I had been in one Inversion Upheaval before, just three months ago. It had been a much smaller one and the illusionary messages warning of what was happening hadn’t been glitching out. It only took half a day for it to be taken care of and I had been able to get to a shelter before any Inversions could appear to complicate that.
It still managed to be the worst day of my life, nightmares having plagued me ever since then.
Despite the terror coursing through my veins when Gail began to drag me from where I had been sitting and unknowingly wasting valuable time playing, I found it a struggle to even move along with him. Even more so to control my breathing so I didn’t hyperventilate.
Instead, my mind saw this as the perfect time to take in what details it could about what was happening around me instead of thinking on the implications of being in a second Inversion Upheaval and how it was my nightmares come true.
The cheery blue sky above was no longer visible, a thin black fog having taken its place and beginning to descend upon the ground, draping darkness over the world. Already, it was beginning to thicken as a sign of the imminent Inversion Upheaval, removing any and all doubts that there would be any reasonable amount of time to scramble to safety before the Inversions would appear.
It also had the incredible side effect of disturbing the usage of the vast majority of technologies that weren’t designed to function through it, which only served to help plunge the world into more darkness. Any electronic lights in the area failing while the sunlight grew increasingly disparate around us.
The massive crowd that had formed in the central plaza to listen to the performance was finding out the natural consequences of what happens when people begin to panic and they’re as bunched up together as they were. My mind idly noted that the sheer amount of people panicking and trampling over each other, alongside all the other negative emotions that must be enveloping them all would only be worsening the incoming Inversion Upheaval if any of the cartoons were to be believed.
Around me, while Gail dragged me over to where I had entered the stage from, were the signs of my own classes panic. Already, nobody else was in sight on stage. Their places taken by upturned chairs, stands, and various instruments abandoned in the rush that must’ve occurred while I was so preoccupied with my music.
My own violin was not one of those abandoned instruments, both it and my bow were still grasped with a death grip in my hand that refused to consider the idea of letting them go right now alongside the cold comfort they brought.
In what felt like it took an eternity, Gail had dragged me into the backstage path where the familiar face of Holly, marred by both fear and concern in equal measure, greeted us with relief clear in her eyes.
“Mer! Thank goodness Gail got you. We gotta really move now if we want to catch up to everyone else. Mr. Gin said he’d try to make sure the doors to the shelter didn’t close before we got back with you, but couldn’t promise anything if an Inversion showed up so we gotta hurry.” She shouted over the disturbing din of people panicking before taking off into a run towards the backstage building and beckoning us with her arm to follow us. Gail dragged me after her, my body still locked up in spite of how bad the timing of it doing this was.
After a moment, Holly yelled back towards us, the concern that had been in it a moment ago replaced by quite understandable frustration. “What the hell were you doing onstage still Mer! This was perhaps the worst time possible for something like this!”
“I-” I began, only for my tongue to twist in on itself once more. Both from the fear still tearing through me, and the guilt now welling up within me. How had I let myself ignore the fact I was being caught in an Inversion Upheaval of all things and drag my friends down with my own weakness?
Before even a second of silence had passed, Gail responded in my stead. His voice was laced with a subdued fear, but still strong. “Doesn’t matter right now Holly. We’ll talk about it once we get into the shelter safe and sound and Mer has a chance to recover. Just focus on leading the way to it. You remember the path, right? Because we don’t have any of the nice shelter lines we saw in drills to guide us to it right now.”
I blinked while I processed his words, and once I had it suddenly became that much harder for me to control my breathing. There were none of the guiding lines that appeared and led people to shelters in Inversion Upheavals. Instead, there was only the swiftly worsening black fog. All signs pointed to it coming to fruition far too fast. There was always warning and time to get to safety. Had I really spent that long wasting time, or was it just that severe of an Inversion Upheaval?
Holly looked back towards us and opened her mouth only for it to transition into a grimace as if she noticed something. A second later she nodded while she swore. “Shit, right. He’s really not handling this well. Knew something big had really happened when he said everything had been fine in that last one he’d been caught in. But yeah, I remember the path. Right outside and to the left of the main entrance to the backstage building. Just keep up and we’ll be there in no time.”
