2044
Allison Fae
Allison didn’t remember hitting the ground. It happened so fast it was like a cable severed—one second in and then the next out. When she fell off the ledge she screamed—she was sure of that. Her voice felt scraped by a thousand knives as her vocal cords shouted almost as loud as she ever had. That memory had threatened to surface and only by the luck of the gods did her passing out take precedence. She called out Jace’s name—in vain, unfortunately and she continued to fall. Down, like a fallen angel falling from the graces of heaven. Her wings ripped from her back and kicked to the depths of hell below. Not even Kronos would take her corpse in. Her mind went blank, and her screams died in silence as the darkness had claimed her.
For but a moment she could have believed that she was dead and the place she existed now was an afterlife meant to suffer and drift without any sense of feeling or emotion. The memory of the fall felt like it happened an eon ago. The fact that brought her mind back to a sense of reality was the pain that she felt. The pain rang so deep within her it flowed freely with no regard to where it bounced off. It rang through her body in totality. It was enormous.
There was a coldness in not knowing where she was—and the pain struck through like a sword stabbing through her gut. She felt a gravitas surrounding her like an imposing force—recognizing that force as the shadow of Vita standing over her it sent chills down her spine—wherever that was right now. The feeling was a black disgust in the pit of her stomach. It had been years...so many long years since she had been so easily overpowered and thrown away. All that she had trained for and worked toward...all the suffering just to be thrown down the chute like nothing had ever mattered.
Suddenly with that realization she felt even more—even greater and deeper pain from her chest shooting outward in all directions. It was like a cosmic pain that echoed across the galaxies. It threatened to keep her eyes closed like stitching with thin stakes of metal. She began to feel before she could see. A foreign feeling jabbed in her abdomen like a spear, and all at once she thought of her lance and figured she probably got stabbed with her own weapon like a fool.
No, wait. That couldn’t be right, she lost the lance when she tried to attack...what was his—HRRRKK! She bent over as a sharp searing pain inflamed her chest area and it spread down fast. Like an injection of pure venom into her body her entire being started shaking violently. Her vision seeped with red as it started to wane. Her body felt numb and totally strung up—the first thing that she could think of was some hunter’s kill ready to be put to the flame.
Then she remembered the creature she had hunted in the woods before ever stepping foot in Remire. How she had tied up her kill and pared the edible meat from the unusable scraps. Before she met back up with Felix...before her course changed forever and she was shown just how powerless she really was.
Her eyes flashed open and immediately she saw she was deep in some sweltering-hot cave. The heat was the first thing that came to her after the stabbing sensation—it was both extremely hot in her chest and almost hotter outside. Her skin was drenched in sweat and as her vision tried to settle she could see the waves irradiating off a large central column in front of her. The sights were unfamiliar at first until she recognized that it was much too dark to see the entirety of the room she was in. The only light she was afforded came from the red gemstones embedded deep into the walls at every odd interval. The light was pulsing all around her it reminded her of firelight—but the artificial nature of it made her shiver above all else.
She looked down and saw a long, thick cable extending out from her chest toward a large machine in the center of the room, the casing of which rose higher, higher, and she saw it eventually translated from metal to a glowing red-hot light—it was up there that she fell from. The cable itself looks like it was inserted forcefully—dried blood had crusted over the entry point in her abdomen, and the pain she felt from it was still so raw. She gritted her teeth and bent her head downwards as it caused her to let loose a rotten sound.
She didn’t know how she survived the fall, but that question quickly sank below the pain that shot out of her chest from the cable. She wished she could just will the damn thing out of her like it were made from the same metal as her lance.
Her lance.
She gritted her teeth and cursed herself for losing it in the first place. She let loose a scream once and then exhaled sharply, letting her head droop for a moment. She opened her eyes again and took a look around her surroundings—she was raised about ten feet off the ground by her arms and legs—metal bracers wrapped around her wrists and ankles. She could tell that everything around her was made of metal—the floors, the walls, and especially the connectors around her.
To her immediate right she saw a similar bar of metal running alongside the perimeter of the room—stopping just a few feet short of connecting fully to the bar she was. There was a body in those chains as well, but it had looked worn and decrepit—drained of all that could possibly been called human. It was little more than the remains of what used to be a teenager, and that was when she noticed the stench emanating from the body. It made her eyes water and she gagged reflexively, coughing up spittle to the ground below. It had the compound stench of decay and burning decay at that.
A chill ran down her spine as she tried to reach toward the cable, but the restraints were just tight enough that she couldn’t make contact with it. She tried again to will her lance to her—but still it did not come. No voice came to her, no help, nothing. She was left all and utterly alone.
