Destroyed

by Madeline Dyer

  I wrap my jacket around me tighter, look to Corin, my vision momentarily obscured by my hair snaking across my face.

  “Is this it?” He’s pale, so pale, thanks to our swift Seer-travel, and his sunburn makes his face look like a collage. He has no jacket, just his shirt and jeans, and he shivers.

  “This is it.”

  I pull him forward with me. Sodden thistles brush against my legs, and I wince. Spirits have to be around here somewhere. They have to be. They are. The air is alive, tingly, telling me to go forward, like I know which way to go, where they’ll be, which steps will take me to them.

  I hold back a shelf of foliage for Corin, and he ducks under it. Then we’re hiking, battling against the torrents of watery mud, the wind.

  “Is this an inactive volcano too?” Corin asks after several moments.

  I shrug. My powers don’t tell me everything. They just tell me that right now, the spirits are near. Of course, they would be, that’s why we came here. My powers guided me, transported me to the nearest place to them that’s safe for landing.

  We walk and walk for what seems like hours, but could only be minutes—I don’t know—and I keep telling Corin they’re nearby. That I can feel them getting stronger. I can. I can.

  “Sev, I think we’re lost,” Corin says.

  “No.” I shake my head, look around.

  We’re deep in the jungle, hidden inside layers of dense foliage, among shorter trees with thick branches and trunks. Mosquitoes buzz, and the air hums. There’s less mud here, and it’s stopped raining. I look up at the broken sky.

  “They have to be nearby.” I look at him. “I can feel it, feel them. I was guided here. We have to find them. It’s how we’re going to win the war.”

  “I know.” His voice is level, untelling. “But I don’t think they’re here. I think we’re wasting time.”

  “Wasting time?” I stare at him, then step to the left, avoiding a clump of nettles. “We’ve got all the time in the world? The Untamed are safe. It’s only us out here.”

  “No,” he says. “The settlement is only so big. And with the Zharat there, it’s a bloodbath. You know it. The sooner the war’s over and the Untamed are the only survivors, the sooner they can get out of there.”

  Get out of there.

  Can they get out of there? Will the spirits let them?

  I frown.

  They have to. There won’t be enough food in there, not now the number of Untamed inside has increased.

  “The spirits are near.” I grit my teeth and push on, duck under a thorny branch, see afro-alpine vegetation. “They are.”

  I quicken my pace. Pain jabs at my side after a few moments. A stitch. I swear under my breath as I slow, clutch at my side and—

  Light catches my eye.

  I turn to the left, squint.

  “What is it?” Corin asks.

  I point to it. The white light, so strong, so bright.

  “Sunlight?” Corin says.

  “No.” I frown. “It’s not. Not that intensity. Not there.” It’s in the wrong place for the sun, I’m sure.

  My heart beats a little faster, then I’m moving again, pushing through more and more foliage, ducking under branches, jumping over others. Vines reach out, try to grab my ankles, and thorns scratch me, but I barely feel any of it.

  Not until I get to the edge of the mountainside and part the leaves with my hands, so I can see the light, see all of it, how the valley far below emits it.

  My breath catches in my throat.

  It’s not the spirits.

  It’s the bison.

  The greatest spirit of all.

  I pull a hand through my hair. My breathing speeds up.

  Then everything moves too fast. The land’s shaking, and I fall. Corin too. We hit the ground together. Tree roots dig into my chest. The mountain continues shaking.

  “Volcano?” Corin shouts, his voice splintering.

  And then—

  Then I’m not here.

  Not in the Noir Land with Corin.

  Huge trees tower over me, each one bare, naked, except for the cobwebs. But these ones are thicker, look stronger, and they’re not just around the trunks. They make a stone web, draped across the branches. The tips of the branches themselves drip darkness. It’s pooling by my feet, and I step back.

  Something bubbles nearby.

  I look up, and between the branches and the stone-cobwebs, the sky is a swirling mass of darkness. But behind the darkness, is the bison. I don’t know how I see him, because my eyes can’t. Yet part of me does. My soul?

