Evanescent

by Carlyle Labuschagne

  Kronan moaned, disappointed, looking in the direction of a dark forest. “I had really hoped we wouldn’t have to travel that way.” He shook his head, and took Maya by the shoulder. “Now, you know what to do should anything turn against us.”

  Maya nodded, hand resting on her dagger for security.

  “You’ve had the sustainability elixir?”

  She nodded again.

  “Stop worrying over her,” Tatos spoke. “She has prepared for this her entire life, unlike…” He nudged his head my way.

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  Kronan looked up. “Really, Tatos, now of all times you’re going to remind me how much of a failure my teachings have been, how my rebellious behavior tricked me with the clone?”

  Anaya pulled Tatos aside. “Stop it you two!” She looked at Kronan. “Tatos is merely stressing the fact that here, there is no time for slipping up, for losing your grip, but to focus on what’s important. No mind reading, pushing, and...”

  “And no magic beyond the safe zone.”

  She nodded to Kronan.

  I studied the hostility between Tatos and Kronan. Tatos was mad and hurt that Kronan had abandoned his Minoan dressings.

  “As soon as we step outside the protective barrier of the mirror’s extended shield, we act humanoid. Anything to the contrary will give away our presence here, remember that,” Anaya said.

  “Soooo, weapons only.” Dave beamed, his gun shining in the twilight of day and night.

  I tried to digest the word, humanoid. I had recently discovered ‘human’ was further away from my evolution than I or my prime had once hoped. Unfortunately, it was the human part we needed to keep us sane through everything that was to come.

  “Can we just get on with it!” Rion called from behind me, eyeballing everything that moved around us. “This place creeps me out.”

  The trail down the mountain was dimly lit by gray light, narrow and concealed by dark twisting overgrown bushes, branches that moved and moaned as they flowed along. The very ground we walked upon seemed to grab at us.

  “It wasn’t always like this on the planet, the organisms seem to have been consumed by the curse released when the queens got here. They are either protecting themselves, or somehow it’s all connected to their dark power,” Kronan was saying to Maya, who looked just as creeped out as the rest of us.

  “This is worse than I could have imagined,” Anaya whispered. She tread lightly, her boots hardly made a sound as gray, dark leaves and grass crept up around them. She kicked them loose with a grunt, pulling her hair back when it snagged on a branch slowly reaching out for her.

  “I think they sense your power already,” Kronan said.

  He kept the key in the palm of his hand, its soft glow emanating through the little path Maya, Rion, and Tatos, were cutting into a jungle of branches, like contorted black fingers beckoning its pray. Troy held my hand, our backs against each other. I could feel every breath, every drop of blood flowing through him. Somehow, this planet, our surroundings, had been dosed with the Shadowing curse, I could feel its effects on me – heightening my ability to feel him, sense him, smell his intoxicating scent. For a moment, I got lost in all the bliss of his rhythm, all that was him, lost my balance and got snagged by a branch. My cloak pulled open revealing that the reaching fingers of dark, tree branches had drawn blood. Suddenly everyone looked at me, like they could smell me or something. I looked down, blood was trickling down my arm. Troy quickly cut and tore a piece of his crisp, white shirt and twisted it around my arm. His eyes met mine.

  “We’re running out of time.” Dave straightened his shoulders, rigid and on edge, his gun pointing at anything dumb enough to lunge our way.

  “I am afraid it’s already too late.” Kronan pushed the key deeper into the forest, trees bent back in its purity and flow, a gray light cut through the fog revealing the way.

  “Quickly now!” His tone was clipped.

  Our pace hastened, as the Night Forest seemed to close in around us. The rush and crack of dry leaves rubbing against each other became increasingly louder, as if the forest knew of our presence. My blood had given them a taste. By this time, we had all huddled against each other, weapons drawn, waiting for something awful to come our way. I was growing progressively dizzier, and my senses were starting to numb even with Troy so close to me. My vision blurred, so I pulled Troy back.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  I swallowed, my tongue feeling thick and lazy. “Poi...”

  “Oh, shit!” He grabbed me before my legs buckled.

  “It’s poisoned her,” he said.

  Numbly, I felt his fingers lightly working the cloth bandage loose.

  “Dad!” he called urgently.

  I looked down at my arm, my back resting on Troy’s chest; all that was keeping me conscious was his beating heart, his warmth. He extended my arm, looking for something. It appeared that my veins were turning a dark purple, like they were bruised and bleeding out from the inside.

  “Her heart.” Troy laid his head on my chest.

