The rain lashed Two as she navigated the maze of remebered streets she’d never walked before. Familiarity grew like a mold, every alley and dead echoed places well trod but ill remembered. The blaze loomed ever taller. A hill tethered to the pouring sky by sinew of smoke and steam. A waling pyre that burned blindly into the night

It brought Hope’s desperate raving to mind. A girl grasping for aid. Too weak to take what she wanted. Was it worth keeping such a fragile thing?

She didn’t know and didn’t have time to parse thoughts from the mire of disgust the girl inspired. She turned her mind to the discoveries.

First and most glaring was the magic Hope possessed. Healing at that pace was in the realm of cultivators. Yet Hope had been cut like a mortal.

It meant she had a chance against greater threats. It also promised there would be greater threats. Flimsy or not It would only take one hit from someone like Butch to end her.

A nearby building folded beneath the storms pressure. Two gave the area a wide berth. Unwilling to chance flying or floating debris.

She caught a flavour in the whipping wind. Bitter like mold and sweet rot. The taste of company dead and decaying. Loneliness.

Two considered the fact her hope actively hated and feared her. It did not bode well for her future endeavors. She drank deep.

Essence wasn’t bounded to matter. Rhevier’s had hammered that fact to her. No, essence could be guided and cling to rock or empty space. In the end essence did as it was wont to do.

The thing she traced now scarcely graced the air. Instead, it pooled in still puddles beneath flowing water. Its scent rose like foul sewage and clung. She felt the invisible mire rise.

The essence lacked the potency to spill into reality yet she felt it all the same. Like the storm had succeeded in drowning the world but forgotten to end.

Rain continued to fall yet it fell wrong. The mire rose above her head and sound became impossibly far away. She felt like a passenger in her body as there was to feel became numb.

Then she reached the source.

The wind did not die, its simply gave up on moving. The rushing current almost forgot to flow. It became a lazy pull at her ankles as a weight settled in her chest. Her target was before her but Two wasn’t sure she wanted to meet them. She wanted to sit in the silence at let the world pass her by.

It was a familiar feeling, and as she’d to do, she trudged through it. She knew there was magic at play. It didn’t make the steps any lighter.

An old castle wall stood, pressed on all sides by shacks derelict and worn. A lone broken reminder from an age lost past. Time had washed everything but the faint impression of brickwork.

A deep crack was among the wall’s many wounds. A twig of a girl nestled there. Crackling lightning peeked into but never quite filled the dark recess. Thunder didn’t dare break the quiet. Only their bare feet were visible, littered with purple bruises and angry little cuts. The rest of them was just a shape. Wreathed in ruined cloth and caressing shadow

Two crouched and locked eyes with the girl she’d been. But they didn’t see her. Nor the storm. Or the rising water that would drown her if the region flooded. She couldn’t see anything. Not her pain or grief. Her bright amber eyes were fixed squarely on nothing at all.

Two dragged her gaze away and fought a sudden wave of recollection. Every breath was a struggle that filled her lungs with syrupy apathy. The sort that came were everything there was to feel came and surged until it cracked its container and left you with nothing.

It knocked Two on her ass.

“Hey,” she croaked unable to muster anything more.

“What do you want?” they said with out any curiosity or feeling.

Two’s head drooped and she saw her soaked robes. She couldn’t bring herself to care. She tore her gaze back to the lonely girl. The shadows about them twitched then returned to holding the girl. Thin ark tendrils caressed her torn skin.

“I want you to help me.”

“Sure”

Two blinked. The girl was still looking through her. Their was nothing in their indicate a sudden change of heart. “Why?”

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“It doesn’t matter.”

Was she saying the reason didn’t matter. Or was she helping because it didn’t matter. Two drank deep of the essence and knew it to be the second option. They were too tired to care… so they just went with it.

A spiteful spark ignited in her heart and beat back the gloom. The oppressive rain droned on in silence. A constant weight that smothered. It doesn’t matter; the words fed the flame.

“If it doesn’t matter why do anything at all.”

“Because that’s what I am. I go and go. One thing to the next, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Because were always alone in the end.” They looked at her. The expression she saw through blinks of lightning could not be called a smile, it was far too dull for that. It was wry nonetheless. The essence shifted. The dark of the girl nestled in twitched again. Its tendrils thickened and tightened around their thin limbs.

A rebuttal rose and died on its way to her lips. She couldn’t deny it. The very air was fouled by isolation. For all the necklace allowed for idle conversation it hadn’t changed much. She was still helpless and surrounded by people she couldn’t trust.

The only exception was Igni, but he was so far beyond her might as well be a passing star. She burned her old life and while she hope her new one would be better… well there was a chasm between hope and belief.

