CHAPTER 31
AFTER A DECADE, SHEILA FINALLY PROVES CHIAKI WRONG
Although she remained on high alert, her muscles taut as she clung to her companion, Mindie felt a small sliver of relief as she watched the bright purple glow take the stage. Having been ejected from her luminescent state, she strained to see who it was behind that brilliant aura. But the voice that emanated from the shining effigy was undoubtedly her mother’s.
“Are you two okay?” the Superstar asked.
“Yeah. Thanks Mom.”
“Go downstairs. I’ll take care of this.”
Mindie nodded and helped Pike to his feet. Her bestie still seemed to being suffering from his bout of helpless shock. His expression was wide-eyed and hollow as he stared at Chiaki’s glowing form. With a little tug on his elbow, she managed to jostle him to some automatic state of movement, and together they hurried through the exit.
Sheila sneered behind her veil of chaos, her purple eyes leering. “How nice of you to come visit me in my lonely tower… for once.”
The moment her eldest daughter said that Sheila was involved, Chiaki knew. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was the moment they reconnected for the first time since Soren’s demise, only a few weeks ago. Maybe not even then. Maybe she had known ever since that day ten years ago. Why didn’t she act sooner? Why had it taken so long?
“I told you before, you can’t bring Soren back—”
Sheila’s chaotic aura flared, the shady rasp in her voice grating like a metal grind. “And whose fault is that?! Soren was the best of us! He gave everything he had during his tenure as a Superstar! He gave and gave until he had nothing left! He saved you and me countless times!”
Through the swarming darkness, Chiaki could see the pain in her eyes as she lowered her head and looked at her trembling hands.
“And when he couldn’t give any more… when it was his turn to need our help…”
She clenched her fist, baring her teeth. “…you destroyed him.”
Chiaki swept her arm out to the side in defiance, her composure unfazed, her tone resolute. “Soren became a Shade! There was no other choice—”
“There was! You chose your precious Superstar status over your… over our best friend! Even after you erased him from existence, you could’ve helped me figure out how to bring him back. I pleaded with you. I told you we could find a way. Do you remember what you said?”
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She did. No amount of time ever faded the image or even frayed its edges of the moment she broke the news to Sheila. She remembered the look in her eyes, wild and distraught and stained with tears of denial. There was no hiding the betrayal she felt. In Sheila’s mind, there was no doubt that Soren could be saved in due time. But there wasn’t any time—not when a powerful Shade was already in the midst of its rampage over Halo Ridge.
Soren wasn’t the only one who met his end that day. When she delivered the final blow, something within Chiaki died along with him. She had confronted Sheila in the aftermath, her mind numb, her heart cold, her soul hollow…
“Soren is gone. It’s time to move on.”
Back then, that was all she could say. And she couldn’t even say the whole thing to her face.
Sheila remembered that. “You turned your back on me. So, I did everything myself.”
“And what do you have to show for it after all these years?”
The tone in Chiaki’s voice was cold and harsh. Clearly, she had no faith that anything had come from ten years’ worth of study.
A smirk twitched from Sheila’s lips.
While it would have been helpful to have absorbed Pike and Mindie’s energy as well, the whispering chaos gave her a feeling of assurance. Among those whispers was the gentle caress of a familiar voice, telling her it was time. All she had to offer at this very moment was, in fact, enough.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Sheila’s swarming aura of chaos flared once more. This time, it exploded outward like a thick, black cloud of destructive energy. With a few flicks of her wrists, Chiaki commanded her arsenal of flying swords to spin rapidly around her. Their motion created a ward that deflected the mass of chaotic energy from reaching her. But the chaos surrounding Sheila just kept growing.
“I feel everything he did. I understand what drove him to the edge. To these feelings, with all the chaos I harbor, I gift a form they’ve been deprived of for so long…”
The energy she exuded continued to expand, pressing up against the very walls of the room. If it could be measured like air pressure, the storage room at the top of the tower was like a balloon on the verge of popping.
And pop it did. Unable to contain such a mass of unruly, destructive energy, the top of High Tower exploded. Debris from its roof and walls tumbled to the ground below, shaking the earth. Had any students been present, they would easily have been crushed by the sizeable clumps of stone. It was fortunate that campus had long since closed for the day.
Anyone caught gazing at the pinnacle of the campus landmark in this moment would see a swirling ball of darkness. It would seem like a lighthouse that had itself turned chaotic, its beacon a foreboding and unwelcoming sight.
Once the top of the tower was blown off its spire, the density of chaos began to allay. Chiaki relaxed the mental grip on her luminescent swords. Still, as she surveyed the scene around her, she found herself surrounded by thick, black fog. For a moment she wondered just how thick the ripples would seem if she saw it through normal eyes, but she couldn’t let her guard down now. She kept her swords close and loosely whirling about her.
The guttural tone of a Shade’s voice spoke from somewhere behind the curtain of fog… but it didn’t quite sound like Sheila anymore.
“To think that a soul in chaos could be capable of something as incredible as this…”
Something caught the corner of Chiaki’s eye, and she turned to it warily. At first, it was a vague shape moving through the fog. As it approached her, the shape’s definition became more visible. Chaotic energy had been formed and twisted into the figure of a human, and Chiaki could see even the finer details of the form’s face and body. Or perhaps the shroud created an illusion that mimicked human form. Purple eyes glowed on the shadowy face, lacking all passion in its expression. It wasn’t Sheila.
It was Soren. “It’s been a while, Chiaki.”