Heart of the Resonant: Book 1: Pulse (Resonant Series)

by B. C. Handler

  Bricet reached behind his belt and pulled out something wrapped in a black cloth. With the utmost care, he pulled back the folds, his hands slow and meticulous like handling a newborn. A subdued gasp escaped Bricet as he marveled at his hands, then held forth a curved dagger to the sky in a gesture like he was appeasing the gods.

  I blanched. The very knife he held was the very same knife wielded by the ghastly, hooded people that attacked my university. The very same knife that turned one of my classmates into a grey abomination. The very same knife that would’ve been buried in my stomach if not for Neepa’s intervention.

  Bardol gave my shoulder one last squeeze and rose to his full height. He inclined his head and gave a respectful bow.

  “You have my utmost gratitude,” he said, then stepped back.

  “Thank you,” Cas said. She had stopped her torture of the wolf-woman to bid me a warm smile and bow.

  I turned my head woozily back to Bricet, who also tilted his head in a prayer.

  “Whatever cursed power imposed upon you by the One will be used towards something greater. The Alpha, while mighty, is hardly any more than the wretched beast it was rebirthed from. The blessing of the Null will actualize that potential within, tame that maelstrom of infinite indecision to a singular purpose. You,” he said, pointing the dagger at me, “will be the Null’s champion, the first to lead the sacred children into battle against those who strayed from the path. Once the battle is done, all will know true bliss.”

  “How is the death of everything bliss?” I asked in a quivering voice.

  Bricet smiled. “When there is nothing, there is everything. No life, no death; no agony, no joy. Nothing left but the true First: Nothingness.”

  The burning in my chest seemed to have quenched, reducing it to a smoldering ember destined to flicker out. The fight had finally left me.

  Hopelessness consumed me, and I sunk my head, staring down at the pebbles below as tears fell from my eyes like rain.

  Is this how it ends? I become a monster and unleash this power on millions of innocent men, women, and children? Maybe this is what I deserve for trying to turn my back on responsibility. Everyone one told me I was the one to bring about great change. Like an unruly child, I was too stupid to believe it and fought against it.

  Mom, Dad, Caroline, Harold, Sigemond, Julika, Merula, Koko, Eva, Neepa, everyone, forgive me.

  A shriek and a roar pulled me from the depths of my despair. I looked over to Cas, still shirking with a hand over her face. Blood poured through her fingers endlessly. The grey wolf-lady standing, wet hair matted to her enraged face and fresh blood dripping from her left hand.

  Cas shrieked again and held up her palm, a swirling mass of orange light manifesting. The wolf-woman tackled into her foe’s blinded flank, managing to wrestle the cat-girl to the ground and getting her throat settled between in her sharpened canines. Cas unleashed the ball of orange light as a fireball just as her throat was ripped out in a bloody spray. The projectile whistled over the pond and smashed into the face of the cliff with a mighty blast that sent everyone staggering.

  Bricet cursed and raised his hand to unleash some sort of power, but before he could manage anything, Eva sprang from the ground, her hand swiftly drawing a knife from her boot, and then sinking the blade between Brictet’s ribs.

  Eva, bleeding profusely from a rip in her side, after taking a fall from a cliff, and fought toe to toe with corrupted beings, still fought valiantly. Fear didn’t hinder her fierce face, hopelessness didn’t numb her body, and she refused to go quietly even when death circled her in every direction. She looked alive.

  My heart’s still beating; I’m still alive.

  Bardol went to unsheathe his sword to engage. Being at the perfect height and angle, I balled my right fist tight and whirled my shoulder, delivering a perfect uppercut into the big man’s jewels. All his breath came out in a rush as his body locked up. Needing to be thorough, I delivered another blow; the impact made my hand hurt, no doubt from my knuckles meeting Bardol’s pelvic bone.

  I was at a huge disadvantage physically, being tired, severely injured, and small compared to Bardol, but a nut-check didn’t take all that much force to be effective.

  When he dropped to his knees, Bardol drew in breath that sounded like a squeak, then I grabbed the nearest stone to clock his blocky head.

