I woke up in the arms of my boyfriend, tight around me, my eyes facing the wall only a few inches away. A twin bed with two people in it was rough enough on it’s own, and we were both pretty tall, pretty built people. I was surprised the bed was still standing, after about a month of our relationship, but hey, I guess the things were built strong. After five minutes of my own intrusive thoughts left me with the lust to move, and thus I nudged Paul with my elbow, getting a small grunt from him and leading to his arms being withdrawn from around my midsection, and letting me lean up on the bed and swing my legs over and out of the bed, onto the ground a foot or so below. I moved to fish my cloths off the ground, scattered about the room haphazardly after last night. As I walked to grab my top from it’s spot by the door, I righted one of the shelves, on the cusp of falling after we’d slammed into it.
I was mostly dressed by the time Paul decided to get up, and started mirroring me in that regard. I helped him once I was done, in what I thought at least was a cute gesture, even if it annoyed him a bit. He’d lucked out awhile back and gotten a solo room, the last odd number on the hall. So we’d been using it to…have quality time…during the evenings. I was sure his neighbors knew by now, but with Paul being a star football player…his reputation spoke for itself, and no one wanted to be the guy to rat out the football star for having too much sex.
At least I hoped so. Who knew. With the recent news, our reputations might not be that great. Since apparently we were supposedly apart of a cult now, or so the rumor mill said the police thought, with the three dead so far. Larry…that loveable little bitch hadn’t helped them much with his drawing as a result. I’d really hoped Andrew had figured that out by now, otherwise he’d only hindered us, and I really didn’t want that to be the case. I wanted to remember him more fondly then that.
Once we were both dressed, I grabbed and pulled on my winter jacket, out of habit, wrapping my scarf firmly around my neck. It was habit, by now. If it was below eighty degrees, I wore this stuff. For a lot of reasons, really, foremost of them that I didn’t like showing off my body very much. Old habits, dying hard.
I looked over to Paul, and more aptly, the shadows in the corner.
Atlas was huge. He’d been blocking the window, and when he stepped away, the room flooded with mid morning light. His armor clanked and clicked with every step he took, to the point where I wondered how Paul could stand it all the time. Maeve was also pretty big, with a fancy dress and a veil, and a relatively thin frame, but this was contrasted by her being nearly as tall as Atlas, only a few inches shorter. They were heads taller then any other shadow, and I found that personally, hilarious. Especially since they were arguably some of the strongest.
Atlas gave Paul strength. The axe on his back wasn’t just for show, and when we had trained together at the junkyard outside of town (a double date from a few weeks prior, before the Enzo mess, with Mark and Kelly) he’d been cleaving old cars in half no problem, and picking up massive metal blocks.
Maeve gave me technique, to put it simply. Fighting styles, ideal training methods, even things like my classes, came relatively easy. I had the benefits of years of study in a few minutes. Though this had it’s drawbacks. For one, it only worked while merged, and once we separated, the stuff left my brain rapidly. For two…I had to be able to articulate it, read it, or otherwise comprehend it on a basic level in order to gain proficiency. And finally, for three, I could only know so many things. Currently, it was honed reaction time, a martial art called Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, first aid, and pressure points. It could change, depending on what class I needed to pass that day, but with the Enzo threat, I’d kept my repertoire more combat focused. Martial arts were preferred because of the extra body mass and reach which came with merging gave me a slight edge. I’d already used it the past few months to quickly build muscle on just my default state-almost enough to make me want to ditch the winter gear, but not quite. All in all…I liked Maeve. Power and personality, even if she could be a bit condescending when I repeated topics. Her purpose seemed to be to learn, and by doing so…well, she’d turned my life around at least, so she was good in my book.
I looked back over to Paul as I finished with my extra layers “Ready to go?” I asked him, smiling.
He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s hope we aren’t about to learn someone else is dead.”
That brought a bit of dread into me. I wasn’t scared of Enzo, as much as I was afraid of losing another friend.
