that his strands of starlight may have been perfectly aligned once, but streamed wildly across his back now. Disorder, franticness, unrest; those were the impressions he gave me. His eyes shone too bright and seemed too lost, as though he were blinded from staring at too much.

He did not look like something that could exist. How could anything so bright resist fading itself away? Watching him struggle there gave me fear, and worry, and sadness, all of which I felt for him. Instinctively, I knew he needed me, and I needed him. And that was all it took.

I tucked my collection of things into my dress, letting its shadows eat them up, and then I crept down the crater and approached him. He stumbled to a stand and did the same.

Fos

We were both too curious for our own good; too new and naïve.

She stood before me feeding off all the emotions I hadn’t yet acknowledged, pulling some from me as she gifted some in return: hope, joy, gratitude, something else…

I reached out towards her, half-expecting her to disappear, but she only mirrored the act. We were two beings that could act, when no one else knew how. That, in and of itself, was an unprecedented occurrence that not even Otikka was prepared for.

There was a mixture of too many unknowns coalescing between our fingers: freshly fallen air atop ancient magic, the chemical makeup of two creatures the land had never once had to deal with. There was nothing in that space that knew how to react to our interaction. Her fingers intersected with mine, the gaps—my unknowns—were covered by what she understood and the opposite was true as well. We were two parts of a dangerous whole dripping our first drops of chaos.

Thus, [Secret Title] was born.

Asra

The world staggered, as if everything hiccupped for a moment. Time flinched. Reality tripped. Unspoken rules that had been set in place had flopped on its side, and colour, life, and everything in between, exploded into existence.

The ground covering my people cracked open, the sky shed its tint of tan and blossomed a purplish-blue. The clouds holding his people dispersed and, on the ground, greenery bloomed.

As my people rose from the ashes, his fell from the skies.

What had once been vessels of the dark grew smiles on their faces. They climbed and climbed to see the things I’d seen, they walked the paths I walked. They learned to love, and loved me for what I’d done. His people, the vessels of light, hated him for what he’d done. And it broke my heart.

I wanted to change the world that hated him…

Fos

But we quickly learned that the things we wanted, the things we tried to change, brought about chaos in the world and we learned much quicker….

that we didn’t want that.

Together

And now it’s yours: the story of our story—two entities bathed in a blunder of the oldest of magicks; two curious existences who’d been diseased with a gift of immortality. The fate-crafting pair who’d quickly been appointed the gods of this realm. Our forbidden love gave birth to a hell of annoyances—and wonders. Our choices had ricocheting effects on entire civilizations and land formations and it felt like the world’s catastrophes—and its blessings rested on our shoulders.

Nevertheless, the approaching tales is not of our own. That would be boring. Our story is only the stepping stones to an entanglement of adventures that had rippling effects on one another. Our appearances throughout their history shaped them into what they are today. To understand their struggles, you must understand our backstory. Not that hearing this will prepare you. We suppose it is up to you to know whether or not you’re ready…

The Geonzell was dark as we sprinted through. Our steps metallic and rapid across the path. At long intervals, there were dim lamps of crackling neon blue light, some sort of plasmic substance of unknown origins. The staff in my hand, attuned to the star of Cosma, hummed and released small strings of power each time we passed one. If worse came to worse, I could probably use its power in a fight. Each time we passed one, I hoped we would not have to fight.

I felt disoriented here. My sense of space and time skewed with my link to the stars cut off. I didn't even know what level we had ended up on. The airship was a beast in size, its underbelly as long as a battleship and dipped in a way that made it impossible to see its end, but I didn't need to see its end—that was not my job—I just needed to make sure no one was following us.

I peered over my shoulder a fourth time, into shadows and a hall with no end.

"Almost there," said Tzader.

I didn't look forward to our destination either.

"After this bend there should be a hatch that'll take us to our exit," he called.

I made a face. 'Exit' was not the word I'd use. The term was propaganda in the face of the spithole he was referring to, but I didn't voice this—lest I wanted Tzader's mockeries to be added to my list of problems.

A room ahead caught my eye and I pushed my staff in front of him to slow his pace. "Wait, there could be an ambush," I warned.

Tzader came to a stop and allowed me to go ahead. I twirled my staff once, warming its energy in preparation. A crescent of gears hung over the gem of Cosma at its end, they spun in tandem with the staff's motion, and I kept it moving.

Nimbly, I slid to the corner of the hall's end, erasing the clanging of my footsteps as I neared. I sensed two presences, but at a distance, their spirits docile. I risked a peek around the corner and spotted no one in the hall itself. Instead, two large cells took up the back wall before the path broke away. I twirled my staff back down, its gem safely pointed towards the floor, then I rounded the corner freely, forgetting to inform Tzader.

"Oi!" He must have sensed them too.

"Its fine," I said distractedly. It was hard not to be upon facing the person in the cell. His eyes already on me before I could step into the opening. He sat referentially on the ground like some kind of ancient king. His hair the colour of midnight, long and straight, his eyes deep purple and powerful. On his mouth was a mechanical muter with retractable creases that wrapped the full length around his face. When he saw the both of us, he rose. Long, regal clothes followed him, cascading down as he stood tall. With his hands behind his back, he looked down on us with no real malice, but that in itself was threatening, for his power was great. My staff rattled in response.

"Whoa," voiced Tzader, "Who's this?"

"Don't know, but he must be important enough to have his own secluded cell." And not just any cell. No metal bars or a visible lock, just a cosmic field that looked like a transparent layer of space dust and various strokes from a paint brush. It shifted slowly between our gazes.

"Think he can hear us?" asked Tzader.

"I doubt it..." I gestured the words: "Can you?" as I spoke them. His demeanor didn't change, he just watched for a while longer, then slowly looked to his left and back to us. His left held the second cell, one he could not possibly see into. But we would if we kept to our trek down the hall.

He did not seem to care much about our presence, but I couldn't tell if that made him a friend or foe. I peeled down the collar of my robes and showed him the tattoo that rested there. The emblem of our people and our cause.

He took long to react—to the point where I began to wonder if he really was looking down on us, but finally he shook his head. I narrowed my eyes and pulled out the badge of Zemnas that helped us break through many of the doors here. I circled the enemy's crest with my finger and then pointed to him.

He shook his head again.

"I'm gonna break him free," said Tzader without warning.

"What? Are you crazy? He just said he's not one of us. We don't know who he is or why he's down here. He could be a serial killer for all we know." I refuted but knew once Tzader had decided this, there was really no stopping him.

