I was roughly shaken awake with a dull ache in my chest. My fingers dragged through soft dirt as I listened to the deep rumbling that resounded through the darkness. Brief glimpses of light gave definition to the shifting mass above my head. They were giant roots, shifting constantly to accommodate the changes Nell had been making above. We had fallen beneath the tree.
The light gently passed over Jason’s face and he tried his best to give me a reassuring smile.
Kay.
A wave of nausea washed over me.
I uncurled my fist and held the crushed up butterfly close to my face. It still stung me as it fluttered weakly, unable to fly with damaged wings.
“Fuck…” I whispered, choking back tears.
Jason cleared his throat. “Hey. Is Nell okay? I can’t find her.”
She was. I could sense her emotions pulsating, her fear sharpening her focus and blocking everything else out. She was still above us, fighting the Crawling Skin alone.
“Yeah, but I-” I bit my tongue, trying to keep it together. “I didn’t… I couldn’t…”
“It’s not your fault. And we will mourn her, but now isn’t the time. It fucking sucks. It feels like I’m falling back on unhealthy habits: the military training, my father telling me to just suck it up… But we can’t take the time right now to feel bad. Okay?”
I tried to focus my mind on other things. The easiest distraction was my twisted leg, bent sideways and pulsing a deep pain up my side. I felt along its length and nearly vomited as I touched exposed bone. As the light passed overhead I saw that Jason’s arm was in a bad way too. His forearm was bent in the middle.
“I don’t know how we survived that fall,” Jason said. “Nell must have intervened. She’s incredible.”
I tried to take in a deep breath and failed, breathing hitching. My ribs felt tight around my chest.
“Kay and I had a conversation at the top, before Quinn and you guys got there. We talked about how Shapes feel like they have a purpose. Like they aren’t just random, there’s meaning to it. Kay felt like she’d been wanting a way to help people in this new world she found herself in and her Shape gave her the ways to do so. I felt like my Shape gave me the power and the confidence to stand up to my father. It’s gone now, but I’m kind of glad, in a way. I needed a fresh start. A new purpose.”
He chuckled wryly. “Not that I was expecting to grow up so quickly. But sometimes it feels like it was just my body catching up to my already grown up brain. Although I do wonder if I’m too stunted and immature to understand how people feel. I’m more of a doer. I don’t want to stand still and process things. So I just keep doing instead. You get that, right?”
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely, staring at the butterfly. Then I slipped it into my pocket and tried again to breathe properly. It hurt, but my lungs filled and my mind felt a little clearer. “Thanks.”
Jason patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “I’m going to see if there’s a way out of these roots, maybe something we could use as a sled for you. At worst, I can drag you, but that’s gonna hurt like hell for the both of us.”
His footsteps in the loose dirt and stone got further away.
I focused on my connection to Nell. She was still trying to contain the Crawling Skin, with the intention of holding it still long enough to find the failsafe within its genetic code that Quinn had spoken of. But it wasn’t working. There were plenty of bodies in the manor and every time the creature absorbed new flesh, it became more and more difficult for Nell to grasp.
Suddenly Jason was at my side again.
“Someone’s coming,” he hissed. “Can you give me a weapon?”
I let a branch extend out from my forearm. He grabbed it and had some difficulty breaking it off with one hand.
“Sorry,” he muttered before kicking at the base of the antler, near my skin.
Crack. A fresh wave of pain shot through my side, all the way to my neck where blood thundered beneath my skin. I watched the darkness, trying to see who was coming.
Jason stood in front of me, wielding the poor excuse for a weapon, essentially just a sharp stick.
Eventually I heard footsteps.
Then a beam of light happened to cross over their path and two people were revealed.
One was an old man with dark skin dotted with darker liver spots. There was a halo of wispy white hair around the crown of his head and he wore a heavy overcoat that accented his hunched posture. Thick leather gloves were clutched in one hand. His eyes sent a chill through me. Clinical eyes that took in every detail. They saw flesh and purpose rather than human beings. In an instant, I knew he was related to Quinn in some way.
The other person was hooded, head bowed, with a witch’s pointed hat resting on their head, pulled low so I couldn’t make out any of their face.
The light moved on and my eyes remained fixed to the spot where I’d seen them.
An aged voice took a noisy breath and spoke, “Today has been quite the spectacle. I can only hope that the years of change to come will be just as violently creative.”
Something about the voice was innately repulsive. My skin crawled with every syllable.
“Not any closer!” Jason said loudly. “I’ve been filled to the brim with nasty surprises by a Witch specializing in parasites. You try to hurt me or my friend and you’ll come to regret it.”
A lie? I didn’t know for sure.
The footsteps came closer anyway and a sudden urge to flee washed over me. Even without any sight, my instincts were in overdrive, repulsed by the presence in front of us.
