I woke up with a new wave of pain rolling over my entire body. I cracked one eye open to look at where I might be. I tried to retrace my steps in my head, where I’d been, what had happened, everything was a blur-I put a hand to my skull, it hurt, all of it hurt. Iris was standing at my side, looking down at me with some measure of…I couldn’t tell the emotion, but it was judging me, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it in general.
“Oh! You’re awake!” A chipper voice from my right called before I could really get my bearings. Looking around the room now…I was in the infirmary, white walls decorated with a variety of faded motivational posters, thin hospital sheets pulled over me, though my cloths were all on, save for one sleeve on my hoodie, rolled up to account for a large cast now over my right arm. I looked over to the voice, seeing a younger nurse with brown hair, her white outfit pristine and clean.
“…yeah…what the hell…?” I said, groaning and turning back over to lay straight, looking straight forward at a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree.
“You must have fallen-you broke your arm, and were unconscious when one of the night guards found you. Lucky they did, otherwise the injury could have gotten worse!”
Fell.
Fell?
I hadn’t fallen. It was all coming back to me now. Enzo. We’d had a fight. I’d merged with Iris, scored a direct hit, and he’d run off. Then, the moment he got out of my sight, he’d got me in the arm and dropped apart of a building on me. I don’t know how whoever found me hadn’t been able to tell that, but hey. I was alive, at the very least, which means Enzo hadn’t come to finish the job…I’d just have to hope I’d be hearing news of how the trap went shortly. Please. Please for the love of god, let us have got him.
“…thank you.” I said to the nurse, after a few seconds. I heard the door open someplace behind her, in the dimmest part of my perception.
“It’s no problem-are you feeling alright, do you need me to get you anything?” She asked with a rapid fire and enthusiastic tone of voice.
“…just some water would be nice, thank you.”
She nodded and hurried off. I reclined back where I was, restless but not wanting to get out of the bed I was in yet. Everything still hurt, my head pounding, and the stiffness in my arm made me want to explode, it itched and scratched and-ugh.
I was snapped out of my slight stupor by the sound of a brief conversation happening right outside the room I was in. I couldn’t catch the exact words with my pounding headache, but I could hear a new male voice speaking to the female nurse, before two people entered the room. One was the nurse, who placed a glass of water at my bedside. I nodded thankfully to her, and she smiled back.
The other person who entered the room was different. An old guy, salt and pepper beard and hair, dressed nicely and carrying a brown leather briefcase. I recognized him immediately as Professor Lanigan, the instructor for the Study of the Supernatural class we’d all been taking. Why was he here?
The nurse exited the room, just as Lanigan took a seat a little ways away.
“Are you feeling alright, Diane?” He asked, opening his briefcase and looking through it, talking over his shoulder to me.
“…I feel pretty awful, but good all things considered. What are you doing here, professor?” I asked, trying to nail in and emphasize the question part of my sentence, though my words held little weight in my current state of pain.
“It might shock you to hear, but my class is fairly small.” He said with a somewhat sarcastic tone of voice “And when I heard one of my students had been effectively hospitalized, I figure a visit wouldn’t be beneath me.”
That made enough sense I supposed. He’d withdrawn a document from his briefcase…an odd looking yellowed paper, with text too small for me to even get close to reading it from here.
“Well, thank you for coming, I-”
I was cut off by a brief near shout from him, as he spoke two words.
“Invicta Silentium!” he spoke with shocking force, and I felt something penetrate me to my core…but when I opened my eyes next, nothing had changed. I looked at him curiously, as he closed his briefcase, stood, and looked straight at me, with a look in his eye and a seriousness to his face that I was shocked by based on his normal somewhat bumbling demeanor.
“We can speak freely now, but not for long. You fought Enzo, didn’t you?” He said in a sharp tone of voice.
I blinked “How did yo-“
“I’ve been paying attention more then most people think. Good day to you, Iris.” He said, nodding to the shadow, who looked a bit shocked.
