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

stay out here." Vanessa advised as she stepped onto the plaza entrance.

"I'm coming with you!" I shouted at her heels. "If it's dangerous than you shouldn't be alone!"

"Idiot! Fine then, what do I care if you end up getting yourself killed?"

The automatic doors opened and just after we crossed through them I had stopped as I surveyed the surroundings. Food was thrown all about on the ground. Trays, chairs and tables were tumbled, just as forty or so patrons laid restless in various positions. Many people laid on the floor, but some had fallen forwards in their seats and a few teenagers, in their bright yellow and crimson uniforms, had slumped across the fast food counters.

And it was dark in there, so dark, so grey and lifeless and though my daeva eyes were meant to grant me heightened visual acuity I saw worse than I had ever done.

My gaze travelled up to the white glowing domes on the roof. "I don't get it, the lights are on so why is it so hard to see?"

In front of me I saw Vanessa call forth a scarlet whip into her hand where that too seemed dimmer than I had previously perceived. "Damn it, they've almost sucked this place dry. Now we have to revert back to normal sight and that I'm a little rusty with."

"Normal sight..." I echoed as I gazed about the dim surroundings but as I saw the shifting of black within it I inhaled sharply. "The shades, they're here!"

"Well what did you think you'd find here? Aura doesn't just disappear, it's being converted into dark energy."

Then deeper in the food court a heavy slam resounded and on the centre stage a girl with blonde hair groaned as she lifted a seven foot sword into the air. It was difficult to make out from this vantage but it appeared that eight silhouettes circled her and one had just made a successful stab into her shoulder.

"Bethanie!" I called and made to run towards her but a hand blocked me.

"Stay back, Polly Pocket, these are what my Crimson Tongue has just been craving to taste!" With light firing from the soles of her shoes Vanessa flew into the centre of the scene and after performing a quick wrist flick her coil sliced a shade in half.

I ran to catch up, taking many seconds to reach but once there gasped in horror for I saw my friend, leaning over her fallen sword, panting deeply as red oozed down the sides of her. It wasn't that colour that had me so concerned though, it was the black that stretched across almost every bodily part of her. The most being the chest and neck where crystal flowers climbed over the top of her lower jaw.

A shade made to stab at her back, but Bethanie was too weak, too tired so when she went to lift her blade she did so slowly. Too slow and did naught to block the black tip pointed at her spine.

"No, Bethanie, watch out!" I screamed.

Then, with a crimson snap the speared limb broke apart in crystals. Then another black limb fell, then another and another as the flexible coil struck at its enemies as if possessing a will of its own. Like a snake it snapped at the shades and like the most vicious of them it took no prisoners. Soon the whole stage was awash in an ebony hail and as thunder roared from overhead it seemed Mother Nature knew of the violent display taking place here.

With an anguished roar Bethanie flew her blade lengthways and managed to strike an arm off an adversary but failed to deliver the final blow. Vanessa was at her blind spot delivering death blows to the hungry shades before she turned down-stage centre and flung her whip into the audience. Narrowly it missed my hair as it soared over the top of it before curving sharply down and provided a loud crack from behind me. Whirling around I witnessed the black body with its speared arm an inch away from me a moment before it shattered into crystals.

There were five of them now, all up on stage, and though Vanessa fought swiftly, the crystals on her legs vanishing, Bethanie had a harder time with her opponents. Each time her large blade fell down and cut into the wooden floor, she took longer and longer to raise it back up. Then, as she lifted her arms once more it was with nothing inside. When she collided her weight forwards her eyes widened as she realised that her sword had completely disappeared. The shade she was fighting meanwhile never lost the pointy edge it had directed at her.

"Bethanie, get away!" I screamed just as a black point made its way towards her heart.

"Idiot!" Vanessa roared as her whip penetrated the shade through the back where it instantly turned to broken stone. "This is no time to be taking a break, Barbie!"

Bethanie was gasping, her legs trembling as I realised she could barely remain upright.

A shade made at strike to where Vanessa was standing, but that was past tense because she was gone long before the black spired leg reached through that space. Then suddenly a long red tongue reached through the shade's chest. Its red head pointed and almost seemed to snap at the air before finally ripping laterally through its confines and tearing free. With the fall of new black crystals that left just three dark monsters remaining.

These backed away from the two girls and turning towards one-another seemed to arrive at some wordless consensus before fleeing away.

"Damn cowards," Vanessa leered, "have no sense of dying with honour."

