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

to quake as a low roar permeated from every direction.

Fearfully my eyes panned first to the right then back to the left where a gigantic beast stood. Harsh scales lined the creature's flesh, all were dark, all were rigid and tough. These stretched out far, no fewer than five meters in length causing my sword to pale in comparison to its massive girth. But beyond the body were legs, four fixed steadfastly on the ground, then wings, two great ones that beat the air a couple of times before its leather settled against its formidable torso. Then up high was a darkly scaled head where two citrine eyes shone done on me with malice.

"Abigail..." I whimpered nervously. "What are you doing? What is this?"

The girl was empty of sympathy, empty of the friendship we once had long shared as she responded. "Isn't it obvious? I have awakened as a daeva now."

Just then the massive beast roared and as it did fire shot from its mouth. I barely dodged the embers in time as I dashed backwards. Despite the near blow I tried to implore my friend. "Abigail, I did save..." but she never allowed me to finish.

"I didn't ask to be saved!" She retorted angrily. "I was ready to die, willing to die for him! So how dare you, how dare you take that away from me! How dare you kill him for me!" She sobbed but as I tried one last time to reach out she just roared all the harder. "Go! I never want to see you again! If you die that would be a kind justice!"

And the beast roared behind me and sprayed the scene with chaotic embers. Again I only just evaded them but the forest was not so lucky, the dead foliage caught light almost instantly.

"Abigail!" I cried. "Stop this, everything is catching fire!"

But the girl behind the pink staff only grinned. "Fire is nothing compared to the burn you've given me!"

My crystal flowers I was sure all grew thorns in that moment, for each and every one cut into my flesh. Not too deep, only about a centimetre each, just to where the greatest amount of nerve endings were. There was only one thing that sliced deeper and that was the invisible spear into my heart as it cut and clawed there. And fire I felt, fire I knew burned within me right at the core of my being but I knew that this was a fire that neither she could extinguish nor could I alleviate hers. Still, I tried one last time.

"Abigail! Please! You've found your erosreaver, that's fine, but please, don't discard me! You know that I did everything I could. You know that I only... tried... to protect you!"

The beast, with scaled skin and leathery wings roared fire at me. If my reflexes weren't so quick it would have surely scorched me then but I managed to move a couple of meters across before finishing my statement.

"I... I'm sorry, Abigail! I only wanted to save you! You, you're the most important person to me, my best friend! I... I never meant to... I never meant to hurt Eric!"

Whilst my apology held the weight of all my sorrow, though I bared my soul to her, Abigail didn't see it that way. Instead she only grew angrier, her brown eyes becoming so enigmatic they turned amber and with their flash I sensed the beast narrow in on me.

I barely missed the swipe from a clawed, deep brown limb before more fire erupted. And so I had no choice at that point but to fall back, to run away and leave Abigail to her rage because, if I had lingered there, then I would have surely been consumed by it.

So I did run, first down the road, but then soon discarded it for the uneven brush of the forest but instead of heading down I went up. I wanted to climb higher, feel the burn in my legs overcome the burn I felt everywhere else in my body. The crystals, they were erratic, crazed and energised, they kept shifting over the top of my skin, each time just one moved a thorn etched a new gash in my skin I was sure. Everything hurt, so much, so bad, worse than ever, more horrible than even when I lost my mother though I never thought that possible. So much pain meant only one thing, I had to run as hard and ruthlessly as I could.

I leapt up through the bush, branches flicking against my crystalline skin where it seemed every spike found the gap between the flowers and sliced inside the unprotected flesh. Normally that wouldn't have mattered, that was good, for it distracted me from the real pain. The problem was that it all added to the real pain. Fatigue, hits, scrapes, stabs, they all added to my emotional disarray. It was just then, and only then that I discovered there was no such thing as a sweet pain for a daeva, all there was was the agony of a battered heart.

When I reached some sort of clearing I stopped, only to find that I had arrived at the exact same place that I was given my daeva power. Collapsing on the ground I laughed. I didn't know why and I sure as hell didn't get any satisfaction out of it, I just laughed because of the terrible irony I had found myself in and for the terrible calamity occurring within me.