“You can see me? How nice!”
“What did it say?” He asked, looking back to me with a measure of confusion.
“It says it’s nice for you to see it. But uh-fuck! How do you-wha-“
He sighed, holding out his hands, a faint jumping of sparks moving between them. My eyes widened. Shit.
“I’m a wizard. Quite a long story, but I’ve been attempting to keep an eye on you and your group, and have failed thoroughly thus far, as it seems things have…spiraled out of control.”
A cold realization came over me. My professor was a fucking wizard. I’d known they’d existed of course, everyone did, ever since one of them had testified before congress four years ago, and said that magic was real, wizard schools were dotted across the globe, and that they were staying out of our affairs if they stayed out of theirs. Since then, the world had been abuzz with people trying to find wizards, replicate magic, or do other things in that vein, but there hadn’t been any success that I was aware of. Things remained a mystery…and now I was face to face with it.
More importantly, if he had this power, and had been watching us…
“Wait. Whose side are you on, here?” I said, a little more demanding then I’d perhaps intended. But my head was swimming with thoughts, and none of them could cohesively fit together.
“In practice? Yours.” He said calmly.
“…how long have you known about Enzo?”
“I’ve known about him having a shadow since he arrived on campus. I learned of his…intentions, once they found David.”
That sunk in. My head was spinning. I was sitting up now, formulating thoughts in my head.
“You knew about Enzo after David?”
He nodded.
“…and you’re a wizard, right? Shoot spells and shit?”
He nodded.
“…why the HELL didn’t you do something?!” I said, anger leaping from my throat.
He took a step back slightly, sighing.
“You could have killed him! Or cast some-fucking spell and sent him packing! Why!”
Lanigan took a deep breath, then looked to me.
“I can’t interfere in things like this. I’m already on thin ice with the institute. I can’t take direct action, because it could expose me, and by proxy anyone attached to me, and if I don’t win immediately, there’s a chance he could get away and hurt someone else. For now…his battle with you all is relatively small scale, and he’s content not to bring anyone normal into it. That being said…I’m sorry about your three friends.”
My anger went cold the moment he said three.
“…W-Wait. Three…?” I sputtered out, eyes wide.
Lanigan took a deep breath, expression sorrowful.
“They found Larry a little bit ago. I though you’d known.”
Larry. Of course it’d been Larry. Enzo beat me, then headed straight for him. He’d probably bypassed the trap too, if that was the case. It had all been for nothing.
Slowly, as we sat in silence, my anger returned, burning away the cold, as I glared.
“Why the fuck are you even here! You don’t want to help fight the serial killer that killed my boyfriend, so what, you just here to bring sympathies! Tell me how sorry you are? I’ve gotten enough of that. I’m sure I’ll only get more whenever they actually fucking find Edward’s body!” I shouted, taking advantage of the fact that I could supposedly speak freely. Lanigan winced, visibly. Good.
“I can help, just not directly. Help me set up a meeting with your friends, and we can all discuss it, we can beat him, we just need to work toge-“
I threw myself off of the bed, landing on my feet with only…a few shots of pain. I looked Lanigan dead in the eyes.
“Fuck you. Sincerely. I hope Enzo gets you next.”
I strode out of the door. The nurse looked at me oddly as I moved for the door.
“Dear, are you sure you’re alrig-“
“I’ll be fine, thank you!” I said, as I headed straight for the door, and into the campus at large.
I was laying in bed, sobbing, a few hours later. Iris was hovering above me in silence, being the stoic bitch it was, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered to worry about being judged in this instance. Fuck! Why did everything always have to go so poorly!
My roommate was out of the room, thankfully, so she wouldn’t see my meltdown in real time. I had no idea where she was, but I’d more then take the privacy where I could get it, during all of this.
Larry was dead. The trap was a bust. My boyfriend’s body still hadn’t been found, and the serial killer responsible for it all was still on the loose!