It was hard to focus on their words now with the latest revelation of how bad the situation was. So instead, I just focused on not tripping while Gail dragged me along with him and keeping my thoughts from being completely lost to the fear within me.
A few moments later we reached the backstage building and Holly all but crashed into the door to open it, unwilling to waste even a second on stopping. Gail and I followed through a second later, the door automatically closing behind us and cloaking us in darkness. It normally wasn’t this dark, but the lack of lights combined with the thin black fog already here made it near impossible to see here
The outside world fell silent now too, something owed to the sound proofed walls of the building.
Holly hissed at the sheer level of darkness and instinctively raised her wrist where a small smartwatch was wrapped around it. She frowned before she shook her head, looking towards us a second later. “Okay, we gotta stay close to each other. This building’s big and getting lost here might be the worst thing that could happen right now with how dark it is. I’d use my watch, but shit’s already fucked and not working one lick. I’ll call out the direction when I make a turn, but I can’t do much more than that if we’re running through here. You two able to follow close enough to make that work?”
Gail gave her a nod. “I can manage. How about you Mer? Think you can handle the run alone or need me to stay with you?” There was not an ounce of condescension in his voice, only genuine worry that was laced with fear.
It took an embarrassingly long few seconds for me to process what they were saying and a monumental amount of effort to give them my own nod. I refused to keep dragging them down in this situation, even if my own mind was fighting with the fears running rampant throughout me. I did my best to shove them all to the side and took a shaky breath before I responded. “I-Yeah, I think so.”
He stared at me for another moment before putting a shaky smile of encouragement on his face despite the situation. “We’ll be right behind you. Run with confidence.”
Holly gave a determined nod, her earlier fear barely able to be seen now. “Then let’s go!” She said before taking off.
In an instant both me and Gail were after her, the sounds of her footsteps and the sight of the ends of her brown braided hair flying behind her being the only signs we had of where she was within the dim hallways. I nearly tripped on legs still partially stiff from fear, but I managed to recover and keep up, if only barely.
You’re so pathetic. Why are you struggling so much when your friends are managing just fine with their own fears? It’s not like there’s much point for you to be afraid of death anyways. If you die, you die, and the world will keep on spinning without a care. My own thoughts berated me while we ran.
Nothing but the heavy breathing of me and my friends saw fit to answer that question.
Holly’s voice in the meantime intermittently called out “left” or “right” whenever we had to turn through the hallways. Any doorways we had to pass through were also conveniently already wide open, likely from everyone who passed through here not particularly caring about closing them behind them in the current situation. Shortly, she managed to lead us towards another closed door, that much like the first closed door she crashed into was one that automatically shut by itself if given a moment to do so.
This time, it didn’t budge and Holly gave a grunt of both pain and embarrassment when she bounced off the door. She barely spared her error a second thought before grabbing the handle and yanking the door open the way it was meant to move instead.
“Alright, this should be the lobby. We’re not too far- Oh shit, shit, shit! Get back! Now!” Her voice began calmly, only for sheer panic to infuse it a half second later. Both me and Gail skidded to a stop a few steps behind her as she rushed to shove the door closed. The answer to what had spooked her so revealed itself a moment later as an inhuman screech echoed throughout the building, sending chills throughout my entire body that threatened to paralyze me again.
It sounded as if a dozen different human voices were doing so in tandem, accompanied by another dozen or so beasts that I couldn’t even begin to identify. Either way, there was only one thing it could be that sounded like that.
An Inversion was right here with us. I couldn’t see its body at all in the darkness, but the two luminescent malevolent white pupils fast approaching us was more than evidence enough that it knew we were here and was charging towards us.
Glimpses of seeing a blonde girl through a camera from the safety of a shelter facing down an Inversion in much the same way flashed through my vision. Only this time, it was me and my friends in the situation instead of her.