"He also said he's not one of them and any enemy of our enemy has gotta be a friend, right?" Tzader had already rolled up his sleeves. The gems embedded into his arms pulsed and warbled the air around them. His fingers curled diabolically and Tzader smirked as if the illegal activity of the day had only now turned fun for him. And of course it was; it's not like he ever found joy in logic.

"Things must be so simple in that mind of yours," I muttered as the field shook and swirled in on itself before popping out of existence. Suddenly, nothing stood between us and the regal man, and my staff was back up at the ready in case he was hostile.

He'd watched the field go down but did not move. Instead, his expression went serious and he shook his head a third time and nodded his chin to his left, directing our attention there again.

"Huh?!" said Tzader, clearly confused. "The heck is wrong with him? Who rejects freedom?"

My mind was not quite as simple, and so I went to check the neighboring cell and was stunned to a standstill as my eyes fell upon the someone blindfolded there. She was but a child, curled up in rags that may have once been a dress and hugging herself with a shiver. Her hair was a blanket around her and a deep, dark blue. Thick, transparent wires and plugs stretched from the walls to her body.

The Geonzell rumbled.

I rushed back to Tzader, hesitating between the cells, and realized wires were connected to the man as well from the shadows behind. Spurred by the rumble, something like liquid plasma streamed from the ceiling through the cords, slowly making its way towards both inmates before pausing around the girl's restraints alone. Pre-emptively the man steeled himself, cementing his stance, clenching his jaw, and the neon liquid retracted away from the girl alone but continued towards him.

Ultimately, the man could not prevent what happened next.

The blue substance barreled through his body. His eyes glowed with the same toxic brightness as the blue pulsed around him, lighting the room, throttling my staff. And all at once, it drained him of colour and strength. The man could not even gasp or shout out in pain as he crumpled to the ground.

In response, the airship creaked and yawned all around them, and then lurched to the side as the structure no doubt rounded the final peak of the Gren mountain range; the final peak between the Geonzell and the start of a war; the final phase of their mission before the valley of their home. And if all went right in our plan, soon, this very ship would explode.

But it was also that very moment when the gears clicked in my head, and a buzzing took hold of my brain that I realized: this was the moment nothing would go right. Because of this man and the girl he was trying to protect, because Tzader had a heart of gold, because these people were the power source of the ship—not some mysterious plasmic substance of unknown origins. These people were the origins. The planned explosion... depended on them.

It felt like an eternity after the man was downed that the system finally stopped. The liquid draining away. The moaning of the ship muted.

"This is cruel," said Tzader, looking disgusted, the gems in his arms sparked and crackled in that way they did when he was furious. "There's no way I'm leaving him now."

He didn't understand.

In a moment, he propelled himself up into the man's cell and panic seeped into the deepest crevices of my chest.

"Wait!" I called, but the man reacted at once, swivelling his restraints away from Tzader as he took a defensive crouch. He was sweating, breathing heavily through his nose, but his stare was deadly. There was no way he knew of our plan, but it was his eyes—for a moment, a reflection of mine but—those eyes told me he understood the weight of whatever happened here. Like me, he had someone to protect.

"Th-there's a girl in the neighboring cell." I struggled to keep my voice level, keep my emotions impassive. I just needed to get Tzader to stop. "I think he's protecting her—" The man's eyes snapped to me, stealing my breath for a split second before my voice returned. "—If... if you're freeing him, I think we must free her first."

Don't free him. We can't free him. If we do, our people would die. There would be nothing to power the explosion, but they didn't need power to drop their poisons. I had people to protect. Not just one but a city in a valley. Was it selfish of me to think this man's burdens were that of just her? One girl to fight for. Versus one civilization of dreams and promises set ablaze on my neck. My thoughts were on fire.

Tzader's thoughts were simpler: "Then we free her." His voice was in front of me as he passed. I hadn't even seen when he approached.

Let me think! I wanted to pound the message into his thick skull. His every action fueled by blind beliefs. His stupid ideations. The 'we can save everyone' mentality. No sacrifices. Never that. Everything works out in the end. Happily ever afters make the world bend. This was Tzader. This was his faith.

My heart plummeted as he dispelled the second cell. It felt like the Geonzell made another lurching turn, but I knew it didn't.

We had no time for arguments, but he would never agree to whatever plots my mind was avoiding, and when it came down to it, I couldn't really beat Tzader in a fight. But he would want to save everyone. Could we save either of them?

Wait!

I watched him slice the toxic wiring around the girl who screamed and shuddered away. The only power source left growled with fury beneath his muter and I found myself raising a hand, placating him, reassuring him: "She's okay," I said, but my words felt hollow.

Why reassure him? I thought I was the logical one. Yet logic was letting me juggle the weight of this man's life, holding it on a scale with mine. Not my people but mine. It was my life that would be inconvenienced if this man didn't die. But Tzader didn't know that yet.

I gripped down on my staff so hard I was surprised it didn't snap. But it did rattle. Staying forever in motion. Continuously collecting its cosmic power while my breaths felt like they were collecting dust.

Tzader had donated the girl by my side and hopped back into the man's cell all too quickly. His hands gripped invisibly at his own power, his arms crackling in preparation for the final strike. But all the while, the power source kept his stare on me. Perhaps just as surprised as I to see my body snake behind my friend.

The buzzing filled my ears and the staff in my hand was raised high like a lantern. And flew down like a brushstroke. Its end colliding heavily with Tzader's thick head. And I watched his body crumple to the ground.

A defeated breath shook out of me. I stood stunned above my own action, watching the power source as he watched me. His gaze fell first, sliding to a spot beyond my back. I blinked and followed his eye to the girl. "Sh-she will be okay." I said. "I will protect her. But... but I—... you— I—"

I didn't have time for this. For my thoughts to make sense or for logic and reasoning to extract itself from things like empathy and regret. But he didn't wait for either. Much like Tzader, he didn't hesitate.

I watched him gather himself in a single stabilizing breath, clutching a knee as he sat referentially, one leg crossing with the other. He straightened his neck and back and rose his chin like a king sacrificing himself for his kingdom. Determination clung to his every breath, his gaze tightly bound onto some distant noble cause.

Like his thoughts were so clear. Like he knew exactly what he needed to do and was confident in his power to do it. Like he was so ready to sacrifice himself for just one. One girl.

While my fumbling fingers heaved Tzader up, ignoring the blood from his wound, I mounted his stomach over my shoulder. Then feeling like I couldn't breathe at all, I backed away. My bloodied staff fighting my hand as I flung it toward the girl, cushioning her in a nest my powers could carry. I had the power for this.

