Two days later they were still chasing after where Rask should be. They had initially agreed to meet somewhere to hunt down a Gate together, but it seems like he moved from one Gate to the next in an attempt to save as many people as he could.
“I should have been here with him,” she overheard Ral mutter once.
“The Bringers want you dead, remember?” Aris said over his shoulder. “You would just worry him.”
“But now I’m out here now,” Ral said, frustration coloring his voice. “It was pointless keeping me on the island - I ended up back here.”
“I’m here with you,” Aris insisted. “It’s different.”
All they had to prove was they had a destiny to fulfill: prove that the Part had intended for all of this to happen. That the Bringers wanted their demise because it would hinder some god’s plan. Failure to do so would result in death, as their existence would be some sort of conspiracy against the Parts. As dramatic as Verne made it sound, it sounded feasible even with Camaz on their side. However just being out here made them glowing targets for the Bringers.
Of course they were never not targets, even on the island. People freely visited Academy island - although there was some security in place that prevented just anybody from visiting, how would Camaz be sure they haven’t already infiltrated the place? After all, Camaz’s long time friend turned out to be a Bringer - a fact that still mystified her.
Aris had a lot of time to mull over things like this. She didn’t even have the option of staring at the scenery - when she wasn’t on the lookout for signs of Rask she was busy trying not to fall off the saddle. It would definitely have been easier just to accompany Ral in Shade form but the suggestion had been severely unpopular with her companions and Camaz.
“If we do find Rask, I’m going to slap him for making us look for him,” Aris complained finally after a grueling second day of riding. She felt Ral shake with laughter.
“He always said you were a handful,” Ral said cheerfully. “He always had Nilda handle you.”
“She was always more interesting,” Aris said.
“Can you still manipulate rocks?” Ral asked. “You practiced it every day when we were little.”
Aris couldn’t help but smile. The memories of the cold, snow covered forests, the pine trees, of playing hide and seek with anyone they could pester. Perhaps if she tried, she could manipulate rocks a little, but definitely not the way Nilda could. She was able to deform it and mold it into almost any shape, most impressively forming deadly spikes as weapons or softening rock bed into some pillowy substance. Now Aris knew that power had come at a great price.
Aris cocked her head and focused on her ‘vision’. It was impossible for her to focus for hours and hours on end, so she only periodically ‘looked’ at her surroundings. The remaining time she tried to practice focusing on non-sight to save her sanity. But a strange ripple caught her eye and she sat up to try to locate it.
“What is it?” Ral asked.
“Something’s wrong. Something… looks wrong,” Aris said. “It looks like waves in the water.” She felt her face fall into a scowl.
“Which direction?”
“I don’t know, direction is weird,” she said, then shook her head. “Just keep riding, I’ll see if it gets stronger.”
Ral did just that and the ripples she saw grew bigger. Aris flipped into Shade form and floated like a ghost towards the sensation, ignoring how Ral swore and tried to call her back. If her suspicions were correct, then this was…
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She drifted thirty paces closer, by her estimation; that’s when she felt the dread. The strange external pressure of something awful without any real reason why. She immediately drifted back to Ral who was waiting for her back where she left him along with Laell and Verne.
“This is it,” she said.
“A v-village is close by,” Laell said.
“Make sure your talisman is on you and secured,” Ral said. Aris didn’t say anything as she could see they both wore them. Now to pray that Laell made them correctly.
“We drag Laell back the moment we sense something wrong,” Aris said to her brother. “The Academy can’t afford to lose her.”
“Do you not have any confidence in your best friend?” Ral teased. Aris chose not to answer and simply drifted ahead. She had to go much further than she thought before she saw anything of interest.
The ripples in the Great solvent grew larger, so large that Aris could almost see differences between this disturbed Solvent and regular Solvent. It was like something was being poured into the regular Solvent and causing this disturbance. She followed the disturbance as if wading through a pool of water and finding mud being dropped in the middle.
She spotted several spots of color that looked like solutes of people running. They seemed to be at a distance and moving quite rapidly, therefore they were escaping the village. She drifted closer and spotted more solutes, all vibrating and quaking in fear. She got even closer and there was screaming. The crackle of what sounded like fire. The sound of fighting, notably the ringing of metal.
Then the horrifying screams of the Unseeing. This was like Gendis all over again. Except back then she didn’t have this… changed sight. Aris looked towards the unholy screaming of a dozen dissonant voices and saw no solute.
There was a marked void of where a solute would be, like a hole draining water from a lake. A singular, Gaian scream was cut off and to her horror, she watched a regular solute get swallowed and turn into a void. Another voice screamed, probably from watching the first turn into a monster. She saw the second solute waver in such a severe way, it was almost shocking. Were solutes even able to move in such a way? It looked almost on the verge of breaking apart.
She really had no idea what her surroundings were. Aris could only estimate the space that the people and Unseeing occupied based on where she thinks they stand in the material world. But she stepped forward, turned into her physical form except for her arm and sought to materialize it within the monster.
It was almost sickening seeing the void-solute so close. She remembered seeing what a Gate looked like in the material world and this strange void was similar, except instead of a ring of dark fire it was a hole sucking in everything around it. She quickly materialized her hand and it thankfully was inside the Unseeing. She had formed right next to it so she could feel its awful smooth flesh and hear its screech up close. She grabbed something internal and ripped it out of its body, making it scream louder.
Aris then switched back to shade form before the monsters could retaliate. She could feel their swipes pass right through her.
A thundering of hooves came from behind her as the rest of the group arrived. “Be careful,” she screamed out, hoping they didn’t get too near. The focus was making her head pound.
Her brother’s warm solute didn’t change. It pelted towards her with that incredible speed along with a row of runes from the Freerunner’s staff Rask gave him. There was a confusing clash of fighting but she reappeared to help him with the second one, aiming to rip out its throat from the inside while Ral had it distracted.
“They turned here,” she shouted over the Unseeing’s dying screams. “Those two should stay back - ”
Verne’s dark green solute appeared close - too close - to her and the Unseeing they were finishing off fell silent. Aris watched with her hands clenched, ready to pull him back if he showed any signs of changing. But his solute stayed the same color, the runes from the talisman gleaming at what she thinks is his chest.
The moment of silence was punctuated by sobs. Aris realized the other person, the one with the very unstable solute whom she thought was running away, had stayed behind.
“Ma’am, you should leave,” she heard Verne say. “It’s not safe - ”
“No, it’s too late,” Aris whispered. Her head pounded with concentration, but she had to open her eyes and watch. She had to look. It was why Doran gave her these eyes, this sight. She was meant to see all this. The crying woman’s solute seemed to collapse on itself and form a dark void in its place. “She’s turned.”