She tried calling out in her mind but found only silence awaiting her every call. Jace wouldn’t answer her. Sakonna wouldn’t answer her. What good were people if they didn’t answer. She bent her head low and offered a hollow laugh. She knew this was entirely her own fault. She wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t worthy. And now she sat here strung up. So, this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a slow...inexorable whimper. How pathetic.
Darkness surrounded Allison on all sides. She lay resigned to herself. Her head remained drooped with her eyes closed. The pain hadn’t dulled any, but the predictable pattern at which it came gave her few minutes of respite before and after each wave. It came like a spoon carving her insides out like a pumpkin on Halloween. She had read plenty of books that described the event when she was younger.
Of course, she didn’t remember anything about the characters or the stories that took place in those old books—much less who wrote them, but she had a clear image of three school-aged kids carving out pumpkins before Halloween night. The act was described as if it were a vicious murder. She sat there with those memories bleeding into the edge of her vision. She thought she could remember the faces of the children—the faces she ascribed to them at least. They were such familiar faces that had accompanied her on several different storied adventures...but why could she not remember them now?
It wasn’t because they didn’t matter to her, she absorbed characters within stories like a sponge absorbed water. Was it because that part of her had died, all those years ago when the world crossed over? It was a hollow within her more than anything that this tower could take from her. A scream echoed across the silence as if to accentuate the horror over such a calamity. She felt the pounding weight hanging off her shoulders like it weighed a ton. Her pad sat at the bottom of her pack, and—HKKKK!
She winced as the cable in her burned white hot and she let out a small scream as the devilish tech did what it needed to. She knew there were more important things now than the unfinished story sitting heavy like a stone in her backpack, but that was the whole point of her feelings, right? There was always something more important. Always something that had to take precedence over herself. Always a duty to get done. Nothing to ever leave to itself and enjoy for herself. Not until her duty was done. Not until...
She retreated back into her mind to her memories. Thoughts she kept locked away reached around her subconscious like a jellyfish—wrapping their long tentacles around her mind like a vice. Her desire to see that which she had lost contact with called on those memories so full of pain and heartbreak. Felix’s face burned into her memory and like another burning feeling inside her she felt intense sadness and anger. The memory that had threatened to resurface had finally pushed its way up, forcing everything else aside.
Autumn 2039
Allison had been long on her hunt for Issachar after her last encounter with him seven years prior. The point in which she was separated from the man she thought was tied to a new beginning for her had been solid in motivation of her search. She was led to find Felix after being separated for so long—after losing their child and encountering Sakonna so long ago in that decrepit old library. She built herself back up from that day and had Jace by her side to hunt down the life that was ripped from her.
She was thirty now—and that fact showed in her physique. She had bulked up and trained herself to live up to the hunter role she felt she had to live up to. She hunted down the two most important people in her life, and whichever she had found first would determine which path in life she would continue to follow.
Years of surviving in the world anew have toughened her to live among the world and adapt to its challenges versus exist outside and in spite. It had become more than clear that this world was not going to revert back to its prior existence—and that meaning from existence would come from whatever she was able to make of it. Her desires would have to be worked for directly. Her hair was short then—she spent a few years trying out a new look to emblazon the new ideology she was forming within herself.
Jace was still with her back then. She called on him frequently for advice and companionship in this world in where she trusted so few. During those days—she was investigating a rumor that a Creature of the Night was spotted around the land that used to be Colorado.
Rumor spread as easily as water through a filter in these days—and the actions of the Creatures of the Night were marveled at like actions of gods that would spread among the commonwealth as acts of inspiration in the new world. They created new mythologies that spread across the landmass like a ripfire. To Allison, they were simply leads to investigate and confirm if they were worth following or not. She had investigated hundreds of rumors across the country for any sort of validity to the claims being made. This led her across marshes, wetlands aplenty, even to the bonelands of the old mid west—land that required traveling through the underground tunnels to avoid being seared alive on the surface by the intense heat from the sun above.
It was there underneath the bonelands she found clues toward the two Children of the Night she was hunting down—she felt deep energies coming from books and hand drawn maps that resonated images of Issachar and Sakonna behind her eyes.
Since then, she has returned to a local settlement where she took to the informants—the gossips of the land who trade information for various resources. Thankfully—Allison’s skill in the hunt allowed her to loosen most lips to find the information she was looking for.
The current rumor she was investigating centered around the mysterious landmasses that floated for no conceivable reason out west of what used to be Denver. It was a strange thought—how people related location to places that used to be. It was as if they all believed the country that used to be theirs would soon come back to them. Commitment to the new would surely mean that they had to give up on the old.
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Allison called this area the Fluxlands. They were areas where the land acted weird. Several chunks of earth were reported to have lifted off the ground and remained airborne. Word traveled that there used to be buildings that had been lifted too—but nobody knew if anybody had actually lived there before it went skyward.
