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

about to be in another couple of steps.

I tried to stop but of course my momentum had gained too much speed so, just before the collision, I made to lung away but pivoted my foot too sharply, causing it to roll and my body to fall not sideways but straight into the path of a silhouette.

Flying through the air it had its arms outstretched towards me, as if it was superman catching his Lois Lane fall from a tower, but when it grasped me I felt none of the security and warmth that I imagined that heroine to receive. Instead it was cold, just like the snow, just like death.

"No!" I screamed as I pushed back at the thing and managed to knock it on the ground beneath me. Escaping its confines I rolled over it and slipped back into a run.

Foot after foot launched forward. Heavier now, slower too. My energy was waning faster than I would have anticipated. I was an athlete, used to holding my stamina and with adrenaline coursing through my veins stronger than I had ever felt I thought that I should have been able to keep sprinting at full pace for longer. It was not so very far from the road after all, I thought surely I should have been able to make it there before fatigue had set in. Back to the park, those swings and...

Then I remembered how something was holding me back earlier as I ran down this path for my white dream. Oh, god, what have I done?!

Another one must have made a leap from behind for suddenly I felt a yank from my right ankle. A quick glance confirmed it was one of those, belly flat on the floor, head upturned to look at me with its invisible eyes and hand clasped around my still-white glowing skin.

I lifted my leg but suddenly my energy escaped me, causing my limb to barely shift onto my toes. As it had me trapped I looked into the being's black face and thought I saw something there, something that resembled hunger.

"I see." I analysed, my firm voice rising above the vocalist's. "You want my energy. Well then," I smirked, "then you can have all the energy in my foot!" With my free foot I kicked the dark thing through its face so forcibly that its head snapped back and its hold weakened a fraction - but the only fraction I needed.

I rotated further, completing a full circle and, shifting my weight onto my free foot, broke the silhouette's grasp by performing a back-kick into where a man's throat would have been. Then I ran, as hard as I could which eventuated into a meagre jog, but because I saw her I forced myself on. This time though, I did not run for the foolish illusion of my mother, but for my tangible best friend that I callously left behind.

Abigail laid just ahead on the dirt path, but unlike the area I was treading hers was no longer glowing white for it was obscured by black silhouettes hunching over her.

"No!" I shouted. "Get away from her!" I reached one of them and swung a kick around a black ankle as if ploughing a soccer-ball aside. The figure had all its concentration poured into my friend, its arms stretched out contacting her skull, so when my foot collided it fell without resistance, but I was not done there. Another clutched at her outstretched arm and I punched this in the face. One had her ankle, I kicked up under its torso. Another figure on the other ankle, this one I landed right on top of before delivering a slurry of punches. Then to the being at Abigail's other hand I grabbed both its shoulders and landed a solid head-butt. But even still, it wasn't done. There were others reaching across, new ones latching onto my friend and then onto me also.

"No! You can't have either of us!" I shouted but my voice was really the last thing that retained any strength for when I tried to rush at a solid silhouette grabbing me I fumbled and fell forward. My kind attacker caught me and wrapped its arms tightly around me.

"No! You won't... you won't have us." I declared as I resisted the dark thing's binds with pitiful force. "I swear..." I struggled further, resisting despite a heavy lull ushering me to sleep. "I'll destroy you!"

The thing, whatever it was, had a featureless face, nothing was shown bar an ebony form, and yet when it had its head full on to me I swore I could see a smile within its darkness.

"Meet your doom, shade!" A voice, high pitched yet full of confidence declared as a spear of light, glowing with the force of a midday sun, erupted from the creature's chest. The dark figure writhed, still holding onto me desperately, pulling and sucking energy from me to it, as if at that moment I had become its life-line. But regardless, in no time the thing suddenly shattered into thousands of black crystalline shards. These erupted from the centre spot of the white glow before they arced down and as they fell they first shimmered white before evaporating entirely away. The grass beneath remained undisturbed.

And it kept happening. All around me the black beings were being struck with this light. They writhed, as if in agony but silently, for even if they could wail from some unseen mouths they would have most certainly have been drowned out by the persistent song. Some silhouettes flew out hands in attempt to protect their head and torsos, others crouched low to the ground, but more still ran away, as if they could escape the light that was already burning into their cores. But they all ended in the same way, they all broke apart as if they were no more than ebony porcelain dolls.