The power to sacrifice a life, to sacrifice a friendship, to sacrifice my emotions and its accompanying sanity; the power to run, the power to face my phobias and jump off an airship, the power to hold back tears, and then watch from far below, in a peaceful, bloodfree valley... I watched my soul explode.

[Sing along Karaoke-style with the link in the comments section below]

I've been staring at the edge of my patience

Longer than I can take it

Never really knowing why.

I wish

I could just live with my mamma

But then I'd come back to the trauma

No matter how hard I try.

Every job I take,

Every house I track

Its my life at stake,

But every career leads back

To the place I know

I don't want to go,

Where I long to be.

See that home with the fence and the trees?

It calls me.

And I know

I can't afford to go.

And the debt that keeps coming after me

In this economy

One day I'll know

If I go, I'll start my life as a hobo.

I know

Everybody in their houses,

Seem so

Happy to have houses.

Oh, interior design.

I know everybody in this country

Has a role to be hungry.

A tummy's gotta learn to mime.

If I stay inside,

Would that be so wrong?

I could sacrifice

And cry all nightlong

Maybe save my tithes;

Sadness tags along—

What is wrong with me?

And the light in the sky that is free

It's blinding

But then I know:

I can't afford to go

And the stress it keeps clawing after me,

Its so heavy.

But I don't know

What's beyond that porch,

Can I own a porch?

See that house with the birds and the breeze?

It calls me

And even though,

I can't afford to go.

If I cling to this hope I'll break free,

If I'm lucky

Cuz my heart, it knows:

I've got to go!

Solis sat atop the bordering walls of the Great Albedion. Her legs dangled freely over its lunar stone face. She did not need sitting, but she sat. Her hair, with its fiery hue hung nearly as far as her feet, draping in front of her face so she watched the capital tiles below through its ribbony slits.

It was snowing—without the sensation. Crystal snow against her face and the faces of her friends. Like tiny bubbles caressing their hairs. If it was a substance meant to be felt then she’d lost the ability to do so long ago. She’d been getting used to this thing called apathy...

But the words escaped her mouth anyway, in a foreign way: “Aren’t you getting tired of this?”

Below her, Freeder crouched over the tiles patterned upward to look like grass—it was incorporated in her training, to know of things like ‘grass’. A crazed smile on his face like he were laughing at a distant memory, always.

She supposed the question wasn’t meant for him. Solis leaned to her left, then tilted her head so her hair fell away from her eyes. She kept them open wide as she placed her gaze on Zen. He was fascinating to look at. Short black hair and dark focused eyes like he always knew what he was looking at and why.

He watched Freeder continue to paint. Though in his hand, Zen rubbed the flat of his weapon—a black dagger to match the rest of his look.

The question was his now, but he did nothing with it for a long while. Then finally—“Years ago”—he answered. Sheathed his dagger, then its chain. Then turned to face her and returned a question: “Wanna quit?”

It burned to hold his gaze. She didn’t like when he stared back at her, but liked Zen, so she held his stare as long as she could. Then set her sights back on Freeder in the fake field.

His hair brown and wavy and almost catching his shoulders. She liked to pull his hair and watch the curls pull back. In a way, Freeder was focused too. Solis saw it in the way he held his painting tools. His hands steady and fluid as they traced over cheekbones and earlobes. He dipped his utensil in some more of the blue scattered across the tiles and kept going.

Freeder’s weapon was his painting tools as the chained dagger was Zen’s. Solis’s weapons weren’t meant for her hands. They were meant for her mind, but this was preoccupied now.

“Quit.” She thought, loudly. She’d never considered it before. Or maybe she had, some time before she’d lost her focus. ‘Before the incident’ is what Zen would’ve said, but she didn’t remember any incident.

“Yes,” said Zen. “I mean: be free. Free from all of this.”

The crystal snow became loud in her ears. A sensation she felt. “How...”

A faint siren lit her vision. She shook her head; shook it away.

Looking at Freeder’s canvas from her vantage point, Solis decided she didn’t like this planet very much. Maybe it was the sensationless snow or the blue of its people’s blood, or the way her mind seemed to unravel the longer she stayed.

“We can pay our proprietors a visit. And kill. Not for them but for ourselves. To free ourselves.”

But then Solis would have no direction. She would have to allow her thoughts to burst down every road and try to follow. Her mind would have to unravel further until she would fall apart.

“No!” She yelled, shaking her head, stripping away the sensations. She did not want that.

The Parentals gave them order. They gave them targets. A place to go and people to kill. She did not have to think this way.

“You used to want this, Solis. We used to fight for it.” He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “To be free. Remember,” he urged her, but his words painted violent sirens across her head—their lights and their noise. It hurt. He was hurting her.

She shoved him. “No!” Why had she asked him silly questions? Zen’s brain was not like hers. It knew things. Knew its path. It did not try to stretch itself apart.

She stood and backed away from her friend, taking a battle stance that felt comforting. The crystal snow picked up between them. He mirrored her, ready for her attacks, always.

She readied her blades, they flitted by her back in the shape of a bird’s wings. Many blades working separately, but held together by her mind. They spread on either side of her, pointing their fangs at Zen, but she didn’t want— she never wanted to attack him, even the times when she did, so she screamed in anger.

She felt Freeder’s eyes on them. He would understand. Zen had said the incident had changed him too. His mind used to work like Zen’s and now it was fractured like hers.

The Parentals were punishers in this way. They’d set their children on planets that needed treatment and release, but the three of them had received treatment before too. Zen had told her himself. And Zen had received it too. That was why he could not fight for long. He needed sitting.

He should be sitting now. Not thinking. He looked tired.

She shook the sirens away.

A streak of blue paint cascaded down the air between them. Freeder’s paint. He stepped through it, crouching upon the Great Albedion even though he used to be below. His paint acted as a tunnel, ridding away long distances of space within the time it took him to flick a stroke.

When he stood, he faced her. His smile aimed at nothing as he watched a spot of nothing. But he was against her; their thoughts were united against her. She screamed again.

“I’m sorry,” Zen said, “I won’t bring it up again, until you’re—... until—”

He gulped then. His face twisting. Pain from inside him unleashing. It was the Parentals’ treatment. Like her sirens, and Freeder’s smile. This was why he should be sitting. But that’s not what he did. It was in a second that all his energy gave out at once. Freeder acted first, lunging his leg back with his strange fluidity, he caught Zen with his calf then pivoted to face him and rested him gracefully down.