Upon arriving on the area Allison had marveled at the chunks of earth that seemed to be floating hundreds of feet in the air. She could only see the undersides of the landmasses from her perspective—but it was clear to see from the underside that the fragments themselves were ripped from the surface of the planet—the large craters evidence of their upheaval.
“What do you think?” Jace had asked. “Some magnetic bullshit or is there something supernatural happening here?”
“I’m not too sure yet,” Allison said. “I am sensing something happening up there which unnerves me.”
“Something like what we’re looking for something?” He asked.
She looked to him, and she saw those same golden eyes and brilliant blond hair staring back at him just like when she was a kid. “Something I wish to check out more than anything else at the moment. It’s strong...pulling me in.”
“Well then el capitan. What are we waiting for? Let’s get up there and rock this shit.”
“Well, aren’t you excitable?” Allison said.
“Aren’t you?”
She gave him a knowing look and then turned toward the closest landmass—probably only about ten to twelve feet off the ground rotating on its own personal axis—that unknown to Allison. She walked to a jog until she leaped off the ground—pushing off with her left foot which was noticeably human and not yet prosthetic. Jace hovered behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist as he shot forward like an arrow toward the landmass.
She flew upward with a hand trained to reach for the shimmering silver knife attached to her belt. She reached the lower landmass to settle her balance on—which started shifting under her. She almost fell over but still managed to catch herself before steadying and eyeing her next goal—the larger landmass that looked to be still in its movement.
“You ready for another one?” Allison asked.
“Yeah, let me just evacuate my stomach real quick while you spin on this disco ball here.”
“Charming.”
“What can I do but point inward, but I try to work with the material I’ve been given.”
She leaped again and Jace continued to carry her to the next landmass. She landed on top of a larger landmass—it looked to be as large as a football field. Topside, she saw a few buildings that she was surprised were still standing.
She walked forward and felt a pulse from within her beckoning toward the center. Something about the center. “You got a scope of what’s going on here?”
Jace appeared at her side. “Something’s there. Something I can’t quite place. Keep your wits about you. I’m sensing danger.”
She nodded as she approached the first building. It sat misshapen and roughly constructed—she had been familiar with buildings like it for quite some time. She stopped as she raised a hand to the side of one of the building’s walls and her breath caught in her throat.
There was no way—she felt an urging of a familiar energy and she turned toward a building off to her right. She started jogging and then running until she made it to just outside—it was a two-story building made of wood and stones. It looked like it could fall over at any minute, but the source of her feeling was coming from this spot right here.
“Felix?!” She called out, hoping to hear any sort of response. “Felix is that you?”
She hadn’t seen him since they were separated. She had an inkling that he was here, and she looked up at the building again in desperation.
There was no answer but the wind that continued to whip around her. She took a deep breath and placed a hand on the front panel that acted as a door. There was a smell about the place that she couldn’t quite place, but it felt familiar. She closed her eyes and felt a pushing force behind her eyes that illuminated his face. She couldn’t see what he was doing or exactly where in the building he was, but she knew that he was inside. Why did he not answer?
She pushed open on the door and it slid into place and stuck. The inside of what she could see almost looked like a lobby—it extended out a couple dozen feet back and looked to extend a couple feet out on either side that she couldn’t see.
“I’m not too keen on you just walking in there,” Jace said. “Something’s not right.”
“Yeah, if it’s not right and he needs me then I need to do what I can to help.”
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“And if it gets me back to him then I don’t care.”
“Ally, I just ask you take some time to think about it and—”
She took a step in and felt an immediate and unshakable pain latch onto her left leg. She shouted out in pain and looked down to find that her leg was dripping blood from three points just under her knee. The blood trailed down and it forced her down—she couldn’t feel anything below the blood. The pain was piercing white hot. She was shaking and trying to keep breathing. There was lumbering footsteps coming from somewhere out of her sight.
The smell of copper filled her front mind and she looked down again and the blood pooling out from her leg had started to spurt now. The sight of her leg like that made her lightheaded, she couldn’t focus enough to summon Jace. She blinked and suddenly Felix was standing above her—he stood still, arms straight to his side staring at her. He looked worse for wear—the clothes he had worn were torn and dirty—his hair a wet mess over his face. He simply stared at her, but suddenly she felt a piercing sound in her mind and felt him crawling around in her thoughts. Probing her brain and she felt questions upon questions.
Who are you and why do you look like her?
Who are you and why have you come here?
Who are you and why are you continuing to torture me here?
What reason do you have to come here?
His eyes flashed for a second longer—he must have realized she wasn’t a phantom or a ghost. The questions continued back up but harder and faster. He stood still staring over her and the pain in her leg was only second to the pounding headache that slammed from his intrusions. The questions were so many, and she was split between feeling pain in her head and her leg. She kept seeing images of Arianna as he scoped through her mind—he was searching her mind for everything—looking through everything. He went as far back as Nassau and he saw the face of Lillian Jones and she screamed out, shoving him out.