I turned back to Abigail where she still laid unconscious on the ground and watched the last malevolent creature clutching at her life form shatter and then fade into oblivion.

Just when I was about to relax however I saw black again from the corner of my gaze. I swung to view it, pointed shaking fists forwards and gulped as I waited for its attack. But like all the others it was destroyed before it even made its move, this time however I saw the arrow that pierced its heart.

Just like the light I saw ripple through those beings, this was violently bright. An arrow, made entirely of this light, pierced through the air so quickly that if I had blinked I would have easily missed it. Then it penetrated the thing's chest, right where a human heart normally lurked. It fell to the ground landing on its hands and as it began to crack it gazed up towards me with its empty face. Then this one too joined its companions and created the dark hail that obscured the white forest beyond.

"Well that sorts out that pocket of darkness!" That same high-pitched voice cheered.

I turned slowly, maybe part out of caution but largely from fatigue. And there, back from the path we first trod down, was a girl who was just as young, with the same light-hearted expression so many high-schoolers wore despite the gravity of the situation.

The girl noticed I had been watching her and smiled in response. "Hey, it's okay now, I got rid of those shades so there really is no reason to look so scared! Oh!" She stated suddenly. "Right, there's one more thing that we need to take care of, isn't there?" The question was obviously rhetorical as she turned, raised a bow from nowhere composed of the same incredible light and pulled a white arrow back towards her cheek. Within seconds of her release the snow slowed then fell limply to the ground and as all the white disappeared from view the song finally ended.

I could barely see anything at first but as my eyes adjusted to the dim glow from the moon I noticed the girl was suddenly right in front of me and holding something out for me. "I found this on the ground, it's yours, right?"

 "Yes." I breathed as I recognised it. "My phone, I completely forgot I even had it."

Retrieving it I set the flash-light application on straight away and took in this girl's appearance clearly for the first time. The girl had platinum blonde hair, fair porcelain skin and eyes that were not grey, but silver.

Then I turned around to the girl collapsed on the path next to me. She was no longer glowing as she returned back to more natural colours, but she was also not moving which loosely alluded to another unsettling circumstance.

I reached over and struck two fingers to the side of her neck just beneath the jaw. When I felt a steady, albeit slow beat, I remembered to breathe.

"Yes, she's still alive but she lost a lot of aura." The girl explained. "Still, I see no reason why she shouldn't wake up soon."

"What..." I murmured, thankful that I could hear my weak voice with the recent silence. "What the hell... is happening?"

That girl was smiling right up until I voiced my question. Here it dropped as sadness flittered across her features. "It's..." She frowned. "Just one of many battlefields."

I looked at Abigail, still alive but so stiff. "A battlefield," I asked, "for what war?"

"For..." The girl with platinum hair and silver eyes broke my contact and gazed at the trees as if she was viewing the city far below. "The war of the worlds."

Chapter 3

 

Abigail

 

"Bethanie," I asked, "what happened back there?"

"I'm... not really sure."

"Did you see it, the light?"

"Yes."

"And then the darkness?"

"Yes, I saw that too."

"No, with that I mean, did you feel it?"

She hesitated. "Yes."

"Do you think that, if that girl didn't turn up then we would have died?"

"... Yes."

"Well, I'm certainly glad we didn't, but if we did at least we would have been together. Death scares me but with you by my side I almost feel tough enough to face it! Bethanie, can you make me a promise? Please, just don't die, don't unless we die together."

When my friend turned her face to me on that lonely road home it showed so much pain. Those tears just as always never fell, but I knew she was sobbing on the inside and yet, despite that she smiled at me. "Okay, Abigail, I promise not to die until you do, a hundred years from now when we both have great grandchildren and hip replacements. And then, after that, I promise we'll enter the afterlife together, best friends forever."

I tossed under my bedcovers, feeling my frown deepen on my face.

I had dreamed some bizarre things that night, unable to rest after the incomprehendable events of the prior evening, but as morning flowed my mind became more accurate and the dreams more detailed, so much so that it was beginning to feel like memory.

In my dream I was lying on one of our mountain's dirt trails and there I looked up at a stranger who was illuminated by the white light of Bethanie's mobile phone.

This girl looked at me too with silver