Daeva: Black Diamond Chrysalis - Danielle Bolger (essential reading txt) 📗

cautiously listened out for the boom coming from the clouds in the distance but just as before the sky made no play.

I looked up between the parting of trees. With living on a mountain you could never see the weather like you could on flat-land. You could hear and even smell it at times, sometimes the scent was so acute it was comforting, like when rain clung to the air and filled it with moisture, or wattle in the midst of a hot summer's day giving you the sweet scent that new adventures were on their way. But those all depended on the wind and that evening it was stagnant. And the sky overhead was purely black, meaning there were clouds covering the sky but not so much as to create rainfall, so in other words I was left with less senses than ever.

I sighed as I began to walk on, realising that I did have a tendency to what Amy and Bart both accused me of, I obviously over-thought things.

Then I saw another flash and this time its source was unmistakable.

I looked up ahead through my street. It was a long one but down it, just up a little from a cul-de-sac was my home, and to the left of where I stood was another road stretching down the hill some way. Further down I knew that it lead to a sport's oval, a cricket pitch and another playground. Then a couple blocks on were a few tennis courts.

I had stopped there as I weighed the two paths. I knew I should have just gone home, a few minutes and I would have been safe and bathed in artificial light, but the silent flash to my left was suddenly just too intriguing.

A flash, I thought, like an arrow piercing the darkness...

I wasn't sure why I thought that but I felt certain it had to with yesterday evening and that girl with the silver eyes. But how, I didn't know. I sensed danger down there and imagined the monsters Eric alluded to going bump in the night, yet, if there was light there that made me feel that she would be there. A girl, smiling over me that I was sure saved me from that very darkness.

So of course I did the foolish thing and, turning left, walked down that hill to the source of the flashes.

-

The streetlamps were fewer here, more widely spaced since the area was frequented less often outside of daylight hours. The sporting centre was busy during summer but that was when the sun remained in the sky longer so that extra lighting was rendered unnecessary. But in Autumn the events were fewer, most on their off-season. A couple still did play but by the time night had fallen all its participants had left for home long before. Up on the mountain no one remained out-doors in the cooler months after dark if they could help it.

I should have done the same, but those flashes ahead proved that someone else was just as reckless and that made me determined to find out who.

I was still some distance off  but as I approached I could finally make out the source and that came from somewhere within the athletics oval.

I halted there as I watched more flashes, but these I noticed no longer faded to dark as some form of light source seemed to always persist.

An arrow as the intermittent source, I thought, but a bow as the consistent one.

With a glance aside and front I decided on a new path ahead and that one involved forging my own. I turned left, shoes crunching fallen leaves by the road-side and then entered into bushland.

My eyesight were not so good to navigate with just the flashing light ahead so I pulled my backpack around and retrieved my mobile phone. Utilising the torch application I lighted the forested floor as I skirted around the oval's extremities.

Keeping low I hid behind one segment of brush to the next, taking easy quiet steps as I moved deeper. I didn't think there was anything to be afraid of because what I expected to find was Ariel using her power. But she could be using it against enemies, monsters perhaps, so that was the reasoning to my veiled approach. But maybe there was another, the fact that I was intruding into someone else's business uninvited, and shamefully the second time that day after rudely witnessing Eric's artwork. I knew I shouldn't have been putting my nose into where it didn't belong, but still, I just couldn't help it. I was just too curious to walk away so instead I walked forward, but quietly.

Soon the persistent source of light became bright enough that I could turn off the application on my phone and tuck it back inside my school bag. And then just a little further on I finally received a glimpse of the sport's oval through the trees and the hurried movement of someone on the other side.

Grunts and groans complemented erratic displays of light, as well as the visage of a pair of legs illuminated well by bright light surrounding them. But these darted quickly so that despite seeing the light that clung to them, I soon lost visual perspective of the body.

"I warned you!" A girl's voice cried out but with its strained volume I knew that even if I knew the person I would not be able to attribute to whom it belonged to. "I warned you to back off. But if you keep getting in my way I'll have no choice but to get rid of you!" A bright light flashed against the trees at the end of that statement.

"You're talking about warnings?! Well that's laughable! I warned you never to show your face around here again or I would kill you. And you know what, I was serious when I said that!"

It was another girl's voice, again from someone that I could not recognise and again another flash ensued from that direction that bounced off the scenery besides me.

