“Snap out of it, Emerson!” Mag shouted. “Please, you have to wake up!”
“I am awake!” I snapped. “For the first time in my life, I’m finally awake. I know what humans are now. They’re dangerous, and they need to be stopped. Either give me the Knowledge Bracelet or perish.”
“Never! I won’t help you kill people.”
The diminishing uninfected portion of me was scared of what I might do to her for saying that. But Vulgra kept its word, and it didn’t force me to hurt Mag. Instead, I explained to her everything Vulgra had told me. I told her about the comfortable, blissful afterlife we could have. I told her about Susan and the potential utopias we could save.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said. “I believe Archie. I believe we are good, and I believe Earth is a potential utopia. I gave Archie my word that I would help destroy you, and I won’t go back on that.” Then she looked me dead in the eye. “Emerson, I need you to remember who you are and fight Vulgra. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
I laughed in her face. “You think you can hurt me? Oh, what a laughable thing to say!” I said and laughed some more to prove my point. Then I said, “You’re going to die now if you don’t change your mind.” I didn’t say it menacingly. I said it in the way a parent might tell their child they’re going to miss the school bus if they don’t hurry. It was like killing my best friend wasn’t a big deal.
That bothered me. It bothered me somewhere way deep down inside, in some part of me that somehow still hadn’t been infected—that tiny, relentless part of me that still loved Mag and, like her, believed the butterflies were right about us. However, that piece of me was but a speck of dust in the sandstorm of Vulgra’s stranglehold.
“Fight, Emerson!” Mag pleaded again. “I know you’re in there. You have to fight it. Please... I can’t lose you.” A single tear rolled down her cheek as she said this.
I couldn’t stand the sight of it. Despite what I had become, I didn’t want to betray Mag. I was suddenly very aware of the smidgen of guilt I had pushed behind my ear back in Egola Castle. It felt like my ear had been stung by a bee.
“Silence!” I bellowed, sounding nothing like myself, for Vulgra had taken over my speech. “The one you call Emerson is no longer able to communicate with you. He is nothing more than my vessel now. He is but a puppet.”
“YOU’RE but a puppet!” Mag screamed. “Give me Emerson back! NOW!” Screaming like that visibly hurt Mag, and she clutched her chest and winced. Though Vulgra had woken her up, her body was still weak from the beating Sir had given her.
“I can’t do that,” I said, “for there is no Emerson to give back. He’s gone.”
“No, he’s not. I know he’s still there. He wouldn’t give up so easily. He acts like he’s given up on the world and that he hates everybody, but I know he really doesn’t. He’s just hurting. At his core, he’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Except for that one time when he did, but even then, I had kind of goaded him into that. The bottom line is, I know he’s fighting you, and I know he’ll beat you.”
She was wrong to have such faith in me. I wasn’t the same person I was when we met, and I absolutely would hurt a fly. I’d hurt a whole flock of them. If that’s even what a group of flies is called. The fact that I don’t care enough to look that up before harming them says everything you need to know about who I was.
Mag was also wrong to refuse to do the right thing. And what for? Because of a stupid promise she had made to her brother? What about all the people in the potential utopias who weren’t her brother and could be hurt if the humans of Earth weren’t stopped? She wasn’t thinking about them at all. She was being selfish. She was as much a human as anyone. Now that I could see that, I despised her as if she were a bunch of Hitlers someone had taped together.
“Don’t give up, Emerson,” Mag said, continuing to be unreasonable. “I know you and the world haven’t always been on good terms, and maybe some things Vulgra has told you are true. Maybe the world is a huge mess, and maybe we all do have evil in us. But that doesn’t mean we’ve lost our potential to be good. We just need another chance to let the butterflies do their work.
“But we won’t get that chance unless you remember who you are. Not just who you were before your dad died but long before that. No one starts out thinking the world is an awful place. Everybody, at some point in their lives, believes our world is a potential utopia. You have to remember who you were when you believed it, too. Find that part of you, and hang on to it with everything you have.”
“That part of me is gone,” I said. “And like you said yourself, once you let that part of yourself go, you can never get it back.”
“I thought you couldn’t, but after everything Archie has told us, now that I know there’s magic in our world and that Vulgra is responsible for our suffering, I can see that I was wrong. The part of us that trusts people and makes friends as easily as heating up a piece of pie in the microwave never leaves us. It never leaves because it isn’t just a part of us. It’s who we are when you remove everything superficial.” Mag took my hands in hers and said, “Please, Emerson, remember who you are.”
I tore my hands away. “I know damn well who I am! I’m the only person selfless enough to sacrifice my own species to save countless others. Ending humanity is the right thing to do. How do you not see that? How can you not see that Archie lied to you? All people do is destroy and hurt. All they do is look out for themselves and maybe a select few who are close to them. But our instinct to love is nowhere near as strong as our instinct to hate. We’re terrifying, and I can’t let us survive.