  Someone shrieks, a shriek that goes on and on and on.

  The Dark Void.

  The place of Seeing visions. That’s why we came to this mountain in particular, in the Noir Lands? It’s an entry point for the Dark Void? Because it needs to show me something, warn me?

  I look around for Corin.

  But he’s not here. It’s just the trees, everywhere.

  I’m on my own.

  Completely alone.

  I wait, wait for something to happen. For the Dark Void to change and show me something, like it did last time when Taras and Elf were there too. But how long did that take?

  I wait and wait—and it took a while, then—but now there’s something hammering inside me, telling me I’ve not got a while.

  I start running. I don’t know when I do, but I am. Lungs burn, arms pump. My shoes smack against the dry land. The fog is even darker ahead, radiates a strange kind of light.

  I keep running.

  I cannot stop.

  The shrieks around me get louder, and I look up, and, on the end of a tree branch, I see a severed head. Muscle and sinew spill out of the neck, and below it—ten feet to the ground—there’s a dark pool.

  I slam to a halt, stare up at the face. A little girl. Juanita? The first Stone Seer I killed, because the Dream Land’s destruction was my fault. My heart clenches, and bile rises. I taste it—dank—at the back of my throat. The girl’s eyes are huge, and the veins in her eyes are too strong, stand out too much. The end of the branch bursts out next to her right eye socket.

  My stomach roils. I step to the left. Her gaze follows me.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  I look down—have to look away from her—and….

  Footprints.

  Footprints, made by the dark blood. So many of them. All around me.

  A cold sensation travels up my spine, and I look ahead. But there’s no one there. Yet the footprints, they’re appearing. Appearing all around me as I look, as the blood from beneath the girl’s severed head extends, and it’s like there are people here, invisible, running alongside me because I’m sprinting again—sprinting as fast as I can, and I don’t remember moving away from the girl’s head.

  Something shines bright ahead, reflects a deathly light at me, a light that pulls me in—and I’m helpless to stop it. I’m moving, moving closer, not in control.

  My breath catches in my throat.

  Something small, cradled in the mud.

  An augmenter. Golden in color, but dimmer, not like the Honesty Zahlia used on her Untamed captives.

  The roof of my mouth dries. A warning about an augmenter?

  I take a step back, and the ground softens, tries to sink me.

  My arms flail out, and then I’m falling. My hands dig into the gloopy ground. I am right next to the augmenter.

  I pick it up. I don’t know why I do, but I do. I’m not choosing what to do. Or maybe I am, or maybe it’s the Seer instability—because I only see them when there’s a problem with my mind, don’t I?

  Or is it this place, the Dark Void, messing with me?

  Another shriek. I shiver.

  The weight of the augmenter feels strangely good in my hand. One side of the clear vial is smeared with mud. I rub at it—only it’s not mud. It’s blood. The blood of the girl.

  No.

  I drop it. But not on the ground.

/>   Into my pocket. It presses against my thigh.

  A dark rumbling resonates through the lands.

  You’re in danger here.

  The bison. I look up at him, try to see him, but I can’t remember which part of the sky he was in, because there are no trees to peer through now, and the sky’s so much darker, thick with anticipation and longing.

  Longing? I flinch. For what? Why did I think that?

  I turn again, my eyes still on the sky. The bison. I’ve just got to see him and—

  I slip, whirl to the left, throw my arms out for balance. My vision blurs, swirls, and the air feels harder, wetter. My fingers are burning—the blood… I look at my hands and—

  Slime. Green slime. My skin blisters, and I watch as it peels away.

  I scream. Turn. Water. Need water.

  I run, and the girl is shrieking, and her shrieks mingle with the screams of all the other Seers this land has taken.

  And you are next. The voice is old. Too old. Doesn’t sound right or real, not at all. Not—

  I take in the words, the meaning. I’m next? No. I can’t be, I’ve—

  “No!” I yell, heart pounding. “No! I won’t! I—”

  Something squeezes me, squeezes my throat. My hands reach up, and there’s a rope or something around my neck—a rope I can’t see.

