Excruciating pain travelled through her, so much so that she couldn’t even tell where it was originating from. It didn’t take long to guess however. When she had withdrawn her hand as though she had been shocked, the pain died down, only leaving her with a sore hand. Keira looked properly at the back of Iris’s neck and realised that there was something there. She pulled her sleeve down to her hand and took out a sheet of paper from the survey. Then she worked at the thing that had attached itself to Iris, she edged it off much like she would a leech and once she had a better look at it, the description felt accurate. It was small and translucent, with a small group of feelers where she guessed its head might be, and its slug body now lying limp in the palm of her hand.

Iris was shivering now, dry heaving and clutching the back of her neck. Then her head snapped up and she saw the thing that was in Keira’s hand.

“What. The. Fuck.” Keira opened her mouth to answer, but a mangled scream cut her off before she could. They both turned to see a woman charging towards them with a look of fury on her face. Keira was momentarily stunned, like a deer in headlights, but Iris had reached her limit confusion and grabbed Keira by her arm. Pulling her up and out of the way as the woman barely missed her before stumbling and falling onto the ground. Keira looked to see what she had tripped over, only to realise that it had been Iris’s foot. Then Keira was pulled away out of the park.

After that she hadn’t needed anymore encouragement to follow Iris into an alley, panting heavily as even though Iris was still recovering from the thing in Keira’s hand, she was in better shape than Keira. So while Keira was busy catching her breath, Iris looked around and made sure that the woman wasn’t going to turn up again. Then she turned to Keira.

“Explain. What is happening?” Keira returned with a shrug of her shoulders. “Seriously? You know nothing?”

“Yes. Believe it or not, I’m just as clueless as you right now.”

“But you got rid of-“ Iris cut herself off and gestured to the creature that Keira was still holding. She almost dropped the leech in response, but a strong pulsing sensation from her wrist stopped her, causing her fingers to wrap around the thing even tighter. Keira frowned. Did Palotl want her to keep a hold of it?

“Wasn’t me.” Keira was still looking at the leech, trying to think of any possible reason that it would be worth keeping. Then pain flared up in her wrist again and her head whipped around when she heard why.

More footsteps were running towards them and Keira made the choice to grab Iris with her free hand and lead the way this time. They started off again in a sprint, but the head start only meant that they weren't in immediate danger and had some time before the people running caught up again. Iris wasn’t quite on the same page as Keira yet, however.

“Why are we running? Couldn’t they help us?”

“Trust me Iris, I’m attuned to this kind of thing. They are not here to help us.” It was obvious that the answer wasn’t sufficient to Iris, but she did stay quiet and keep pace with Keira. Their pace was a fast one, but not enough as scratching sound approached from behind before a searing pain spread up her leg. Keira screamed and stumbled down to her knees, turning to kick the familiar looking dog in its face. It let go and moved out of the way, but as it went in for another bite, a cheap wooden clipboard smashed into the side of its head sending sawdust and splinters across the alley way. It also sent the dog careening into one of the walls surrounding them.

Iris looked at the now broken clipboard and then tucked it under her arm, holding up her other hand to help Keira up. She grabbed it and took her turn to be supported. Then she looked behind her to the body of the dog to check that it really was dead. It was twitching. Broken head still twisting and moving around with the rest of the body, trying to stand up and carry on its mission. That was the least of their worries, as it turned out, as a man sprinted into the mouth of the alleyway and headed straight towards the two girls. Keira swore and urged Iris on, who moved as fast as she could, given the extra weight. She then felt the sudden urge to take the next left, and so she did. Her mark flared up painfully and the world tilted slightly, throwing her back to her knees. From the retching of Iris beside her, she guessed that the feedback hit both of them. Keira crawled over to the entrance of the alley and saw that the man and dog were no longer there.

It was how Palotl was communicating with her, she realised. It couldn't speak directly to her while she was awake, but it could still give her urges and vague suggestions. At the moment, it would be in her best interest to follow them.

“What- what.” Iris did actually throw up this time, opening the lid of a bin to do so. Keira was pretty close to doing the same thing herself. “Actually, I don’t care right now. We need to leave.”

