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

really just Bethanie's hand, directing my momentum down along the mountain with her.

"Wait, come back!" Bethanie cried, her hand fallen by her side and no longer illuminating the path ahead. But to my astonishment, I realised that she didn't need to. Somehow, the dirt here shone with its own white glow, just as the tree trunks did, its leaves and the birds snuggling up amongst them also.

"Wait!" Bethanie called and again increased her pace, oblivious to the strange phenomenon surrounding us.

"Bethanie!" I shouted just before my foot failed to rise high enough off the ground. Suddenly its forward momentum stopped, caught by a superficial tree root, but the rest of me kept moving. "Help!" I cried just as Bethanie's fingers tugged free of mine.

As I fell I saw her continue to run forward, faster now that nothing was holding her back, her form faintly illuminated by the surrounding glow, like a ghost following the trail to the other-side. When I collided with the ground I lost sight of her completely.

My arms were first to hit the ground, causing deep scratches along both forearms as I skidded. When I stopped I pulled myself up, trembling from fatigue and just barely managed to reclaim my feet.

I looked at my arms and just like Bethanie's form I was dimly illuminated by the forest's strange ethereal glow. This made the crimson along them stand out all the more.

"Bethanie!" I called over the music which in all this time had yet to cease, its one song looping over and over. "Bethanie!"

I was exhausted, my backpack felt like an anvil strapped to my shoulders, but with little energy that was fading fast I persisted forward. There was only one path after all so as long as I continued to follow that I knew that I would meet up with Bethanie eventually.

I tried to run, but more scuttled ahead to the same effect of a toddler and just like one I found myself falling forwards again. Lying on the white glowing dirt I cried, terrified of this strange place that was once so familiar, terrified that I wouldn't find Bethanie again and terrified that I would never leave the forest.

I tried again to get up, but this time my body did not respond. That was it, somehow I had completely run out of stamina. I wondered if it was because of the cuts on my arms, causing me to lose too much blood. I hadn't thought that much was flowing, but then I was finding I could hardly think much at all. It was all getting very difficult to process.

And just then I noticed the singing had changed. It was slowing down, like the song was finally coming to its sorrowful end.

I was lying on my belly, my head turned to the white trees across. They did look beautiful, but like the vocals, so sad and lonely. This seemed strange, since there were so many trees to keep one another company but then I realised why, they were disappearing, obscuring back into black. One blotted out after the other until finally just one remained. Then, with a breeze, that one's light went out too, but with the wind I was given the sensation that it wasn't really gone, just obscured by something.

Then in the corner of my vision I saw a figure walk along the path. I almost smiled, thinking Bethanie had returned until I realised that this figure was no more than a silhouette. The path's white glow did not reflect from them.

The person kept walking towards me, the sound of their steps hidden beneath the foreign words. The hammering of my heart likewise was muted by the music.

It kept moving forwards, its size increasing until I became sure it was a man but even when he closed the gap and leant down over me I still could not see a face.

"Please, help me. I feel... so weak."

He didn't say anything, just leant closer to me until finally all I could see was the black of his silhouette.

"Please..." I murmured, so devoid of energy that I barely managed the small utterance. "I need to find... Bethanie."

Then it was all gone. The last of my energy finally expelled as I felt my eyelids close and my consciousness float far away.

Chapter 2

 Bethanie

 

It was her. Down the forest's path she walked. Alone, white, like an angel returning from heaven.

"Wait, come back!" I called out, running as fast as I could to catch up to her but neared no closer. Something was dragging, pulling me back, a phantom from a nightmare was stopping me from reaching my dream.

"Wait!" As I cried I took a desperate leap forward, felt that menacing cruel tug again, forced through it until I finally broke away. Then, unhindered, I sprinted with a blinding pace.

Tears filled my eyes, daring to pour free, but I resisted them and forced them to remain in their place.

Never again, I will never cry again.

The problem with that was that all the water made it very difficult to see clearly. It wasn't just the woman ahead that was white, but suddenly all around her too. I figured that the effect was a result from the woman's light glistening along my obscured gaze. Still, it made it appear as if all the trees besides me, the path underneath and the leaves overhead were all white. And as my eyes threatened to leak all that brightness twinkled.