  We want you. Let’s keep you here.

  The words twist inside me. I cough, but opening my mouth means badness dives inside me, along with the screams. The screams that devour everything as I tug on my powers, try to pull myself out of there.

  Corin’s face hovers above mine, and, for a second, all I can do is stare at him. He’s here. I’m here.

  I’m lying down, and he mutters something, but I can’t make his words out. I made it out. I got out.

  “A Seeing dream,” I say, breathless. “The Dark Void.” I lift my hands up, stare at my fingers. At the way my skin’s hardened and callused. Not peeled off, but….

  “What is it?” Corin asks. “The warning? And what’s happened to your hands?”

  I tell him about the trees, the cobwebs, the severed head, the blood, the footsteps, the bison’s words, the slime. And the augmenter.

  But I don’t tell him I picked it up, that I put it in my pocket. My mouth dries, and I stop talking when I get to that point. He’ll think it’s the end of the warning.

  “A warning about an augmenter?” He frowns.

  “Has to be about the Enhanced.” My gaze fixes onto a curry bush not far away. Its yellow flowers are like little suns.

  He presses his lips together for a moment. “They know where we are. That we’re here.”

  We both look around, as if expecting to see mirror eyes glinting through the leaves, the stems, the trunks.

  But there’s nothing.

  My heart hammers. I can’t be captured now. I can’t. Raleigh can’t get me, use me.

  But the augmenter.

  Me picking it up like that.

  Me choosing them?

  No.

  Me being forced to choose them?

  Are they close by? Yet my powers brought me here. I can feel it, the air is alive with spirit energy.

  What’s going on?

  I turn, feel sick, look back down at the valley and—

  The bison’s gone.

  Instead, thousands and thousands of spirits line the valley. They’re emitting the light. The valley far, far below is alive with them. So much light, bright, illuminating and silhouetting their forms.

  Hundreds and hundreds of figures. Some float, some run. The air’s hazy all around, glowing. It looks beautiful and deadly.

  I point to the valley. “We need to get down there.” If we’re with the spirits, we’ve got protection. We’ve got numbers. We’ve got an army.

  We’re in danger on our own. I am in danger on my own. Was that what the Dark Void meant? But there are too many possibilities, too many interpretations, and not enough time to work it out. The air’s getting heavier, pressing against me, urging me to move.

  “Okay,” Corin says. “But what’s the danger? The Enhanced? Do they know we’re here?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. But the spirits are down there.” I point again. “Just look. We need to be there. With them.”

  He looks. I see his eyes narrowing, but his gaze is just blank as he turns to me.

  I ignore the pain in my hand, and take his, make him turn, so we’re facing back the way we came. Go back through all the jungle-growth, that’s best. I don’t understand—I was sure we had to walk up the mountain. The air itself told me. It—

  I stop.

  My breath catches in my throat for a second time. Only this time it’s real.

  The augmenter is on the ground.

  The same one that was in the mud.

  Corin looks at me. “What’s the matter?”

  “Do you see that?”

  But the moment I say the question, I know he doesn’t.

  “See what?” Corin asks.

  I let go of his hand, bend down, reach out to touch the glass vial. Part of me expects my fingers to go through it—because if I was imagining it, then they would. But my fingers touch glass, and I pick it up with both hands, feel the weight of it.

  Pick it up just like I did in the warning. There’s no mud smeared over it, but it’s the same one.

  The Dark Void doesn’t warn you. It shows you the things to look for, where to go, the things you need in your future.

  I need augmenters?

  My vision blurs a little. I’ve been seeing them the whole time—because of this? This moment now? The image from the Dark Void, did it slip through the cracks, reach me in the mortal world as well, so many times, becoming real, but only for me? So I’d know how important it is. So I wouldn’t ignore the warning? It wasn’t Seer instability after all… I’m not going mad.