Solis was beside him in an instant, her blades clattering to the ground in whichever way. She cradled his head, watched his crystal cold sweat. Freeder slid his painting tool from his ear and tried to use Zen as a canvas. Solis roared at him and tried to slap away his hand, but he dodged and grinned at her.

Pinks and reds and lightning whites shot blades through her brain. They tinted her sights. She needed guidance. Someone to tell her what to do or where to go or how to help him. The parentals were her direction, but Zen was her stability. He was the ground that kept her standing.

Not Solis. Zen needed help; he needed treatment. But this treatment was eating him.

She was cold.

The snow was cold, and she was scared, and they were all in pain, and she finally understood.

It was not treatment that they needed, but release.

Have you ever heard of fear?

Of strangers' eyes bobbing from that blind spot over there.

Milky shadows that shift and follow.

A breath cut shor--

To match the gasp of a ghost

holding your hand without your consent.

The hairs on your arms standing tall, being touched

without a presence, just a hush.

Cold and cold then hot.

You forgot something.

Don't breathe.

Stop.

Tick Tick Tock.

It's not clean. Your soul. Your back. Your face.

Their judgments rattle the seats beneath

disgracedisgracedisgracedisgracedisgracedisgracedisgrace

The vehicle--its heavy metals--lose its tracks to a cliff

Nosediving

You are groundless

plummeting to the ends of a nightmare

where the bed cannot hold you.

And the floor cannot find you

Yet.

Faces

you can't look at,

tower over you the whole while.

In black and white and criss-crossed eyes

They watch,,,,,,

The vulnerability that you are

Something chases you

slowly.

Both fleshy and frothy

and unseen and

slowly.

It will reach you.

The question is when.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

You anticipate it.

It anticipates you.

It cannot wait to get you.

A little more than hug you.

It hovers over your ear

with a whisper of a question:

Have you ever heard of fear?

Of course its not like any of that stuff is really there

?

There's nothing I feel for in this day that could make up for the time life has spent wasting me away.

There's a door right next to me that I don't feel like walking through, just to try and fail at fixing a world that few set out to do. So few it becomes an impossibility; a sacred mural of hope only an artist can try to seek until their little clouds rain over their work, reminding us daily that we are weak. But without their colourful sounds of hope and imaginings of what its like to have peace, the vast majority of the crowd mentality will wither so completely, 'till money becomes the only thing reminding the earth of the toxic litterings that was once humanity. And that time they spent striving for the very green-coloured garbage they created and not the hearts of the Smiles hoping the world can become a better place, is such a waste.

Until then, I'd rather sit here behind this door and write out my hopes to someone out there who's actually awake.

What it takes,

What it takes.

What it takes!

WHAT IT TAKES!!!

Everything wants to take from you. Rob you of your riches and rewards.

Cover the face of your work with their traps and contracts

and rip your dreams right -w-r-i-t-e- out of your head.

What they take from you is your all. All the days you spent slaving for the takers, when all you want is to be a giver, to give to those who haven't yet learnt how to take back their stolen lives from these greed-filled takers who rake every drop of sweat from your bones and leave you to pay the price of your medication and casts.

Watch each bill leave your fingers as, you--now made cripple--hobble back to your desk to feed dreams out your pen to give back to the thieves who break souls to no end, so take, TAKE it all away.

Because at the end of the day,

The dreamers and believers

Will find a freakin' way.

[Author's note: Due to the nature of this story, there are many instances of stylized font types, SFX, special symbols, formats, speech bubbles, and images that appear all throughout the novel so I included some examples of what they might look like as footnotes that can be referred to at the bottom of the page. Hope you enjoy >:D]

Track 01

I stood still and watched the movie play out. There was no sound but I heard it, no colours but my mind painted them—between the lines, like a colour-by-number film, except the frameworks were built off imagination and the numbers were composed by distraction.

The theatre had no seats, or popcorn, or friends to laugh with, but it was there, and I was a participant, snared to the spot with awe on my face, blind to the shadows that surrounded the screen.

The movie took place in a city, kinda like Ezveria—my city—except cooler, less real and less mean, with better graphics and kinder actors. Their script was made up of an algorithm of movie-memories jig-sawed together in one awesome concoction. The genre: a kickass, action-packed, flying-car adventure, with robots and superheroes and epic fight scenes in the sky.

To a killer soundtrack, and a killer shot worthy of a best picture award, the main hero makes their entrance, skidding their car vertically along the side of a skyscraper. The camera captures an exhilarating angle of the actor’s boot—only the boot—as they step out of the vehicle and stand sideways against gravity upon the building’s glassy face. The shot crawls slowly upwards, rotating around the girl wearing the space-goddess equivalent of a leather jacket. She poses for a moment and then rips off her sunglasses to reveal:

Zetta; Defender of the Cosmos

The words appear in bold comic book font beside her. The kind of typestyle that can only be read by one of those narrator voices made for movie trailers.

In a world—yeah, like that—of slayers and sonatas, one lone warrior embarks on yet another quest to conquer the omniverse. Zetta the indomitable and her gravity-defying Corvetta take the stage.

She flips her scarlet scarf over her galactic-armored shoulders and it whips in the wind with her equally long brown hair.

-Swip- [*1]

She closes her car door as gracefully as closing a book, then stares the city down. The spirits of her enemies rise and collect into a wonky cloud of purple smog with a diabolical face fit for a ghost-type Bokémon. She locks eyes with the creature and, in the quiet of the elevated air, like the moment of tranquility before a showdown between outlaws, she gathers her power and utters her best one-liner:

“Ack! Sorry!” I’d accidentally bumped into some guy who looked like he really could’ve been an outlaw. His persona reeked of intimidation. I thought I’d been standing still but it turned out I’d been walking, probably to avoid the service counter, my head hundreds of stories in the clouds.

[Enter here the SFX for embarrassment]

I dodged eye-contact as I passed him, but felt the man’s glare anyway. There were too many people here, too many things to look at and listen to… like this nice vinyl flooring for example. I kicked at it, as if I were kicking a pebble.

Pretty sure I was the pebble in this picture.

I pinched the Rezu-chip in my hoodie pocket and bit the inside of my lip, watching everyone’s footsteps rain by.

I approached stairs I hadn’t seen until they reached my feet and took them down, its steps were shallow and wide enough to pass as a ramp and its surface had the colourfully reflective gleam of a bubble. There were too many colours, too many swirls of silhouettes and wonky motions, and my head spun with them as my feet led me to the main foyer; a huge circular space with many foyer-like things I couldn’t look at for long. Stuff like holo signs and modern art displays, and people. Courage slowly drained from my shoulders as if each shoe that passed were stepping over me.