I reached out with my hand, a very blurry and whitish hand and pleaded to the figure who was ill-defined, barely visible in the long distance ahead, but unmistakable in her identity. "Please, stop! Don't leave me again!"

I couldn't see where I was going, the nooks from shallow stones and trees roots undetectable and skinny stretching branches across the path blended into the white and yet, despite all that my dash never slowed. My feet quickly compensated when it landed on poor footing, and my shoulders motioned away to lessen the scrapes from the tree limbs. I dipped down at the last minute when the canopy suddenly lowered and leaped over barely seen broad logs. I didn't know this location but I did know the forest. All my life I had lived here, running its paths, climbing its rock walls and navigating its fast-moving streams. I was adept at moving in bushland, screaming off its snakes and whacking hairy spiders with sticks. So, when it came to this chase, it would take a lot more than lack of sight to slow me down.

Surprisingly that didn't last too long however for soon I found myself entering a clearing that was again bathed in white.

I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds to allow the tears to hide back into where they came from. When I reopened them I made the discovery that my eyes were not deceiving me as much as I had thought. It was still white, and still just a little blurry. Bright and glowing, a dim source of light not too dissimilar to the moon that was just revealed overhead.

Grass lined the floor of the clearing and the blades swayed toward me gently. Above them was what caused their movement, the air filled with lateral moving snow-flakes. I raised my hands to greet the ice and felt their cold prickle at every small touch. And the music was still going, that sad, lonely voice. And she was just up ahead, in the centre of the clearing, waiting for me.

"Mum." I whispered.

My mother, glowing white, couldn't have heard me, but I guessed she must have felt my plea instead because then she turned and smiled.

"Mum!" I yelled, smiling, again with watering eyes and started to sprint forwards, but then abruptly I stopped.

A hand the colour of deepest black was clasped around my wrist.

I couldn't feel it, I could not even see it properly because somehow it appeared both transparent and yet it blocked the white glow entirely. The hand was around me, fading into vision, into darkness, and then disappearing entirely as if I imagined the whole thing. In and out, real and unreal in an unreal world of light.

I looked up at the mother ahead of me, she was closer now, closer than I had been since I had first sight of her. And she stood there, with her head tilted to the side, smiling.

"Damn it." I murmured. My voice couldn't be heard over the vocalist's but by how much my throat stung I knew it must have been very croaky.

I dashed back, flinging my arm away and as the black appendage returned I saw its contact break. Then the rest of it became apparent as a six foot silhouette suddenly materialised.

Despite reality hitting home I gave one last longing look to the white woman. There she smiled, but bitter-sweetly, like she too regretted the truth before she faded away.

The song suddenly changed then. From tragic and sad it transformed into hard and angry. It was much faster and much darker.

Then the world of light vanished, or more accurately was obscured by figures of darkness. In the tens, twenties these black beings stood all around me, sizes of high and low, wide and narrow, all in the form of man and populating the clearing as if it was their own little village.

The snow kept floating laterally through the air, still white and when it hit it was still cold, but it was also something else - soothing, like a lull into an endless dream. Those little spots did not melt straight away like real snow on flesh, but clung there, unshifting in its chill just as the song it was really trying to make me hear.

When I noticed this I thought of that first melody, the one that seemed to reach right into my heart and the black figures around me began to fade away and a white figure in the centre of the clearing seemed to almost re-emerge.

"No!" I yelled. "It's not... it's not real!" Just then I saw the black arms reaching toward me, bare inches before making contact.

"Get away from me!" I screeched as I instantly twirled and propelled myself back the way I had come.

They kept coming for me though, the fact that I had broken their illusion not enough of a deterrent, and as they lunged across I had to dodge left, right and low to escape contact. They grazed me a few times but did not catch me so eventually I manoeuvred free enough away to find the path and ran up it once more.

These guys, or things, whatever they were, were persistent though and not only followed behind but sprung at me through the trees. They grazed me a couple more times, a shoulder to which I lowered and sidestepped, then grazed my arm where I made a complete 360 degree turn from, and then just kept on running.

Fatigue was beginning to hit though and my breaths grew so loud that I managed to hear them over the top of the deafening voice.

Another black being emerged, flying across my vision and blocking the beautiful white forest it once hid behind. The thing arced through the air, not aiming for where I was currently but for where I was