  Once Bardol fell to his side, I looked back to Eva. The stone fell from my grasp and I uttered feeble cry. The Alpha had come to its master’s aid.

  A hoarse cry was wretched from Eva’s throat when the monstrosity seized her shoulder in its snarling maw. Eva was hoisted off her feet, then flailed in the air like a quail caught in foxhound’s jaw. Then flung bodily towards me. I caught a brief glimpse of her pained expression; eyes pinched shut and her teeth cinched like a vice. A few rivulets of her blood pelted my face as she passed inches from me, then crashed into the wolf-woman near the pond’s edge.

  I pushed myself off the ground with the bokken, then haphazardly bear-crawled my way over to the injured girls. My body cried in protest, but I ignored every neurological signal responsible for pain so I could see Eva.

  Cas had darkened the water around the bank with the contents of her neck still pouring like rain runoff, her eyes dull and staring blankly towards the sky. A brutal and horrific way to go; couldn't have been any more fitting.

  Eva lay on her back, her head resting on the wolf-woman's stomach.

  Killing Cas used what little reserves the wolf-woman had; now finally burned out, she just remained still on the bank, her chest rising and falling weakly, unbothered by the nearness of the woman resting on her belly or by the man crying in front of her.

  Eva was pale. Breaths came as heavy rasps while her right hand kept pressure on her shoulder. It was sickening and painful to see her so damaged; her clothes torn and dirty, her usual golden hair caked in clay, and her powerful form reduced to shambles. The Alpha’s mad flailing had torn most of her shoulder to ribbons. Blood flowed freely through her fingers. Her whole body trembling from her precious essence spilling away. The eyes that took on every tone of the forest and bared the same vivid life and strength, watched me. She didn’t say anything, just watched. That was all she could do at that point. And it tore me asunder.

  A low sounded, and following it was a rabid orchestra of death. I set down the bokken and reached for Eva’s available hand, taking it in mine and giving it a firm squeeze.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told her, my voice steady.

  Things looked too dire to be okay, but the fact of the situation didn’t make my tone any less steadfast. The words left my mouth strong and resolute, even if there was no rational reason for it.

  I reluctantly parted with her hand, setting it across her stomach, and then forced myself up with the aid of the wooden sword.

  My ears rung, the world wouldn’t stop moving, and my stomach wanted to turn inside out, but I kept myself up right. Just the simple act of turning around discombobulated me, making it feel as though I stepped off a tilt-a-whirl, but again, I remained upright.

  Despite double vision, I was able to make out Bricet. His head was titled, masking most of his face with a heavy shadow under his hood, but the aura he radiated showed how absolutely livid he was. Eva’s knife remained in his left side, the blade too short to have pierced his lungs if he was able to rally his beasts with the whistle.

  Bricet bared his teeth, either in rage or pain, or both. His lips twitched as breaths came from his mouth laboriously. Offset to his shoulder stood the Alpha, muscles bulging, spittle dripping from its maw, and its one milky eye keen on me. Behind the king of the monsters stood its smaller contemporaries, stepping out from the shadowy canopy of the forest so the sun could highlight their grotesque features.

  Math never being my strong suit, I had grossly underestimated their numbers.

  What I thought was two dozen turned out to be four. More and more stalked out from the forest and stood behind Bricet and the
Alpha in loose ranks.

  “Fools.” Bricet pulled the hand from his side and pointed at us, blood flinging off his finger. “The lot of you, fools.” His body tensed for a moment, his head dropping for the briefest of moments only for it to come up again, his expression anew. He knelt to retrieve the cursed Null dagger, then admired it. “I truly pity you, truly,” he said quietly, mournfully so. “You willingly submit yourself to this act of futility because of the lies that have been fed to you. Please, cease this prolonging of suffering. Submit yourself to the one truth and be reborn so as to carry out the greatest of callings.

  “All denizens on this plane will be closer to absolute eternal bliss if you abandon your lies and accept this grand duty, this grand blessing.” He reached out his hand. “Please.”