A moment of respite appeared in the form of an empty chair facing a window.

I slumped into it. Took some breaths. Calmed some downs. Crowd sounds rose behind, but I pinned my attention to the window in front, which looked out on a cute, humanless, indoor-outdoor courtyard. A pretend path led to a circle of rocks, but there was no door to get in—or out?—there. Sprouting from the rocks was the giant four-leaf clover that umbrellaed over the entire community centre. Klover Community Centre, to name names. The clover looked like it was made out of the stuff used by 3D-printers, and I think it lit up at night too.

A message blocked my view of the clover for a moment. I frowned. Of course its ad-glass, of course. I stretched out my legs, reaching out to the two-story tall glass wall that angled back a third story, and swiped my sneaker across the headline about yesterday’s blackout. Once: and the news display slid to propaganda from the chief of police, and twice: into oblivion, leaving me to judge my reflection.

Not much of a Zetta, am I?My hair was waaay shorter than hers, kinking out at my jawline. I wasn’t as tall or stylish, and I could barely ever make eye contact with anyone, much less my enemies. I didn’t even have a license.

The only similarity was our scarves. Both red, both long. One fluttered in the wind; the other flopped over my lap whenever I threw it upwards.

The scarf slumped to my lap for a third time before I slapped my cheeks.

“Get it together, Rei. You’re strong. You’re strong.” I held the little black square labeled ‘Reizetta Zykophona’s Rezu #2’ in front of my nose with both hands. The ‘2’ represented my second chance at nailing a job. Even though, technically, this was my 6th Rezu-chip—I’d lost numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, but then found #2 in my sock drawer last night. And technically, this was more like my umpteenth attempt than my second chance, but, I mean, whatever. Details.

I slipped the chip back into my front pocket and stood up. Here’s how this was gonna go: I was going to hand them my Rezu, they’d scan me into the server, then judge my character, rate me as averagely employable, interview me, I’d answer the questions all professional-like, then obtain the job, and work the job, and live monetarily ever after.

“You got this!” I held my fists by my sides, clenching triumph in each palm before turning around. It was almost a 180 turn, until it was a 360.

Okay, maybe if I closed my eyes for that first step, I could trick my brain into thinking I was somewhere else and it wouldn’t seem so scary.

Boof [*2]

“Ack, sorry!” My shut-eye tactic hadn’t gotten me very far. I bumped into some other guy wearing the exact same black shirt the first man had been wearing. I held my nose and squinted, and my gaze fell to the object on the stranger’s waist. Confusion struck me as I peeked up at his face. He had blond-brown hair braided back into a dual-coloured ponytail, and—even though he didn’t look like a police officer—there was a sword strapped to his hip.

He retracted his hand from a Silvertooth earpiece and stared down at me.

~ ~ ~ [*3]

So, uh… remember when I was going about my day with a Rezu-chip in hand, and hopes and dreams and all that fun stuff?

Well, yeah, that wasn’t the case anymore.

The man with the different shades of braids now stood with a drawn sword and a snarl over the many frightened civilians of Klover Community Centre. His bluish-grey blade weaved threateningly beside his march, like the serpentine hand of a nurse before an injection. Beyond him, a ring of lackeys stood two metres apart in matching black shirts and fancy utility belts, trapping us in a tight huddle with our backs to Klover’s encased clover. They wore blank expressions behind bandana masks, and had steel bows planked across their thighs.

Radicals.

I knelt smack-dab in the front row, forced into submission by the shouts of fellow marks and swordsmen before I knew what was going on. Sprawled out behind were the other helpless individuals who’d been going about their morning.

Job hunting. Yep, that’s how I’d started this day. I must have been the only person in all of Ezveria who could screw up the task bad enough to become the hunted.

Whimpers and muffled sobs harmonized from behind. I’d ignored their sounds before but not anymore. Their fear was infectious. Whether or not that fear had seeped into my gaze, I didn’t know. The only sure feeling I felt was a blaze of hatred bubbling inside me, directed at the man who’d coordinated the attack. The man who was pacing in a U-shaped path that passed my place in the huddle more than any other.

Each clacking step left me simmering. A few more seconds or a few more paces might have made me commit to an idea stupid enough to threaten the life of every hostage in this room. But sitting here, doing nothing? I couldn’t handle that. My timidness came with the kind of flaw that would get you fired umpteen-too-many times: provoke me, and I’d forget who I was.

The ringleader clicked a button on his belt and spoke into his earpiece in a hard, cold voice. “Is this some kind of joke? What have I asked of you, officers? The release of my comrades, right? And I told you I’d know if you were screwing me over, right?”

Garbage. This man is a waste of a human being.

His chuckle lasted a beat. “That’s not what my associate said. From what I heard, only a few holo projections of our troops were set free. Were you trying to dupe us, officer? Hmm? Because, if you didn’t care so much about the differences between a real person and a figmentation, then I could start sending out a few ghosts of our own.”

Someone screamed. I flinched. The ringleader made a hand gesture and an arrow zipped over our heads. A wave of cries followed it. I remained in place, silent, stunned maybe, or mentally gone.

“Quiet!” he shouted.

I couldn’t turn around. My body refused to find out where the arrow had lodged.

His tone changed when he spoke back into his earpiece. It was darker, more sinister. Those with better seating wouldn’t have heard it: “If you want even one of these hostages to survive, you’ll do as I say. I’ve done crueler things for your government than cause 50 casualties, give or take.”

He clicked his belt again and swung his blade up to rest on his shoulder.

“Listen up, dimwits. Your corrupted cops don’t seem to care about you enough to follow simple instructions, so some of you might have to start dying in a few minutes. Take your picks.”

My hand coiled around my scarf, but I remained otherwise motionless. These scum didn’t deserve my tears, or the sight of my fear. Monsters like these didn’t need any more feelings of triumph.

There wasn’t a single hero from a single film who would have allowed this kind of injustice, and (as a fan) I didn’t want to either.

“You have a fierce look in your eye there, little lady.”

If it were Zetta here, instead of me, she would have saved everyone by now. She would’ve whipped out her compact mirror, chucked it in the air like a ninja star, had it shapeshifted into its vehicular state and run over all her foes using her telekinetic power. All her enemies would’ve KAPOWed or FWUMPed out of the way and humanity would have been safe once again.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about doing something heroic?”