I brought my hands up in front of my face where, beneath the patter of heavy rain, I saw the flowers moving as if they were indeed flexible and had lives of their own. They spawned new parts of themselves and reached thicker along my skin, as well as higher up my head. In a moment my entire skull was covered. I still had my eyes, I could see the black, beautiful flowers growing on me and as they did obscured the tiny patches of my skin.

Finally I saw nothing but black and similarly could not even raise my arms up anymore. Nor could I move my legs, nor could I turn my head, change my expression, or even close my eyes. The tear that was etched on my face meanwhile seemed like it was frozen in place, that part of me even rejected the freedom of movement. My long curly hair ceased to bounced off my back and when I noticed an ebony strand from the corner of my vision I realised that my hair had become immobilised along with the rest of me.

Then I could no longer move my eyes.

Then I could no longer see.

I heard though, the sound of thousands of panes of glass shatter, so loud that it was a screech to my ears, before that was finally taken away from me too. Then I was left with no perceptive capabilities, nothing except for the idea that I was reduced to no more than a consciousness drifting through a world of nothingness.

It's all wrong, my thoughts managed to tack together, it wasn't meant to happen like this. I wanted to protect the world, save people, save her. And now that darkness has claimed me Gaia is destroying me, after everything I tried to do for it. All I wanted was peace, but the world doesn't work like that, the world only knows how to shatter dreams and render pain and destruction.

Curse this world, it doesn't deserve to be saved.

I floated through that empty space, nothing but a string of thoughts until suddenly, with a rush and a massive breeze proprioception came back to me. All at once I sensed the position of my fingers and toes, my tightly shut eyelids, the air sliding in and out of my lungs and the rain, once again, was cascading down on me. Somehow, it seemed, I was back in my body again.

"Well..." A girl's voice cooed. "Raziel was right. She was a Sleeping Beauty."

"Dorothy..." I murmured as the voice entered recognition but failed to see her clearly.

"It's okay!" The silver-haired girl cried happily. "You're one of us now! And prettier than ever before!"

"I... what?" I struggled as after blinks and squints received the blurry image of my enemy.

"That's right." Another, taller silver-haired girl supplemented who I managed to perceive as Jacqueline. Despite the weird vision I saw her smiling at me quite clearly. "You're one of us now, one of the chosen to reroute this world to a better path."

"What's... what's happening? What just happened to me?"

Ariel was also in front of me and there she smiled. "Look for yourself."

I followed her silver eyes down along my form to a tattered red stained school uniform that beneath bestowed clear immaculate porcelain skin. It was whiter than it ever was, so white that it even sparkled and at no place did an ebony crystal besmirch it.

"You don't have to worry about the crystals anymore," Ariel explained, "now that the chrysalis is complete and your diamond core has successfully transitioned. Congratulations, few of us escape disassociation, but it is evident that your heart was ready to accept the darkness."

"The darkness?" I repeated in confusion.

"That's right, Bethanie, your diamond core is no longer clear, no longer lux, but nox. The black diamond chrysalis has been successful and as the fourth daeva-nox we now hold the power to influence this world's four dimensions. A better world is coming and hand in hand we'll create it, my friend."

Rain pounded through the scene heavily, drenching all four of us girls. The scene was still very dark here, with the obscured skies and lifeless forest. From down the mountain came the smell of smoke but none of its amber glow, the fire having been put out quickly by the enraged waterfall.

Things were just as they were a few minutes ago, everything but me. My skin was clear, hair that floated in front of my vision, though wet displayed a brilliant platinum and as I stared into the pupils of Ariel's eyes and saw my own silver ones reflect there I noticed one more difference about me. I felt calm.

And I knew that Ariel was right, that Raziel, Jacqueline and Dorothy were right. This world produced too much pain, too much death and it could only be through darkness that serenity could be found.

"Yes," I agreed to the girls, "the world is wrong and it is up to us to fix it."

Noesis

 

Darkness. People fear it, its vastness giving rise to mysteries that they have no knowledge of. And if one does not know something one cannot protect his or herself from it. Within the darkness may lurk a calamitous stalker, but worse than that, in the dark there may be nothing at all, emptiness which becomes quickly associated with death.

But the darkness is necessary, it is the container to our universe, the birthplace of life and the frame that makes light appear so bright. If there was no darkness, there would be no sight for within a wash of white wouldn't we be left in a new kind of emptiness, a new kind of darkness?

Light could never exist without the dark but the darkness has always been and always will be the only force