"Glad- you agree." Keira was panting heavily now. Pain and exhaustion mixing together in an unpleasant mess. She opened her bag and fished out the scarf that she brought, but something stopped her from wrapping it around the wound on her leg. Another pulse from her wrist paralysed her and she dropped the scarf on the floor with a yelp. Iris looked at Keira, and then the scarf before sighing and picking it up, bringing to Keira’s leg for her. It got as far as touching the wound, soaking in some of the blood before Keira’s hand shot out without her permission and stopped Iris from tying it. Palotl wasn’t going to let her dress the wound she realised.

“Keira? What are you-“

“It’s not…” Keira got the sudden urge to push Iris away. Instead she squashed it and focused on what to tell her friend. “Do you trust me?”

“It’s starting to wane.” Iris remarked, still holding the scarf up to the rip in her leg.

“For some reason, I’m not allowed to dress this wound, but for the same reason I think it’ll be okay.” Iris looked at her like she was insane, Keira probably was, but when she took the scarf away from the tear in Keira’s leg, she blanched. Keira frowned and looked down to see the flesh starting to knit together, blood darkening from presumably drying quicker.

“You know what. You’ve got this. Do you need me to do anything?”

“The coach will be coming to pick us up soon, but I’m not sure how capable people will be to get to it. Could you go and round people up?”

“That might be possible… but it seems like everything is out to get us. This,” she held up the broken clipboard, “isn’t going to protect me for much longer. And you’re injured, so it’s not like you would be able to help me much.”

“I’ll be the bait then.” The idea had come to her suddenly, and she hadn’t had the chance to censor herself before it came out. Now that she was actually thinking about it though, it made sense. “I’ll draw them to me and away from you. It’s not like I don’t have ways to protect myself after all.” Iris eyed Keira’s leg, which had stopped healing but was still dripping slightly. A moment passed before she nodded.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Fine. If you’re the last one left though, I’m coming after you.”

“I won’t. Be safe.” Iris snorted and stood up, helping Keira up while she was at it. Then she walked out of the alleyway and took off into a sprint. Keira also began walking, choosing the opposite end of the alley. When she made it onto the street she was immediately greeted by one of the town residents, his face contorted in rage as he began to charge at her. She, in turn, began to run away. The wound on her leg felt like it teared slightly from the sudden usage, and it was only one person, but it was a start. As she rounded another corner she came face to face with a group of around five to six of them and she began to regret her decision.

Keira ran up the street with more vigour than she thought she could manage and threw herself into another side alley, collapsing to her knees as she felt the world tilt yet again. Ears popping when everything snapped back into place. With shaky breaths she stood up and stumbled over to the alley mouth to note that yet again, she was somewhere else. The pain in her leg was a steady, throbbing, omnipresence and she glanced down to see that the colour of her blood was darker than it was previously. And it was leaving a trail. It would lead them to her, or it would lead them to her if her path wasn’t like someone had crumbled up a map and stuck a needle through it. The oozing blood brought another, much more prevalent concern to her. Blood loss. She would have assumed that Palotl was handling it if not for the fact that there was already a black haze overtaking her peripherals and threatening to consume her. Keira moved on through it all though. Even though she was limping more than walking and gritting her teeth against the agony of the bite, she wasn’t about to be caught by anyone in the town. Palotl had proven that it would step in if needed, but she didn’t know the extent it could act to. She didn’t want to test it.

This meant that slowly her focus shifted from making a scene and luring people away from Iris to moving from one location to the next, trying to stay away from the encroaching hoard. And after every relocation, after every wave of nausea when she entered a new alley only to find it somewhere completely different from where she was expecting, she found herself struggling more to retain consciousness. The constant shifting of her location did nothing to help her retain coherency of the situation, with one particularly nasty wave having her lean over a bin to throw up what remained in her stomach. Everything blurred for a second and she felt her consciousness wane, causing her to brace her hand on the brick wall behind it.

A rancid smell invaded her nose, emanating from the bin. She would have thrown up more if she had anything left in her stomach, but at least it did a small favour in helping clarity return to her mind. An itchy feeling on her hand had her looking up and seeing that the alley had gone dark. Was it night already? But then what was that crawling sensation on her hand? It didn’t feel like the brick it was a minute ago. She pulled her hand off of the wall and stumbled back uncontrollably.