“We won’t. We’re going to get Enzo.” I said calmly, opening the door for him as a courtesy. We stepped out into the hall, and then out of the building. We had our first class together, thankfully, so we could watch each others back until afterwards, where we’d have another lunch meeting. During this one, we’d make the plan to bring Enzo down for good.
Our statistics class let out early, which was nice. It let me and Paul take the long way around to the dining hall, looping back around the campus’s edge. We walked mostly in silence.
Silence was a lot of our relationship, honestly. After a week or so of it, we understood each other enough that the company was good enough. We supported each other, knew each others issues, and generally had a handle on what the other wanted.
It worked out like that, and neither of us were complaining. I felt good enough after about a few minutes of walking that I even shed my winter jacket, tying it around my waist with a measure of care, leaving the outline of my now physique exposed. I’d bulked up in the past few months, with Maeve’s help, and it had alleviated a lot of my worries about my appearance…but not all of them. I still shuddered a bit, sometimes, thinking about just a few years ago.
I’d been stuck in a relationship at fifteen, with someone I’d known awhile before that. He’d…done some pretty horrid things to the way I thought about myself, over time, even though I convinced myself everything was fine. I’d broken things off at the end of the senior year of high school, but he’d stalked me all summer, and nearly driven me to near insanity, before I’d moved away and finally had my freedom, at the cost of being the most self conscious I’d ever been, and as a whole being paranoid at almost everyone. It had been somewhere close to hell on earth.
Then I’d met Paul, and everything’d changed. We’d met our shadows on the same day, and around the same time. We’d stuck together as the group formed. We’d stuck together when it almost fell apart. We’d stuck together in his room late at night. Things just sort of evolved, one after another, when we were around each other. I wasn’t even sure if this wasn’t technically a relationship yet, we’d never called it that, we’d never looked at each other and went ‘yup, this is what’s happening’. But it felt right all the same.
I looked over at him, his face stone cold and somewhat chiseled face as always looking like he was about to win a game of poker on bluff alone. I couldn’t say I looked dissimilar, though I looked more grumpy perpetually then anything. I considered nudging him, trying to get a smile out of him, but I didn’t really feel like it. Neither of us were very happy people, and most recent events hadn’t helped things. Enzo.
Paul wanted to crush him, and most of our plans involved putting him at the forefront, Atlas charging Evander. We weren’t quite sure of their strength compared, especially with the potential growing strength of three shadows. Now, at least, we knew that he was faster, but the strength contest…well, I certainly hoped Atlas’s power would be enough. If it wasn’t…we’d have to try something else.
Our brooding lasted for a few more minutes, as we slowly approached the cafeteria building, one of the back entrances because the front would be claustrophobic in the mid day scramble to get food between classes. Stepping in despite our silence, we passed a few employees but no students, as we headed through and into the cafeteria at large. Our table was barely populated as of now, with only Cynthia and Dawn having made it so far, the pair engaged in some kind of hushed and whispered conversation, with Cynthia out of the pair seeming slightly annoyed to Dawn’s neutrality at all. As we approached, they leaned away from each other, both looking between each other before affixing themselves forward to their food. We hadn’t bothered to get ours. With our luck, something would rear it’s head to ruin our appetite soon enough, as it had the last few days. I’d thrown up yesterday, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Thinking about your friends being brutally murdered had a habit of making you not the most stable in the stomach.
We sat across from the two present, none of us saying anything. A few minutes later, Andrew joined us, tray in hand, though he only poked at it in equal silence. Pulling out a photo from his bag that I recognized as the photo Kelly had copied of the crime scene where they’d found Larry’s body. Where the cult theory had begun.
Even now, I could see people eying us as they passed. What could only be judgmental gazes of the perceived freaks. We were just lucky the police weren’t fully involved yet.