The moment was shattered by the slamming of the door by Holly before she braced herself against it, both her hands gripping the handle tight. She grunted at the first crash of it into the door, but managed to keep it from opening more than a crack. Her face a mask of determination over her fear in spite of her shaky voice. “Get moving you two! Don’t know how long this’ll hold, but I’m the fastest of us and I’ll catch up after-”
She never got to finish those words as the Inversion crashed into the door again. She let out a loud gasp and this time the door didn’t stay closed, but shot open, with Holly along for the ride.
I flinched at the audible cracking sound that emanated from her. I couldn’t decide whether it was better or worse that I could only vaguely see her silhouette in the darkness and none of the details when she collapsed without another sound coming from her.
The culprit of Holly’s fate emerged from the shadows of the doorway, its eyes ominously leering at Gail, with me ignored for the moment for some reason. Its form was indistinct and cloaked in many ways by the ever deepening black fog. But the forms of the jagged spear in its left hand and the round shield it had crashed into the door with held within its right hand were not nearly as hidden as the rest of its body was.
And then it raised its arm that held the spear, in a motion that primed it for a throw.
Adrenaline was already coursing through my veins from the primal terror flowing within me. A potent combination of the current Inversion upheaval, the Inversion standing in front me, and seeing what had just happened to Holly. My mind was a storm of different thoughts and ideas, ranging from’ run away and never look back’, to 'it was over and to give up to make it less painful’. But unlike back on the stage, I wasn’t paralyzed by the fear within me this time. My entire body was shaking, but I was in control.
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And in a strange reversal of when I’d been frozen on the stage, at the edge of my vision I saw the form of Gail frozen in his own terror, his face locked in a horrified gaze with his mouth left gaping wide. Never once shifting from Holly’s fallen silhouette. He was just as unmoving as I had been on stage and I realized what would happen if nothing changed in this situation.
The Inversion was about to throw their spear, and Gail was unmoving. There was only one outcome for that.
The thought had barely formed within my mind when I made a split-second decision and lunged towards Gail to grab him with my free hand, yanking him towards me and the walls of the corridor the moment I got ahold of him.
The spear rocketed forwards from the Inversion's grasp and I could hear the audible whistling of it flying through the air. Thankfully, I was just in time and it did not find its mark within Gail’s head, surging right past him instead and only drawing a thin line across his cheek. Before I could even consider what to do after the near miss though, the Inversion had let loose another one of its inhuman screeches followed by its heavy steps. It was already in motion and charging forwards shield first, rigidly still aimed at Gail.and uncaring about me.
Maybe someone better than I could've figured something out. As it stood, I could barely even begin the motions to shift him out of the Inversions path when the Inversion collided with him, the shield angled right for his head.
There was a crunch of something giving way before his body went flying. Another crack echoed throughout the corridor when he hit the wall beside me where he didn’t rise up afterwards.
I wasn’t spared any consequences either with how hard I had been gripping him, part of the force that had turned Gail into a ragdoll slamming me against the wall too.
I gasped in pain from the impact of my back against it, though I didn’t lose consciousness nor did anything snap. Instead, I just struggled to breathe, the wind having been knocked out of me while pain radiated from my back. Oh and I had a deadly Inversion in close proximity to me.
So, this is how I die. Alone, after having gotten both of my friends killed with my weakness. How… pointless. The thought came unbidden to me while my body instinctively fought to regain its breath.
Weakly, I rose my head to face the Inversion that could almost certainly kill me in an instant while I struggled to recover. Might as well bear witness to my end if it was to come around.
The Inversion in question now that I was closer was decidedly very different now that I could actually see it. Its face was a gaunt thing, forever fixed in a facsimile of life that I could now see oozed the same ubiquitous black fog that enveloped everything. Peculiarly, it looked in many ways what one might imagine a spartan of old might be if their armor were a part of their body and not something they wore. The black fog around it seemed to surge back into its hand and the jagged spear it had thrown reformed in its place.
The glowing whites of its pupils stared at me while it let out raspy breaths and I felt a strange feeling of acceptance wash over me. At least it all would finally be over today even if I deeply regretted that I had somehow dragged both Holly and Gail into my fate.
My heart beat fiercely within my chest while I waited for it to move. A dozen beats of it later and it was still just staring at me. Confusion began to bloom within me while I finished catching my breath.
What was it waiting for?
