Ruined by Shadows

by Lola StVil

  The team stands in a huddle, Atlas at the center of it, inside of Langston’s shield. Arken throws a power ball, and the shield disintegrates. Perry fires red plasma at him. He bats it aside with one hand, not even bothering to use a laser.

  “Seeker, you have three seconds to come to me or I will take your friends out one by one,” Arken says. “Three.”

  I see Langston grab Atlas and hold her in place as she starts to move.

  “Two.”

  Atlas pushes her hand away, and she darts out of the huddle before anyone can stop her. She stands facing down Arken, defiantly.

  “Here I am, Arken. Leave them out of this,” she says.

  “Wise move, Seeker,” Arken smirks as he and Atlas stand facing each other.

  Atlas has a cut on her cheek with blood smeared below it, but instead of the cut making her look vulnerable, it makes her look like what she is. A true warrior.

  “I am going to remove your heart, Seeker. If you try to fight me, your friends will pay. Do we understand each other?”

  Sadie and I exchange a look, and I nod at her. She tenses, ready to go, as do I.

  “Perfectly,” Atlas replies calmly.

  Arken takes a step towards her, and Sadie and I burst into action. Sadie is closer to them than I am and she reaches them first. Arken looks up at her, his palm coming up, but he’s too late. Sadie throws a handful of Visio Powder at him. It attaches itself to his face, growing into a mask and temporarily blinding him. It won’t last long, and we have no time at all to waste.

  Regal is a step behind me as I reach Atlas and Sadie. The rest of the team, with no idea what the plan is, are running towards Arken, hoping to inflict some damage on him before the mask peels away. I don’t waste my breath reminding them he’s a god and it’s pointless.

  Just then a loud crack of thunder sounds and a downpour pounds angrily around us. Rain...in the desert? I don’t have time to contemplate what’s happening.

  Atlas looks confused as hell as I arrive at her side and bend down to retrieve the dagger from my sock. I didn’t dare use it in the battle in case I lost it.

  I bring the dagger up, and her confusion turns to horror as I use the dagger to tear open my own chest, reach in, and rip out my heart.

  ATLAS SPEAKS

  Time stands still for a moment. I don’t know what the fuck is happening. Kane has been acting so strange ever since he came back from unconsciousness. First, he was almost delirious with joy when he thought he’d found a solution, and then he was somber, just never mentioning it again. And when I said goodbye to him, I know I saw a tear running down his face. Even in the darkest moments, Kane doesn’t let his guard down in front of everyone like that. I don’t know what happened to knock him out, or what he endured while he was out, but this latest turn of events is just unimaginable.

  He’s just torn his heart out of his chest right in front of me. Is this his way of saying we’re in this together? I lose my heart; he loses his. If it is, it’s the worst gesture ever. And that’s not even the weirdest part. The weirdest part is that Kane shouldn’t even have a heart in the first place.

  Time is moving again, and Kane lies on the ground, his eyes closed. Dead. He has to be dead. His heart is in his hand, his chest torn open by a fucking dagger.

  I’m frozen. I don’t know what to do, what to say, or even what to think. I’m numb. Dead inside. My Kane is dead, and a large part of me died with him.

  Sadie bends down and snatches Kane’s heart from his hand. Her movement breaks my paralysis, and I scream Kane’s name and throw myself on the ground beside his body.

  My tears splash onto his open chest as I shout his name over and over again.

  “Sadie, Regal, somebody. Do something,” I scream.

  The rest of the team is staring at us, as frozen as I was a moment ago. What the fuck is happening? Why isn’t anyone helping?

  Regal just stands there, watching Sadie. Sadie has Kane’s heart in her hands. She’s muttering words in a language that’s so strange to my ears that I can’t even place what it might be. She stops chanting and pulls on Kane’s heart. I scream again as it comes into two pieces in her hands. Both pieces are pulsing, still beating, like they don’t know Kane’s dead. How can they not know? How can anything just continue on like before?

  Sadie bends down and slams one of the pieces of heart into the gaping hole in Kane, and then she nods to Regal. Regal falls to the ground beside Kane and lays his hands on his chest on either side of the wound.