“Mag, this is your last chance to do the right thing and join me in a blissful afterlife. Refuse to hand over the Knowledge Bracelet, and I will have no choice but to end you.”
I hated that I said that. The sting of guilt in my ear swooped down my neck and pierced my chest, but I deflected it and buried it deep, deep, deep inside my stomach until I couldn’t feel it.
Besides, I knew I wouldn’t have to follow through on my threat. Mag wouldn’t stand in my way knowing that the cost of doing so was her life (and afterlife). She wouldn’t risk eternal comfort to save a bunch of jerks and assholes, most of whom she’d never meet, most of whom hadn’t even been born yet.
However, Mag did not respond as expected. “No. I won’t help you. It’s the wrong thing to do.” She made a quick motion with her arms and shouted, “Serenity!” She was then instantly engulfed in a gentle white flame. “I refuse to give up on us. I will fight for the Butterfly Guild.”
The flames surrounding her were heart-warming and tranquilizing. She took my hand in hers again as she looked deep into my eyes. This time, I did not move my hands away. I looked at her. I looked past the bruises, the cuts, and the blood and just saw Mag. A thousand images flashed in my mind, reminding me who she was, who we were. I saw her standing above me after fighting off Jason and Cody. I remembered how she and her moms made me feel like I had a family when I needed one the most. I felt her body protecting mine as araknor tore through her skin. I saw her eyes shine with hope when I told her I would fight Vulgra. With each memory, my soul softened.
I tried to fight through Vulgra and speak in my own voice. I wanted to beg Mag to help me fight Vulgra. To get me off this mountain so that the talismans could reject Vulgra from my soul. To kill me if I couldn’t resist it. But Vulgra choked me, and I coughed up the same vile, black tar-like substance that my father had coughed up countless times. It was a terrible, soul-wrenching feeling. And this, I acknowledged, was only a small fraction of what my dad had suffered. All to see me, to say he was sorry. Because he loved me that much.
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With that thought and that feeling, a light glimmered from within the Destruction Rod. It was faint, and it was brief, but it was impossible for my eyes or my heart to ignore. There was no question about it: A hint of the Butterfly Rod had shone through the Destruction Rod.
Mag saw it, too. “You’re doing great, Emerson,” she said in her hero voice. “Keep fighting. I’m right here with you.”
I squeezed her hand and finally forced myself to speak. “Please don’t let go. I can’t fight it without you. I need you to get me off this mountain—”
Vulgra choked me again, and my words cost me an especially intense bout of coughing and vomiting. Every muscle in my body ached, and I felt like I was puking my soul out.
Some of it hit Mag, but she didn’t flinch. In fact, she brought herself closer to me and wrapped me in a hug. “I’ve got you, and I’ll never let you go. You’re my best friend, and I love you. Even now, even when you’re full of darkness, I still love you. We’re going to beat Vulgra together, okay? But I need you to stay with me.”
She pulled back slightly, still holding my hand, and looked at me. Her gaze filtered through my smoke-filled eyes and into my soul. There was something about the warm look in her eyes, the softness of her voice—everything she was filled me with hope and made me believe our world could still be saved. Her friendship proved it, for a friendship like hers could never exist in a hopeless world.
My staff glimmered again, a little more brightly this time.
I wanted desperately to eject Vulgra from my soul. But I feared it was too late. It was ingrained in me, and now that it felt threatened by Mag, I could feel it tighten its hold on me.
I ripped my body from Mag’s and shoved her away. “No! You don’t love me!” I shouted. “You never loved me. You love that I make you feel better about your brother being dead, that’s all. Your love for me is as selfish as any love any human has ever felt.”
I punched her in the stomach as hard as I could—which, having been powered by Vulgra, was really, really hard. The flame surrounding Mag extinguished before she hit the snow-covered ground. Whatever hope she had given me was lost.
I looked down at her pathetic, battered body and salivated at the idea of causing her more pain. This reminded me of something Vulgra had said: It couldn’t make anyone do anything they didn’t want to do deep down. I wouldn’t have hurt Mag unless I truly wanted to. I must have always wanted to hurt her. This was who I really was. I was just another human, and I hated myself as much as I hated anyone. This profound self-hatred made the Destruction Rod darker than it had ever been.
“Get up, you insect,” I sneered at Mag.
Mag slowly rose to her feet. She tried to cast Serenity again, but her body barely flickered, like a lighter that was out of fluid.
I shook my head and smirked at her with enough contempt to rot a piece of fruit as she stood there, wobbling, unable to defend herself. I cracked her in the jaw with the Destruction Rod, knocking her down. This time, she couldn’t get up.
I grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her to her feet. I clasped my hand around her neck and lifted her off the ground like she was a rag doll. Ecstasy filled me as I squeezed harder and watched her body dangle as I choked the life out of her. I stared at her disfigured face as the color drained from her skin. It was hard to believe someone could be so hideous. She disgusted me.
