The world swam back into focus.
There was a creature in front of me. It stood unsteadily, limbs made of entwined fibers. When it moved, it jerked, like time-lapse footage of a plant growing. Various fibers grew and retracted, pulling the “muscles”. It wasn’t pretty and it needed a lot of help, pushes and shoves from its invisible creator.
I stood in a crowd of these beings, each one choosing a different route in their evolution. Some wore bark like an exoskeleton while others used rippling motions of their lower tendrils as locomotion. There was one creation that was a perfect replica of the human skeleton, made of ivory wood, but it was inert, the eyes in its head looking around but having no way to move its body.
I flinched as one of the creations bumped into me, but it paid no attention to me. Its target was beyond this wall. I felt the unifying pulses that drove these creatures. It pounded inside of my foggy head, through gaps in my thoughts and perception.
I felt vulnerable, naked like the creations around me, no skin to stave off the unwanted pressure of existence. I had no identity.
Still, the one thing I could rely on was her. So even as I drifted in and out of conscious thought, my body was compelled to move to her will.
Several of the plant beings began to merge together, mixing their best parts and growing taller. A complex eye formed on its head, the texture of the cornea was messy, opaque in places. It rested a gnarled limb on the wall.
She wanted to get past this obstacle.
I went to the wall and touched it. There was a pull of something within me, an instinctual hunger, some purpose of my body unfulfilled. This part of the wall was different.
The hunger reared its head and I let it eat. The wall began to melt into me.
“Exit the building!” a familiar voice called out from the other side.
The leader. She knew him and wanted him dead.
The creations poured through the hole I’d made, weathering gunfire as the enemy retreated.
Purpose urged me through the gap but I hesitated. There was a part of me that longed to throw myself head first into this purpose, to lose myself in it. But her voice carried so much pain. I wanted to reassure her but I had no way of speaking to her. I needed a connection, but my mind was still fragmented. I didn’t even know her name.
Lost on what to do, I followed the horde as they chased the enemy outside of the building.
The air outside was bitingly cold. I hugged myself and shivered. The suit I wore wasn’t warm enough for this weather. Raising my head and blinking away the falling snowflakes, I saw the orbs that dominated the sky.
She hates the snow and the cold. Her plants die, things become still, she loses her place.
That memory was strong and I felt it slide snugly into its proper place.
A strange flower bloomed in spite of the snow on the body of one of the enemies. Vibrant blue streaked with red.
An empty deer mask lay on the road, staring at me with its empty eyeholes.
The body twitched and I yelped and slipped on the icy ground as I tried to backpedal. The man struggled to raise his head to look at me. His breathing was ragged and shallow and he spasmed each time her waves poured over us.
“Help me,” he pleaded. He tried to get up and then his eyes widened. His body lifted in the middle, like the flower was pulling him to the heavens. He reached out for me to save him and I instinctively grasped it. I pulled, only to watch in horror as his flesh began to slide down his arm and into me.
Memories hit me like a splash of freezing water. Every muscle clenched as the visions poured into my head.
He had been told about Nick, an old adversary from Chase’s past and the guardian of the most powerful Witch, the Gardener. She could extend her reach over entire countries. With her power, she could reach the Lacunae and call them down, but she wouldn’t do it willingly. A devastating blow to her emotions would trigger her innate Witch instinct. The guardian’s death would be the catalyst.
Then came flashes of people I didn’t know, places I’d never been.
This isn’t me.
The memories about the Gardener and her guardian were useful, clearly I had some connection to them. Even more useful were the memories that felt totally foreign, the ones that clearly belonged to this man alone, the things he held dear, the things he despised. They felt out of place within me and that was a relief. I could make sense of the memories without filling the empty places in my mind with different identities.
I let go and the man limply fell into the sky.
Flexing my fingers, I felt the strength I had stolen from the man. Better still was the path forward I had found. Touch more enemies, fill the holes, pursue Chase, the target of her ire.
The sound of tires rolling on tarmac snapped me into focus. It was time to act quickly. I ran towards the sound.
Snow blurred into white lines around my vision. I was fast. This felt great. My lungs filled with air as I exerted myself to the limits, only to find that whenever I thought I had reached it, the limit proved false. They were self-imposed walls that I could break past with effort.
Then I spotted them. Car wheels spun as a trail of vehicles left a parking lot. A few plant creations had managed to cling to the back of the last ones in line.
I huffed as I leaned forward and pushed my legs to go even faster. The gap between me and the cars closed and I saw one of the creations hanging off an open car door, slowly grinding away its body against the road.
A person in a deer mask leaned out of the car to point their gun at it.
At that moment, I leapt onto them, driving them back inside the car. My fingers found the edge of their mask and then touched the warm neck underneath. I intentionally pulled this time and hugged the person tight as they struggled before relinquishing their memories.
She liked Chase. She liked the cool glint in his eyes when he figured out how to take a person apart, bit by bit. She liked how unbothered he was of the world that had no meaning. Following him would lead to a deconstruction of every system that had been foolishly made without the future in mind. And it didn’t hurt that she felt giddy every time he made his victims scream, when he opened them up to see how they’d react. Like a clockmaker, he would pull apart the pieces. Sometimes he would find that when he removed a piece it would make the whole person fall apart. And that wasn’t very good design, now was it? Wolves were superior. They weren’t fragile like the rest. It felt bad to even think that once she had been human.
Her husk fell away from my touch and I reached for the two in the front seat.
One fired their gun and my entire head wrenched to the side. The pain was momentary, new flesh was already filling in the damage to my jaw. I touched and took. More memories, each telling a sad story.
A Wolf with nowhere else to turn, having been exiled from his community for an incident of lost impulse control. The other, just a man who had been in the wrong place and the wrong time and found that his whole life had spiraled out of control. He blamed that single moment of chaotic nonsense in his orderly life and cursed the people that had spurred it on.
I shook the memories out of my eyes and opened the car door to leap to the next. Broken glass pierced my face, weapons were brought to bear, but I grew confident that there was nothing here that could hurt me.
I learned a lot about these people and I learned even more about myself. Violence felt good, a release of jittery, uncomfortable feelings into something so solid and real. Violence established order. I could take what I-
I pulled back, stopping myself from entirely absorbing the Wolf I had in my clutches. The driver next to me stared in horror.
Something feels off about this.
I left the driver untouched and moved on. Each car I used as a stepping stone to the next, dismantling the group, feeling satisfaction in carrying out the Gardener’s will. Except she wasn’t paying attention. Her focus was somewhere else and no amount of people I punished seemed to bring her back. If anything she was getting further and further away. The violence I thought would be my connection to her seemed to be failing. This wasn’t it. This wasn’t the path forward.
I didn’t know what to do. A whine started in my throat, anxiety leaking out from my soul. I needed to know who I was before she left without me.
So I took the final leap from the roof of a car, launching much higher than before. My eyes expertly tracked the landing and I slammed down onto the hood of Chase’s car.
We locked eyes through the windshield.
That was odd. As I stared at the grinning blond man with blood on his face, I thought that this moment would have evoked some emotion in me, but I felt nothing. Only the Gardener’s anguish tugged at my heart.
A lost memory wriggled its way to the front and I moved as if reenacting the scene. My hand punched through the glass and settled on the steering wheel.
Like this?
I yanked it to the side, sending the vehicle careening off the road.