It was then I noticed something odd. There was none of the hatred or ire within its eyes that it held while it had been attacking Holly and Gail. Only the same confusion that I was staring at it with now.
Eventually, it did the unthinkable and instead of stabbing me with its spear or any number of other ways it could’ve killed me, it turned away. Instead, opting to walk towards the crumpled body of Gail.
I… What? For a single solitary second I wondered if I was somehow dreaming. If I had died and this was my mind’s way of flailing about in its final moments before it all disappeared. Eventually, I settled on it being the Inversion having a perfectly good opportunity to kill me and instead, choosing to ignore me for some unfathomable reason.
I had no idea how to feel about that.
Then I realized what it was going to do now that it was approaching Gail’s body. I didn’t know what it was that I had borne witness to, other than I had seen it happen only once before. To that same girl within the camera and it had felt like I had witnessed both the girl and the world itself being wronged in a way that extended deeper than I could ever hope to truly understand.
And now it was going to give me a first hand showing of the tragedy I had witnessed then, once more.
A shaky breath left me. If I was smart, I would not question what had just happened and leave Gail to his certain fate. Probably would be smart to do the same with Holly too considering if an Inversion had found its way into the building, there were probably many more outside and there was no world where I could sneak past them or outrun them carrying her body when I wasn’t even certain if she could survive her injuries or not. If I was very fortunate, the shelter might still be miraculously open for me. Even if it wasn’t, I might be able to hunker down somewhere and wait for the MG’s to arrive, something that under normal circumstances would only take a day at the most.
Nobody would blame me for what happened. In fact, there was a very real chance I’d be praised for having survived such a harrowing encounter where many others would and had perished before in the past.
It would be incredibly pointless for me to die after an Inversion of all things had decided not to kill me. And yet I found it hard to care about that when with every step the Inversion took closer to Gail, the same thing I had seen happen to the girl through a camera flashed through my mind. A girl whose radiant smile and forceful personality had been the rock that kept me stable for all my life before she passed. My twin, sister, and other half, Noelle.
I failed you then by not anticipating you’d come to find me.
I felt my breathing begin to pick up again, and this time did nothing to fight it. My vision fell down to the ground where my violin and bow had been sent careening out of my grip and into the wall alongside me. Its wood, never having been meant to bear such force, had shattered and splintered from the impact. But the string and hairs of both still glowed with a soft purple light even within the black fog. A telltale sign of the enchantments that preserved them.
I leaned down, grabbing what glowing strings and hairs I could that had come loose from the wood it had once been bound to, bundling them together in the process.
Idly my mind reminded me about the common sense of people trying to fight off Inversions in lieu of the MG’s, or even properly equipped soldiers and police officers. It almost never worked due to the Inversions terrifying resilience to anything that wasn’t enchanted. Combined with the incredible variance of the different forms they could take, and even those who did have enchanted equipment but weren’t MG’s found themselves undertaking a risky proposition when they fought them.
The only saving grace was that it only mattered that the object being used to hurt them was enchanted or magical in some way. Even a durability enchantment would do. Not that it generally helped those who tried despite the warning about doing so.
I wrapped the ends of my glowing bundle around my hands as tight as I could, pulling the string taut to test it out while I approached the Inversion that was now kneeling beside Gail. Its shield was still visible, but at some point it had dissipated its spear again so that their hand would be free. Said hand was now raised and ready to plunge into Gail’s head to facilitate its perversion on the sanctity of something I instinctively knew should never be violated despite not knowing what exactly it was.
A voice in my head told me what I was doing was pointless. That I would die from what I was about to attempt. That even if I succeeded, both Gail and Holly were badly injured at best and required medical care I had no idea how to give.
I ignored the voice and tuned it out like I did with every other sound that began to annoy me. Right now, I didn’t care.
Never again.
I reached the Inversion and draped the bundled strings and bow hairs around its neck to which it barely reacted, seemingly not registering what I had done. Taking advantage of that, I then twisted my arms around for a better grip so that I could pull even harder once I began.
I pondered where it was that all my fear and terror from earlier had gone. Why, when it had frozen me earlier, was it gone now without a trace? Why I wasn’t running when that was frankly the most sensible idea in this situation.
