Jasper nearly dropped his sword as he tried to rationalize Lillian’s words, knowing that an Amity had gone missing on a mission to Ereachia and knowing it was prior to Eldrin’s arrival. The memorial in the hallway, with the other dead students, was the one Elana had caught Eldrin near, thinking they were related. Jasper had just thought it a coincidence - two black-haired elves.
It couldn’t be. He couldn’t believe it. Lillian laughed at the way his face dropped, his stomach cold and nauseous. Jasper himself had gone to Ereachia with Astra and Lavinia to try to find her - and after a month, the search slowed, for they all knew they were now looking for a body. Amity’s parents once visited the Academy, concerned at the mysterious amount of money they received every month nearly a year later. Kylantha had assumed it was a friend of the family, anonymously paying for the death of a child.
But how much money could Eldrin spend to pay off the debts of murder?
The cold blade of a sickle curved into his torso, jolting him from his thoughts to realize that this was reality, that he was going to die to Eldrin’s fucking crazy ex and never know if he survived Soleki. He wouldn’t know if he could forgive Eldrin for the murder, if they could still love each other once the truth was unveiled.
He hit the ground, breathless, every pulse of his heart sending aching throbs through the bloodied wound. Lillian leaned over him, black and white hair touching his face as she grinned, ecstatic.
“What scares you the most?” She asked.
“Death - Kharis - all of it,” he answered.
–
The forest was filled with the echoing scream-shrieks of something that should have never existed, chasing down its creator without the leash that all seruses seemingly had. All of his creation could sense it, a higher power older than all of them combined, and it bound them to loyalty.
But not this one.
Soleki darted through the trees just as he had done a millennium ago, the branching twigs snapping against his skin as he blindly rushed for salvation. The thing with black hair followed, a thundering of limbs until he could not tell if it ran on two legs or four.
The battle roared behind him, surrounding him with his defeat but he would not believe it. They would prevail, no matter how much silver the fucking peasants smelted, no matter how many seruses his best friend burned with her light. They were wrong. They were all wrong.
An arrow flew past his face and he whipped towards the source, finding the guard he dragged trying to slow the monster down with a shaking bow, turning and firing as he ran. Too cowardly to stop. Could Soleki blame him for not wanting to fight a losing battle?
It was an arrow that did not reek of silver, for it was not permitted in the Order. The one who thought she was righteous had carried only silver, convinced that Soleki was made of the same darkness as his seruses. Perhaps she was right. He had relished in the idea of being possessed of the similar potential to be something that shouldn’t be, but now, running from his creation, he wondered if something had gone too far. This thing he had created was a hellhound biting at his heels, chasing him into the same hell Aldreda had condemned him to.
The forest broke into a grove that rather reminded him of home, though there were no blooming trees. There were only black branches silhouetted by more and more blackness. The guard stopped with him, though he looked uncertain.
“My Lord-”
Something that sounded too human and too animal all at once barrelled into the guard, tearing into him with wet, jagged teeth - too many of them. The guard didn’t even have time to scream.
The thing hunched on limbs that were too long as it feasted, and so Soleki did the only thing he knew to do - he summoned his magic, slicing his hand down in a cutting motion.
It made a pained sound, tumbling towards the woods. To his surprise, it did not rise immediately, instead extending a limb out and fumbling for something in the dark underbrush.
Soleki had been so panicked in his escape that he never noticed how the animal remembered its humanity enough to grab its scythe, and now it wielded it with something like familiarity, though it was a jagged movement, not smooth like the scythe-wielders of old. Soleki remembered the one with the scythe at the Academy - this could not have been him.
The fight was fast, though Soleki remembered how to parry a human blade. The problem was that this was not a human wielding the blade, and it fought with none of the strategies that made sense. Wild, reckless, yet brutal. God’s creation turning on its maker and finding nothing but hatred.
Soleki’s back hit the ground, knocking the breath from him as the creature leaned over him, blood or saliva or both dripping from hungry teeth onto him, and he found that he was terrified. A sharp tongue found his cheek, the wetness of tears threatening to spill, and it laughed deep in its chest.
As a last resort he clenched his magic, finding the core of the beast with some struggle. It did not want to be found. “Turn back,” he commanded through gritted teeth, summoning all the ferocity he could find.
