Ruined by Shadows

by Lola StVil

  I have to know what’s wrong. I have to trust that she isn’t mad at me and not be afraid of the answer.

  “Atlas?” I say.

  She turns to me.

  “There’s something wrong. Something you’re not telling me,” I say.

  She looks away from me.

  “Hey, come on, talk to me,” I say.

  She looks back at me, and I am alarmed to see tears in her eyes.

  “There is something, but I can’t tell you until we get back to the loft.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because I made a promise that I wouldn’t. Please, just trust me on this, okay? I swear I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay,” I agree. “But whatever it is, you’re not alone in it.”

  “You might think differently when you hear what it is,” she replies.

  I don’t get a chance to react to that because Regal yells fuck at the top of his lungs and points to our left. I feel panic inside of me when I see the hooded monks coming towards us. They mean business. They are running full pelt, and they’re gaining on us even as we stand watching them in horror.

  “Run,” I shout.

  I tighten my grip on Atlas’s hand, pulling her along with me. We catch up to the team within a couple of strides, and I match my pace to theirs. Everything in me screams to turn it up and get Atlas out of here, but we can’t just outrun the team and leave them to deal with this alone. Atlas would never forgive me if we left them behind. I would never forgive myself.

  “Their touch alone causes an agony so intense you will want nothing more than to die,” I shout. “Don’t let them touch you whatever you do.”

  We keep running. I can see the door up ahead of us. I glance back. The Brotherhood is closing the distance between them and us, but we’re almost at the door. We’re going to make it.

  Regal reaches the door first. He drags it open, and we all rush through it and into the entry hallway. The entryway has changed from when I arrived. Now it’s all yellow sandstone. The floor is sandy too, which makes running harder, but we only have to get through the gate, and we’re free.

  The Brotherhood is so close now that I can feel their presence. After we cross the large empty clearing, the entryway isn’t wide enough for us to make it through as a group. Atlas and I lead with the others behind us, alone or in pairs. I reach the gate and snatch it open. I push Atlas through, and then I’m out and free.

  I don’t know where we are exactly, but we’re in a desert. The heat gets to me almost immediately, pushing down on me like a blanket of oppression. My mouth and throat are instantly dry, and I am already craving an icy-cold bottle of water.

  Langston and Perry are out. Rachel comes next.

  The Brotherhood is right there. One more stride and they’ll have someone.

  “Hurry,” I scream.

  I reach inside the gate blindly, grabbing a hand and dragging. Carla stumbles out followed by Regal. I reach in again for Saudia. My fingers brush hers, but I’m too late.

  She gives an ear-splitting howl of pain as fingers grab her and drag her backward.

  I freeze, my hand still reaching out for Saudia’s hand, her own hand still outstretched towards mine. The team is screaming Saudia’s name. Hearing the way she is screaming is enough to break even the most hard-hearted person, and there is not one eye that doesn’t at least fill with tears as we listen to the sound of her agony.

  “Go. Leave,” Saudia manages to gasp out through the screams.

  I remember when I decided to come here. I know Atlas is strong, but she can’t do it all alone, and I remember thinking she’d be alright with Saudia by her side. I remember when I first joined the team, unofficially. Officially, I was still the Keysu, but I was working to save Atlas, not hurt her. Saudia was naturally wary of me, but she was the only member of the team who wasn’t downright hostile to me. She saw the potential for good in me long before the rest of them.

  And when we found out there was a traitor on the team and everyone was quick to point their fingers at me, accusing me, the outsider, the demon, the ex-Keysu, and the brother of the current one at the time, Saudia didn’t. She scoffed at them and told them it wasn’t me. Somewhere through this whole thing, she’s become a true friend. Maybe my best friend.

  And I am not going to stand here and watch her be taken away by the Brotherhood.

  “Fuck this shit,” I shout.

  I run back into the entryway, towards the hooded figures who are dragging Saudia away from us. Somehow I know if they reach the open part of the entryway and get her through that door that she will be lost to us forever.

  I’m almost to her, and we’re just at the point where the entryway opens out. She is almost blinded by the tears of agony running down her face, but at the last second, she sees me, and she knows what I’m about to do.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  But I do.

  She shakes her head violently, which must hurt like a bitch. I reach into the circle of the hooded figures, and I grab her wrist. She tries to resist me, but the pain has weakened her. I pull on her arm as hard as I can, and she bursts out of the circle and stumbles past me. I shove her, harder than I meant to, but it gets her moving.

  “Get them back home,” I say.

  It’s the last really coherent thought I have before I’m seized by the brothers. One of them touching me created an agony unlike anything I’ve ever felt, but when they all reach out and touch me at once, it’s all-consuming.

  I could never make someone who hasn’t felt it themselves understand it. It’s like being branded by a thousand irons at the same time as being stabbed from the inside and the outside by a thousand knives, all done while drinking bleach and having acid poured into my eyes.

  Space, time, nothing has any meaning anymore. I can’t see. I can’t hear. I just exist with the sole purpose of hurting. The pain consumes me, swallows me. It permeates every part of me and changes me from a living, thinking organism into nothing but a giant nerve ending.

