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

low to the ground, perching my face an inch above the blades of grass as a heightened gust of wind frayed my blonde hair back behind my head.

The shade then pivoted off his left foot and with its right arced it towards me. Blindingly fast the limb moved but as it did it ceased to hold discernible form as it stretched and elongated so smoothly that the entire appendage became one long blade. And there, at the point of the toes, was the sharp tip to its sword.

The shadowy limb was coming at me from the side, low to the ground, right where I was poised. Just in time I managed to roll backwards and using my momentum climbed back onto my feet. When I looked back up it was to the dark limb slicing through the air in front of me, maybe an inch away if that.

It was then that the words of my physical education teacher really rang true for me, that PE was an essential life skill. I supposed it was lucky then, that it was my best subject. But as I dodged back away from another black swing I did consider that it would have been nice to have supernatural backup. I had these daeva eyes but besides that I was all relying on athletic ability just to keep from being severed.

The shade went for a jab out ahead but like its legs, this shivered before thinning and lengthening. Within moments it covered the distance I kept trying to put between us and all the while the appendage kept narrowing and elongating.

My eyes widened as I realised that there was no limit to its reaching hand and that if I stayed a second longer just where I was that I would find stake through the centre of my heart.

With no time to for clever footwork, I collapsed to the ground, but still that was not even fast enough for that long narrowing spike sped through the air with blinding darkness and struck into my arm with a searing heat.

I quickly gazed at it, it was not so bad, a centimetre deep clip into my forearm that spanned across it for five. It gaped open, like a mouth just created there for a moment for red began to spill freely.

Damn it! I thought. Where is Ariel? Did she just tell me to meet her here so that I would die waiting!?I can't fight this thing! I don't have any powers yet!

Then I saw it, too impossibly late to do anything about it, that same spear that clipped my arm was moving laterally back towards me. I didn't even have time to raise my arms in defence.

Then with a chime the darkness broke away to light as a golden arrow cleaved the spear just before it connected with my face. Then black, crystalline fragments fell from the broken portion that was so near my face that I had to go cross-eyed to focus on the closest portion.

My eyes were wide, my throat exhausted for when I silenced it seemed I had been screaming.

"Quit being such a coward!" It was Ariel's voice. Of course it was since it was her arrow that saved me, a suddenly golden arrow. But her words, they seemed to cruel to be hers. "If you don't fight you can't evolve!"

I clambered back to my feet as I watched the shade retract the rest of its broken limb before it shivered again and produced a new arm that was equal in its original length but much skinnier.

"Evolve?" I cried out, searching all around me but finding no trace of the girl I was directing the question to. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Her voice spoke from somewhere but nowhere I could locate. "That you're not a daeva yet, not a true one. The seed gives you the eyes but unless it sprouts then you cannot have the darkness flow into your diamond core. Without it you'll never be able to control aura. You need to fight, Bethanie, it's the only way to awaken your true power!"

"Fight..." I murmured as that dark shadowing being was launching another arm-speared strike at me. "But how can I attain power if I must first demonstrate it?"

The spear shot over the top of my crouched form then I instantly rolled to the side where a moment later I felt the ground quake as the thin spike sliced through the earth. I also heard stone shatter, it seemed that a tombstone had also just been desecrated.

"Ariel, help me! I can't fight this! I don't have any power!" I screamed out as I continued to run away from another relentless attack.

But as the shade came to strike a pointed jab at my face there was no arrow to intercede its path so it kept nearing undeterred. As I dashed across, missing the strike by centimetres, I finally realised exactly what was going on.

"So, this is your idea of giving me the answers, is it, Ariel?" I stated hostilely as I dropped below the shade's next sideways slice.

"Yeah, it is." I heard her voice answer behind me calmly. "I gave you one lifeline but that's all you get. From here it's either survive and destroy or be killed. How it pans out however, is entirely up to you."

"Geez, thanks." I responded hostilely. "That's so sweet of you to give me a choice, you know, about how I get to choose between life and death!" I shouted but more because I evaded an additional down-slicing arm that the shade must have deemed appropriate for its limb's newly reduced width.

"Even though I told you this would happen, I knew that you would still be angry at me..." And somehow she had the audacity to sound sad.

With the shade's newly de-proved form it seemed to throw in an extra couple of moves to compensate for its weakened arm. Here it jabbed with a slice-slice-slice, where I shifted left, right, and back left in the opposite directions to the creature's movements.