I was curled up into a ball, content to stay there for a few more hours, I’d already missed class and just didn’t care anymore. The only thing which interrupted me now was a knock on the door, twice. I stopped, and numbly stood, arm still in the cast and throbbing with pain from the configuration I’d been laying down in for that long. I shuffled to the door, wiping my eyes slightly, and opened it.
Mark and Kelly stood there, both looking relatively somber as they stood together.
“Hi Diane.” Kelly said in a serious tone of voice. “Mind if we come in?”
I nodded a little bit numbly, taking a step back to allow them entrance. They both stepped in. Mark looked to me first, looking like he was going to take the lead in the conversation.
“…we have some bad news.” He said, somber. “We told the rest of the group during lunch, but…you weren’t there.”
“…Larry. Right?”
They both looked to each other, nodding.
“You heard?” Kelly said questioningly. I nodded stiffly.
“…they found him crushed underneath a car. A symbol was drawn out in blood under him. We think he made it, and tried to pass on a message. The police think it’s a cult thing, because it does look weird, and…we think they might suspect us a bit. They apparently went around and talked to some of the other students and faculty about us, and it’s not all particularly good things. So…that’s a concerning thing…not to mention…” He took a deep breath.
I looked at him. My emotions were now gone from my expression and demeanor, as I simply readied myself for more bad news somehow.
“…they found Edward’s body.” Kelly finished Mark’s thought for him, a sympathetic and sad look in my direction accompanying her statement. My heart sunk, the sadness hitting me all over again as I was reminded, given the final nail in the coffin that Edward wasn’t coming back.
“…where?” I said in a small voice which was almost at the point of shattering into pieces and tears. But I managed to just narrowly hold it together long enough to ask the necessary question.
“In an alleyway, a few blocks away, buried under a dumpster. Enzo set it up to look like he’d gotten in a knife fight, and lost. Because that doesn’t sound like him…it’s lending more to the crazy cult theory. His family got told, dunno if they’ll push the narrative or not. Doesn’t sound like they were…close.” Kelly said, doing her best to keep her tone level.
“…his mom might. His dad…I don’t think so. I don’t know exactly how they’ll react, but it won’t be good…the former because she’s an attention grabbing whore, and the latter because he actually gave a damn.” I spoke bitterly about Edward’s mother, because if even half of the things he’d told me about her were true, then she was a despicable human being. He’d always had nice things to say about his dad, though.
“We’ll keep an eye out. For now…we got a picture of the symbol Larry drew printed. Do you want a copy, or…?” Mark said, gently.
I nodded “What do we know about it? What was he trying to tell us?”
Mark sighed, as he reached into his bag.
“Not much, unfortunately. Andrew and Dawn are mostly on it, trying to figure something out, but for now…we’re a bit stumped.” He finally found what he was looking for, a small photograph which he handed to me. I looked at it. It was a picture of the pavement, a small police encirclement around it. In the center, under an overturned car, was a symbol of a circle, the within it several buildings crudely drawn in the living ink of blood. In the center, was a circular sharp. I recognized it anywhere. That…and the buildings, it looked like a very quickly drawn version of the campus. Then, going straight through it, a drawing of what seemed to be a sword lodged straight down the middle, puncturing even the circle.
I frowned, looking it over.
“I’ll keep thinking about it. Thanks. For everything.” I said, looking up to them with as much genuine thanks as I could muster. These two…were trying their best, at least, and I could give them credit for that much.
Mark and Kelly both nodded, the latter looking to me gently.
“Do you…need anything else? We can walk you somewhere, or bring you things, if you want?” Her voice took on a softer tone from the more serious tone she’d taken when talking business a few moments ago. I appreciated her not being as cold as she was normally, at least. Made me confident that I hadn’t overstayed my welcome with the group in some capacity, or at the very least with the defacto leaders.