  I feel my sanity start to slip and I’m ready to let go. To embrace the crazy and hope it can block out some of the pain. As I start to let go, to relax into the pain and almost embrace it, I hear something.

  It sounds like my name. I feel as though I don’t have a name anymore, that I am not a person anymore, I am just a ball of energy that is consuming itself, ready to burn out, but still, I hear it, and it gets through the fog of consuming pain and craziness somehow. I strain, listening.

  “Kaneeeeee,” I hear.

  And I recognize it. It’s not my name I’m responding to; it’s Atlas. It’s her voice. She is guiding me through the pain, feeling it with me, and begging me not to give in. Asking me to fight for her, to go back to her. To keep my promise and never leave her again. I force my vision to stop swimming long enough to take one last look at her.

  She stands with her palms flat out in front of her, and I realize the Brotherhood have erected another force field, one that will stop her from getting to me. For that at least, I am grateful. If she could reach me, she would only have to endure the pain beside me.

  Two of the team flank Atlas and the rest stand behind her. All of them watch me; all of them look like they’re breaking inside. I want to tell them it’s okay, that I did what I did because I love them like family, but I can’t speak. Even if I could, I don’t have the words to tell them how I feel about them. I will just have to hope they know.

  My eyes slip closed again as I’m dragged along on feet that no longer work. I don’t lose consciousness, although I wish I could. I know we must be close to the door now, and once I’m through there, there will be no more Atlas, no more light, no more love. Just darkness, pain, and sorrow. It will be over. I will be able to let go and give in to the pain. I won’t have to fight it anymore.

  “Kane,” Atlas shouts again.

  I force myself to open my eyes once more. She deserves one last look. She deserves everything in the world, but I can’t give that to her. I can only give
her one last look. A look I hope she can read and see that I’m okay with this, that I made the right choice.

  “Don’t you dare give up on me, Kane. Fight them,” she screams.

  Can I do that? Is it even possible?

  I don’t know, but somehow her voice, her presence, it cuts through the pain. It doesn’t ease it, but holding the picture of her in my mind makes it slightly more bearable, and I find I can close my mind down to the pain. It’s almost like I’m splitting in two. One half of me is gone, useless, consumed by pain, but the other half is bathed in light and love, and that half, well, I think that half might be able to do something about this.

  I dig my feet into the sand. It doesn’t have enough resistance to halt the progress of the hooded brothers altogether, but it does cause them to pause slightly. They renew their efforts, and I dig down harder. I can see the furrows my feet leave in the sand.

  They grope me, rubbing their hands all over me, increasing the pain to something way beyond anyone’s tolerance threshold, but they can’t break me. Not all of me. Only the part I’ve shut off, the part that screams out for mercy. The part I ignore.

  I tense my arms and shoulders, pushing my body forward, and I feel myself halt. I am stopping them from being able to move me. I push harder, straining, giving it everything I’ve got. I gain an inch. Two inches.

  I glance up at Atlas behind the force field, and I can see her smiling.

  “Keep going, Kane; you’ve got this. You can beat them,” she shouts when I catch her eye.

  And just like that, I know I can. I can take on the world and win when I have her on my side.

  I drag the hooded brothers a few more steps toward Atlas, toward freedom, but I question what will happen when I get there. How will I break down the force field and get to the other side of it?

  I don’t know where the idea comes from, but I suddenly know what I have to do. I push forward harder than ever, pulling my arms forward too. The screams of pain that come from me even as I shut down the pain become a roar of effort, a roar of anger at these monsters, mere shadows of men, who think they can tear Atlas and I apart like this.

  I pull them forward with all of my might, and I’m moving forward quicker, the brothers stumbling and sliding in the sand. And then I stop. I come to a complete standstill, and the momentum carries the brothers forward like I hoped it would.

  They lose their footing and have to fight to stay upright. Now one of them stands in front of me, and I reach up and grab his hood, pushing it back to reveal a lumpy bald skull. I have no idea what happens next, but somehow, I knew I had to push that hood back. I knew it without any doubt at all.

  The hood falls back and the few brothers who managed to keep their hold on me release me. They step away from me, and the pain is gone. They all fall to their knees. I look away from them, back to the brother who remains standing, facing me. I can take on this one brother now and get past him, maybe break down the force field by willpower alone, but I don’t move.

  Instead, I wait, acting purely on the instinct which tells me I must. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it got me free of the brothers’ hold on me, so I choose to trust it.

  As I watch, the brother before me begins to emit a yellow light. The light spreads, encompassing me within it. It is warm and pleasant, and I instantly feel calm.

  The brother’s robe becomes a radiant white dress. The sleeves float up and split and become three pairs of silver wings. The balding head beings to grow hair, and the featureless face in front of me begins to transform.

  The brother is no longer a brother. He is a sister, a beautiful woman who stands before me bathed in an ethereal light that makes me want to reach out and touch her. She smiles serenely at me, and I feel myself smiling back.

  I don’t know who she is, what she is, but I know she means me no harm. I think she is my savior, sent here to rescue me.

  “You have faced great sorrow and pain since you came to the Land of Lost Souls, Liam,” she says.