  The pure sincerity in his voice was so endearing that I almost forgot the nightmarish monsters and the mangled remains of the wolf-people. This man speaks with utmost certainty that the Null is the absolute truth. It was moving how he put aside our indiscretions and reached out to me as a man and follower of his beliefs, to seek out the end of all suffering, the end of everything.

  Confliction ran through me due to how sound his logic was. One thing cannot exist without the other, therefore something can’t cease to exist so long as the other does. The world the Null seeks will be something beyond balanced. Abandoning the scales entirely to rise above them.

  Out of all the madness I've heard that last two weeks, it almost didn't sound so mad.

  Bricet smiled at me when I smiled at him. He took a few steps closer, his hand still reaching out as if I would accept.

  “Bricet,” I said, “eat a bowl of fuck.”

  Almost, I thought.

  He halted midstride and the crushed look on his face sent enough joy to numb all the throbbing pain, if only for a few glorious seconds.

  His hand fell to his side, his proud countenance gone. “Know that I do not hate you, just the flawed thing you have been cursed to become. Take solace that I’ll be merciful enough to give your companions the same blessing so they too can absolve their sins by serving a greater purpose.”

  “Save your mercy for someone who needs it more,” I wheezed.

  Bricet gave his whistle a terse toot. The Alpha and the other monsters snapped from their sedate trance and began marching towards us. Bricet stood at the forefront of the furry army, with the dagger in his hand primed to turn me into some abominable monster, to corrupt me and whatever power I had.

  I stood on wavering legs, my head in a heavy fog that made it hard to focus on any one detail too long. My one good arm clung onto the bokken, the sword feeling as though it were actually made of lead. A gust would threaten to blow me over.

  An army approached, yet everything but fear coursed through me in the wake of the cruelly unfair odds.

  “It’ll be okay,” Neepa’s voice whispered in my ear.

  “Al, look into your heart and feel what I feel,” Julika echoed hopefully.

  “You can’t protect anyone if you don’t fight,” Eva’s voice boomed in the confines of my mind.

  “I want you to live a long and happy life,” Caroline’s voice reminded.

  “We’ll always love you,” my parents said from everywhere.

  Bricet stood just paces with the army to his heels, then the world stopped. The pond motionless amidst a ripple; leaves freed from their branches hung in the air. My heart stilled, enveloping me in absolute silence that carried over into the deepest corners of my mind.

  A pulse started, not from my heart, but deeper, in the far reaches of a place I wasn’t aware of. A second pulse, slightly out of sync from the first, sent a ripple up my arm from my hand. Two beats formed then, slowly, seemingly years apart. The tempo rose in pace, the two beats fighting against one another in a violent tirade of concussive beats. Harmony formed, the two beats became one, and my whole body throbbed as the sensation shook me like a tower caught in an earthquake. The beat climbed in frequency until my body vibrated with a hum that threatened to rip my vary atoms apart.

  The frequency climbed into infinity until I was caught in a confusing equilibrium; everything vibrated so fast that nothing appeared to be moving anymore. Stillness reclaimed my mind and body as time resumed at a snail’s pace. Bricet still reaching his dagger towards me with the army behind him, all moving at one sixty-fourth the speed.

  An actual monster army was approaching me with a mad wizard at the apex, yet the calm never wavered. Everything, the army, Eva and the wolf-beastkin, Neepa, the academy, all of Scintillion, the loss of everyone I loved, all the acidic thoughts that’ve been corroding my mind, all of it slipped away like dust in the wind. All the dust clouding my consciousness continued to flow away, revealing an inner light that I saw, but didn’t. I was in the middle of a clearing, but I wasn’t. A portion of me stood in a space of no form, no boundaries, yet nothing occupied the space. Just me, the light, and the stillness. Like a water unmolested by external forces; absolute zero of kinetic motion.

  The serenity in my mind was violated by my own deafening proclamation that vibrated and echoed off in the infinite confines of the space.

  I will protect everyone!

