Aris collapsed on the floor and let the sword clatter away. The Unseeing were left braying and screaming while clutching their smooth too-white heads with deformed hands. One by one they collapsed. One of them fell onto Jorra’s severed head; Aris unceremoniously vomited on the floor.
She didn’t want to look at any of it. The smell, the colors, every morbid detail shone through and clamored to be accepted into her brain. Why wasn’t her brother there? Rask? Camaz? Why was she alone all over again with corpses surrounding her?
Close your eyes, little moon.
She had been surrounded by corpses then too. Rask thought she had forgotten it all and never brought it up, but she remembered everything. The smell of Nilda’s blood dripping down her face. The twisted faces of the assassins sent after them. Aris knew she killed them. She had done something to do in the Great Solvent and she had never been able to replicate it again, until now. Did they have to take everything away for it to work?
The Gate was still singing its horrible song, even after the Unseeing lay dead on the floor. Eventually it would die out - in the past, the fear was that more and more monsters would escape through but now Aris understood that wasn’t the case. The Gate turned certain people into Unseeing. She wasn’t yet certain who specifically would get turned, but as each and every Kuvanian in the village seemed to have disappeared and the corpse she ran into belonged to a villager of Gendis, Aris firmly believed pure Gaians only turn.
With the exception of the one needed to open the gate to begin with. She miserably glanced back at the village chief’s corpse on the floor. She had no idea how to stop it. He was already dead, how could she make him deader?
Aris sat as far away from the corpse as possible because she didn’t want it to grab her again. Something was keeping the Solute alive and she was too exhausted to try to figure out what it was, so she had to wait it out. It felt like a solid plan until the corpse started talking again.
“Join me in despair, Daughter of Moons,” a voice from the unhinged jaw seemed to laugh. Aris recoiled and tried to press further from the corpse, the runes, the bodies, the voice - everything.
“No…”
“The antithesis, a failure,” it said, tone amused. She hated the sound.
Pride was all she had left. Pride and hot hatred. Even Jorra and Morton were dead. There was nothing else in this moon forsaken world. She lunged towards the sword on the floor and moved to the corpse, meaning to hack it apart. There was no proof it would even work, but if there was any chance it would shut it up -
“Stop,” a deep voice rolled forth.
Aris saw a dark cloud move into the room. She was convinced she had begun to hallucinate. It was dark smoke that moved as a mass and it roiled and turned until it formed itself into the figure of a man. After another moment, two green gemstone eyes formed in its shadowy face along with solid looking clothes around a perfectly normal body of a man: a being made of smoke.
“You,” she whispered. This was the thing that Nilda had been trying to find all her life, this strange smoky being with green glowing rocks for eyes. It stood right in front of her now.
It ignored her and instead looked to the corpse on the floor, green gemstones glowed. The voice emitting from the dead body laughed hysterically as if it had just heard the funniest joke.
“You failed! You failed! You failed!” it jeered at the Being in Smoke. “You’re wrong! And conceited! It’s always the same!”
“It’s alright to admit you’re afraid,” the being in smoke intoned.
“We know no fear,” the voice said. “Only the truth.”
The voice faded slowly as if the person speaking was moving further and further away. Aris could no longer hear the words spoken, only odd clips of sounds with the strange music drowning it out. Then all the sounds coming from the corpse at the Gate were silenced. No more strange black flame painted the ceiling. The bodies of the Unseeing littering the ground dissolved into the ground, leaving nothing behind. The one that fell on Jorra’s head also dissolved and the woman’s dead eyes stared at her.
A familiar feeling took over. She felt it when she was a child, right when Nilda was murdered. Like a door had closed and all her senses were locked in a tiny room and everything she was supposed to feel was locked away from her. It was almost difficult to move while feeling so distant to touch, smell, sounds - only her vision remained relatively the same but it sometimes felt like she observed things at the other end of a long tunnel.
She didn’t even notice the Being in Smoke speaking. Aris almost forgot why she should care he was standing there right in front of her. It approached her, its smoke form expanding a little like an animal attempting to be threatening. She knew no fear at that point. All she did was study the glowing gemstones with eyes that felt too heavy, pondering the sharp cut corners and its mysterious glow. Did they hurt sitting in his face?
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“Lyssiin?”
Her eyes felt so, so heavy. She moved them to see a different set of green eyes. These looked a lot more normal as they were round irises set into black eyeballs. Aris stared at the face and couldn’t place it for a very long time.