But I wasn’t Zetta. I didn’t own a weapon, and this was my first hostage-taking scene ever. Crazy as it was, those weren’t uncommon in Ezverian society. Radical demonstrations of every kind were becoming the norm, these days. Every other month it seemed like a mall or a school or some business company was being attacked or ransacked in the name of justice, or as a call to freedom, or a noisy request for minimum wage.

Kindred Spritz, Poison Donation, Adeptus Thread, Vanditization; there were a number of groups tagged all over the city via graffiti or sticky holo projections or 3D printed sculptures that were taken down within a day, but none, in any given form, were ever this close.

The leader crouched in front of me and pressed one gloved hand against my cheeks. “Listen to people when they talk to you.” I pressed my lips into a tight line, or as tight as they could go with his fingers smushing together the sides. The bluish-silver tint of his blade gleamed in my eye from beside my neck. It pierced my hair to punctuate his threat.

I was frozen.

“Maybe you’d like to be next.” The blade slid through my hair as he considered this.

I’m supposed to be afraid. Some distant area of my brain understood that, but the stillness I was trapped in was not infused with fear. Knowing there was someone behind me who’d been… wounded, at best, because of a flick of this man’s hand, had already driven me to a level of disgust and rage I hadn’t known I possessed.

“If you knew anything at all about the government you enslave yourself to, you wouldn’t look at me like that. None of you would.” His sword swooshed over my head as he stood, an incomprehensible, dark amusement spreading over his face.

If I knew, my butt!I wasn’t even part of the slaving class yet. He’d ruined my chances of that by causing this mess. If anyone needed educating, it was him.

A scene played out; another movie in my head: I yank his weapon from his arms and twirl the blade around with the finesse of a DJ, leveling the tip to its true target. Swip. Just like that, a simple, elegant cadence with blood oozing out of his chest and a finale to my fury. Cue level-up music. The credits roll.

. . . And then the arrows from his minions would probably skewer me.

I twitched.

The smile left his face. Whatever expression my imagination had led me to make didn’t sit well with him. He angled the tip of his blade down towards my chest. The end met my scarf. My eyes widened.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. [*4]

“Dex.”

I was close enough to hear the voice inside his headset.

‘Dex’ stopped taunting me and peered over his shoulder mere seconds before the end of my life. I followed his gaze.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

A boy strolled out of a hallway and into the ring of archers, his eyes locked on the phone in his palm. He wore a short-sleeved black jacket with wrist-warmers on both wrists, one longer than the other. His hair was a messy clump of black tufts held down by a pair of vibrantly coloured headphones—which were clearly deafening him to the presence of danger.

What kind of music could distract a person so thoroughly? His eyes weren’t even closed like mine had been.

“Hey!” shouted Dex.

Thumb scrolling, expression oblivious, the boy continued his blind march towards the huddle of hostages.

I flicked my eyes between him and our designated villain and briefly wondered which of them was the bigger stupidface.

“Hey!” Dex yelled again. He swung his blade back to his shoulder and strode towards the boy.

Using the sixth sense headphone wearers always seemed to have, the boy started making a detour around him without so much as a glance up. Dex’s blade swooped down and brushed the red cord to the boy’s headphones with cutthroat precision. He finally looked up—lazily. Carelessly.

“Today ain’t your lucky day, kid,” said Dex, devilish grin returning. “You shoulda stayed in the washroom to piss your pants where it was socially acceptable.”

It didn’t seem like Dex fully understood how headphones worked. The boy tilted his head in confusion. He must not have heard a single word.

Dex cocked his head to the ceiling and let out a humourless puff of laughter.

The boy pushed one earmuff off his ear, unaffected by the glistening death-threat pointed his way, then waited for who knows what.

Dex’s smile remained, but only while his sword flew up. When it went down, his expression transitioned to a killer’s scowl. The boy backed away, but was too late. The sword ripped clothes, skin, and blood from his chest. The impact pushed him backward. He tilted on his heels, and his body went down,

down,

down,

then thud. [*5]

Five seconds. Then time streamed on like normal, ignoring the fact that a life had been lost.

Screams rang through my eardrums, not nearly as deafening as his body hitting the floor, the thump of my heart against my chest, or the vibrations of the two. If I thought the mob had been hysterical before, they were crazed now.

I stood up with the grace of a zombie. My vision was jittering, as if trying to focus on something that wasn’t there. Red lasers dotted my arms and upper body.

“This / This / This is just / just a pre— / pre— / preview of what hap— / happens when people / when people upse— / upset / upset me / me / me.” [*6]

The murderer’s voice sounded like a broken recording of a faraway echo, as if the needle of a record player could find only shards of his voice. This was now also the condition of my better judgement. Broken and far away.

“Your / Your / Your distress / stress / stress / is only a frag— / frag— / fragment / —ment / —ment / of what we / we / felt / felt / felt for our frien— / friends / false / false / false / convictions / —tions”

What did that boy have to do with any of that? Why did he have to die for their dumb cause?

Still infatuated by his own speech, the terrorist was approaching me again. No, wait, I think… I think I was the one approaching him this time.

“Your / Your gov— / government / —ment / is messed up / up / up / No / No / your society—”

Our society doesn’t need the likes of you. A warning arrow shot past my eyes. Dex glanced in my direction, smirking, still speechifying. I continued towards him. Another arrow zoomed by, this time ripping through my hoodie’s sleeve and grazing my arm. I froze. Fear tickled my numb limbs.

He chuckled. “You’ll face death but you’re afraid of a little pain?”

It wasn’t the pain. Not this time.

His chuckle morphed into a bloodcurdling cry as a scarlet sword pierced through his armored side. The air around the sword shuddered as if shaken by an invisible force. Dex the murderer stumbled away—though perhaps he couldn’t be considered a murderer anymore. The boy he’d killed had just slashed him through the waist.

I’d watched him die and now I was watching him kill.

As Dex stumbled off to the side, I got a clear view of the messy-haired boy with the out-of-nowhere sword in his hand. His disinterested gaze was now filled with determination, irises swirling with reds like the red, purple, and blues were on his headphones. His clothes were ripped diagonally where he’d been cut, but his wound was gone. No scratch nor scar; only a bloodstain by the tear’s edge.

The cellphone he’d held was replaced with the hilt of a long single-edged blade. The weapon itself seemed alive, glowing in time with all the colours on the rims of his headphones. The red cord, once plugged into his phone, was now hanging from the hilt.

I put the pieces together.

He’s a sell-soul?

An internet legend; a conspiracy theorist’s dream come to life, but that’s what he is. That’s what he has to be. I’d only seen a handful of memes about them, maybe one or two BlueTubers talking about the ‘lunatics’ who sold half their souls for inhuman capabilities. I’d written them off as staged publicity stunts, things I wished, but didn’t actually believe were real. Magical things were supposed to stop once they reached the screen. Everything outside of that became the artificial; the holo re-enactment of a fantasy; a lie.