  I feel a hand on me, dragging me roughly to my feet. I try to free myself, but the grip is like steel. I look into Sadie’s eyes, and instead of the crazed eyes of a lunatic, I see her normal, calm eyes. They hold my gaze, and her calmness begins to rub off on me a bit.

  “Atlas, you have to trust me,” she says.

  She lets go of my arm, and as quick as a flash, I feel a red-hot pain in my chest as she cuts me open with a knife. My knees start to buckle but Sadie keeps her eyes fixed to mine, willing me not to give in and collapse, and somehow, I stay on my feet. With my chest gaping open and blood soaking my whole front, she drags me closer to Arken and the team.

  “Sadie? What the fuck?” Langston says.

  Her voice is so quiet I think maybe I imagined it, and Sadie makes no attempt to answer her. She doesn’t even look at her.

  Sadie stops me beside Arken, who is groping at the mask of skin that covers his face, making him look like one of the hooded brothers from the Land of Lost Souls.

  Sadie shoves her hand into the hole in my chest, and the pain is so intense my vision goes black then white. It floats back in, and I feel her hand clamp around my heart. It’s agony as she tugs on it, and without warning, it rips free of my body.

  My knees give way, and I fall heavily to them, but Sadie isn’t finished with me yet. She shoves my bloodied heart into my hand.

  “Give it to Arken,” she shouts.

  Her words bounce off me, my brain too focused on dying to comprehend what she’s saying, but the urgency in her tone gets through.

  “Atlas? Atlas? Give your heart to Arken. Now.”

  I don’t really understand, but she’s so insistent, and I just want to sleep. I won’t be able to with her yelling like that. If I just do what she wants, I can sleep. With a massive effort, I reach out and place my heart in one of Arken’s groping hands.

  Sadie drops to her knees in front of me and shoves something into the hole in my chest. It’s warm and familiar. I give in and let sleep take me. Delicious sleep where I can float in the darkness, not having to think or feel or fight anymore.

  I feel lighter suddenly, like I’m completely free, and I open my eyes. I am floating in the air, looking down at the team. And at myself. I know it then. I’m dead. Arken won.

  No, he didn’t. I gave him my heart willingly as the fifth object. I placed it in his hand. We won. We did it. I can move on, happy.

  The thought does nothing to move me, and I just float there, watching the scene below me. Kane still lies on the ground, bleeding and dead, but in this state, I feel no emotion. I don’t feel, I just exist. Sadie is lying beside him, her eyes closed. Also dead? I don’t know.

  And then there’s me. I’m definitely dead, or I wouldn’t be up here, but Regal kneels beside me, running his hands over me, desperately trying to save me. I want to tell him not to bother, that I’m okay, but I can’t speak.

  The mask of skin over Arken’s face finally comes loose, and he’s Arken again. He looks down at the heart in his hand, and he raises it above his head, claiming his victory, but his triumph doesn’t last long. Because I was right.

  He didn’t win. We did.

  The heart bursts into flames in his hand, and the flames spread down his arm, over his chest.

  Then he freezes.

  “Oh no, you don’t, brother,” I hear a commanding voice call out. “I want you to watch this. You lost, and now you will see what true love is.”

  “I will see nothing, I may have lost, but t
he Seeker is still dead, as is your son.”

  “Just watch,” Nyten tells him almost smugly. “As soon as you see this, I will allow you to die in peace.”

  Arken rolls his eyes, still unsure of what’s happening.

  I am getting higher now; I don’t understand what Nyten wants him to see. I begin floating away, and I watch as the figures on the ground start to get smaller.

  “I’m losing her,” Regal calls out in panic.

  I don’t want him to be panicking or scared. We won. He should be happy.

  Carla runs to his side. Ah, good. She’ll tell him to let go and stop with this nonsense. But she doesn’t.

  “What do you need?” she asks.

  “I need the bleeding to stop long enough that I can get the wounds to close,” he says.

  Carla reaches into the hole in my chest. I don’t know for sure what she does, but the blood flow does almost stop. I think she must have nipped the main artery or something closed. Regal goes back to running his hands over my lifeless body, and the wound begins to close slowly.