“You don’t deserve to live, you fat, ugly dyke,” I said. I wanted those to be the last words she’d ever hear; it’s what she deserved.
As the last tinge of color left Mag’s face, she choked out her dying words: “I still love you, and I know you can beat Vulgra. Don’t give up.”
Her words had no effect on me. I tightened my grasp around her neck to deplete the last ounce of life remaining in this vile, repulsive human. However, my euphoria was interrupted by the sound of a hover of helicopters hurtling toward the top of Misery peak. But as they burst through the blizzard, I saw that they weren’t helicopters but a flock of thousands upon thousands of butterflies.
I knew what was happening. Or, rather, Vulgra knew what was happening, and so I received the information by osmosis. Actually, to be honest, I don’t know what osmosis is exactly, but I think that’s a good enough way of explaining it. Besides, how I knew wasn’t nearly as important as what I knew: Mag’s inextinguishable hope in me (and, by osmosis, her hope in Vulgra itself) had given the butterflies enough power to reach this realm. They had spent their entire power supply, risking everything, to come here and help Mag. I had given them no choice. If they didn’t help Mag now, the people they watched over would be eradicated anyway, so they might as well expend all their energy in one last desperate attempt to stop me.
The butterflies swarmed Mag’s body. When they touched her, they shimmered, became lifeless, and then dissolved. With each butterfly that faded into Mag, she gained more strength. The color returned to her skin, and she was soon glowing. The butterflies were transferring their life force to her somehow (I really don’t want to say “osmosis” again, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was).
I despised what I was witnessing. How many times did this wench need to be killed before she died? If humans were the cockroaches of the multiverse, then Mag was undoubtedly the roachiest cock of them all.
I choked her even harder. “Just give it up!” I shouted at the butterflies as they continued filling Mag’s soul with love and hope. “Hope is no match for hatred!”
But there must have been something to hope because Mag was now glowing as bright as the sun, and her skin became so hot that I had to release my grip on her neck. She then released a blast of white-hot fire from her body, knocking me back several feet.
She had transformed into some kind of angel-butterfly hybrid. Her red and black attire had become as white as the fire around her body. She also now had vivid butterfly wings containing all the colors of the rainbow, as well as many other colors that no phantom human had ever seen before. It turns out there are some additional primary colors that phantom humans can’t see, and when you throw them into the mix, the color spectrum expands like crazy. I wish I could describe some of these new colors to you, but I can’t. Perhaps you think that makes me a lousy writer, but you try describing green to a blind man and see how far you get.
Worse than the blinding white flame surrounding Mag, worse than the impossible colors of her wings, was the ball of pure light energy on the end of her wand. I was terrified of this version of Mag. She could ruin everything.
“You pudgy little bitch,” I growled, trying to mask my fear. I took a step toward her, but before my foot even hit the ground, she blasted me with a bolt of energy from her wand. The blast knocked me down and illuminated the mountaintop for a moment, revealing not colorless ice and snow and rocks but vibrant grassy hills and wildflowers beneath a blue sky. A glimpse of what this place could be, or perhaps what it once was before Vulgra arrived.
When I returned to my feet, Mag was standing right in front of me, aiming her wand at my chest, the ball of energy glowing fiercely.
“Please, don’t shoot!” I cried. “It’s me. It’s Emerson... Oh, God, what have I done to you?” I covered my mouth to hold back a sob. “I’m so sorry, Mag. Please, end me now. I’m scared I’ll hurt you again.”
Mag’s eyes softened, and she smiled. “I knew you’d come back!” She placed a hand on my cheek. “I knew you could resist Vulgra. I’m so proud of you.”
My deception had worked. Now that Mag’s guard was down, I bashed her on the head with the ultra-powered Destruction Rod. She went limp and collapsed, dropping her wand. What an idiot she was for not seeing I was still Vulgra.
Her foolishness was surely an effect of her soul being filled with so many butterflies. That’s the problem with butterflies: They’re too eager to trust people, to believe that people have kind hearts. That’s a really good way to get hurt.
As I stood over Mag, she tried to open her eyes, but she was too weak. I knew I had to kill her quickly. I couldn’t savor the moment. She had come too close to thwarting my plans, and I couldn’t risk giving her another chance.
I bludgeoned her skull with the Destruction Rod. At first, each thwack was like falling in love. But the sick pleasure gradually became an overwhelming sense of guilt. The feeling grew within me until I found myself wanting to stop, desperate to stop. But Vulgra strengthened its hold on me and fueled my strikes with even more ferocity. Blood splattered everywhere, including onto my face, but I barely noticed it.
At some point, I noticed that Mag’s flame was no longer glowing on the end of the Destruction Rod. I didn’t know which blow was the one that killed her, and I didn’t care.