Then, she saw it. A writhing mass of butterflies were perched on the wall with them, much like the rest of the alley, looking like they had all of the colour drained out of them. Their wing opened simultaneously, the sounds combining into one. While the undersides of their wings were stained in greyscale, the rest wasn’t. A vibrant red butterfly appeared on the wall in front of her. Burning its way into her brain through the grey monotony. Its only patter being two black smudges that twitched as the thousands of butterflies that made up the mural moved.

“You are tired friend. Why don’t you rest and let me take over for a while?” Maybe she wasn’t more awake after all. Maybe it was a delusion her mind was under as she dreamt. Or maybe the delusion was her finally waking up and seeing the world beneath the prison of awareness. Keira shook her head and shut her eyes. Opening them to the alley and the dim light of the sun that had filtered through the rain clouds.

Was she loosing too much blood?

Keira looked down at the bite mark in her leg and the trail it was leaving behind. It was black. Blood shouldn’t be black? Another wave of nausea knocked her out for a moment, enough for her to see the darkened alley again, to see a singular red butterfly float out of its mouth. When the desaturated colour returned to the world, Keira felt like she had no option other than to follow it. The mark on her wrist that had been permanently itching spiked again in intensity and this time it stayed at that level as she walked out into the town square. It was so empty… was this what Palotl was trying to do? Another wave of nausea but instead of a dark mirror of the town her mind blanked completely, the only vision in her mind was a white symbol breaking through the black. It burned itself into her mind and she couldn’t help but feel like she had always known it. It was familiar.

Collapsing to the ground she gazed at the pavement and wondered how she would inscribe it onto the stone. Her pens or pencils wouldn’t work… The darkness invaded her vision once again, and then she was back to the fake reality. Only this time she wasn’t crowded by tall buildings and rooves that hung a little too far over the walls of their houses. This time she could see her god in the stormy clouds that overlooked the monochrome landscape. Her finger moved without her permission and pushed itself into the pavement. The dull pressure barely registering before pain pierced the haze. The rough surface of the floor tore her skin and her finger started bleeding again. Keira shouted and pulled her hand off of the pavement. Looking up she saw that it was once again light.

Only for a moment. She did not blink this time. It was like the world seamlessly shifted into its grey tones. A sun setting all too quickly. Leaving the sky to something far more powerful. Her hand was back on the stone and tracing the pattern she saw perfectly. It didn’t matter how much she was resisting, how much her hand was shaking from the pain of slowly grinding her finger to the bone, the lines came out with robot like precision.

Keira looked up into the clouds and met Palotl’s gaze. Two white spotlights in a shroud of blackened cloud that moved ever so slightly with the phasing in and out of its multitude of wings.

Fingers stopped moving and she saw that the pattern was complete. She didn’t even feel any pain. The black ink blending in with the dark asphalt.

Something itched on her face. They followed the natural path of tears from her eyes down her face, but they were too thick to be so. Her free hand moved then, to take the leech out of her bag and put it in the centre of the pattern of circles and lines. Both of her hands moved to the bottom of the pattern and she once again gazed up at Palotl, wanting an explanation and not trusting her voice to convey it.

She also wanted to see it. To watch its wings manifest and collapse without the protection of the oncoming storm. Her gaze were drawn to where the largest rifts in reality were. Windows unto the plane. Its eyes. The only thing that was clear about it. They had no depth yet they offered a glimpse into the abyss.

A rotten taste filled her mouth as a heavy silence settled across the world. Centred on the drawing in front of her, a shudder ran through the earth. It jostled her enough that she threw up the vile taste in her mouth. Watching in horror as a black sludge came out and splattered over the pattern and the leech that sat on top of it.

And then the blood on her face, in her mouth, on the floor, everywhere. It converged on the leech in an oil like substance. The liquid kept flowing to it. Then the screams filled the air. The screams of the dying. Soon the red and black blood was carrying more translucent creatures. Crushing them all into a sphere in the centre of where the symbol once was. Then it passed.

As if the world let out a breath. She had. Keira breathed shakily and picked up the dark red orb in her trembling hand. It had the consistency of glass, her mind supplied, before she slumped over and the world faded away into nothing but a single dot in the sky.

Lying on her back she had nothing to do but look at it. To see the figures that were around the edge and it felt like they were watching them. Names were scratching at her memory, just beneath her awareness. An eye opened above all of them, snake like and golden. This time a name did come to mind, said with enough vitriol to pierce the fog in her mind.

Traitor.