I ventured nearer still, ducking low and keeping to the cover of trees as the interplay of light flashes continued. Finally I made it behind a large rock where, through some brush, I received a fairly clear gaze of a battle going on in the midst of my local athletics' field.

When I saw Ariel I wanted to cry out I knew it! As I witnessed the bright white bow in her hand and arrow that she pulled back across her cheek. But then when she fired it was not at what I suspected, but to a girl that bore a long slender and flexible white line. When Ariel released her arrow it struck through the air blindingly fast but with a great flash I realised its travel was impeded. That was because the girl it was aimed for not only blocked but seemed to destroy it with an illuminated whip in her hand. The coil continued down in its arc, snapped against the earth and then swiped back up and raised out in front of her. And I realised what kind of stance that was, a ready stance, one ready for attack.

But... I thought silently with alarm. They're both two girls. Why are they fighting one another!?

I couldn't see her face, but that platinum hair was surely no one else's and when she addressed her adversary her voice softened and finally proved her to be the girl I thought she was. Ariel lowered her bright bow. "We don't need to fight, Vanessa. It does neither of us any good. Just put down your whip and go home or go kill some shades if you need to vent your rage but fighting here, one of your own kind, will get you nowhere!"

Far across the oval the swords of light trembled as red long hair shook furiously. "One our kind? One of our kind?!" The girl repeated hotly. "How can you say something like that! You're nothing like us! You're horrible, you're evil! You don't deserve to breathe!"

"I know what you are saying and I understand how you feel," Ariel responded calmly, her platinum hair swaying about by some wind that seemed to originate only around her, "but still I can't let your emotions interfere any longer." And there she raised the bow again and from nowhere materialised a white shining arrow that drew back and rested across her cheek.

"I've wanted you dead for such a long time, but I was willing to stay my hand so long as you kept away." The other girl admitted, her own crimson hair shifting as if carried by a breeze also. The coil of light in her hand was still held in ready position but it trembled even more as she responded. "But now things are different, you coming back to school can only mean one thing and I cannot allow that to happen again!"

Then the girl on the far side started moving straight ahead, but this wasn't a run or sprint, though her feet did move it was at such an impossible speed that I couldn't even describe what it was. With feet that burned white she went from many meters away, to bare inches from Ariel with a white lash just about to contact my new peer's face.

I was about to scream out, warn the blonde away but there simply was no time. Suddenly they went from talking then Ariel was being attacked without a moment for defence. So instead of calling or better yet, running out to help, I just turned away and buried my face in my hands to blind myself from the final moment of impact.

Despite my eyes being shut, despite them being covered, light still penetrated through and glowed my vision red quickly before returning back to black. But during the red I could not cover my ears from the horrid sound of a girl's acute anguish and nor could I keep out the sound of laughter that followed.

"I warned you, I did warn you." A girl spoke with a voice so harsh that it barely sounded human. "But now I have no choice than to kill you just like her."

"No!" A girl screamed as another flash made the inside of my eyelids turn red.

"Ah!" A girl exclaimed. "Damn you!" Then more flashes, lots more.

"Die!"

"Not before you!"

"Yeah, okay, I'll agree to that. Let my destruction take you down with me!"

"I don't think so, I'll send you to oblivion with her and all the rest!"

Laughter again. "Like I said, so long as you're with me, I'll happily run to my grave!"

"You're insane!"

More flashes, all the time. They were so bright, so red when seen from the back of my eyelids and so consistent.

"Yeah? Maybe, probably! But that's all thanks to you now, isn't it? You and the rest of your phantom scum!"

More laughter, I thought it was from the girl that first laughed but in all honestly I couldn't tell anymore, they were both yelling with such furious unnatural voices that I couldn't tell who possessed the most horrible sounds. And then they kept fighting so violently. I couldn't see it, my eyes were closed so the details were veiled but I saw each strike blaze redly as the light shone through my eyelids. And then there were their grunts, their shrieks, their desperate cries as someone was struck, and then, when it seemed to have all reached some kind of climax desperate pants ensued.

"Vanessa, please stop this." I finally made out Ariel's voice again between her deep breaths. "Fighting each other gets us nowhere, you know that!"

"I..." The other girl replied, even more breathless with a much softer volume but the vindication in her voice was still present, albeit wavering. "I know fighting you is pointless, but still..." The girl began coughing and though it sounded horrid I just had to open my eyes again to find out the state that she was in and when I did I gasped.

Fortunately