  Breathing had become strenuous, heavy. I just wanted to close my eyes.

  “I have a cure for that, you know.” A voice came suddenly.

  “Farrow.” Kronan didn’t sound happy about whoever she was.

  “We told you to never come back here,” she said with malice.

  “Well, that’s just too bad, because here we are,” he replied.

  “Indeed,” she returned maliciously. “Aroen will be pleased, so much so, she might just let you off for bringing her to us.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Troy announced resolutely, his voice vibrating in my skull.

  “Troy, is that you?” Her sweet voice infected the very air around us.

  “Don’t even think about it, Maya,” she ground out, her voice harsh. “Do you really think I’d be here without back up? Take a step back, and drop that blade.”

  I managed to lift my head enough to see the beautiful girl that was Farrow. Her eyes were so green they radiated through the gray fog smothering us, her hair, black and cold as a lonely, starless night. Her beautiful ruby lips twisted into a wicked curl.

  “I know why you are here,” she said, addressing me. “You don’t need Legentium. You have us. We can give you everything you deserve, desire and could ever want.” Her voice drifted on the fog, curling inside my head.

  “What have you done with Legentium?” Kronan stalked closer. David and Tatos flanked him on either side.

  While they kept the dark-haired beauty occupied, Maya and Anaya came to join us on the ground.

  “We need to get her away from Farrow,” Anaya said.

  “Can I suck the poison out?” I heard Maya query.

  “No.” Anaya pushed Maya from me. “You are related by blood to this disease, remember? It’s intended to turn your blood – shift permanently.”

  “I am so going to kill this bi…” Maya began.

  My eyes darted from one black shadow to the next, between contorted fingers of begrimed trees – something was moving, watching, waiting.

  “I feel it, too,” Anaya whispered.

  “Let’s just make this fast. I already can’t wait to leave this place,” I said, feeling utterly nauseous. The dizziness was increasing, and I wasn’t sure how long I could keep myself from hurling. I didn’t want to turn anymore, I never wanted to feel like that. We all heard the twigs crunching, the movement on the ground, and those tiny vibrations coming our way. It might have been too late to change my mind. The darkness was coming for me.

  There was an awful smell which accompanied the sense of foreboding; enemies surrounded us. My throat began to tighten, my chest felt heavier, and my pulse started to quicken.

  “Troy.” I pulled at his shirt, my fingers slowly curling around the warmth of the fabric. “It’s happening, I am turning.”

  My body started to shake and I felt a cold sweat, one that seemed to coat the underside of my skin. A cramp tore through
me, much the same as when Ava and Maya experienced the Change for the first time.

  “Fine!” Troy shouted. “Just stop it, get the cure, we’ll do whatever you want. Just leave her alone.”

  “Son,” Kronan said.

  “Kronan, pleaaase,” I begged, no longer able to take the pain.

  I held on to Troy, even if it meant I could feel the discomfort of agony.

  “Make it stop, make it stop,” I moaned. Freezing splinters ran over my spine. I snarled and screeched. At some point, I pushed Troy from me, pulled free from Maya and stood on all fours, nails digging into gray soil, pulling withering grass from the moldy ground.

  “Oops! Sorry, but it’s too late,” Farrow said. “You had your chance, but I can see I didn’t need you anyway. She’s doing just perfect on her own. The disease is the only way to keep her alive. If she doesn’t turn to its power – she will die.” Her voice was so electrified and deliriously happy at my discomfort.

  A sob escaped me. The crystal around my neck burned into my chest. The fist of terrible anxiety formed in the pit of my stomach and grabbed on to my chest from the inside, pulling my very breath from me. The searing fire of rage gripped my face. I ripped the chain and pendant from my neck to stop the pain. Farrow was targeting it, I knew that much. Troy’s arms circled me, then with one hand he pushed my face into his chest. That was the moment she knew where my strength lied – in Troy. He had sacrificed himself for me – a clone.

  “Listen, breathe and listen,” he told me. His gentle voice finally found me, with instant effect.

  The thump, thump, thump of his heartbeat, his steady breathing, soothing and slow. I felt myself starting to float back into my cloned shell. Painful shudders stilling with each thump, thump – breathe in, breathe out. His scent filled me.

  Farrow shouted, “Get him!”

  Suddenly the earth around us moved, shook, quivered and tore open. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was me, and then the strange smell intensified. I tried to turn, to take on whatever was coming for us.