  I don’t question how she knows my real name; I just stand and listen, my mouth hanging open in awe at this dazzling creature. Her voice sounds like the wind that blows through the fall trees, rustling the leaves. It sounds like the waves lapping the shore on a beach. It sounds like birdsong and children singing. It is everything that is good and right in the world, all packaged up and given to this magnificent creature.

  “Your physical pain was unimaginable, but I fear your spiritual pain was worse. Separated from your true love and broken inside without her. But you came through it all. You overcame it all for love.”

  “Of course,” I say. “I would do anything for Atlas.”

  She smiles warmly at me, as though this is the best news she’s had in a long time.

  “Every so often, a soul arrives in this land that doesn’t belong here,” she continues. “You were one such soul. Those souls, they believe themselves to be beyond redemption when really they couldn’t be further from the truth. It is part of our duty as Seraphims to watch such souls.

  “We watch and we wait, willing them to be strong, but that is all we can do. We must not interfere with those souls until they can prove they are worthy of our help. Unfortunately, it is rare that a soul doesn’t succumb to the anguish and the desolation all around them and just give up. It is usually a sad part of our responsibilities to mankind to watch good, honest men and women succumb to pain and torment.

  “But this time, it was different. You are one of the rare ones. You fought it every step of the way. You faced your greatest pain and your greatest fear, and love set you free. You are a demon only in name.”

  She floats up into the air. She hovers in front of me, about three feet from the ground. She spreads her arms out to either side of her.

  “Liam Kane, son of Nyten and Sadie, you have beaten the dark forces in this land, and you shall be freed in the name of me, Liliana. You shall leave this place and be free, and you shall go forth with the blessings of the angels.”

  As she speaks, the yellow light spreads out. It moves behind me, and I glance over my shoulders. It forms a solid barrier behind me. One the Brotherhood can’t cross. And in front of me, it snakes up the brothers’ force field.

  “Go free, Liam, and fulfill your true destiny beside Atlas.”

  She floats back down to earth and steps towards me. She stands a foot taller than me, and she bends slightly and plants a kiss on my forehead. It leaves a warm spot. She smiles and steps to one side.

  “Go.” She smiles.

  The yellow breaks through the force field, releasing Atlas and the team. Atlas throws herself into my arms with such force that I stagger back a step.

  I can’t hold the emotion in this time, and I find myself hugging Atlas, the rest of the team wrapping their arms around both of us, and I’m laughing and crying at the same time.

  I heard it from the very mouth of an angel. I am a demon only in name. Light resides within me now.

  We continued our group hug long enough that Liliana had to gently remind us that we should leave. It seems bizarre that we needed the reminder, but with the warmth and goodness radiating over us from her, it was hard to believe the place we were in was anything other than paradise, and it was easy to forget where we actually were.

  I hung back a little, trying to thank Liliana, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She explained that she was only fulfilling her duty and that this was definitely one of her favorite parts. And she told me if I wanted to repay her, I could live a long and happy life with the girl I love.

  I hope I can do that for her. It is something I want for myself, but while Atlas and I might be happy, we’re not going to be together for a long time unless I figure out a way to save her from handing her heart over to Arken. There has to be a way. I just need to find it. Because the rest of my life doesn’t even feel like it will be enough time with Atlas, let alone the couple weeks, possibly even days we have until the decision has to be made.

  We arrive back at the loft,
and it feels strange being back here. Home. Somewhere I never thought I would see again. I look around, taking in every detail like it’s all new to me. I don’t see it how I used to. I used to see it as a base camp, somewhere to have meetings and occasionally sleep over. Now I see it as something more. It’s the heart of our team, the place that holds us all together. The place we bonded as a team, and the place Atlas and I will always have.

  Pest comes in from the kitchen and grins as soon as he sees me. He crosses over to me and claps me on the shoulder. I pull him into an awkward hug.

  “You did it,” he says to Atlas.

  “Did you ever doubt her?” I ask.

  “Not even for a second,” he replies, hugging me back.

  His attention doesn’t stay on me for long though. He spots Rachel, and his eyes are instantly glued to her. He crosses the room to go to her, and he embraces her tightly.

  She returns his embrace, but it strikes me as odd that she made no move to meet him halfway. I remind myself I need to talk to Pest about her, but that can come later. First I need to find Sadie and thank her for making the Pearl potion.

  “Pest? Where’s Sadie?” I ask.

  Pest doesn’t hear me; he’s too intent on whispering into Rachel’s ear. Atlas and the others hear me though, and suddenly, none of them will even look at me.

  “What is it?” I demand. “Atlas? Where is she?”

  Atlas looks up at me, her eyes shining and her bottom lip quivering. She takes my hands in hers. I am afraid now. Something terrible has happened.

  “Kane, I’m so sorry. Sadie… your mom… she’s… she…”

  “Is right here,” Sadie finishes from behind her.

  Atlas spins around and launches herself into Sadie’s arms. She is laughing and crying at the same time. Sadie just holds her. She smiles at me over Atlas’s shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I mouth.

  She gives a half nod and then turns back to Atlas. I turn to Saudia.