“It’s a shame Quinn let things get so out of hand. She was such a promising student of mine. But it’s clear that the control I gave her in our organization went to her head. She started making mistakes. You were the biggest of them all, Nick.”
“You’re the other side of Organ,” I surmised. “The ones who wanted to remove the possibility of the Crawling Skin being used on the Lacuna.”
“She unveiled that much to you? Tsk tsk.”
A boot crunched on the debris, too close.
I heard Jason’s weapon whipping through the air and then he grunted, falling beside me. The branch was gone and his fingers had been broken. He stared at them like he didn’t know how it had happened.
The old man was close enough that I could hear his breath rattling in his lungs.
“Violent reprobate.”
The air pressed in around me, as if fleeing his presence. My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
Jason turned to me, eyes wide. “Nick, snap out of it! You need to-”
A hand appeared out of the darkness at his shoulder, the skin around the knuckles looking like the knots of an ancient tree. It touched Jason lightly on the neck.
Then Jason was gone.
I stopped breathing.
Just gone. He had vanished.
“Jason?” I asked quietly. Had I passed out for a second? Had he moved?
“I have no need for distractions, so I removed him.”
“What did you do?” I asked, voice shaking. Please. He’s just a kid.
He replied matter-of-factly, “My power is the culmination of the efforts of many Witches to push the limits of a Shape and it is why I was given the moniker: the Hermit. Any brief touch of my skin and the unfortunate recipient will be shunted somewhere in the ballpark of 250,000 miles away from the surface of Earth. We have a few theories as to the exact mechanisms. I won’t bother to explain to you the ideas of quantum entanglement. I’m afraid that even if your friend miraculously survived the transit, unless they have the ability to survive in the vacuum of space they are quite dead.”
I stared into the deep nothingness.
The light passed over the man’s face. Impassive. Looking at me like I was the one who was wrong.
Rage ignited my bones. Antlers tore out of my skin, wrapping around my legs, trying to get them to work so I could reach this awful excuse for a human being. I screamed as the movements sent spikes of pain through my skull.
“He was just a KID!”
“Maintain your composure. Your Witch needs you to focus on the Skin.”
“FUCK YOU!”
How had things gone so wrong? I’d just met Jason again. And Kay was just trying to help. Why would… How could both of them just die? There was so much more ahead of them and what, it was cut short like it was worth nothing?
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t overcome the deep anxiety in the pit of my stomach that told me that everything, forever and ever was fucked. Nothing I could do or had ever done would help change that fact.
Tears ran down my chin as I screamed and the bones in my legs cracked from my clumsy efforts to fix them. Useless. I can’t even do this without Nell’s help.
“This is pointless. I need you to deal with the Crawling Skin with haste so that we can move on.”
“To what?” I asked bitterly. “More Beacons? More suffering?”
“If everything goes to plan, we have no more need for the Beacons.”
“Fuck you. I’ll never help you. You deal with the Skin. Kill it like you-” I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud.
“I would risk sending the Skin towards the Lacuna in space.”
“So you would rather lose all of humankind on Earth?”
“I don’t desire that outcome either, but I see the destruction of the Lacuna as the worse of the two evils. I founded Organ to welcome the Lacuna as a path to the enlightenment of humanity. If we do not elevate to a new plane of existence, then we are simply not worthy and the Lacuna will make something new in our place. That is certainly the best choice.”
“You’re talking like it’s a god.”
“I see it as the future. And in the effort of that future, we should fix your leg. Maria?”
His companion spoke for the first time, feminine but with a strange cadence, as if the voice came from a throat that had been misshapen. It responded with venom, “I can’t believe you would request that of me. I refuse.”
“I’m not asking you to heal him,” the Hermit said patiently. “Here, I’ll carry you, let me get my gloves back on.”
“…Fine,” she said stiffly.
Light flared and I saw the Hermit gingerly lifted the hat off with gloved hands.
Then darkness again.
The feminine voice spoke, “I hope you realize how gracious we’re being. You better not disappoint, Nick.”
Footsteps approached. I waited for my opportunity.
A beam of light crossed behind them and I saw their shadow. I lunged forward, tackling them, sinking pointed antlers deep into their chest. They didn’t fight back as I immediately started to consume them. The foreign memories came quickly, but I brushed them aside. I didn’t care to understand. I didn’t want to. This person was one thing to me. Fuel.
My leg jerked, cracked, straightened, and set into place.
Eventually I was left holding empty clothes.
The Hermit’s presence had disappeared as well.
My friends were gone. My heart ached unbearably.
Nell will be next, my worst thoughts whispered to me.
I spoke to the darkness, making a promise, “I will do anything to ensure Nell’s happiness. So you’re all gonna die. Cause there’s no rest we can have while you wicked monsters live.”