  “Not yet,” he said, and pulled me in tighter, his arm crushing my body to his. His warmth seeped into me. I felt light as a feather, like every ache had lifted from me. Motionless, we held on to each other, as if our existence depended on our very embrace. The quiver of a bow, the soft swoosh of arrows releasing, blades cutting, moans, silent gunshots. A heavy breeze lifted my cape. Feeling a burst of wind rip Troy’s arms from me – we flew apart, the darkness was instant and cut right through me. Anger took over. I was scared, no, terrified that I liked it. A wave of nauseating rage tore through my core as the poison penetrated each vein, and burned into my heart. I almost heard myself snarl at the emerald-eyed girl like a beast. That kind of blood-shift was the same as the first time had Ava shifted. It was raw and deep. And it was as if I needed it to carry on. I should never rely on something I was not meant to be. I was not meant to change who I was in order to save the ones I loved. I was not meant to exist that way. I was not meant to shift before the very kind I was destined to free. I was not meant to be a killer, and a savior in one. How long would I stay in the darkness before I found the light? Ava’s guilt bubbled up inside my mind, feeding my disease. The shift took me; one pain-striking, gut-wrenching claw at a time, climbing its way into my mind. I trembled all over with an electrified power. Time froze. The cold harness of fate gripped me. I remember a face so beautiful, so elegant, I was drawn to her words like a bee to pollen – there was nothing else, only the dawning of the darkest hour.

  And so it had happened again, just as Troy had explained. The exact way Enoch got to her twice before – gone. Nothing. There was no sign of how my sister’s clone had been sucked out of our time. All that was left was the smell of rotten smoke and puffs of dark, dissipating clouds. We were left standing in a gray fog in the Night Forest. Silence. Even the woods were eerily still. No creeping vines, fluttering grass, or grabbing branches. A thick smog covered our feet, so dense I felt I could walk on it. We stood staring at each other, our breaths settling slowly in white vapors.

  “What was that?” Dave swung and jumped down from a twisted tree branch above.

  “Please tell me you know where Farrow took her?” Troy asked, pulling three silver stars from a nearby tree stump.

  “Indeed, I do,” Kronan confirmed, wiping his hand across his mouth in thought. “Let us go.” Kronan pulled me by my arm.

  Tatos started to retrieve his arrows, gliding them back into the sheath strapped across his back.

  “They just disappeared, all of them.” Anaya sighed, raking a hand through her hair.

  “They are strong,” Troy said.

  “What are they?” I swallowed.

  “You didn’t smell it?” Anaya looked around. “Death.”

  As Kronan stared at the gauntlet around my arm, his eyes touched mine with concern. “We can’t track her through these, I see.”

  “Why not?” Dave queried, coming closer.

  “Simple. The clone is not Ava.”

  “But how does it know that? Her DNA is the…”

  “Her blood is an imitation.” Kronan grinned, cutting David from his thoughts.

  “Will the queens know this?” Troy crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I cannot be sure. The Shadowing queens seek a powerful carrier, that is all. And for now, her blood seems to be that of a powerful carrier.”

  Troy nodded.

  I kept staring at the dull glow of my silver gauntlet, even rubbed it for good measure. All that reflected back were gray skies and dark, twisted, black clawing fingers of the Night Forest’s trees surrounding us. We started to make our way through the gray and black woods. The Curse, as Noxian’s called it, had ripped quite a fissure through the lands, like a stain in the very earth; everything it touched was transformed into a colorless creature. As we edged the forest and looked down at the White Castle – once a glittering star over green fields and blue waters, now replaced by a dusty, white skeleton rising up from dark ash – I felt mortified at the devastated lands. I had been to Noxia as a kid, we had visited Legentium when I was very young. And I’d never thought much of it until then. When Kronan had found me, just after taking me to Arriana who adopted me, I never knew it was because they might have taken me to the tall man with kind eyes for a reading.

  “I don’t remember it like this,” Troy gasped, searching the lands for signs of life.

  Twilight. The curse had the planet stuck between day and night, when moon and sun occupied the sky as one.

  “It has been quite some time since we last visited,” said Tatos, looking down to the deep gorge below. “The river has completely dried out.”

  “This was a clever move on their part,” Anaya said, pulling her hair into a low braid.

  “Why?” I asked

  “Noxians in the surrounding area have suffered. The queens simply harvested the passing souls.” She turned to me, hurt brimming behind glossy eyes.

  “That is what those things were?” Dave screeched. “Zombie souls?”

  “Yes, and I felt it, too.” Her face hardened. “We need to free them.”

  Anaya unclasped her cloak and looked down into the gaping mouth of the dried out riverbed, fish bones and rocks jutted out like pulled teeth – a stark, white death against a drying, pale-yellow river bed.