Andrew was pouring over the photograph, seemingly completely tuned out of the world around him in the process, staring intently like there was some sort of detail he could have possibly missed in the first few hours of staring he’d surely done already. He’d done it yesterday when it was handed off to him, and the fact that he was still doing it now did wonders to explain his last day’s itinerary. But…in truth I couldn’t really blame him. He was trying to help the best he could.
Finally, about seven minutes in total late, Mark and Kelly entered the cafeteria, seemingly deep in a conversation with each other, one that seemed relatively heated, for them, at least based from what I could read from across the room. They took their sweet time getting their food as a result, walking across the room and up the small set of stairs before reaching the table where we all sat, taking their seats near the rest of us.
“Where’s Enzo?” Mark asked, with a measure of caution in his tone, as he looked around the cafeteria, as if expecting the French prick to pop out of the nearest shadow.
“More importantly.” Dawn cut off anyone from answering, her strong tone somewhat out of place for her “Where’s Diane?”
It all dawned on us now, that Diane wasn’t here. Her normal spot, and Edward’s spot next to it vacant.
“When was the last time someone saw her? Did anyone see her after me and Kelly yesterday?” Mark said, an infection of worry spreading into his tone. Everyone at the table now looked concerned. I know me and Paul hadn’t seen her since lunch two days ago.
Cynthia shook her head. So did Dawn. Andrew looked up…then also shoot his head no.
“…we need to check on her” I said, starting to stand.
“Agreed.” Paul said, moving to do the same.
“…right. Just be careful, Enzo could be lurking anywhere, and with Arthur, he could easily set a tra-“
A loud slam, as we all turned over. Andrew had slammed his fist into the table, looking forward with wide eyes.
“I’ve got it.” He said, holding up the photograph fervently, as if that explained anything.
“…Elaborate, Mr. Genius?” Cynthia said, slightly exasperated, rolling her eyes.
“…what Larry was trying to tell us. He drew a sword, embedded in a stone, which surrounded the entire campus. How did I not get the reference sooner…” He trailed off.
Everyone looked confused, until Paul spoke up.
“…Arthur. The sword in the stone was drawn by King Arthur.”
“Right. And surrounding the whole campus…” Andrew’s brow furrowed. “What if each ability Evander has gets stronger with each shadow he takes in? Edward had a radius of about a hundred feet. What if Enzo has…more.”
“…that could explain how he evaded our trap.” Dawn said, nodding.
“That makes things even more complex, doesn’t it…how do we hope to get the jump on him now.” Mark said, creasing his brow.
We all sat in silence for a solid five minutes, me and Paul sitting back down as we all tried to think of something, anything which might get us through this, which might help us out of this seemingly impossible situation.
Eventually though, Cynthia spoke up.
“…Arthur tracks objects, right? Not people?” Her voice was uncertain, but it had some level of confidence to it.
“That’s correct” Andrew said, nodding.
“…so, if we were to…I dunno, switch stuff with each other…he wouldn’t have any idea who was who.”
We all heard the idea for Cynthia, but it took us all a second to actually hear it, and consider it. It sounded…stupid. But…
“That just might work.” Mark said, almost stunned that it would.
“Rebecca switches with Dawn, Paul switches with Andrew. I switch with Kelly, and Mark is Mark. We pincer him, while he tries to go for our exposed individuals, he’s surprised by Atlas and Maeve, meanwhile Artemis and Orion come in from the sides and I come down the center, while Dawn and Andrew are perfectly safe on the backlines. Oh-and if we get Diane, she switches with Mark.” Cynthia said, nodding. The rest of us thought about it, then joined the motions of agreement. It was a good plan.
“Right. We doing this tonight?” Mark said, as if thinking it through.
“I don’t see why not” Cynthia said, shrugging.
“Right. I’ll get to picking a location with some Orion scouting. Paul, Rebecca, you two go check on Diane, make sure she’s alright. Dawn, try and find Enzo. I want eyes on him, just make sure you stay in a populated area. Kelly, stick with me, Cynthia, cover Dawn. We’re going to get him. We’re convening at the founders statue at 6pm.”