The world around her changed as she pushed him out—everything looked like it shifted. She was inside what looked like a shopping center that was completely hollowed out. The edge of her vision looked like it was full of stars and cosmic energy. Down on her leg she saw what looked to be a crimson bear trap. Its teeth were sunk deep into her leg, and she looked up in horror to see Felix, there was a dark aura outlining his presence.
“You had a child...you had my child…” He said, offering a look of contempt. She couldn’t respond, and so he continued on her. “You let her live. Knowing what I have gone through with my condition and with how this world is...you let her live?”
She willed enough of herself together to summon Jace. He stepped in between the both of them, pushing him back a step. Here, in this strange sight...he was fully corporeal.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jace asked.
Felix looked to Jace with a look of great offense. He placed an arm on Jace’s shoulder and forced him to one knee—he wasn’t able to push back—he was too weak. Felix bared his teeth and sloppily pushed him down even further. There was a pained look on Jace’s face, and she felt herself in a similar situation back facing Lillian Jones as she tried to use Jace against her.
Something in her broke. She jumped up to a standing position—blood coating the entirety of her left leg—she no longer felt it as it has gone completely numb. The trap seemed to cling even tighter—she felt it closed fully and the teeth met inside her body.
Allison had a feeling deep inside of sadness and relief—the chance at some form of normalcy returning to her life and in that moment those feelings died. He was ready to kill her here and think nothing more on it—all because he learned that he had a child out there. The world around her had stopped. She noticed on his hand was a golden ring with an onyx black stone—and in that moment she realized that was the true source of the energy that was calling out to her. Suddenly the smell came clear to her, and she inhaled a great must of alcohol, it almost doubled her over, but she remained grasping out and clasped a hand on his—catching him off guard and in that instant an explosion of light seemed to ring out.
The world around her changed back to the normal sight—and the trap around her leg vanished—even though the pain and the blood remained. Jace wrapped his hand around hers on top of Felix’s and suddenly she felt his presence leave her. She felt a piece of her vanish as she was pushed back by the force of their impact. In her hands was the shimmering black lance—when it reached its full length she saw the black stone in his ring was gone. She had pulled the lance from the stone.
“What have you done?!” Felix shouted—his face an angry mess. “That’s not yours!” They sounded like the cries of an angered child. “You come here with all these...all these terrible things and now you come to rob me all I have left?”
She fell back as her damaged leg couldn’t hold her any longer. It hurt too much to keep standing. She hit on her back and the pain shot through her vision as a bright white flash. The lance extended over her like a shield and covered her entirely against the ground. She felt him hammering at the shield—but she couldn’t make out what he was saying—it was drowned out by his screams and then she heard glass smashing against the shield. And then a second sound of it—almost like a bottle. Then a third continued. God damn it Felix, how deep a hole have you drunk yourself in up here? That was the last thought she had before she passed out.
Felix was long gone by the time she had woken up. She was still underneath the shield, but as soon as she woke it retracted and popped next to her as a small ingot sized chunk of metal. Her leg was completely dead to feeling. She had lost so much blood—it was a wonder why she wasn’t dead on the spot. She reached out for the stone and cut herself on a glass shard that had landed near the metal. She bit her lip as she drew breath in and cursed, bringing her hand close. A thin line of crimson started dripping down and she cursed again.
She reached out again and grabbed the piece of metal and it extended out around her arm—almost like it had sentience of its own. It worked its way down the side of her body until it reached the part of her leg she couldn’t feel anymore.
“Jace...I can’t feel...I can’t feel my leg.” She didn’t hear any response—she couldn’t hear him anymore. But she knew what had happened—he had helped her when the stone in the ring shifted—transformed before their eyes. There was something about this metal here that drew her in. “Jace...you’re going to need to help me here. I cannot move from this spot. I can’t feel my leg.”
The metal wrapped itself just above the point where the trap had dug into her leg and connected to itself like a brace. She felt a sure feeling in her gut that what was going to happen was going to hurt—moreso than the trap latching on in the first place, but she knew it needed to happen. She took a deep breath and for a second switched over to that other world—that other strange sight she couldn’t explain. She saw the trap just below where the metal had wrapped itself around her leg, and that confirmed what Jace had intended to do.
She sat there as the metal started growing warm around the spot on her leg—warmer until it became painful. She bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood when it increased. The only thing keeping her conscious was an otherworldly will that came from having contact with the metal. She knew even then that this belonged to something greater than their world. As much pain as it brought it was the one thing her consciousness latched to as it worked to amputate and cauterize the wound in one fell swoop. She screamed louder than she had ever screamed before, and in her memory she returned back to her front mind.