  My eyes followed the trail Anaya was climbing down into. It was dry, dusty and curved, like a scar in the ground. Black gates gutted a crevice in the castle wall where the river had once passed through the castle walls, and into the city. Approximately six guards stood at the narrow entryway.

  “There are guards!” I shrieked.

  “The only way we are going to find her and Legentium is through those guards. We need to take the queens down, to stop the curse from spreading.” Troy pulled up his sleeves, and started climbing in after Anaya.

  “You don’t think Legentium is dead, do you?”

  “No,” Anaya said on a smile. “I would feel it, there would have been a sign. Th
e gauntlet, the ancient weapons – they would no longer exist. He is the one thing that ties this all together until the time comes when it is passed to the chosen one.”

  I looked down the steep hill, almost scared.

  “Come on, you have climbed a million times before,” Rion reminded me, unclasping my cloak.

  It was not the climb I was afraid of. I didn’t want to face the queens that had cursed the lands. There were tales of what their kind could do. And now that we knew what their kind was and because I was related by blood, my sanity was at stake. I’d rather die than turn to the Shadow. Rion slid my cloak into his bag. I felt naked, my yellow top and blue denims bright against the ash world around me.

  “It’s just like rock climbing.” Dave unraveled a black rope, handing it to Troy.

  I looked down and then back up at Rion, his pure, blue eyes steady on mine. “I will be right behind you, and Troy will belay and wait on the other side.”

  I let them believe it was the climb I was afraid of, but I think we were all trying not to focus on the obvious. I was very much in danger of being infected. So, as he tied the rope around my hips, swiftly pulling the rope tighter, I had no time to fight it because I was almost shoved down the second Troy’s feet hit the river bed below.

  “It’s very steep,” I said, only then realizing the angle of the climb.

  “You have done this before.” He tucked my hair behind my ear.

  “Okay.” I turned, my back against the hole, then swiped my head over my shoulder staring down at an impatient Troy.

  “You drop me, I will kill you.”

  Troy kept a steady face. My feet found each and every little nook on the way down, like a million times before, but this time the anxiety electrified my body and I was shaking. There were times when sand from above fell onto my face, and I was increasingly becoming annoyed with the stupid plan. Once we all reached the bottom, the armies footsteps echoed throughout the dried-out chasm; an army of strange looking, numb men stood before us. Their eyes dull and empty, gray and pale. Unlike those that attacked us in the Night Forest, these creatures had bodies but I guess no minds, like human droids, or Noxian droids. Noxians were said to be older than Atlantians, in fact, it might be where the Minoans had learned their magic from. Both a tall race, but where the Minoans were dark skinned, Noxians were fair with vibrant colored eyes and hair, and slightly larger foreheads. Now that these Noxians were turned into whatever they were, their once beautifully fair skins looked drained and bleak. We followed the army down the dried-out river bed, pebbles slowly crumbled away as we walked over them. Fish bones and plant skeletons crunched beneath our feet. From our position, you could see the cursed skies perfectly; forever twilight. A moon and sun standing beside each other like sisters, day and night existed as one and despite its unnatural state, it was quite beautiful and haunting at the same time. The sky paled from a powdery-blue to light-yellow, and dipped behind the White Castle in pink hues. Shadows crept across the pale sand toward us. Black metal gates creaked open as we walked through, and led up a set of broad, white, stone stairs and on to what used to be the docks. My palms were nervously sweating in Rion’s, but neither of us would remove our grasps for one second. Tatos’ hand pulled his sheath, which contained his bow and arrows, under one arm. Kronan quietly slipped the key deeper into his dark, denim pocket. Anaya and David were the first to round the corner, and for a second it felt like I would never see them again. My heart thumped in my throat. Once we cleared the alley, we found ourselves in the White Castle’s streets. High above us, guards walked the walls. When I looked back for a moment through the huge windows on the castle wall, I could see the golden sun and the green hills in the far distance where the Curse had not reached, a sign that hope of restoring this once magic land was within our grasp. Boots echoed throughout the streets and uneven cobblestone floors. Stalls and cottages, abandoned, rotting food and bodies left to serve as a reminder of how little this place meant to the queens. Huge wooden and copper doors swung open with a piercing screech, and we all turned upon the loud bang as they shut behind us and echoed into the expanse of darkness. A tiny sliver of light emanated from the far windows above, dust particles shimmered and settled to the ground below, the glow of a lit room guiding us to the location of the throne room.