“Lyssiin, are you hurt?” Blue skinned hands reached out to squeeze hers. She nearly couldn’t feel it. “How much of this blood is yours?”
“She is in shock,” the being in smoke said behind him. “On top of her injuries.”
The man who was holding her hands looked away to the room in shambles. Not that long ago, it was a gathering place for the villagers of Gendis. Now it was a place of death. “I’m not surprised.”
Tassik. The name drifted to her as she recognized the Munna man. She finally felt that the hand on hers felt warm, but then slipped back into a strange state of reverie. Aris felt like sleeping forever but it felt strange when both being asleep and awake felt the same. She realized she must have been sleeping briefly when she opened her eyes to see the forest landscape rush by, the warmth of a back under her. Someone was carrying her. Strange, she didn’t remember being picked up.
When was the last time she was picked up? Aris closed her eyes again with difficulty and tried to remember. Her brother was always the one asking to be held when they were children. She remembered she didn’t like it that much and preferred to walk by herself. She used to call Ral a baby and he would cry to Rask about it. That felt like two lifetimes ago. If only her brother knew how much she missed him.
She opened her eyes again and found herself inside an unfamiliar room. Wooden logs made up the walls and the scent of pine trees filled the air, fresh and clean. It brought her to reality, to truly being awake and her whole body hurt. Aris doubled over in the flat bed she was in and did the one thing that would immediately dull the pain.
The switch to Shade form was almost a reflex. Long gone were any trepidation for using that form. Aris clung to it, resigned to stay as a ghost for as long as she needed. Perhaps then she could fade into the shadows and it would all fade away with her. She closed her eyes at the comforting thought, sleep loyally following in her step. Sweet blissful sleep, free from pain, free from corporeal reality.
If only she could sleep forever. There was nothing else left for her. She should perhaps sleep forever.
“Lyssiin.”
She heard the voice say the Yscian word over and over again. Irritated, Aris folded into herself, making herself smaller. Maybe she would drift into the wall or the floor and they would finally leave her alone.
“Lyssiin, you have to eat.”
Camaz liked to eat, although he never looked like he did. He always liked to say he used his big and powerful brain hard enough to stay lean; he always was a cocky bastard. Always made it look like he was oh-so-intelligent with all the right answers. Except he always did have the right answers. He was right about her returning to Caelis: she was useless. If nothing else, Aris wanted to prove him wrong for once but she failed to even do that. What was she doing here?
“Perhaps a bit of water?”
Back at the Academy, she could always hear the ocean. It roared during storms and hummed when it was fair. Camaz had told her that the Great Solvent itself was like the ocean and that the Academy was built on the island surrounded by water to remind everyone of that. It was just a story, of course. Aris never believed the stories Camaz told her. Often stories were told to placate, like the stories one told children. People always needed something to believe in - whether it be the Parts or the Moon or how being a good person will lead to good things.
Sluggishly, she turned away to try to further incorporate herself into the wall. Why was she thinking of these things? When would sleep take her and remove these memories, these feelings? Camaz abandoned her and her home was gone. There is nothing else left in this world. Maybe it all ended back when her parents died and Nilda died. Maybe she had simply been a walking corpse since that day Caelis fell.
“Come out, Daughter of Moon.”
Aris was jerked in one direction and forced back into her corporeal form. It was like a heavy blanket crashed into her and every injury, every ache, every pain seared into her flesh. Crying out, she desperately tried to return to Shade form but she couldn’t. Like when the corpse suddenly animated and held her foot in place. She looked down to see hand shaped smoke holding down her arms on the ground. Above her was a dark angry cloud, swirling and swirling in darkness except for two gemstone eyes glowing down at her.
It was always the same. Forced to stay in one place. Forced to endure. Forced to do something she didn’t want to do. None of them fucking got it. Aris existed alongside their plans, their wants, their needs and not one of them gave a fuck about her or Ral or Caelis. Even Nilda, with her life altered by forces unknown to her, living a life staged by things with grand plans. How pathetic their lives must seem to them! Just stupid animals, forced to be.
The old familiar anger took hold of her heart again. It burned and it felt good. It was better than crushing loneliness, better than the bitter taste of defeat. No, she burned with hatred and frustration and a kind of madness that she couldn’t keep contained and she thrashed against the being in smoke.
“You can hate me if you want, Daughter of Moon,” the being in smoke said. “As long as you live.”
With her last ounce of strength, she wriggled free from the smoky grasp and disdainfully glared up at the being in smoke. Oh, she was going to live. She was going to live until her solute burned out.