Marked

by Jasmine Derriman

  The blade did nothing though, well at least it seemed that way. It didn’t slice through its flesh; it didn’t even hinder the beast. It tried to strike me again but I stopped it again, by swinging the blade at the same time. It tried to bite me too but I managed to swipe its nose with the blade, and this time make successful contact. It however didn’t bleed and it only seemed to be getting stronger. I didn’t know what to do or how I was going to get out of this.

  There was no way I was going to be able to keep this thing from hurting me, and I was completely backed up against the wall, breathing hard. The creature suddenly became distracted and I turned its head away from me. Rhys was standing on top of the pile of rubble with a piece of it in his hand. Now he was trying help me that same way I had. Rhys threw another piece and the creature started to advance back towards him, forgetting about me.

  I figured by now there was only one way that I could actually kill this demon, and I had seen Isaac do it once before, so I had some small idea on how this was possible. It was the heart I had to go for, and since I wasn’t entirely sure where the heart was on this creature, I took my chance and used my common sense. I pounced towards to creature and with all the strength I could muster, pushed the blade into the creatures back.

  It let out a high pitched kind of squeal and it jumped up on its hind legs. Its strength threw me back, forcing me to realise the blade. I feel to floor and hit the back of the wall as I was pushed away, but as I looked back at the creature I saw that it started to crack, like the smoke demon I had seen before and before I knew it, it kind of just exploded and turned into a cloud of smoke and evaporated into the air.

  The blade fell to the floor with a clang and I felt myself exhale out in relief. I looked at Rhys who was breathing heavily and he was so pale that I thought he might faint right now. I forced myself to my feet and I picked up the blade. I wanted to walk over and just hug Rhys, but as I started to walk towards him I realised it wasn’t exactly over.

  Isaac was defending himself with what appeared to be a piece of timber. He was surprisingly strong and a surprisingly a swift fighter for a boy who was fighting off a rock creature ten times its size. I saw him glance at me with the blade in my hand. He gave me this sort of nod and I realised that he wanted me to get the blade to him.

  If distracting the panther creature worked then surely it would work with this thing to. I hurried over towards them, and moved myself on an angle to where I was at the side of the rock creature. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do but realising that all I needed was a second for the creature to turn away so I could throw the blade to Isaac and give him his window of opportunity, so I decided to swipe the blade at the creature’s leg.

  The blade actually broke through the rock, leaving a sliced mark and it let out a low yell before turning to me. I tried to focus on Isaac instead of the creature but it was kind of hard. I knew I could just throw the blade at Isaac, so whilst ducking away from the rock demon I slide the blade on the floor towards Isaac and he ran forward and picked it up. I just started to run then, in the other direction as fast as I could until I was up against the wall.

  I saw Isaac from behind the creature though. I watched him use the back of the rock creature to jump himself up so he hung over its shoulders and he pushed the blade directly into the rock creature’s chest. I covered my eyes as the light started to burst out of the creature and once again I heard the sound of the blade clanging to the floor.

  It was a slow reaction for me to move my arm away from my face. My heart rate was trying to find its norm again but I didn’t think I would ever be able to find anything normal ever again. Isaac looked at me before he walked over to pick his blade back off the ground. I don’t know if it was a look of gratitude or just a look, but he gave me this nod and I tried to force a fake smile.

  “Are you both okay?” Isaac said giving us both a look.

  “I’m…I’m fine,” I stuttered my words out a bit, my voice slightly shaking. “Just a few scarps and bruises. Rhys-oh god.”

  Rhys was back on the ground and I realised he was looking down at his leg. It was bleeding, and it was bleeding quite a far bit. It was like a large scarp across his leg, I figured that he had been cut by something. The creature must have gotten him, or when the ceiling fell over us.

  “It’s just a little blood,” he muttered, looking at me. “Right?”

  “Yes, yes, of course it is,” I said quickly, rushing over towards him and leaning down towards him. “You’ll be fine, it’s just a cut.”

  “Just a cut…just a cut,” he repeated but as he looked at me I realised he was freaking out.

  His eyes suddenly rolled back in his head and his body fell to the floor in a heap.

  “Rhys! No, don’t do that,” I said in a panicked voice.

  Beside me I felt Isaac, just standing next to me and I looked over at him with an angry look on my face.

  “What? It is just a little blood. Felix can fix it,” he shrugged. “No need to faint over it.”

  “He’s not good with blood,” I told him, “especially his own. But he will be okay, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s just a scarp,” Isaac promised. “But we need to get out of here before something else comes along.”

  “Isaac, I-,” I started to say as I stood up. I realised it was the first time I had spoken his name and he looked me intensely and I breathed out. “Thank you.”

  “I should be thanking you,” he said. “You did a good job for someone who has been freaking out all day.”

  “This is a lot to take in!” I protested at him. “You can’t just expect me to-.”

  “I don’t,” Isaac interrupted me, “but you can’t run away from this. It’s happening.”