The thing seemed to waver, just enough for a voice to form from the growling of a beast. Perhaps the voice came from Soleki’s own mind, snapping under the reality of it all. “Tell me my name.”
Black hair - a savior or a killer, a misguided soul turned idiotic and full of grandeur. They all wanted to stop him, to kill him, to stop his dreams of what they would never understand. Black hair over it all. Just like him. Just like him. Just like-
“Aldreda,” he whispered, seeing a ghost with white skin over the grey pallor of something worse.
It laughed. “No.”
Soleki lost his grip on his magic and a wild desire to live overcame him. His feet found the creature’s stomach and kicked, sending it to the ground in its surprise. He stood, taking his magic again and feeling for the creature and twisting, making it shriek in agony, its entire body as tense as a bowstring.
“Then show me what all this howling is for.”
He would never admit it, but he was unsure of how he did it. Nevertheless, the bones of the serus snapped in a way Lillian’s never did, and then the traitor was emerging, bloody and shaking, a shell of the man he had seen before.
He could have killed him. Neither of them understood why he didn’t. Both of them understood that it was not mercy that had Soleki vanishing back into the woods.
–
The first thing Eldrin thought of when his mind was his own were the ones that came before him. The nameless bodies in the unremembered rooms, experiments and people trying to understand why this child, too, did not Turn. Perhaps those children had looked well upon the Shadowmaker’s face and found that they knew fear.
Eldrin remembered in brief flashes how Soleki had looked under him, his eyes glossy with the terror of death. It was not the look of a god - but he knew that, already.
He stood, feeling different than when he would change before. His legs did not threaten to give in, but there was a great unsteadiness from within, as if at any moment, his humanity could break apart again. The serus now knew that there was a power beyond what had ever been explored, and it hungered. Maybe nothing would save him if it happened again. He grabbed his scythe as he moved back through the woods, following the trail that the serus had torn through in a wild effort to kill someone else.
Not far from the field, Eldrin smelled blood in the air, hot and tangy and human, and instantly he felt his stomach drop. Something monstrous started to answer him, just at the surface of his skin, and for the first time in years, he only barely considered letting it take over, letting it avenge him.
Not yet.
He knew that it was Jasper’s blood in the air, though he still ran desperately to the source, finding the silhouette with one sickle and knowing what she had done.
Eldrin didn’t know that Jasper was alive when he tackled Lillian with a ferocity he had never felt, seeing only shapes and smelling the blood of someone he wanted torn into pieces. Even Lillian looked shocked as she looked at his white eyes, hooking her sickle against the staff of his scythe, trying to push him off.
She smiled. She always smiled when she fought, though this time, Eldrin thought she looked a little nervous. “You came back. It was a bold move, to do the Turning twice.”
He snarled, all teeth and anger that he forced to not be grief. “Shut up.”
She laughed, pushing him off and kicking him. He rolled but he did not feel it. He forced himself to not look at the body in the red-stained grass, at the silver hook in his stomach, at how he wasn’t moving.
“He wasn’t terrible,” she said, only barely regarding Jasper. “You fight better. You’re someone worth my time, though I can’t say you fuck better than-”
“Is he dead?” Eldrin asked, his voice flat as they circled each other, both hunting the other like they had always been trained to do. There was very little, he thought, that separated them. The only difference was that he had chosen his own life.
Lillian only shrugged, pulling the blood-covered sickle from him. Jasper only barely tensed. “If he’s not dead now, the blood loss will kill him. What were you thinking, fucking some boy from our enemy organization?”
Eldrin swung the scythe at her, hard enough that she fell back when she tried blocking it. “Should he die, you’ll wish the first life you’d taken was mine. He would have been far more merciful.”
“Can you not handle losing someone pretending to love a false version of you?” She moved for him but when he dodged, she simply punched him. His nose dripped with blackened blood as she licked the blood off of her hand. A long time ago, he would have been attracted to it. Now, he was only repulsed. “You never told him about Amity. About how you weren’t always Eldrin.”