"Bethanie!" I called as I ran up onto the stage. Reaching her I grasped wet and red shoulders gently as she wheezed in response.

"Bethanie! Are you okay? What happened here?"

Towards the rear I heard the sound of glass shattering. Turning I saw Lara emerge through the emergency exit where black shined into white dust. As a crystal flower faded from her cheek the girl's smile was revealed.

"You almost let three get away, Vanessa, you're getting sloppy." Lara reprimanded.

The red-head on the stage smirked. "Here I do you a favour and you call me sloppy? Shouldn't you be thanking me right now? By the look of you I very well may have bought you a couple more days."

Lara raised her eyebrows. "Well those ones allowed my crystals to regress a bit but there's still a long way to go on that front. I'm thinking a hundred shades will allow me to get an even tan again."

Vanessa's face darkened. "You want to target the asura. I knew you would, desperate times call for desperate measures, after all. But I'm not that desperate yet so rule me out of that hunt."

"It needs to be killed, Vanessa." Rebecca's voice carried through the hall before she was seen emerging from the emergency exit. "We can't just get around to it when convenient like the shades. This one is much hungrier and everything that comes into its path gets consumed."

Bethanie collapsed on the stage with a thud. "The asura, it's still out there. Is it hurting people?"

Lara answered this. "Not people, but that's not yet. Unlike the shades it seems to be able to detect aura over a much larger distance so instead of coming up the mountain it's..."

"You're kidding me!?" Vanessa cried. "It can't be heading towards the Serene Coast! The population there is half a million!"

"Exactly why we need to go after it before it steals all that aura."

Vanessa's fists were tightly curled beside her. "But it's a death sentence going after it. You of all people should realise that, Lara and besides, look around you. It seems to me like we have our plates full with just protecting Skyward Mountain!"

"I get it." Rebecca sniped from the end of the large hall. "You're scared. Makes sense, considering how it wiped the floor with you."

"I'm not scared, I'm smart!" Vanessa refuted passionately. "I mean, just check out this place! It's so dark that we have to use regular human-sight and you know what that means, it means it's tapped out - these people are here, some have run out of aura"

"No!" Bethanie screeched as she rose to her legs and ran down the stairs. She almost fell a couple of times as she navigated between the food court's tables, gripping onto the backs of chairs to keep herself upright, but she recovered quickly both times as she forwarded herself through.

"Ah, Barbie didn't quite get it, did she?" Vanessa smirked darkly. "She didn't realise the reason for the darkness or why her sword became too heavy to lift. She didn't realise just how much aura was being consumed and it seems..." She added as Bethanie leaned over a boy that was slumped at a table. "That she didn't sense this place like we did. The reason that she's here is because she was on a date. Oh, now that's tragic." she stated with a voice far from sympathetic.

"No, no wake up!" Bethanie screamed from down the hall. "Please wake up, Kieran!"

Chapter 25

 

Bethanie

 

"Kieran, please. Please... wake up!" I shook him but still he made no response.

Abigail appeared quickly by my side and slipped in a hand beneath his jaw. I turned to her, shocked that she was even here. Then she turned back towards me, smile in tow.

"It's alright, Bethanie, I can feel his pulse. He's going to be ay-oh-kay!" Abigail cheered.

I collapsed on the ground by his chair panting. "What the hell!? What just happened here!?"

"The shades are getting stronger, that's what." Lara reported as she crossed through the space towards us. "They never used to be capable of draining aura of such a magnitude before. They could only dull things, weaken them. When teaming up they've always been capable of stealing it all but, that's only when they focus on a one or two people, never this many at once before."

"No one's dead!" I exclaimed quickly as I sat on the tiled floor. "The shades, they take aura but they can't get to the potent part, right? They can't get to the diamond cores!?"

"Well that... depends on a couple of things." Lara extrapolated as she reached us and pulling out the adjacent chair to Kieran sat herself down. "Firstly the numbers. You see, a shade on its own can only siphon a small portion of the aura it comes into contact with but that's not due to its lack of strength, more a lack of gravity. You see, shades are in our world, but not fully, they're not completely here. So they emit less force than they're actually capable of, just the same way that we perceive them as translucent. But the more of them that cross over, the more that feed, the greater weight they possess in this world and the denser they become. They don't carry more mass, but they do hold more weight just as their intellect perceives our world more clearly. So, in effect, they become smarter. As they sap energy from our world they use it to synchronise with their own and draw parallels between our laws of physics with those of the world called Noein."

"But the cores can be