  He nods to Carla, and she pulls her hand out. It’s covered in blood and gore. She must really hate me now she’s wearing part of me.

  Suddenly, I’m not floating anymore. I’m hurtling through the air towards the ground. I hear Arken scream in agony. I take a quick glance his way and see that all that’s left of Arken is a pile of ash, with a heart on top.

  My heart.

  My vision fades before I smash down, so I don’t see anything, but I feel myself slamming against the ground. It’s not painful, just jarring. I’m back in my body, and with that comes all the emotions.

  And a hell of a lot of questions.

  I sit up, my eyes flying open, and Regal breathes a sigh of relief. He and Carla high-five behind my head.

  “Give yourself a moment to recover,” Regal says.

  “I can’t. I don’t need a moment. I need Kane.”

  I get shakily to my feet. Carla reaches out to steady me. I take one look at Kane, and I know what I saw from up above was right. He’s dead. The blood has almost stopped flowing from him. There can’t be much left. A pool of it surrounds him, turning the sand there bright red. I drop to my knees beside him and take his hand in mine.

  “I don’t know what you did, Kane, or how you did it, but I know you saved me. You gave me your heart, didn’t you?”

  Tears run down my face again. I glance around. The team is all on the ground with me except Regal, who is holding his hands to Sadie’s temples trying to wake her up.

  I’m not the only one crying over Kane. It hits me then how much of an impact he made in all of our lives, and I know for sure I’m not even close to ready to let him go. Sadie is sitting up, conscious now, and Regal helps her up. They come to join us, and Sadie’s face crumples when she sees Kane.

  “Sadie, do something,” I plead.

  “I can’t, Atlas; he’s gone.”

  “Regal?” I say. “Please. Fix him. I just can’t… I can’t lose him. I can’t.”

  I know Regal can’t fix dead, but I need him to. I need him to more than I’ve needed anything in my life. He just stands there, his head bowed.

  “Regal, for fuck’s sake do something,” I scream at him. “Someone make him better. Bring him back to me.”

  I break then, and I drag Kane’s lifeless body into a sitting position, holding him to me, rocking him gently back and forth, screaming out my hurt and my pain. I can feel the hole in him, and his blood soaks me, but I don’t care. All I care about is him.

  “Kaneeeee. Kaneeeeee. Come back to me. You swore you’d never leave me again. You promised,” I yell.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder. I know it’s meant to comfort me, but it doesn’t. It only reminds me that I’ll never feel Kane’s touch again.

  “Nooooooooo,” I shout. “Somebody fucking fix him.”

  No one does. No one can. Kane is starting to go cold already, and suddenly, I can’t bear to touch him. I can’t bear to feel the warmth leave him. While he was warm, I could convince myself this was a mistake, that he would open his eyes and be okay, but I can’t anymore. I gently lay him back down, and then I scoot backward, coming to a stop a few feet away from the others. I sit on my butt, my knees pulled close to my chest, my arms wrapped around them.

  I rock back and forth whispering no, no, no over and over again until it becomes a litany. It will be the soundtrack to my life now.

  I see a flash of light, and there’s a deafening crash. We didn’t even win. The world is ending anyway, and it’s starting here. I realize I am wrong when Nyten steps out of the light.

  Nyten! He was the rain!

  I hope he’s not here to congratulate us because if he does, I think I might throttle him with my bare hands. He quickens his pace when he sees everyone gathered around Kane, and me sitting apart from them like a crazy person. Sadie and Regal still stand by Kane, their heads bowed.

  Nyten looks angry as he approaches.

  “Sadie? Why didn’t you help Kane?” he demands.

  “I couldn’t,” she says. “The spell I had to use to split his heart and keep both halves working was too strong.”

  Both halves? That’s what she was doing. Kane did find a way to save us both. He had Sadie split his heart so we could take half each. I instinctively place one of my palms on my chest, feeling my heartbeat. His heartbeat. I will always carry a piece of him with me. It’s not much of a comfort, but it’s something.