  I pocketed the augmenter in the vision. A sign I choose the Enhanced? That it’s what I have to aim for?

  “Sev, what is it? I can’t see anything.”

  My lips feel strange. “It’s an augmenter.”

  He swears under his breath. “Destroy it.”

  I nod. A strange feeling pulls through me. I stretch my right hand out, uncurling my fingers as I turn my hand over. Then I stamp the ground in an obvious motion. Too obvious?

  But he can’t see that my right hand was empty, and I place the augmenter in my pocket, just like the warning showed me.

  I hope it doesn’t mean what I think it does.

  Because I’m not joining the Enhanced.

  I’m not.

  The augmenter weighs heavily in my pocket, the whole way down the mountain, to the valley. I lose all track of time, barely register it passing. Not when I’ve got an augmenter in my pocket. The sign of the enemy. With me.

  I feel sick, and I look at Corin, the hard lines of his face, know I should tell him. He has to know everything.

  But I can’t bring myself to open my mouth, to say the words. Not until I know what it means.

  A symbol of a merge? Of me saving them all? Taking away their addiction?

  But there are billions of them, and I know I can’t take all of their addiction. Corin’s right about that. So many insects inside me would kill me before I finished, I know.

  Then the war would never end.

  But what does the augmenter mean?

  Because Raleigh’s not going to get me. He doesn’t know what my plan is—he can’t know what I’m doing—and we’re going to surprise him. We’re going to have the upper-hand. He thinks he’s backed me into a corner, but he’s wrong.

  We’re going to win.

  I stare at the Lost Souls in front of me—so suddenly. I’m at the mouth of the valley, and I blink hard. The land rising up each side is covered in giant heather and groundsels.

  “They’re all looking at us,” Corin whispers. “Damn, I wish I had a weapon or something.”

  I shoot him a look. “We’re not hurting them.”

&nbs
p; He doesn’t say anything, and I turn back, see the hundreds of eyes on us. The light is so bright, and I squint as I scan them, trying to find Three—because he has to be here, he just has to—or anyone else I know. Clare, or Jed, or anyone.

  But their faces are all blank, any distinguishing features stripped back so they’re replicas of each other. They watch me and Corin as we walk toward them.

  Corin’s hand tightens in mine. He’s shaking a little. “Sev, this place isn’t right. It’s messing with our heads.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I whisper, but my words feel like shells, no substance to them.

  In front of us, the mass of Lost Souls parts like a tide divided and forms two lines. A funnel for us.

  I squint, look to the far end, to where the light is coming from, try to see the origin of it, but it’s too far.

  I have to walk to it. Walk the path through the spirits.

  “Do you want to stay here?” My voice is low as I squeeze Corin’s hand.

  He shakes his head; I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye and take a deep breath, then step forward.

  Some of the Lost Souls hiss, some don’t. Some are silent, others whisper. The air feels strange. I don’t like it.

  The more I walk, the farther I go, I see more and more degeneration. Eyes missing. Arms coming loose from their joints. Tendrils forming around bodies.

  My Seer pendant flashes hot.

  The augmenter does the same, burns me through my jeans.

  I pick up speed. Corin stumbles on the slippery grass, and I right him.

  More spirits, Lost Souls.

  More and more degeneration.

  But they’re still vaguely human, not as bad as the ones protecting the rest of the Untamed.

  Who says it’s bad?

  How can a natural process be bad?

  I recoil, stare at them as they close in, as their words whisper into my mind. They can read my thoughts. Oh Gods.

  The lines of spirits stop inches away from my right side and Corin’s left side. I feel him tense. Teeth flash at us.

  If they all go for us now, we’ve got no chance.

  We speed up, and I go first as the pathway narrows. Something splatters over my bare arm, and I flinch, but it looks like water. Spirit saliva?

  We walk faster and faster, but the corridor of them, it seems to go on forever. Oh Gods. What if we’re trapped here. Spirits play mind games, don’t they? They could have us walking here forever.