  I subconsciously touched my left arm. I rubbed the top of my arm a little and I remembered what I had seen a few a minutes ago, what was now there. There was a mark on my arm. The same mark that was on the piece of paper that had caused this much grief. He was right, I couldn’t run away from this because now it really was happening.

  “Okay, I want you hear you out.”

  Chapter Six: Insigne

  “What the hell happened to you guys?!”

  Isaac convinced that there was nothing else I could do but take Rhys back to his apartment, where I could help him, and keep Rhys safe. Before Isaac and I left, Isaac did he best to make Rhys’ house look like it was more of a break-in. I couldn’t even imagine how his mother would react when she came home. It turned out the apartment I had been in before belonged to Isaac and it wasn’t that far away from Rhys’ house or mine, and it was all just a matter of coincidence.

  Felix and Hadley were sitting on the lounge together in the living room, and Hadley was the first to jump up when we walked in. Her reaction was kind of fair considering both us were covered in dust and rubble and cuts and bruises.

  “We had to deal with two demons,” Isaac informed them, shrugging from the weight of Rhys on his arm. “It can wait though. Felix, I need your help.”

  Isaac was carrying Rhys, and somehow we had made it across a town without anyone really questioning what was wrong with Rhys, it helped that we took back alleys though.

  “He’s mostly okay,” I told Felix as Isaac placed him down on the couch. “He’s just not good with blood.”

  I saw Felix look down at Rhys leg and then looked back up at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Me?” I asked him softly.

  Felix gave me this look and before he could speak Hadley drowned out any chance of him speaking. “I am not cleaning the sofa. I can’t imagine how hard it is to get blood out of the sofa.”

  “That’s really what you’re worrying about right now, Hadley?” Isaac asked her rudely.

  Hadley just shrugged at him anyway. “So you killed three demons today? Should’ve invited me along, how rude.”

  “Actually I only killed two,” Isaac said. “Lily killed one.”

  “What?” Hadley asked surprised looking over at me.


  “She got hold of my blade,” Isaac shrugged.

  I sat down on the coffee table so I was across from Rhys and Felix leant down near Rhys leg. Felix and I exchanged a glance but I didn’t want to talk right now. My head was completely spinning. I was still in shock, that I was sure of. This was the most confusing day of my life and I was honestly more worried about Rhys right now than anything else going through my head.

  “He will be okay, right?” I asked, leaning towards Felix.

  “He’ll be fine,” Felix told me with a smile. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through today or how you even managed to kill a demon.”

  I found myself shrugging. “I don’t know how I did it… I don’t know how I did any of it. I’m so confused right now. I just want to close my eyes and wake up and find out it’s a dream.”

  Felix nodded at me a little. “I can only imagine how hard this must be for you. We’ve grown up our whole lives knowing what this is…and this just gets thrown at you.”

  I breathed out slowly. “I feel like I’ve been going crazy in the past couple of days because…the moment I saw that symbol…I knew something. It was like there was something in my head that was trying to find its way out. This is scary…and crazy, but every time I find out something…I actually feel a little less crazy, believe it or not.”

  “There’s still a lot to understand,” Felix told me, turning his attention to Rhys’ leg.

  “I know.”

  I sat on the table and just watched Felix as he healed Rhys’ leg like he had healed my head earlier, only now I could see it. His hands slowly guided over the cut and there was no light or anything, but I saw as Felix moved his hand along Rhys leg that the cut was literally just healing. It was like there was never a cut there once Felix moved his hands away and I think I had been through so much today that I didn’t find it as shocking as I thought I might.

  Felix talked to me with this sympathy in his voice that comforted me, it made me feel like he understood what I was going through. Isaac didn’t talk to me the same and I guess I thought I would want him to talk more considering he had been the one who I had been seeing these past few days; he was the one who followed me after all.

  “Are you alright?”

  It was Isaac now who had walked over to me with Hadley behind him. They had gone into the kitchen earlier, to talk I presume, but now Isaac stood next to me. I barely looked up at him but just nodded a little. Truth was, I didn’t know how I was feeling right now.

  “Good,” Isaac said, “because we really need to talk about all this.”

  I immediately agreed with Isaac. I needed to understand what this was so I could sort out every thought that was going through my head, and maybe even feel sane for a minute.

  “Where do I even start?” Isaac asked, sitting on the arm chair near the TV.

  “How about…by telling me what an…Insigne is?” I asked him slowly.

  “Insigne,” he said to correct my slightly off pronunciation of the word. “That’s a long story honestly…but okay. So… um the history of what an Insigne is. It’s a long story and where it all started is unclear. The legend tells that that once demons were created by the devil, the heavens decided something needed to be created in their image to protect those who are human from danger. Insignes were simply humans at first, humans worthy of the responsibility possessing great power. At first it was just kind of set kills, the knowledge of how to fight and kill a demon, but the heavens decided that they needed something else. The marks were created to give an Insigne a special type of power. Each mark is different and each mark does something different.”