  With the world moving like molasses in the winter, I swung the sword with the speed akin to a lightning strike, the slash whipping horizontally before my foes, the wooden sword running its course without striking anyone. Time resumed nature’s pace as soon as my swing followed through. Tornado force gales whipped past my body and a defining flurry of swirling air roared in my ears. My eyes burned from the mad rush. I shielded my face and fought against the turbulence to stay standing, the force so great that I feared getting swept away.

  The wind subsided to a strong breeze that still made the trees rustle loudly, then it stopped all together. When I blinked my eyes open, nothing stood before me but a thick cloud of dust and dirt that made visibility a few feet ahead impossible.

  A sudden attack of sensation overtook all my senses and made me cry out. My vision flashed white, a vibration much like before assaulted my body, but it carried pain with it. Everything shook as if I grabbed a live power line. I pitched forward and caught myself with the bokken. I pressed my full a hundred-and-ninety odd some pounds onto the stick to keep from crashing outright. My arm burned from the excessive load, the bokken’s tip sinking into the ground as it bared my weight.

  As soon as the sensation came, it left. Calm swept back, drowning out the pain, and then it was gone completely.

  The bokken remained firmly planted in the ground when I found that I could stand. The fugue passed and I whirled around in a panic.

  The wolf-woman still breathed, and Eva was still there, dusty, bloody, but still there. She blinked her eyes open and coughed, then she met my eyes. A stupid grin broke on my face as we watched each other, but then I became confused when her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open.

  A cloud touched her face. “Oh my God, Al.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but then something irony spilled over my lips and onto my tongue. I wiped my face, the back of my hand came back crimson. It felt like tears were rolling down my cheeks, and when I wiped again, fresh blood stained a different part of my hand.

  Why was I bleeding? I felt fine.

  Actually, things felt numb. A second rolled past and then I couldn’t feel anything at all.

  My body moved forward a few steps, a strange sensation to witness motion but not feel it. My vision danced wildly and I collapsed on my knees in front of the prone Eva and wolf-woman. Eva’s mouth was moving frantically, but I didn’t catch any of it.

  The world drained away, things growing hazy while I felt myself growing… distant. I saw myself falling through my distorted vision, falling towards Eva. Horror disturbed her pretty face.

  I continued to fall through Eva, then through earth, and kept falling and falling.

  Chapter 20

  Sinking. I am sinking, I think. It didn’t feel like water was suspending my body, but the lazy sin
king felt appropriate. Like swimming out into the ocean, letting your limbs go limp and expelling the air from your lungs to sink calmly to the sandy bottom. There was no light shimmering from the top. Nothing but a vague sense of motion. Even stranger when there was no indication of me having a body. Just like in some of my nightmares; I’m just a floating consciousness held at the mercy of some benign force dictating my direction.

  Or maybe it’s because no force is guiding me anymore.

  The fall continued, the passage of time far beyond any sort of comprehension, and I felt myself dwindling; things slipping away, my sense of self fading. Fading as if I were nothing.

  The end of the fall was nearing.

  A flicker caught what was left of my attention. Small and insignificant, like a stray snowflake at night that caught the tiniest bit of moonlight. As soon as it was seen, it was forgotten.

  It flickered anew, brighter, closer, forcing its presence upon me

  When I looked at it again, I felt something warm tugging at my heart, drawing me even closer towards the beacon, halting my fall.

  I felt them, everyone I lost, in that light. They were there, they were calling me.

  Ascension came and I flew towards the light, the feeling within growing stronger.

  I went closer, expecting to see some pearly gates or hear harps playing, but before me was just a simple mass of tangible light. I reached for it, my hand materializing from nothing, taking on a sort of ethereal phantom limb. The closer I got, the more whole I became. The rest of my arms formed, then my legs, the entire structure of me materializing into being. Not flesh, something more, deeper, my spiritual being. I grasped the comforting sphere of light and brought it to my chest, and then I drew it into me, and it drew me into it. Tangled and infused with light, all was within me, and I was within everything.

  I felt everyone.

  They felt me.

  ✽✽✽

  I opened my eyes and saw a tent canopy. After blinking a few more times, I confirmed that what I was seeing wasn’t heaven, or hell—at least I don’t think.