“But I’ll have myself. Won’t I?” Two offered her hand. The rain soaked her and the essence played games with her heart. She let it happen, it felt right.

The shadows tightened and pulled the lonely girl deeper into the crack. Grinding their soft flesh into hard stone. They didn’t make a sound, they just stared.

“I don’t know. Do I?”

Ah. There it was pain. A hint of flavor almost lost beneath heavy dispassion and rising agitation. The shadows bristled.

Two stretched her hand into the crack. The dark prickled as it covered her, like pins and needles steeped in malice. It didn’t stop her as she brought her hand right beside the girl’s.

“Thats something for you to decide.”

Their eyes fell to their hands, a hair’s breadth away. “You know this doesn’t really change anything.” Two waited. Their eyes bounced back to her. They stretched a finger and a crack opened in the haze of quiet loneliness.

From it flowed something bright warm -

That was lacerated, torn and broken by the jagged edge. Pain and fury ignited spread like a spark upon oil. Dozens of amber eyes opened in the cracks dark but they were eyes like a dolls eyes were eyes. Bright stinging buttons stitched into dark flesh. Shadows writhed and fingers of ink and eyes reached out and sank into the crack’s edge.

It was instinct and blind panic that saved her from the first strike. A dark lance shot out and two threw herself to the side. She crashed into thin alley’s side and was instantly soaked, but her attention was fixed on the thing spilling from the crack.

They soaked the girlZ in ink and shackles as they stepped into being. Liquid darkness pooled and frothed into a woman’s shape. The ‘lance’ jerked free off punctured stone. Layers of ink peeled off in strings to reveal an arm and blade fingers.

Eyes of amber light swirled in their form and glared at her. The greatest two shifted to their face, as a pair of mismatched hateful eyes. Even hunched till their head was lower than their knees they stood taller than her. Thin like a staved cadaver and crooked like the victim of a beating. A silhouette, dropping and disproportionate. Pupilless orbs stared from a stain deeper than black.

They bled essence into the world. Two did not need to ask their name. She could almost taste it. Soured joy, bitter agony, the bite of something that should have been soft. Distrust, abandonment, and betrayal boiled and stirred until it could only be Rejection.

Two didn’t let it take the first step. She bolted and duked round the first alley she saw. She glanced behind, her shadow was not far.

It fell into motion, taking one overly long step, then stumbling and scrambling on all fours. It’s fingers and tones keened as they peeled stone . Yet the imbalance did not slow it. It collapsed forward. Again and again. In a violent affront to motion. A tumbling procession of silent fury punctuated by the tearing of all it broke.

Two ran faster but the thing was a machine of momentum. The sound of its procession crow. Shipped stone chopped wood, cutting tearing splashing. While Two heart and legs could only pump so fast.

Her mind scrambled in search of escape. She spied an open window through an open door and darted. She bounced over tables and chairs and crashed through the single rotted board that barred her passage. She hoped the sudden turn and small space would be an impediment.

A single glance told her that killed that hope.

The thing moved in stumbles and scrambling fits of violence. Perfect violence. Every stumble only served to push to carry it farther. A lash sank into wood and a lurch smooth hoisted it over a fallen table. It bounced through the window and exploded into violent motion on the other side.

Two had not stopped running while glanced back. It did not matter. They lunged. Two raised her knife in time to catch the attack. The blow’s weight threw her back, it all her strength and poise to stay upright. Lest the sharp seeking fingers reach her eyes.

She could do nothing about their second hand. Cold pain blossomed in her thigh. She looked down to see their hand sank into the meat of her thigh. Finger scrapping across bone and peeling flesh. Agony and panic killed the scream that tried to rise. Desperation resolved the world into crystal focus.

Act or die. Considering the wound’s depth she might already be dead. Yet inaction would turn maybe into certainty.

She stopped fighting the claw seeking her eyes and instead twisted out of its path. She earned a deep gash on her shoulder. The motion stripped fresh layers of her leg. Teeth grit against the pain she glared up at the blank-faced wraith bearing down on her. Its mismatched eyes narrowed in satisfaction.

Two plunged her knife into one. Amber exploded into a gush of vibrant and pitch gore. The storm swallowed both.

The thing screamed.

It did not have lips, or breath or voice, but they screamed. The sound high and deep pierced her ears and shook her bones. It danced across her soul.

Her grip never faltered she twist and drove the blade deeper with all her strength. Driving their wail octaves higher.

They coiled like a spring and swept Two in the motion. One moment she was dangling by her ruined leg. Her knife wrenched free by the sudden motion. The next she was whipped into the wind. Hurtling head over heel hen falling with the raging wind and rain.