Everyone nodded, and began to split off to our various tasks. Me and Paul headed out of the back entrance again, and began our somewhat hurried and silent walk towards Diane’s dorm.
We’d gotten into the dorm easily, I lived in this building after all, I just alternated between my room and Paul’s. We headed for Diane’s ground floor room, each footstep feeling heavier then the last. We did reach it eventually, however, and Paul knocked on the door twice, heavily.
We waited for about a minute, nothing but the faint ring of the loud knocking to fill our ears, but there was no reply. Another pair of knocks rang out, to once more no reply. We both looked to each other. Paul looked down at the doorknob…looked to Atlas…then looked to me. I looked at the surrounding hallways. The dorm was empty, this time of day. I nodded back to him.
Atlas and Paul merged. They became a massive hulking form of armor and muscle, one which reached for the locked doorknob, and turned. I could hear the locking mechanism snap, along with the knob itself, limp and useless as Atlas released. They undid their merge, and he moved to open the door carefully.
The door creaked open, and he took a step inside, me after him. The smell of blood hit us first, and a moment later, as we got a view of the room proper, we were hit by the realization of Diane’s brutalized body on her bed. Knife in her gut with her hand around it, signs of cuts all over her body. We both took a step back, and I puked into the trash can with violent vitriol.
“…this was Enzo, right?” I said, worried. Could Diane have done this to herself? Doubts started to fill the back of my head.
Paul nodded. Pointing to the other end of the room, where the air conditioner unit had a sizeable dent in it. “Signs of a struggle.”
That brought an immense amount of relief, the sickening, toxic kind that felt overwhelming and made me feel even more lightheaded. I took a step back, and so did Paul.
“…lets get out of here. I don’t want to be the ones to report this. It’ll only make things worse for us.” I finally said, after about a minute of standing in horror. Paul returned it by nodding, and we both moved for the door. Gently shutting it behind us, we exited the dorm, and left our friend behind to rot.
It was meeting time. We’d skipped the rest of our classes for the day, being content to spend the rest of the hours leading up until the meet just being in close proximity to each other and being left alone to our thoughts. Along with a bit of crying on behalf of both of us. We’d needed it.
But now? Now was time for action. We both strode across tandem, silent and stoic in a pair, and headed for the founders statue on the east side of campus. A tall well done art piece of an old white guy from over a century ago. Yippee.
But the others were gathered there in their entirety. Andrew, Dawn, Cynthia, Mark and Kelly. Then me and Paul, for a total of seven. We approached, waving a greeting, getting nods in return.
Mark broke a two minute or so silence.
“…well. Let’s not put this off any longer. We’re losing daylight. Enzo, according to our scouting, is on the other side of the campus right now, talking to a professor. But his dorm brings him this way, and he’ll likely do a scan for us. Everyone ready to go change?”
Everyone nodded.
“Everyone ready to kill Enzo?”
Everyone nodded, and we broke off into pairs.
This might have been the most hellish thing I’ve had to do in a very long time.
I felt like I was being constricted from all sides, wearing Dawn’s cloths. Everything was too fucking small, which made sense, since they were normally worn by someone nearly a foot and a half shorter then me. It was a miracle it wasn’t all tearing beneath me. Paul was doing marginally better, since Andrew was only half a foot shorter then him, but he still wasn’t exactly top of his game when it came to his current comfort. Thankfully this would all go away once we merged, or at least I really hoped it would.
We were in wait behind a pair of small stone pillars in the west courtyard, a gazebo in the center.
Eventually, though, we began to hear heavy footfalls. Looking out slightly behind cover, I could see it. The looming shape of a merged Evander and Enzo. They now wore Juno’s mask like a shoulder pad, along with Iris’s on the other shoulder. Their rifle was already drawn, and Arthur’s limbs jutted out of their neck, and zephyr’s bodily quirk of various parts shunting to each other was ever present here, as their arms seemed to shift and reposition every other moment.
