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

The rain grew harder as I ran, lightning and thunder chorused louder and became so synchronised that there was barely a second between the two. Eventually I made it though, onto the very road that spiralled up towards the lookout. It didn't take long from this point to walk, only about thirty minutes so to run at my speed made short time of the rest of the journey.

Just as I began the final ascent lightning and thunder struck at once with a bone-chilling roar. And this one was close, so close that I actually saw the distorted bolt break through the trees to summit of the mountain. With an ear-splitting snap I heard a tree sever and through more cracks and groans others followed and soon an avalanche of torn debris was falling fast down the side of the mountain. Suddenly the breeze turned icy as it collapsed sheets of rain against me.

A minute later I had eyeshot of the wreckage. Atop the road were many fallen branches, some stones that were sure to break bones and then also a massive fallen tree a little further on. By the sound it seemed to be of a boy, crying, as visualisation became apparent he seemed to be hugging a wide tree trunk.

The rain was still very heavy, the drops centimetres thick and so many that clear perception at this range was not possible, so, slowing to trepidatious walk, I approached the location. I gasped as I recognised the boy.

"Eric!" I ran up quickly, so fast that it took a second to clear the meters of distance between us, not caring that if anyone looked they would have realised the impossibility of my speed. "Eric, what's wrong? Why are you crying?" My voice was already quivering as if I already knew.

But of course I did, for I could see the hand the boy held onto. The one he pulled at and using his other the boy pushed at the meter wide trunk to no avail.

"Move, move!" Eric screamed. "No, why did you do it? You saw it so why did you run straight into it!?"

He did not have to say her name for me to know who that pale small hand belonged to.

I choked back a wail and instead summoned my claymore into my hands. With a violent slash I tore the wood apart in half where the topside rolled away and slid down the length of the mountain. Then I struck, again and again and again at the horrid timber. The large chunks were propelled away from the two of us but smaller shards flicked back and as they sliced against my cheeks I felt their searing burn. Red liquid flowed down them like acid but I kept up my swordplay and reduced to the tree to little more than rubble. Much of this fell to the road, some to the wayside and more far down its steep slope, but there was plenty atop a sweet small girl where the wood appeared to be merely blanketing her during her slumber.

Finally I collided my blade to the road, cutting through the asphalt thickly. When I panned across I noticed that Eric was watching me, his eyes wide with confusion, terror, but by far grief. Then he looked down at the sword whose hilt I still held within my hand.

"Abigail!" He screamed as he turned back to the fallen girl. "Wake up, Abigail! Wake up!"

Dropping my claymore I fell by her side too, collapsing hard onto the bumpy stones where they bit redly into my knees. My hands made flurried movements as they swept all the wood scraps away, some proving more resistant so I had to pry these out with force. Once a large portion of the blanket was removed I stopped.

"No! No! This can't be!" Eric shouted next to me, his voice filled with agony. "No, she can't...! She can't!"

All the beautiful crystals on my body, the ones that I was hoping Abigail would have the chance to admire, suddenly clawed and stabbed at my flesh. But it was more than that, I swore I suddenly began to sense their movement on top of me, through me and felt them creeping up subtly onto my face.

"I refuse..." I murmured. "I refuse to believe this. I'm meant to... I arrived in time. In time to save her!"

"It's all my fault..." The boy whimpered. "She pushed me... she pushed..."

"No, Abigail, wake up!" I implored her myself then as I landed both my hands to her shoulders and shook her first softly, but then roughly, but still she didn't enact. It was then, my gaze just centimetres from her that the terrible reality came crashing into my mind. The crushed sternum and right arm, the leg with so many red coated sticks poking out from the skin, and the head that was surrounded by an ethereal crimson halo.

And it was all muted, almost grey, as if what I was looking at was not someone who possessed a soul, an aura, but a corpse.

"Abigail!" I screamed before suddenly I was thrown onto my back roughly. A sharp piece of wood sliced into me below my lower ribs that caused me to scream out in pain.

"You!" Eric was on top of me, pinning me to the road, a wild accusing look to his dark eyes. "Save her, damn it!"

I coughed as air returned to my lungs. "Save? I... I..."

"You can!" He roared. "I saw that sword you were carrying, seven feet all made of light and then it suddenly disappeared. And you! You're all dark, like you're covered in shadow, all but your face. Something's going on with you. I don't know what but you have power so use it, damn it! Use it and save Abigail now!"

He saw my sword! And the darkness... he can see my crystals. Not properly but he can see the shadows they leave behind.

