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

through the eyes of his special younger brother he caught a glimpse of paradise.

"Yeah, I think I spotted her next target. A girl from Golden Heights High, her name is Bethanie Starr."

I stopped dead in my tracks upon hearing my best friend's name. It came from around the bend, the sight of the speaker obscured by trees.

"She's found someone already. I knew that she could move fast but to recruit a girl this quickly..."

"Well the solution is obvious!" Another new voice, but this one seemed familiar. "We kill Ariel now!"

"You're going to kill her?" A fourth voice mocked. "Doesn't seem to be going so well, didn't she wipe the floor with you yesterday?"

"Girls." The first voice cautioned. "Stop talking."

"She got as good as she gave trust me! And the next time I won't go easy, next time I'll destroy her once and for all!"

"Fool, you know you're no match for her, you're the weakest one here."

"I said I will, damn it, but if you like I can take you out first!"

"Girls!" The first voice repeated with fury. "I said shut the hell up!" This hushed the fighting pair instantly, but it wasn't long lived.

The more emotional voice, the one I recognised, shot hotly back. "What, and you just expect me to take this crap Rebecca is spewing?"

"She means." The second voice answered calmly. "That you are making a commotion and attracting undue attention. There's a girl listening to us through those trees and she's very curious as to the meaning our discussion."

"Oh, yeah. I see her now." The fiery one exclaimed slippery.

I gasped and tried to back away and out of sight but I was too late because all of a sudden a girl with flame-red hair and a dark grin suddenly stood in front of me. I gasped as I realised it was the same one I saw yesterday, the one intent on killing Ariel.

"Ah, check out that uniform, she goes to the same school as us. She looks a little small to be in year ten, but I wonder if maybe she's a friend of this chick's..."

I backed away, trembling. "You moved, so fast..."

"Aw, that's precious, the little teeny bopper is scared of me. Maybe you think I'm a big bad monster that will gobble you up and eat your soul!" The red-head roared with laughter.

"Hey, Vanessa?" Another girl suddenly appeared next to her. "You should have shut up when Lara warned you." Then a fist connected with the red-head's face, sending her flying into the trees, leaving behind sprinkles of blood in her place. On the other-side of that punch were long black strands of hair that swayed to cover the girl's face.

"You better beat it now, kid, things are about to get a little dicey here." The girl cautioned as she stared through the trees.

Then bright white light flared and laughter chorused between the trunks.

"Damn, she's an idiot." The girl with black hair murmured but more to herself than anyone. "But if pummelling her is the only way I can get through then I guess that's what I'll have to do."

The light shone brighter, cutting multiple pathways ahead from between the trees' silhouettes. I shivered as a spotlight just missed me, as if the light itself was a blade that would cleave anything it touched.

That's what I thought until true swords originated within the black-haired girl's hands, long white, intense double-edged, dual blades that instantly swallowed the light the distant girl had created.

"That... light..." I uttered.

"Get out of here, girl!" The black haired declared. "Unless you have a death-wish!" And just then she turned her head and bore bright green eyes down on me with severity.

Who, or what, I thought with terrible trepidation, are these girls?!

Then a long coil of light snapped from between those trees and as it collided on the forested ground the whole world shook.

"Go!" Those emerald eyes roared. "Go now or suffer a fate you wish you hadn't!"

I ran, stumbled, almost fell, but then somehow picked up my feet as I continued down a pathway that led back to school. But it was the wrong way, I couldn't get home from here, there was no way I could reach my sanctuary.

But as my feet pattered meekly on the asphalt, as my heart thumped painfully in my chest, I realised that even though I was running in the opposite direction to my home I wasn't necessarily running away from safety for another place laid close to here. Just a few blocks back past the school, in a forested area hidden from the road, was a small quiet garden. From between concrete pillars flowers blossomed and beneath it all the deceased slept, a perfect harmony matching the tranquillity above.

As I ran I thought a small apology for my friend. I'm sorry, Bethanie, I know you wanted your solitude. But, if by some miracle you're still there now, I need you. Please, protect me!