  “It used everything I had, Nyten. I have no magic left,” Sadie says.

  “You knew that would happen, didn’t you?” Regal asks.

  She nods.

  “Yes, but I chose not to tell you or Kane because then you would have had to choose, and I didn’t want to put you in that position. Draining my magic to save Atlas was a small price to pay.”

  “And you?” Nyten demands, turning his focus to Regal. “You’re a healer. Why did you heal Atlas completely and let Kane die?”

  A gasp goes up from the team, and I stop repeating no, needing to hear Regal tell Nyten that isn’t true, that he tried everything he could.

  “I wasn’t strong enough to heal them both,” he says.

  He looks so uncomfortable, so broken, I almost feel sorry for him, but Nyten’s words still run through my mind.

  “You could have had them both stable, not healed completely, but alive.”

  “I wasn’t sure we would have enough time to get them to the clinic,” Regal says.

  His words hold little conviction.

  “You didn’t even try,” Nyten booms.

  Tears pour down Regal’s face.

  “Because he never would have forgiven me if I had,” he shouts. “He made me swear that if there was even a chance of this happening, that I’d choose her. HE MADE ME PROMISE!!” Regal yells, hitting his knees by Kane’s side.

  “So I did. I did, and now he’s dead, and that’s on me,” he says in a whisper.

  All of the fight goes out of Regal, and Carla goes to his side and wraps her arms around him. I can hear the pain in his voice.

  “I let him die. I’m a healer, and I let him die to make sure she lived.”

  Nyten calms down and places a hand on Regal’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry I judged you so harshly. You did the right thing.”

  No, he didn’t I want to shout.

  This was my mission. It was my destiny to die here, not Kane’s.

  He should have saved Kane.

  I don’t have the energy to shout. I don’t think I’ll ever have the energy to do anything again. I’m just going to stay in this spot until death takes me too.

  “He should be alive. He didn’t deserve to die for me,” I shout out, surprising myself.

  The team seems to notice me sitting apart from them for the first time, and Langston comes over and sits beside me. She wraps an arm around my shoulders. She doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.

  “He died for you because he loves you, Atlas,” Nyte
n says gently. “But you’re right. He didn’t deserve to die. And no one who loves as completely as he did should have to die this way.”

  He moves closer to Kane.

  “Stand back,” he says to the team.

  His voice is no longer gentle. It’s the command of a god, and they move back instantly. Except Sadie.

  “Nyten, you can’t do this. It’s against the very laws of nature. You don’t know the consequences it could bring down on the world. I want him back more than anything too, but not like this.”

  Nyten meets Sadie’s eye.

  “Fuck the consequences, Sadie. He’s our son, and we failed him once. I won’t do it again. Now stand back.”

  Sadie backs away. Nyten holds his hands over Kane, and he fires two beams of yellow light down on Kane. They hit him and spread out, enveloping his whole body in yellow. I barely dare to breathe as the hole in Kane’s chest vanishes. It doesn’t heal slowly; it’s just gone like it was never there.

  Nyten lowers his hands. Kane sits up and gasps in a breath.

  I’m on my feet and running toward him.

  “What the…?” he starts.

  He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because I’m on him. I dive on him, knocking him onto his back, and I shower him with kisses. Tears run from my face, making him taste salty.

  I finally pull back when I realize he could still be in pain and I’m squashing him. I help Kane to his feet, and the team embraces him one by one.

  “You were dead, Kane,” I say. “You were gone. And Nyten brought you back.”

  “I swore I’d never leave you, didn’t I?” He winks.

  “You knew Nyten would turn up and save you?”

  Kane laughs.

  “Honestly, no, but I cared more if you lived than if I did.”

  I turn to Nyten.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  He shakes his head.

  “No, Seeker. Thank you. You not only did what no Seeker before you could do, but you reunited my family. And for that, I will be forever grateful.”

  Sadie throws herself into Nyten’s arms. They embrace for a long time. Nyten raises a questioning eyebrow to Kane and holds an arm up. I don’t want to let him go again, but I stand back and let him make his choice. Self-consciously, he makes his way to Nyten and Sadie and joins their hug.