“Dawn, Andrew. Did you really think you could hide? Let me show you how wrong you ar-“
We didn’t give him a chance to finish. Wordlessly, we both merged, and charged Enzo, just as he leveled Evander’s rifle towards the hiding place Paul was hiding behind, pulling the trigger and only hitting stone as Atlas and Maeve both charged him.
Me and Maeve hit melee first, deftly landing a pair of blows, but backing up before they could swing their rifle back around, just for Atlas to connect a massive blow with his axe, sending Evander flying back ten feet and to the ground, massive cut in their body armor bleeding a viscous voidish blood. Juno’s mask glowed, just as they stood up in a flash, drawing their rifle back around and pointing it towards me faster then we could follow.
Just as he pulled the trigger however, Paul tackled me out of the way, taking the blow with little issue, as the front of his and Atlas’s armor glowed, defense activated, as they moved to charge again.
Evander moved quickly again, pulling the trigger at Atlas’s back, once more to no real effect, swinging the axe backwards with enough force to cleave through a car, but Evander dodged backwards-
Right into me and Maeve. We laid into them from behind, using our martial skill here to put them on the backfoot, moving to use Zephyr’s speed but not before taking a heavy blow from Atlas which nearly floored them, Juno’s ability the only thing keeping Evander afloat-though we both thankfully had the reaction time to back off just as the Iris mask began to glow, shedding multicolored light. With our reaction time, we shielded our eyes, but Atlas wasn’t so lucky, getting a near full blast. Evander managed to recover, taking advantage of Atlas’s lack of vision to slam the butt of the rifle into him and stagger him.
We moved to quickly take this chance to strike at Evander’s open flank, however, we stumbled, as one of my feet found itself caught on something. Looking down, we saw a patch of moss growing from the pavement beneath, wet and teeming with growth. We pulled my right foot away with force and a jump to our right, only to put our left foot down on something which punched through our shoe, sharp pain embedding itself through, as we stumbled and could feel the blood seeping out through the holes in the footwear. Our head hit the concrete, and as we turned our gaze over, trying to what we’d stepped out, we noticed the concrete had reformed into rows of two inch spikes that hadn’t been there a moment before. We moved to stand, until a slashing pain hit my leg, like someone slicing into it with a knife, and I saw the shadow casting over us
A massive, nearly six and a half foot tall bipedal figure, with golden brown feathers wreathing her body, and wings jutting from her back. Like half human, half bird, and her clawed foot had just sliced our leg into ribbons. I let out a scream of pain.
Cynthia…fused with Andromeda smugly looked down.
“Not so good now, are you?”
“Cynthia what are you do-” we were cut off by her jamming her claws into my gut, I wretched out another yell.
Atlas looked over, bellowing out “Rebecca!” at the top of his lungs, just as he cleared his eyes, moving to charge towards me, but Evander discharged the rifle with two squeezes of the trigger, sending Atlas tumbling to the ground with a heavy impact. We dimly turned our gaze upwards to Cynthia.
“Sorry it has to end this way, Becca.” Cynthia said through Andromeda’s filter, but it was clearly her talking, only she could call me Becca to the amount of hatred I felt. “But hey, we’ll see each other again some day, if all goes well. But for now…you’re in for a bit of a taste of what eternal torment feels like. It’s necessary, unfortunat-”
We moved to lunge upwards, cutting her off attempting to use our reaction time and martial skill to maybe knock her off balance, or do something to save ourselves, not bothering to speak at this point, however it was all for naught. The clawed foot came down one more time, this time turning my throat into ribbons, blood spewing from it out in all directions. Our head hit the concrete one last time, and the last thing I was even slightly dimly aware of before I lost all perception of anything, was the pure scream of rage, pain and sorrow coming from Atlas and Paul as one.
Kindling And Miscellany 