Chapter 8

 

Bethanie

 

I sat there, gazing at the marble tombstone, at the flowing calligraphy and at the dates that spanned across too short a time period. The stone was quite pretty, it was black with interwoven white lines. Though this reticular pattern was jagged and distorted, it was comforting in a way for every single one of them connected. The lines seemed to represent aspects of a type of being, like the energy my mother retained in her final moments. Maybe that was why I liked those intersecting, never ending lines, because it gave her some kind freedom, even if it was only within her enclosed world.

I had held this sentiment before the prior morning's discussion with Ariel. Long ago as I had studied the design and sat on the disturbed soil, I had clung to that idea. It was something that nourished me, a thought that if just a small part of her remained, no matter how minute, maybe it was still there with me, crying by my side.

Then time passed and I realised what a foolish child I had been, so pitiful clinging to a blatant lie that I constructed in response to my weakness. Slowly, in barely more than two years, the world revealed its harsh truths to me. I became the excuse of my eldest brother, to the next one a burden, then to my youngest brother, the one I scarcely saw anymore I became a no more than a stranger, a ghost that faded along with the memory of his mother.

But then when I thought about it that was all I ever really was, a ghost of my former self. The happy bright Bethanie having died in the hospital at her mother's bedside. In a moment I had it all, a mother, a step-father, two older brothers and a younger half brother, but in the next it was all taken away. Then, as my family shattered, so did I, but my body remained and I kept living like a ghost that just couldn't understand why she remained in this world.

There was one person however, just one that helped me see the light of the world again, help me feel the flesh that I was in. My very best friend in her endless and earnest pursuit of spreading happiness somehow managed to bring me back to life, to allow a smile to form back onto my face. And it wasn't just one of those fake ones, the ones you plant so that people finally stop asking if you're okay, even though you know that deep down they don't really care, they just want to alleviate any small burden of concern they're meant to hold. But Abigail was different, her sympathy was real and the fake smiles didn't cut it with her so she worked towards a feat that no one else could have. Even so, I still had an emptiness inside and a desperate desire to battle death, only I just had no way of doing it. Powerless I had no choice but to try and make the most of the life that was left to me and I did try at it, but now things had changed. Now, I could finally fulfil my purpose and destroy death.

I looked into the grass that laid before my cross-legged position. I gazed into green shimmers, I watched the way a subtle breeze swayed the blades and how the vibrant colour lagged behind. A world so bright, so colourful, even more so than any other place I witnessed thus far and all because of a cruel fate that Ariel suggested, that soul fragments lingered here in greater force than anywhere else. All because of the dead that laid beneath me.

Then a certain kind of darkness caught the corner of my gaze. One that didn't sparkle, but blocked the world's splendour entirely. Or, in other words, one that absorbed the light that touched it.

A few meters away one sat in front of a tombstone. It was black, but not opaque. It was more precisely as Ariel named it, a shade, where some light shone through, but what came out was muted, the image beyond it appearing bland and decayed. It still had human form, it still seemed to be bound by simple laws such as gravity as it was in direct contact with the ground but its darkness and lack of self presence made it easy to spot as foreign to this world.

"So..." I stated as I rose to my feet. "That is why Ariel told me to come here, because she knew that you would be here to greet me."

The thing, the shade, was hunched forward, palms planted onto the soil as if it was extracting the aura within it. It seemed completely preoccupied with its prize at first, so much that it seemed to even miss a bystander as it engorged on human remains, but it became evident, as it raised its head, that my voice was enough to arose it.

"So, even though you don't have ears, you can still hear." I deduced.

The shade turned its head, then its feet rose, its torso, the entire body and swivelled around. And in the whole time that head didn't divert from its direct positioning on me.

"And you can see too." I added. "But that one really doesn't surprise me, not when you exist by absorbing light. Whatever you're made from, it might as well be one giant eye, am I right? Since you take the world's energies but give nothing back. You," I stated as the shade started forward, "disgust me."

But this thing moved quickly, far quicker than I had expected, so my little monologue was cut short as the next line was replaced by a desperate gasp. The thing sped a limb at me so fast that I even lost sight of its form and perceived no more than a blur, but right the apex I seemed to see clearly for it was a spear pointing sharply for my torso.

Just barely I managed to evade away, sidestepping to the right, but the thing was not done as it had more limbs to strike with and far more speed than I could contemplate. With its right arm slicing through air, it utilised its left to cut laterally at me. Instantly I dropped