  “Like mine is to heal,” Felix said looking at me.

  “Yeah, they’re all unique,” Isaac nodded.

  “So…the idea of an Insigne, is to just protect the world…from demons?” I frowned. “It’s that simple?”

  “It’s not exactly simple,” Felix disagreed.

  “More like unbelievable,” I muttered.

  I found myself touching my arm again though. I knew what was under my sleeve but they didn’t. I didn’t know if I could say anything, or even if I should. It was my last bit of sanity, getting that to myself, but it was also the only thing that was keeping me here now.

  “Okay, so these marks,” I said slowly. “You all have one?”

  “Yes,” Isaac nodded at me. “You are technically not an Insigne without one. Demons have become stronger and a mark can help you fight. The mark will reflect who you are, reflect your personality. There are hundreds of marks you could receive but you receive one that reflects you.”

  “Didn’t always used to be that way though,” Hadley had been silently leaning on the kitchen counter until now and she barley looked at me when she spoke. “Once upon a time, Insigne could have as many marks as they wanted as long as they willed it. Now you only get one.”

  “Why?” I frowned.

  “There was this Insigne, they say his name was Zulu and he didn’t want to rid the earth of demons he wanted to control them and control the world, and he attempted to do so by wielding as many marks as he could and using that power against others. When the heavens learnt of his betrayal to his duty and made it so an Insigne could only have one mark,” Felix told me gently.

  “And that’s where the dagger comes in,” Hadley muttered.

  “The dagger was known as the Sicam, and it was created when the heavens realised that Zulu was able to draw power from the demons, making him stronger,” Isaac explained. “The dagger itself was given to a chosen one, one who the heavens believe would be strong to stop Zulu and the more trust worthy. The dagger would only be used by the chosen one and they could use it to draw onto them any mark they wished. When Zulu heard of this he tried desperately to retrieve the dagger, but in the end his obsession to find it lead to his death, and the chosen one sacrificed their life to make sure he died, and he did.”

  “…And the dagger?” I asked slowly.

  “Lost,” Felix said simply. “It was found by a chosen one in the eighteen hundreds. A girl named Annabeth held the dagger and stopped the war between the demons and Insignes reaching boiling point, but once she did that, the dagger became lost, and no one has seen it since.”

  “Then why the hell did I have two demons try to kill me because they think I know where it is?” I asked them looking around.

  “Bets me,” Isaac shrugged.

  “You said that…this boy…researched stuff for you?” Felix asked me.

  I pushed my hair back from my face and nodded. “Yeah… he took some marks I drew and he searched them. He found this map and stuff about demons, but that’s it.”

  “I think he possibly may have found something about the dagger,” Felix shrugged. “The demons are getting more desperate to find it.”

  “Why?”

  Isaac sighed a little and so did Hadley and I had no idea why. I felt like Felix was the only one who could be honest to me or even tolerate every single question I had.

  “There’s an uprising going on at the moment,” Felix answered. “The war is reaching its peak, once again.”

  “At the moment? It’s been going on for eight years,” Hadley laughed. “Basically the council wants all demons eliminated, and of course the demons want to control everything. They can’t expose themselves as long we exist, so basically we’re trying to end each other. It’s a war. The dagger would mean victory for us, but to them it would mean we have no chance of ever been stronger.”

  “There’s a council?” I whispered it slightly.

  “There is so much to explain,” Isaac said, leaning back on the chair.

  “Why are we even explaining it to her?” Hadley asked suddenly. “If the council found out we were telling a mortal all of this, they’d kill us.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Hadley,” Felix said. “They won’t kill us.”

  “The demons aren’t going to leave her alone,” Isaac said, standing up. “I think it’s more than some teenage kid’s internet searc
h.”

  “Well, I don’t know where the dagger is, or what it is,” I said quickly. “So what else could they want from me?”

  Isaac shrugged and as I looked at Felix he shrugged too. My head was spinning again and I think I needed fresh air or something. It was a lot to take in, a lot to even think I could start believing it. I was here though, in this apartment, with my best friend passed out after we were attacked by demons and I almost died twice today. I couldn’t ignore that, but I also couldn’t ignore the state of shock I was still going through.

  “Can I go outside somewhere?”

  Isaac led me through a bedroom, which -wasn’t the cleanest bedroom- and to the fire escape. He didn’t want me going downstairs and I understood why, so he left me alone to sit on the steps of the fire escape. Summer was starting to turn into autumn, but it wasn’t quite there yet, I could feel it in the wind. The air was still warm, but there was no humidity in the air. It could really cool down out here.

  I realised I was thinking about the weather. A topic that was usually brought up when one didn’t know what to talk about, but I realised I didn’t want to think about this. I had always hated how I lived, how school was for me, how home was, I just got by. This wasn’t simple, I couldn’t just get by this, and why I hated everything and I wanted things to change, I didn’t want any of this to be the change.