Then the shade shot out its thin bladed foot straight ahead for which I dodged before the creature spun around and procured a new blade pointed, once again, for my heart.

"Act quick, Bethanie because like I said, I can't help you with this one anymore." Ariel cautioned me from some unseen location.

"And why the hell not?!" I screamed as the black lead shot through. I pivoted but not fast enough and so the blade caught my shoulder. Crying, my flesh forming my red tears, I shouted out to my recruiter. "Damn it, Ariel, as you can see, my hands are kind of tied up here so, unless you're fine with watching me die, help me!"

"If you keep acting like a baby, then your death will be acceptable." Ariel stated too coolly. "Disappointing, but if you fail here then you are useless to our cause."

"You..." I breathed after ducking below a hook to my head. "Only care about that?"

"Precisely." I heard her respond a thin moment before my left shoulder was again grazed by the shade's sword arm.

A world of pain. That was what I had felt, within my hands, in both shoulders, in my fatiguing legs, it was all through my body. But then, even though I was willing to keep pushing all through that, there was Ariel, watching and allowing me to die. That was what stung the most.

As another sharp appendage caught at the side of my torso I believed I finally understood what was happening here and my own value as an extension. In the end, it was all about this war. No one, not Ariel, not Raziel cared if I lived, all they cared about was a new solider to their ranks, but then, if I could not defeat this adversary here, then I would be just as useful dead. So that was what this was, my training, as well as my test for if I did not succeed I would not be allowed into their special powerful world, I would simply be their failure.

I was given one last chance, I realised, but there were no more coming, this was it, I had to fight or be killed.

Shifting away from another attack I thought on what Ariel had said, how she belittled me and yet urged me to push on. There was something in that, I knew, I just had to discover its meaning.

I screamed again as a wide gash was made into my thigh causing me to stumble meekly forwards with hands raised in a weak attempt to gain balance.

The shade loomed over me, its head raised proudly, two arms reshaped into long spears pointing down to my torso but all the while I couldn't take my concentration off that skinny arm. A tiny defeated limb for which my enemy still managed to utilise the remainder of whatever being it still had there and put it to use.

This being could do it because it wasn't human. But apparently, if I used this seed correctly, then neither was I. If I really believed that, if I truly placed my faith in that then...

The shade kept thrusting forward, pointing straight for me and this time I didn't move. Right there and then, I knew, that I simply couldn't deny this any longer.

I hated Ariel in that moment for I knew that she wasn't going to save me. She said she gave me one extra life, maybe for the sole purpose of guiding me to this moment, but, once I arrived here, she would remain uninvolved, even if she was capable of helping me. It made me angry, bloody angry, but I got it - right now I was entirely on my own. If I wanted to continue living I couldn't wish for miracles, beg the help of others, it was all up to me. Fight or die.

Two blades soared through the air in front of me, they neared, each positioned for either side of my torso. One to cut a lung in two, the other to cleave my heart but free to do whatever collateral damage whilst there. I saw that in those black hands as they reached out for me, I saw it for a long moment before I closed my eyes.

I knew that in that moment I was sure to die, but with red hot fury I rejected that notion. No, never, even if was cut into a thousand pieces I would never give up!

That was when I saw a brilliant light shine from inside my consciousness. It glowed ethereally, but was solid, like it had sides and seemed to bend white in such a way that a multitude of colour spilled forth. It was... the most resplendent diamond.

I reached towards it and at the touch I pulled something free. Something large, something sharp and something very, very powerful.

I smiled.

And that smile continued as, with a sword seven feet in length, I sliced the shade's two arms apart. This materialised blade fell quickly to the ground, tearing into the earth with a cut a foot wide as dark shards rained onto the adjacent grass.

As the shade backed away it seemed to look at its arms that showed jagged and disordered finishes despite the clean strike I had given it.

"Yeah." My grin deepened as I grasped the black hilt of my fallen blade tighter. "My sword is bigger than yours."

The shade gazed at its empty hands, then after a look both left and right its arms stretched to replace the missing lengths but at the cost of their prior widths.

"You can manipulate your form all you will," I commented smugly, "but it will not save you from my claymore!"

All fear vanished as another sensation took its place within me. A type of glory poured through me, outside of me, but all at once it was me. I had opened myself up, the metaphysical doors to my lifeline, my soul and as I did I felt a part of me escaped,