Blood beat inside my head, urging me to do something, anything to stop this moment from happening. But it was already too late.
Chase’s face was smeared with dirt and the vestiges of the Marquess’ fluid body. He panted heavily and his tongue was black. The dark crucible groaned, wood splitting as it curled ever tighter with each breath.
He stretched out his hand, showing it to me. A hole appeared at the center of his palm like a stigmata, widening until it started to bleed. Then he held it out to the side and let the blood pour out onto the dirt. The puddle bubbled and grew, swelling upwards to form a bubble. The walls of the bubble began to bend as something pushed against the inside. Veins crept across the surface of the bubble and a limb became clearly defined inside, pushing against the placenta until it broke through and the veins sank into their flesh. A feminine human with long white hair straightened up, glistening with the blood she was born from.
Her skin was as white and smooth as an ancient Greek statue and her eyes were the same, from a different time, staring straight through me without a hint of a spark of human recognition.
The girl turned to Chase and reached towards his face with her slender fingers.
“Chase,” she said, her voice distant, like it came from deeper down inside her than her throat.
Chase examined her, eyes flicking over every detail on her face. More black sludge dripped from his nose.
Despite her alien nature, her face was distinct, unique in a way that made me think that this was someone specific, someone Chase knew. She caressed his cheek, wiping away the dirt.
“Chase,” she repeated with the exact same intonation, sounding like a skipping record.
Chase’s eye twitched. Then he raised his hand to her face.
And swatted his hand right through her. Her body melted away at his touch, turning crimson and disassembling into a bloody mush that slopped into the dirt.
Chase lowered his head, panting. His expression was masked in shadow.
Then he flung his head back and shouted at the ceiling.
“WHO THE FUCK CARES!”
He chuckled, then laughed harder, the tendons in his neck stood out as he pushed out the laughs like they were hurting him.
Then he grew quiet and met my eyes. “Come on, Nick. Let’s cut loose. Just you and me.”
I didn’t want to talk to him. Couldn’t. Whatever sympathy I had mustered for Cecily, I couldn’t with this man. I knew he wouldn’t be convinced.
He cocked his head and a sly smile crept up his mouth. “I heard what happened, you know. What a tragedy. Nell didn’t know you weren’t dead. What a terrible misunderstanding. A real life Romeo and Juliet!”
Something in me snapped and I lunged at him.
The apathy intensified like I’d been dropped deep into the cold sea, but I had prepared answers. Tapping into Nell’s Lacuna gave me the emotion necessary for action.
Until Chase raised his hand and my body halted, caught in a Witch’s grip. He could grasp me, something the Marquess couldn’t do.
“It seems you and I are the same,” he chuckled. “We’ve both eaten Witches. No more restrictions, we can Shape ourselves and others without restraint!”
I reached out and Shaped his legs. His eyes widened as his legs turned to thin vines, unable to support his weight. As he fell, I felt my own leg bones warp and snap. I turned during the fall, my chin hitting the dirt. I seized handfuls of it, clawing my way out of the kiln.
Chase’s laugh bounced off the walls as he crawled after me.
“We’re all so primitive!” he shouted. “The Shaping we do is like a monkey with sticks and stones. The Marquess has become lost within my mind, but not before opening doors and paving paths I was barred from. His knowledge of Shaping, honed over centuries, is now mine and I can tell that his own mind had limited his potential.”
The trees were groaning and shifting. Roots wriggled through the earth, coming for me. The forest was under his control.
I crawled towards a person petrified by Chase’s apathy. At their waist hung a seed pouch. Roots pierced my legs like snake fangs, dragging me backwards. I Shaped my arm, stretching it towards the pouch.
Chase fought me there too, Shaping my arm, turning the skin into some immobile shell-like material. I split my arm into two branches, splitting his focus and allowing me to snag the pouch, spilling the seeds onto the ground. I reached out and pushed them into the earth with my other hand.
A cocoon of vibrant green shoots wrapped around me, tearing away the malevolent roots and distracting Chase enough that I could reform my legs. I sent more roots underground, pushing the seeds into the area all around us.
The cocoon walls began to dissolve and Chase was on the other side, already standing on restored legs.
The trees themselves closed in, churning up the earth and remaining concrete with scything blades for roots. They seemed to snarl at me with inhuman visages on their bark.
New growth erupted from inside the zombified trees. Rosy hued willows and beeches tore through the murals, replacing Chase’s art with their own swirls of vibrant colours akin to the aurora borealis.
Chase whooped and Shaped the trees further, making snakes of spiky wood that coiled overhead. I caught them with giant flowers that closed their petals around the heads, shattering them.
“How about this?” he crowed and flung blood from his hands into the dirt, forming dripping black roses that shot their thorns out like missiles.
I dug deep into Nell’s memories so that it felt like her hand was guiding mine as I created a garden of strange and frightening plants, their thick foliage protecting me from the thorns. The flowers and leaves glowed with bioluminescence, pushing back the darkness.
Chase tried to seize these, to twist them to his bidding, but I knew these plants like they were extensions of Nell’s soul. He couldn’t touch them.
At my bidding, six flowers rose up from the ground around him. The bright orange and yellow spotted petals were a trademark signal from nature: danger. He ignored them and headed straight for me.
You think I won’t do it, but you’re wrong. One of us has to die.
The first flower unfurled its petals and there was a sound like a cracking whip.
Chase’s eyes widened in shock as a massive hole opened in his stomach. A cannon-ball sized seed was embedded in a nearby tree, painted with his insides.
Crack.
Another seed took off his arm. He grimaced in pain and stumbled.
Crack.
Just as he was creating a new Shape from the stump of his arm, his head snapped back as a small chunk of his skull was blown off. Blood sprayed the trees around him and almost immediately small creatures began to pull themselves together from the blood.
Crack.
His spine was hit and he crumpled.
Crack, crack!
Two more seeds decimated what was left of his body. His blood remains lay still in the soil.
I turned away, feeling sick with relief.
Only to get that ice cold feeling in my stomach. None of the people in the forest had started moving again. They remained as still as statues.
Wind seemed to whip up the dust around as I turned back to Chase’s corpse. His blood was coiling through the air, collecting and condensing into a minute point, like a singularity. What remained of his body rose up too, flesh reforming from the largest pieces. His bare feet touched gently down to earth and his body sprung out of the carmine point, waves of Cecily’s anger pouring off of it as he was restored entirely, body literally shining with vitality.
Chase brushed the dust off his naked body.
“Like I was saying, Shaping is untapped. Emotion carries energy through the ether. How do I explain this to you in terms you’ll understand? You shouldn’t be surprised that this energy can be commanded to act on its own. It’s almost like a spell. Such is the weight of the anger from the Lacuna that now belongs to me. You could kill me a thousand times and the energy would hardly be diminished.” His smiled widened. “So now we can play to our heart’s content!”
He flicked his hand and one of the people stirred. A young man with no will of his own walked towards Chase.
“If only this was one of your friends. Oh well, use your imagination.”
Bile burned my throat. “Stop!” I shouted.
“Maaaaaaaaake meeee,” Chase said in a singsong voice as his hand touched the man.
In an instant, the man’s body warped, his face squishing and stretching into a thin line, his arms and legs sucking into his body. A black sheen crept over the skin and his ribs began to spring out of his chest.
It only took a second and what was once a young person with hopes and dreams was now a black sword, ribs running down the pommel, a tortured expression reflected in the blade’s face.
It hurt deeply, knowing that I didn’t have the skill to turn them back.
Chase ran his hand along the blade, wiping a tear from what was left of the man’s eyes.
“I hope you can rise to my level. Otherwise this won’t last nearly long enough.”