It was when I pulled my string bundle taught against the Inversions neck that I realized that the horror I had been feeling earlier hadn’t disappeared, but was still clearly there. Only I was now acting in spite of it rather than letting it control me.
Because I couldn’t bear the consequences of what would happen if I let it control me this time. Even if it might get me killed.
The instant I yanked with the bundled strings, two things became clear to me in an instant. The first was that I had nothing to protect my hands from the string bundle that now tore into my hands with the same force it did the Inversions neck, only a little more spread out. The second was that the Inversion was no longer content to let me do as I pleased.
For the third time it let out its inhuman screech and I felt the fear within me begin to amplify as it fought and tore at the strings in an attempt to free itself, only to find it didn’t have any leverage at all to do so and was just uselessly flailing. I did not let go.
Its legs began to kick out at random while it did its best to reach out back towards me, its hands reaching terrifyingly close to my own, but never close enough to grasp or hit me. I did not let go and began to drag it towards the wall of the corridor, its weight barely mattering to me with all the adrenaline coursing through me right now.
Its screeching hadn’t stopped yet even with it actively being choked and I was beginning to feel the gulf between my strength and its own, despite how little leverage it had to make use of that. Every time its flailing legs found the floor, the force with which they pushed off threatened to send me off my feet where only death would await me if it happened. Still I did not let go and when I reached the wall, I began to slam the Inversions head against it every chance I thought I could without losing my grip.
It wouldn’t do much to harm it compared to the string bundle around its neck, but just because it didn’t hurt it didn’t mean it didn’t do anything at all to disorient it. At least I hoped it did.
The string bundle wrapped around its neck began to pull more and more taught as something tore. Alongside that, the pain around my hands where it was wrapped around and my arms from how much effort it took to not let go ate away at me as they both intensified. Still, I did. Not. Let. Go.
Almost imperceptibly, the Inversion began to grow weaker, its screeching quieter to my ringing ears that shouldn’t have been able to hear it, or really anything, at this point. It still fought and it took everything I had to not let go, but with every slam against the wall and tearing at its neck, I found it easier and easier to keep it contained.
Eventually, something snapped.
The world was blissfully quiet now as I panted heavily, the Inversion hanging limply in my grasp. Though that might also be because of the ringing in my ears that still hadn’t stopped. My hands and ears were warm and wet and I realized it was from my own blood. My shaking legs collapsed and I fell to my knees while I silently untangled the string bundle from the Inversion's throat and my hands. I marveled for a second at the white blood from the Inversion that now coated it, which slowly mixed with my own red blood that traveled down the strings in some of unholy matrimony.
My hands themselves were an absolute mess of red lines that criss crossed them, from which only more and more pain seemed to emanate through them with every second that passed. Rivulets of blood dripping onto the floor with them as their source.
For a while I just stared at them, part of me still not having processed that I had just done something that was considered impossible for the majority of people. That I, of all people, had just successfully killed an Inversion.
And then the blissful quiet that had descended upon the building was disturbed by the padding of something nearby that notably wasn’t me and was frighteningly close.
My head shot up towards where the sound had come from, only for me to pause at what I saw.
It was the same stuffed white fox I had thought I had been hallucinating within a mirror, only now it looked to be very real and standing within the black fog that shrouded everything in its darkness. Except, unlike everything else within the black fog that was consumed and hidden away by it if it was too far away, it shone like a lantern that chased the black fog away wherever it went.
No longer was it stuffed too, instead its fur looked soft and fluffy as it plodded it way closer towards me, tail swaying from side to side behind it. I was left speechless when it sat down beside the motionless Inversion in front of me and leveled me with its vibrant lilac eyes that glimmered with intelligence and ambition in tandem.
And then it pushed my exhausted mind another step further when it opened its mouth and began to speak, the ethereal voice of a confident young woman reaching my ears that I’m sure had just been ringing and deafened from the Inversion’s screeches.
“Well, if that’s not proof enough of what really lies within your heart, I’m not sure what would even qualify after a showing like that. Would you wish to make a Vow with me?”