Chapter 31: Rage
SLENDER HANDS CURLED AROUND HER shoulders, pulling her into an embrace no one would've found comforting. She looked down and saw that the fingers were tipped with long silver nails, curving slightly down to scrape at the skin on her collarbones. When she blinked the hands flashed a beige the colour of flesh, and she felt a sense of déjà vu before shaking herself. The hands went back to the black coloured, silver tipped danger from before.
Tucking her elbows into her sides, she shot them backwards. But the thing behind her didn't budge, only tightened its hands around her till its fingers were wrapped around her throat. Somehow, she'd lost her whip. It had fallen and now she didn't know where it was. She clawed at the appendages, feeling the warmth of blood running down the length of her fingers, and reached for her Air magic. Her powers didn’t respond. They’d run out during the battle. It - she'd forgotten what Daniel had called it - could just kill her now, crush her throat, tear the flesh to shreds and be done with it. But no, it had to drag her back into the mon of Demons to get mauled by the rest, chittering and chattering in her ear. No quick death for her.
No. I just found myself, I can't die now. I just got rid of a Demon inside me, I can't get killed by them now. I need to get to Camp, find the others, make sure that there’s still three of us. Make sure that there are enough Emblems for the world to be saved. Leone trusts me. I can’t fail her, can’t let her down. She lashed out with her left hand in a wild, wide arc and it clanged past something, dug into cold, inky darkness and the things behind her screeched, disappeared, leaving flashes of pain in her shoulders. She looked down again, found that the Demon had dug its claws into her collarbones in its death throes. The others closed in, out of the corner of her eyes.
She touched the silver fingernails sticking out of her flesh, surrounding her neck like some perverted idea of necklace, and with the cool metal at her fingertips, felt something even colder rise up inside her. This feeling... Something familiar, though she hadn't felt it since the Demon went away. The urge to tear everything around her to pieces, get rid of threats, ensure survival. Aggression, fear. One always came with the other.
The Demons regarded her with their black and silver eyes, closing the circle around her, straining closer. She looked at all their faces, perversions of what nature made, and with a snarl tore the pieces of metal out of her shoulders and flung them at the horde. "Die! All of you!" For the first time since she woke up in the med bay she wanted something to just stop and go away and leave me alone!
Don't you want the Demon gone? The voice echoed in her head as she tore her way through the monsters with a dagger and her bare hand. Don't you want to stop hurting other people? Don’t you remember what you did to Emily?
There had been fear and pain and aggression and the sense that everything that made her her was at stake. Of course, yes, yes, yes. She'd agreed with them at first. They'd shown her Emily's face, her mauled body, the bits of flesh and blood and guts and she would’ve vomited if not for the straps tying her down.
Then why are you fighting us? Why are you fighting this? The voice she'd heard had been comforting, understanding, and the world had been fuzzy, everything muted and muffled, like how she'd felt when she woke up on the med bay bed, slow and sluggish and painfully unaware, without even the energy to fish herself out of the influence of some drug unknown to her.
YOU ARE READING
Emblems
Fantasy((Originally, Phoenix)) “Leave me alone!” Her form flickered in the dim light. The brothers shared a look. “All right,” one started. “Just let us say something first. We know you have powers; we can sense them on you. We can do this because we have...