He shouldn’t be possible. Nothing in this world should be able to do what he’d just done. But the blood that spilled was real, and the boy standing woundless above was even more so. How else could I have explained the twisting glow in his eyes, the conversion of his weapon, the full self-revival? Normal people didn’t get up after being slashed across the chest by a sword. Normal people didn’t unblinkingly face a mob of radicals.

I watched the bloody scene in a daze. Unable to retreat back to the crowd, I remained standing. A target.

The boy positioned himself in front of me, shielding me from the man he’d just stabbed. All the marksmen in the room aimed their arrows at him. Now that he was close, I realized that, although I’d called him a kid, he was my height. Maybe seventeen. He stood in a lowered stance. His sword ready. Seventeen and ready for the world.

I’d seen him come back to life once already, but I didn’t want to see him die again.

“You’ll pay for that, boy.” The man’s voice was strained by his own pain and weighted by his rage. The sword he’d been using like a toy looked far more frightening being dragged against the floor, with blood from his own wound streaking down its length. He signalled to his fellow goons. I flinched, expecting arrows to pierce our bodies, but his signal must have told them not to interfere. The red laser dots drifted away.

Even hunched over in pain, Dex was larger than the sell-soul who stood unwavering as my shield. Dex lunged towards us for a slash. The boy easily redirected it.

He took a deeper stance and yanked his blade back, causing the red cord to ripple. I could have touched it if I’d wanted to. I watched his thumb swipe upwards along the fabric of the hilt. Beneath its surface, the faint glow of a screen lit up and a triangular bar rose from green to yellow to orange. An instant later, his weapon drove horizontally across Dex’s chest, then swooped upwards at a diagonal. Twice more at different angles, carving an asterisk out of his armor through half-blocked attacks. He toppled back.[TS11]

The crowd screamed louder. Red lasers dotted us from every direction as Dex hit the floor. The boy shot his gaze at me with a speed deadlier than the lasers and next thing I knew, he’d tripped me. As I, too, fell, he tossed the blade with his right hand, caught the cord in his left, and gripped one of the huge earmuffs on the side of his head. Wielding the sword like a long mace, he let out a yell.

My head hit the floor and I shut my eyes against the stars, hugging my headache and curling up in a ball. I heard the clang of metal on floor and the rumbling of many feet.

Despite my splitting head, I fought to open my eyes.

I wished I hadn’t.

At first, I saw only blurry feet tumbling in every direction. They tumbled over benches, knocked down fake plants. Beside me, I noticed a broken arrow, and another, and another, and another. I reached for one to verify if it was real. Someone stepped on my hair. I held that instead, then attempted to sit up so I’d look less like a carpet.

A cough drew my attention. The sell-soul was on all fours nearby. Blood was on the floor in front of him and…and…

“Can you…pull these out for me? …Please?”

My jaw trembled. I gaped at the three arrows sticking out of his back. The animated swirls in his eyes were gone and his irises shook as if they were searching for their former colour. Blood dripped from his mouth to the floor. As I watched, his sword reverted back to a phone.

“I can’t—heal—myself—if they’re still…inside.” His breathing was level, calm, but in a way that was forced. Painful to listen to.

It was common knowledge never to remove an arrowhead from a wound without proper medical treatment, but it would probably go against common sense to question a guy who could come back to life. He’d also saved my life without a second thought mere seconds ago—or minutes perhaps; I wasn’t too sure what concussions did to your sense of time.

I swallowed my fear. Put a supporting hand against his chest and wrapped the other, trembling, around one of the cold, metal arrows.

“I-I’m sorry.” My voice cracked. I looked away and pulled as hard as I could.

He cried out and I felt like crying back. I tossed the arrow away and quickly fumbled for the next one, still refusing to look but feeling the—the wetness, the gooey redness—It’s okay: this is probably like ripping off a band-aid to him; it’s okay: you’re strong, you can do this. The second one came out, and this cry was laced with far more pain than the last. I reached the final one, but had to stop. The censored banner over his back was corroding away.

Blood. So much blood. It was so red. So warm. So, all over my hand, soaking his shirt. So real.

Who am I kidding? He wasn’t a machine. He wasn’t even holding himself up anymore. One of his hands was weakly clinging onto my arm. The slightest squeeze from his fingers felt like a desperate plea for me to stop.

“I—” I can’t do this! Tears smeared across half my vision until a bluish light guided my eyes to the gruesome sight of his back, and I forgot about speaking. A blue, then purple, flower made of light was twirling over the first wound. Glowing. The thinnest of petals shaped like wires were looping in and out of his skin in formation of a carnation. Slowly closing up the gash.

The heck!

A second flower began to bud out of the next wound… It’s fine. Don’t question it. It’s fine. He’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.

The flowers were saving him. In the clamour of chaos, I watched them weave and mend. The flowers are saving him. I breathed. All I needed to do was save the flowers.

“H-hang in there, okay?” I said to myself. To him too, though he didn’t respond, just kept rasping. “I-it’s just one more, alright?”

He nodded. I took a deep breath, and tugged the last arrow free. He yelled until his voice broke.

“You’ll pay for this.”

I looked up, straight into Dex’s face. Blood was draining from the star-shaped wound on his chest and stomach, dripping into the crumblings of his armored clothing. He was struggling to breathe. Sweat dotted his face. He raised his sword slowly above his head, giving us a look people usually reserve for vermin. “You’ll regret interfering.”

The boy in my arms couldn’t fight—that much was clear. The question was, could I?Holding a bloodied arrow and an injured stranger?

I threw the arrow at Dex’s head. It would have grazed his cheek, had he not tilted his head to the right.

From the corner of my eye I saw the headphoned boy reach for his phone. The terrorist smirked.

I blinked.

Before either could swing their weapons, two sharpened steel boomerangs whizzed over my head and criss-crossed in front of the radical. Both boomerangs carried chains that axled through their centres, and a familiar insignia that was too fast to see, but not enough that I couldn’t guess.

The weapons reeled back as if homing in, and the X of chains hit Dex’s chest with a metallic thwack. He gave a gurgling yell of agony. Jagged, bluish-white lines of light flittered around his chest where the chains had bound him.

His body crumpled and was dragged backward. Brutality that would have been covered by mosaics if caught on the news. Even after he fell, the electricity danced over his body, stopping only when a man in uniform walked over it.