I shook my head, though. “I just need more time to process it all. Keep me updated on plans, alright? I want to make sure we get this bastard…for all three of them.” I spoke with as much confidence as I could, though my voice was quaking slightly by the end. Neither of them reacted to it though, which evoked more silent appreciation from me.
“Of course. We’re working on another trap to deal with him once we decipher Larry’s clue. For now…lay low. We really need to make our next strike count. Unified…we have to be able to stop him. Even with four shadows.” Kelly said this with determination, but even I could tell she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. That would have to do, though.
“Right. We have to be able to.” I echoed her, attempting to instill a similar sense of determination in my own voice, but failing utterly. It seemed so…hard to quantify, now. What would even happen.
“That’s the spirit” Mark said, nodding. “We’ll be off now. Stay safe till tomorrow, Diane.”
I nodded to them, waving, as they took the chance to depart the room.
I moved back over, laying back down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling longingly.
“…Iris?” I asked upwards, in a small voice. The shadow broke off from it’s position in the corner, moving to loom over me. I felt ever so slightly threatened by the animal heads which stared down at me. I’d always wondered why it’s appearance and abilities differed so much from each other. But now wasn’t the time I’d be asking that. Andrew was the one interested in the naming conventions and was researching them…
“Yes, Diane?” It said harmoniously, looking down at me. It…she. I couldn’t quantify it, really. It wasn’t a person. It never talked like one, it treated itself like an object…but again, a debate for another day.
“…are you worried? About all of this?”
“Of course. I do not want to be subsumed by Evander.” The response was near instant.
“What about me?” I asked, with some curiosity. I wasn’t sure about what it thought of me, in truth.
“I do not want to see you killed, Diane. I assumed that was a given.”
“Right. Sorry.” I said, shifting my gaze over to it. “When we first met. You said the shadows are meant as guardian spirits, yes?” That day had been chaotic. I thought I was being stalked, and woke up in the middle of my first night at college to a shadowy figure standing above me in an animal mask. I was so, so thankful that my roommate hadn’t quit on me after I’d let out an unearthly shriek in the middle of the night.
“That is correct. We have recently awoken and have found host with which to develop our abilities and protect. The host’s safety comes foremost.”
“…right. What’s the difference with Evander?”
That gave the shadow pause.
“I am unsure. When I first met Evander…a very long time ago…he was different. Less…stoic. I do not know what has changed.”
“…well there goes that.” I said, with a sigh. “I’m going back to sleep. Wake me if a serial killer is going to kick down my door.
No response to my jest via the shadow, so I simply rolled over, careful to make sure I wouldn’t end up sleeping on the cast before slipping off into sleep to dodge any more of my feelings.
I awoke to the sound of a long clunking sound against one of my walls. Flitting one eye open, I gazed at the electronic clock on my desk, which read to be nine thirty. The darkness outside my window only confirmed this. I sat up, careful of my arm, which thankfully had no more pain that I could immediately feel. Thinking, I determined the source of the noise to be on the outermost wall, just below my window, just as it happened again, even closer. Eyes widening, awake in an instance, I pushed myself out of bed, backing away towards the door, when the window was opened with a whoost of somewhat cold pre-fall air.
I called Iris to me, and got ready to merge, when the person threw himself through the window. The well dressed figure of Enzo. Not merged, with no sign of Evander. I immediately merged with Iris, and fired off a burst of iridescent light straight into his face. Then another, then another, then another. We worked in tandem, each blast visibly making contact, his attempts to intercede his hand over and over again failing almost utterly.
Eventually, he spoke, after the fourteenth or fifteenth blast, having been forced to the floor.
“…my retinas-” He winced “-have thoroughly been burned, now can we stop the lights show-” He still spoke with his aggravating slightly accented tone. But he looked up at us, but not directly at us. He’d been blinded, I could tell, the rainbow light still bouncing around his eyes.
