“Everyone who is under my influence, use any means necessary to kill yourself.”
With those words, I flung my sixth sense as far as I could reach, expanding my perception to its limits and seizing hold of every living thing within it. It felt like I’d been flayed open and stretched across space.
Chase’s half-eaten face bubbled as it regenerated. He just watched me struggle.
How far was his range? I had to make sure I didn’t miss a single person. I Shaped indiscriminately, binding everyone in lashes of creeping vines grown from their own bodies. Restrict their arms and legs so they couldn’t harm themselves. Create twig lattices inside their mouths so that they couldn’t bite their own tongues and choke on the blood.
Far away, I could hear Chase’s voice next to my physical body, “I’m so, so disappointed in you. You would leave this all behind? What, so you can be a god of your own little playground? Or are you trying to get rid of your power? Unbelievable. I thought you were a lot of things, Nick. But I didn’t take you for a coward.”
In a cold lurch, I realized the Witches were resisting my changes. I sent instructions to every Flower-Head in the vicinity: snare and subdue but don’t kill them. Not all the Flower-Heads would play nice, but they could hardly make this situation worse than it already was.
“You want to know something funny?” Chase’s tone shifted, turning jovial once more. “I’ve been experimenting for a long time. Shaping is so complex and if you aren’t a Witch, there’s really only one way to see what’s happening under the hood. I had to pull Shapers apart to see how they worked. Of course, most people’s bodies can only handle so much pulling before they expire.”
Wolves were breaking free. I had to sedate them. Flowers bloomed and tiny spines injected pacifying chemicals into the ones that struggled the most.
“Regenerators didn’t have that problem and I was especially curious about them anyway. I felt that they held the key to knowing the limits of Shaping.”
Chase raised his palm and a sickly white knife emerged from it, thin and curved. He chuckled. “I would pump them full of nerve blockers and then cut off pieces, make them guess what they thought I removed. Or I would feed them their own bits to see if they could use that fuel to regenerate what was gone, a self-perpetuating cycle, surviving on just their own flesh. I would take them apart, piece by piece just to see the exact moment the regeneration would stop.”
The knife point stopped in front of my eye. I couldn’t move. My body was merely the central point of a vast array of Shapes all trying to hold hundreds of people still at once while they strained against their bonds in their attempts to end themselves. There were no screams of terror echoing through the city, no people bargaining with higher powers, or saying all the things left unsaid.
“You know what I found?” he asked.
When I didn’t respond, Chase dragged the knife lightly down my neck and chest. I shuddered, feeling the point reach my belly button. Then Chase stopped and my skin split open. Layer by layer I watched myself unfold; skin revealing fat revealing muscle. Then the muscles peeled away from the cut to reveal the trove of glistening organs within. Chase plunged his hand down and hooked a finger into my ribs. It only took a short tug to pop the ribcage open like a treasure chest, sending cold shakes all the way to my fingers and toes. The pain was like stars exploding inside my chest, bursts of hot and cold and sensations I couldn’t even name.
Chase reached inside my rib cage and I felt his fingers close around my heart.
“I found that Shaping is tied to the heart!”
He slowly pulled it out, connective tissues stretching and snapping off. There was no spray of blood, no loss of sensation. It didn’t feel real. Chase held my heart in his hands and I could still feel his fingers squeezing it.
The lights of reality flickered like a dying bulb.
In an instant, my awareness of all the people around us was cut off and I was snapped back into my body. My sixth sense had been extinguished.
“When the heart is removed, Shaping stops.” Chase laughed and laughed, he tried to start saying something but then doubled over, spasms wracking his body. Finally he wiped his tears with bloodied hands, leaving streaks and stains around his eyes.
“Isn’t that just so romantic? We’ve been feeling with our hearts this whole time!”
Chase held out his other hand and something flew out of the sky and hovered right above it.
A severed hand, wrinkled with age.
Chase held it close to my heart but not quite touching. “This is my final test for you, Nick. I do hope you make it. Nothing would make me happier. But somehow, I doubt it. This will be my third time killing you, after all. Third time’s the charm. I’ll have to find someone more fitting to be my dance partner.”
I couldn’t feel them anymore. Were the others okay? Or were they already dead?
Chase teased the hand closer and closer to my heart, a hair breadth away. I closed my eyes for a moment and found something I didn’t expect. Glimpses of a stolen memory that I hadn’t processed consciously.
I opened my eyes. “Chase,” I breathed in a whisper.
He paused, then pulled the Hermit’s hand away and looked at me.
“Who is April?”
I saw something on Chase’s face that I’d never seen before. A moment of fear.
Then it was replaced by anger.
I felt the weathered skin of the hand brush my forehead.