I didn't fight within his grasp. "I... I can't..."

"You can!" He pressed harder into my shoulders, unwittingly pushing the wooden shard deeper through my back. And there, through the sea of heavy rain a stream of his tears greeted my face. His voice softened. "You have to be able to. Please... save her, save her! She can't die, no, I love her so... so she can't die!"

He... loves her. Then that means... I turned my gaze to the sadly battered girl next to me. Then she loved him too.

"Please!" He continued to sob. "You have to be able to! You have to! I don't care what you do, I don't care that it doesn't make sense, just bring her back - bring her back!"

My eyes watered. "Eric, I... I don't know how..."

Suddenly he fell off me and crumpled back down by Abigail's side. There he held her very white hand as tears fell atop it. He didn't go for the other one, the one that was crushed and completely red.

I sat up, my hands cradling my head as I rocked back and forth. "This can't be happening. No, it can't be. I have to save her. It's my mission to save her. Raziel warned me, he told me I could do it, if I hurried. I just had to come straight here and I would make it in time. I just had to come straight...."

Then, when I recalled the girl whose aura had almost been completely drained by the shade I screamed.

"Bring her back." I thought Eric was still pleading to me but when I turned I saw him staring deep into her beautiful empty face, his hands gently rubbing against hers. "Bring her back. Bring her back. Anything, I'll give anything, just bring her back..."

"I can't..." I whispered in response even though Eric now seemed to hear nought of my words. "I can't..."

But then a teasing memory came back to me, the one where Raziel promised that the power of a daeva could bring a person back from death. I almost scolded it internally, thinking that in order to do that the world had to be sacrificed first until something Ariel once told came back too.

A daeva, nox or lux, has the power to save someone from grievous injury in the last moments of their life. This is possible even after the heart has ceased beating so long as there is still some brain function...

Tentatively I looked back at the brunette's head, one framed by crimson but not too severely marked. It had been only minutes since that bolt, me just having missed my chance to save Abigail. But, whilst she appeared dead, it was still likely that some function was left in her, some brain function which should take many minutes at least to fully die. If that was the case, if there was some small part that had yet to fade then... she could be still saved.

The harm may be reversed and full health may be restored, for a price of course and this is a large one. However, this is very different to total control of life death, where someone may be killed at will, or someone else brought back from the dead regardless of the years since they had died, and here the toll is nought.

So, without the world ending, it was possible to bring someone back from the cusp of death. But what was the price Ariel was talking about and, more importantly, what was the method? If I could save her, even at the sacrifice of myself, then wouldn't that sacrifice have been worthwhile? Especially for Abigail, a girl who could never harm anyone, one so good and kind she could pull people away from their darkness and despair. She was the true hero, the one worth protecting. Whereas I, I could amount to no more than a soldier. A failed one at that, weak among my peers and incapable of protecting my best friend. Whatever the toll may have been, I was willing to accept it, even if it meant my end, so long as Abigail returned back into the arms of her loving boyfriend.

Slipping up towards the top of her I placed my hands to the sides of her skull where my fingers touched red instantly. That flowed off quickly though, as did the sad halo, since the weather did not wish to relinquish its barbarity for such a tender moment. Lightning shone just then too. Thunder a couple of seconds later.

I breathed as I felt for the girl's aura. I wasn't really sure what I'd expect to find, but I thought I'd feel a little more, but on the contact I may as well have been grasping a log I had just chopped because it was nothing that came to me.

"Bethanie?" Eric murmured with blood shot eyes as if he just noticed I was there. "What are you doing?"

I gave the weakest of smirks. "I'm trying to..." I gulped as my throat stung, "save... her."

"But, how?" He enquired innocently, painfully. "What can you possibly do now?"

"With... my power." My voice was so soft that it could be barely heard over the cascade of falling rain.

"Power?" Eric looked almost angry. "What are you talking about?!"

He's forgotten already, I realised. That really didn't take long.

"Never mind, I'm... I'm just gonna make this right. You'll see. I have to..." The end finished in a chest-tightening whisper.

I searched her again and felt for a trace of energy, the brilliant, bright colourful stuff that was so obvious we could see it with our eyes closed. But it wasn't so obvious here, I felt her body, it felt destroyed, empty, kind of like... a piece of furniture. There was a trace of aura there, that couldn't be denied, but it felt lost and confused, like it didn't know where it was meant to travel back to. But then, from right between my hands I felt a colour. Pink, I sensed, but it was there, and so very Abigail. There was still a self-aware aura clinging to her brain. She wasn't