“We can still burn through to your brain” We said, with force.
“Right, but I promise you I can summon Evander here and blow your head off before you come anywhere close to having that happen. Face it, Diane, Iris. Alone, you can’t hope to hurt me.” He spoke calmly and methodically, and it only made me want to kill him more.
“We’ll take our chances” We said, raising our hand again to keep firing.
He raised a hand “Don’t make me break your other arm. Besides, I figured you’d want a chance of getting out of this situation alive.”
“What do you mean” We said, voice near a growl.
“I can kill you effortlessly. So let’s talk about this, before we get into unpleasantness.”
The weight of his words began to sink in. Our fight last night had gone similarly. We’d lost. Our powers couldn’t beat him alone.
“You can’t attack me here anyways, my roo-” I looked to my roommates bed. It was empty. Shit.
“She’s taking a night off, took an unfortunate fall, in the infirmary” He said, smirking.
“That’s against the rules you pig”
“Perhaps, from a certain point of view. But then again…who makes the rules?” His grin was insufferable.
We lowered our hand.
“Talk.”
“I’ll make this short. I want your help in collecting the other shadows. In exchange for that, I’m willing to offer you Edward back.”
What.
The.
Hell.
“You can’t do that. That’s not a power you have.”
“On the contrary. His soul is still mixed up with Arthur’s. And the powers of the combined shadows is more then enough to make a vessel for said soul.” He said it all so damn calmly. Like we were talking about some casual life goals, not the murder of eleven people for power.
But still. It made me hesitate. Us hesitate.
“What would you want me to do? I’m not going to kill my friends!”
He clicked his tongue. “Well I’m afraid that’s a necessary portion of helping me. Would you rather get to live to the end of this and get your boyfriend back, or would you rather die alone, tonight, having accomplished nothing? I’ll win either way, in the end. You…eight, now, have no one coming to save you. You’ll all die alone, in the end.” He spoke with finality. I hated that.
I considered it. But something stopped me. He’d just backstab me, for one. Secondly…I refused to be a pawn.
I unmerged with Iris.
“What are you doin-“ The shadow said, I cut it off. I compelled, through our mental link.
“Go tell Lanigan he has another dead kid on his conscious. Wake him up if you have to. He lives just off campus, a tiny house with a red roof.”
“But, I must protect y-“
“Go. Or I’ll hand you over to Enzo right here and now.”
The shadow nodded.
“Goodbye, Diane.” It said solemnly.
“Goodbye Iris.”
The shadow vanished. I slowly approached Enzo.
“Fine. I’m in. I just want to see Edward again.” I did my best to sound defeated.
Enzo smiled. Not a smirk, but just as aggravating.
“Good, now, I’ll explain the pla-”
I punched him in the face. He couldn’t see it coming, and went slamming into the metal air conditioning unit just under the window.
“If you’re right, I’ll see him again pretty damn soon. And I’ll see you in there too, when we kick your ass!” I yelled, kicking him in the side, managing a few blows in before Evander appeared, and merged with Enzo. I took a heavy punch to the upper chest, and was sent sprawling to the ground with a thud. They weren’t even bothering with the rifle. Prick.
“You’ve chosen death. That’s fine, I suppose, I just expected better” They said, withdrawing a knife from their belt. I recognized it. One of Edwards.
“How tragic. The inconsolable girlfriend, steals the murder weapon of her boyfriend from a crime scene, and eviscerates herself in her own bed-” I was picked up, thrashing, forced back onto my bed, still attempting to scratch or hit them somehow, until the knife pierced my stomach, slowly, as if to make me feel the most pain. “Truly, the cult here is out of hand-” they said, continuing to gloat. I just glared, despite the pain.
“You’re just a fake ass son of a bi-“
The face beneath the helm hardened, and pulled the knife straight up. I didn’t feel anything, after that, but my stone cold glare didn’t change despite it all.
Kindling And Miscellany 