“Careful!”

The newly formed Unseeing bounded away from them and Aris immediately knew it was going for Laell, who had hung back from the fighting. A burst of speed had Ral propelling himself at the Unseeing, his warm orange solute tangling in with the strange void solute, runes from the staff glimmering and flashing as he changed its shape to suit his needs.

Laell’s gold-yellow solute trembled, but her voice sounded normal enough. “I couldn’t s-stop Verne,” she said. “B-but - ”

“The talisman is working,” Aris said. “So far. It’s fine.”

A fresh cacophony of dissonant voices cried out. Aris watched the Great Solvent ripple as dark shapes moved across the distant ‘landscape’ that only she was witness to. Ral swore beside her - she could tell he was itching to run towards the danger.

“We need to get closer,” he said. “But there are still more Unseeing closer to the Gate.”

“Laell will be safer close to us,” Aris siad. “And we still need to watch her and Verne in case the talisman fails.”

Verne’s dark green solute seemed to recoil at her words. She considered saying something but words failed her - there were more important things to be done, quite frankly, even if it was important for Verne to understand what was happening.

Aris turned back into Shade form and drifted on ahead but not too fast, keeping watch on the group just behind her. Ral engaged in combat with yet another Unseeing not long after, the screams and clash of carapace on metal ringing out. A splotch of void moved and Verne also moved to meet it. There was a confusing mess of sounds, along with cursing and what sounded like Verne toppling to the ground.

Aris moved to help, grappling clumsily at the Unseeing to find the right place to attack. The throat was usually the best place. The monster thrashed around when it realized she was there, making it harder for her to kill it swiftly. More cursing sounded and she felt the bulk of the body hauled off on one side, the unsettling screaming dying to a gurgling gasp.

“I’m fine,” Verne said, sounding annoyed.

“You didn’t seem fine,” Aris snapped back. “I’m blind and I could tell.”

“Hello?” Ral’s voice sang out along with a grunt of effort. “Can your lover’s quarrel be on hold after we’re not in danger?”

Verne made no response, only moved quickly to aid Ral in fighting.

“The Gate’s nearby,” Aris said, staring at the wobbling lines swimming through the Great Solvent. They grew in intensity as she followed it towards a singular point.

“Yes, I t-think I see it,” Laell whispered. “The strange f-fire.”

“Do you feel any different?”

“N-no. Just scared, a-anxious.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

A sickening crunch sounded and Aris observed the void-like solute blink out of existence, much like how a regular solute behaves when a person dies.

“Quickly now, before it does more damage,” she called out to her brother. “The Gate is close by.”

Aris turned into Shade form again to avoid tripping over anything and went straight to the strange rift of disturbance in the Great Solvent. Now that she was able to get a closer look, it looked like a knot in the Solvent, lumped into a ball and pulsating like a heartbeat. It was this ‘heartbeat’ that made the ripples through the Solvent. Indeed, upon closer inspection she could see something like a glimmer of solute at the very center of this strange abnormality.

So it was true that there was some solute that ‘fueled’ the gates opening, like a piece of wood burning in a fire. Not that Aris ever doubted her brother. All he had to do now was to crush it to close it.

“This is the most sun-cursed part,” Ral muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“I have to find it, Aris. It’s hard.”

She had her mouth open ready to give him a sarcastic response but a fresh trill of Unseeing voices sang out and Aris could see their twisted solutes closing in. “It’s right here,” she said impatiently, materializing into her solid body as if it would help.

“No, sister, I do not have magic eyes like you,” Ral snapped back.

Torn between wanting to stay and make sure Ral gets to closing the Gate properly and wanting to help Verne in defending the area, Aris impatiently shifted her weight between her feet while Ral seemed to freeze in concentration.

Inner Eye and Manus working together. But how?

Just as she could materialize in and out of her real form, perhaps… could she do the same for the solute? Touching a solute and certainly manipulating it in any way went into dubious territory; it was precisely why Camaz hated talking about his abilities. However this was a solute belonging to a person that was already dead.

Aris furrowed her brow and tried to wrap her head around it. She never really needed to interact with a solute before as solutes usually belonged to a person alive and well. It wasn’t some disembodied object as it was usually tied to a body that was alive and well. But in her perspective, solutes existed like light shining from a source and so the idea of grasping or even destroying it seemed impossible to her.

It sounded like her brother had the completely opposite perspective - he was able to feel and even shatter a solute but unable to see it. Aris reached out and approached the solute slowly being consumed by the Gate. From her mind’s eye, the Great Solvent rippled harder and with greater frequency as she tried to touch it.

“Daughter of moon,” a voice hissed in front of her. Uncomfortably in front of her. “You’re here. The Finale is coming and you can’t stop it.”

“Aris, what the fuck are you doing?” Ral sounded tense.

Desperately ignoring the voice that came from the other side of the Gate, Aris tried to grasp the solute but only managed to put her hand ‘into’ it, but she then materialized back into her real body. “It’s here,” she shouted. She felt something wrap around her torso and for one terrifying heartbeat thought it tightened into a stranglehold. “Ral, it’s right here!”

“Now!” he screamed back and she flipped back into shade form in time. He must have ran the staff through the solute because it suddenly burst into countless pieces that shattered further into dust. The knot-like abnormality in the Great Solvent unraveled itself as the powdered solute dissolved into nothingness.

The cries of the approaching Unseeing were abruptly stopped. The feeling of despair not her own slowly drained away and replaced with the rustling sounds of the wind through the surrounding trees.

Perhaps she should have felt relief or even happiness at their success. But Aris couldn’t help but taste a bit of bitterness at her lips at their achievement. All she could think about was Doran’s smokey form and his glowing green eyes.

You really did think of everything, didn’t you, you bastard.