I lifted my gaze to the officer. His all-black uniform with its diagonal strap of kunai marked him as a member of the police force which controlled Ezveria. Others like him were charging into Klover and reeling bad guys in like fish. Their march evoked a different sense of fear; their shouts held a more practised form of aggression; unlike Dex and his flock, this man was licensed to hurt people. The badge on his upper arm like a radioactive symbol of sickles; it gave logo to the word bloodshed.

All my fear, anger, and angst shifted. I couldn’t bring myself to feel grateful. It was like watching a bully get taken down by more bullies.

The officer approached me and flicked an uncaring eye down at the boy. “Drop it.” I was too aware of the boomerang he wasn’t putting back in his holster to understand. “I said drop your weapon.”

I hadn’t noticed I’d picked up another arrow, or how tightly I clung to both it and the sell-soul—not out of an urge to protect him or anything; he just happened to be there.

He squirmed and lifted his head enough to watch the officer. Both of our stares must have been too much for him.

The man snarled and flipped the boomerang to his opposite shoulder. “I told you to drop it!” A half-second later, he slammed his weapon against my temple. The blow rattled my vision. The shadows coloured between the lines. And my world was shut off.

Footnotes:

[*1] - smooth/slick font style

[*2] - poofy font style

[*3] - Image of Rei's fluttering scarf

[*4] - spaced out staccato font style

[*5] - impactful font style

[*6] - Slashes here represent glitchy-looking lines or jagged lines that run through the words and cause them to be retyped

*Also the "In a world...." part might have its own unique Movie title-esque font style

Here's a Youtube Teaser Reading that you can share with your friends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5jM9acXUys&ab_channel=TaijaSensei

(please, please, please share with your friends >___<)

[This was a handwritten 10min write that I'm surprised I pulled off without edits]

To break a person is easy. To break a spirit... is another story. So this was a feat, truly: this crumpled will in front of me, lying on the dirt. Rocks and blood in his hair, a severed tautness in his fingers, hanging loose away from his blade.

There was no space in me to feel sorry for him, for a moment ago, he might have killed me. Breaking his will was my only option, because breaking a person was easy, and it was easily that he broke me. My blood in the dirt in his hair, my wrist twisted, my ankle sprained. So I told him, I showed him, how all his loved ones were dead and that the person who broke them with ease was the very reflection that'd been trying to break me now. Revenge was not an option for him. Rage could not fuel him. It was sorrow and despair and sadness and remorse; these were my weapons, and through them: I shattered him.

There was a time when I was kinder.

Regarded as wholesome even. Not cruel or twisted, cold or wicked, not a perfectionist or some freak artist with a corrupted dream—I know what they say. but I wasn't always this... warped. There was a time when my heart still rested on her canvas, atop a puff of a colourless pillow.

I used to draw for her: my heart.

I used to depict all the sights she'd been too bedridden to see. It started with a few ugly scratches from a pencil on torn paper, but the papers got bigger, the pages fuller, their numbers filling books, then shelves. After a while, pencils didn't cut it. Drawings couldn't capture the beauty of a sky or the shimmers of an ocean, and she wanted to explore it all. She was an adventurer at the core; an adventurer with a cough. And it was that which kept her in bed.

If nothing else, I used to fear their sound; breath leaving her lungs so forcefully, so destructively. My paintbrush used to leave the page to wait for them to pass, but they got so torrential I used to fear the air would not return. So my brush strokes grew fervent. I rushed to paint my point. Entire sketchbooks full of sights, creatures, magical items. I rushed for the chance to show her the world she could not trek on her own two feet. I'd resolved myself to show her everything I had the power to show.

"Would it kill you to smile?"

My paintbrush stopped.

"You make such beautiful paintings, yet it never looks like you have any fun making them," she whined.

I considered her for a moment, giving the usual lack of emotion. She sat there, in her blankets, hugging her pillow and staring expectantly at me.

I moved my brush to an empty patch of blue and continued to paint. After a moment I tucked the canvas between two fingers and flipped it around to show her.

She laughed. "That's not what I meant."

I'd drawn a smiley face for her, using the bend of sand dunes splashing higher than they normally would and two pebbles thrown by a dessert sylph. It looked ridiculous.

"This is your best one yet, Akris."

She said my name like a song, ignoring the S, rolling the R in the only way it was meant to be rolled.

I didn't say anything.

On the days she didn't harass me, she stared out the window solemnly, between naps and coughs and our games of show and tell.

When she slept, I left to capture new sights for her to see. When I returned I'd remake them, down to last detail on each overlooked pebble or leaf.

I'd watch her excitement each time. I'd watch her joy, her bitterness, her tears, her yearning for more.

"Never stop." She whispered to me one night, after her healer had finished his failings; his potions of emptied promises discarded in a bin.

And I never did.

I rushed through her paintings when she coughed and rushed even more when the coughs stopped. I rushed to show her the world, without realizing I could have kept her in mine. If I had only stopped to paint her. Just once. I could have kept her by my side with a single portrait. I could have painted what she looked like looking at my paintings. I could have kept my heart in an eternal capsule of time, upon a colourless canvas.

But I didn't.

And she died.

Just as everyone knew she would.

The day she left her bed, I brought all my tools into her room. All my paints and oils and pastels and water colours. I threw crayons into the mix, charcoals and pencils and for the first time in my life, I made art.

The final touch was a single canvas, resting atop her pillow. There was no colour upon it, for black was not a colour; it was a reminder. A reminder that darkness and death lurks behind every masterpiece, waiting to sink its teeth into every colour you've ever grown to love, every hue of emotion you've worked hard to put on a face. Upon this canvas was a black silhouette of the portrait I'd never drawn; her shadow, resting upon her pillow without her. Abyssal and uncoloured, just a crude black splotch on my past reminding me exactly where my heart could have rested had I eternalized it.

Behind the canvas, her pillow was painted. Her bed was coloured in to the brim. Her bedsheets covered in crayons Her window splashed with rainbows of oils. Her door carried the greys of lead. Her floorboards, and walls, and ceiling and chair. Her rug, her dresser, the inside of the drawers, her flasks and vials of lies from healers whose bloods I used for all the shades of red. Every knob, every screw, every crevice, every wick... I painted it to eternity.

Living proof of the life that could have lived if the world hadn't failed her. If I hadn't failed her.

When I finished, I left the room. Closed the door—

"Would it kill you to smile?"

...I considered her echo. Then took the paintbrush from my ear, stole a smudge of red from my cheek and drew a smile on the knob.

And smiled back at it.