Immediately he felt a cold pit in his stomach, freezing up enough for her to kick his legs from under him. Her boot crushed against his sternum, his ribs aching under her. This was yet another thing he would have swooned at before they tore each other apart. His head swam from all the changes in his life - changes he was still haunted by. “You didn't,” he begged.
This, too, was something unforgivable in the Academy’s eyes. In Jasper’s eyes.
Her gaze grew serious as she stared at him, at the scar on his cheek. “You abandoned me,” she said. “None of us are guaranteed survival, but you - you were all I had. All I wanted. I loved all of you - the very blood of you. And you left me to rot.”
“You could have come with me,” he said. “You still could. If the choice was killing you or mercying you to a better fate, I would choose mercy every time-”
Her hand found his throat, crushing. “Stop lying. You never wanted this as much as I did. You never wanted me, so long as you had your little soldier boys you’d stare at in the training yard. I always knew.”
“Then you should know I - liked you! It wasn’t the men I pursued. We may have been arranged together but I enjoyed the Lillian that wasn’t fucking, killing kids.”
She released him, standing straighter. Her weight was crushing, the boulder rolling down the hill and onto him again. Again and again. His punishment for Amity. “I wasn’t the one who killed her.”
Save me. Save him.
It answered. Were they united once again?
He snarled, grabbing her leg with a clawed hand and tearing, tendon and blood that made her shriek, stumbling as she grabbed the injury. She looked up at him with white eyes, grinding the fanged teeth that wanted to rip him apart. They would not survive this - and Eldrin did not care any longer. If Jasper died-
He did not remember much of the fight - only the hot breath and the white fangs, wet with the blood of the one who tried to kill his love. Somehow, Lillian escaped, bloodied and cursing at him.
“You’re something more evil than what you think the Order is,” she said before fleeing. “You’ve forgotten what it was we taught you. When you succeed in killing us all and inevitably lose control, who will stop you? Who will catch you? Who would even try?”
Eldrin was human again when he spoke. The stench of blood from all around was overwhelming - blood and sulfur. “You talk so much for someone so naïve. Tell me, Lillian, does the serus within love you? Or does it hunger? I think it would devour you the first chance it got.”
She made a frustrated sound, and then she was running - or limping - away. Eldrin ran for Jasper the moment her back was turned, collapsing on the grass beside him and using anything he could find to press the wound. The blood was slow, either clotting or running out of blood to give. “Jasper,” he pleaded. “Tell me you’re alive.”
Jasper’s skin was pale, ashy from near death, though he opened his wet eyes to glare at him. “I wish I wasn’t,” he said.
“Don’t say that,” Eldrin said, risking a look at the injury. It was not as deep as it had looked, but it was still bad enough that they needed to leave now. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Before he could lift him, Jasper put a cold hand to his chest, stopping him. Eldrin wished that such a simple movement didn’t hurt so terribly. “You told her you would mercy her. Why didn’t you kill her, when she’s the most dangerous one?”
Eldrin paused. It was enough for Jasper to look away, betrayal in his eyes as he frowned. “This is more complicated than I can explain - at least for now. Please, Jasper, Soleki is somewhere and we need to-”
“You killed her.”
He froze. Both of them knew who he was referring to. A thick silence filled the air between them. “Tell me she was lying,” Jasper said. When Eldrin looked away, he grabbed his hand. “Tell me. It couldn’t have been you - you who cried over Elana’s mom and who owns a cat and-”
“It’s true. All of it.”
Something felt irreparably damaged as Eldrin lifted him, trying to not bend him. He knew of the path that led to the edge of Kanalion, though it had been forbidden, covered by a gate and soldiers. He also knew of the thick trucks nearby, used for transporting goods and heavy enough to mow over anything - or anyone - in his way. What was another body to the mass he had already killed?
“Tell me you can still love me after this,” Eldrin said, nearly pleading. He did not want to show how desperate he was, for the one man he had ever loved. For the one person who mattered. “I can understand if you cannot, but this death - it is something I couldn’t control. It is something I’ve always regretted.”
“Does Kylantha know?” Jasper asked, seated moments after Eldrin had stolen the truck. It was unguarded, likely from the Order scrambling to help Lillian and Soleki.
“You’re the only one who knows.”
“Then how can you possibly be sorry?”
–
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