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THE SHADOWS
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“SAV!” JASPER’S SCREAM pierced the air.
Shadows crept from between the trees, humanoid figures with beady red eyes made of living darkness. Their breath reeked of rotting corpses and ash. Their fleeting forms went from human to cloud and back again as they stalked around the group.
Savara’s heart began to pound. All the fears she’d known as a child came flooding back; of being left in the darkened corners of the rickety old manor, trapped between shifty shadows. “A shadow can’t hurt you,” Ms Short used to say. “It can’t see you, or hear you, or touch you, Savara.” That being the way the old woman used to chastise her into a restless sleep. But for all her high-horsery, Savara knew Ms Short would roll in her grave if she’d ever encountered these kinds of shadows.
A low hissing sound reverberated around them. The shadows transformed into curling fingers that stretched through the forest.
“Jasper!” she screamed in reply. With trembling knees, she took a step towards him, freezing again as the shadows blocked her path.
Flashes of light bounced around the curtain of darkness that had formed between them—blue starlight, yellow flames—but none broke through. She was alone: trapped. Then, a single creature began to form from within the curtain. First came the eyes, beady and red like the bloodstones on her cheek. Next, a pair of feet stepped out from the whorls of ash. The whole of its body was fluid, shifting from human to cloud with each second that ticked by. Savara didn’t wait for an invitation to attack. She dropped the shirt and ran into the bushes as fast as she could. The sounds of her companions faded into the distance until they were nothing more than the tail end of an echo.
Tendrils of darkness traced the floors beside her. She hurled herself over a rotting tree trunk. They chased. She dipped under vines that hung like a hangman’s noose. They gained. She weaved through the trees to escape their path, but each time they drew closer. Within minutes they were at her feet, snapping at them, taunting them. Their lick was icy against her overheating skin. She stumbled. They found their opening. Tendrils shot out, catching her mid-stride, and dragged her to the ground. Her scream sent birds flapping into the open night sky above, far away from the horrors of the earth below.
The darkness slithered up her leg like snakes, coiling themselves around her, encasing her in the foul stench of burning skin. She struggled against them, trying to pry herself free, but her fingers caught only handfuls of black dust. Hot tears streamed down her dirtied cheeks as she tried to scream again, but the black dust covered her mouth and her ears. The cold smell of the damp forest floor faded into that of wet charcoal. The sensation of stones digging into her back disappeared. The world went silent. She caught a final glimpse of the twinkling stars above before the dust rushed over her eyes, and she was plunged into darkness.
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THE SOUND OF HER HEARTBEAT startled her. It echoed in the emptiness of the space, pounding against her ribcage and the floor beneath. Savara opened her eyes. The forest had disappeared—the trees, the ground, the sky. She lay alone in a void.
Once, many years back, she remembered drowning. The sensation of leaving the world behind. Slowly. Fading from it the way a film fades to black. Struggling against the crushing darkness of the waves and waking up to a whole new kind of darkness. Savara felt like this now. Beneath her, cold black stone. Above her, emptiness took shape. A faint silver mist circled her as she pushed herself to stand.
“Hello?” Savara called into the void. Muffled voices echoed around her in reply. At first, it was impossible to distinguish any single one, but as they grew louder, the sound became clear.
“Daemon,” they called in chorus.
“Who said that?” she called back, her voice echoing in the silence until it faded into nothingness. The horrible choir started up again.
“Blood Daemon.”
“This is... just a dream,” she told herself, attempting to ignore the hunger and malice in the voices that surrounded her, but their words grew louder. They repeated themselves over and over, singing out the horrible word: daemon. “I...” she began with a faltering voice. Salty cold sweat pooled on her upper lip. From somewhere deep inside her, a purple light began to glow. It traced the veins down her arms and covered her hands like spiderwebs. Soon the light turned a sinister red, and she shook violently, trying in vain to get rid of its restrictive qualities. It trickled into her palms and then further into her fingertips. Her veins burned like they’d caught fire as she struggled to be free of the glow. She feared her skin would melt away.
The evil chorus continued to sing.
“No,” she pleaded meekly. The light became bondage, severing connections between her muscles and her brain. It held her in place, frozen and submissive, as something inside her began to take control. She tried to push against the thing that now used her body, but it was no use. She was trapped. A ghost in a shell it no longer owned, clinging desperately to a physical sensation that no longer existed. She strained against the cage her body had become. If her heart were still her own, it would’ve sunk. If her eyes could still cry, they would’ve. She let out a wail of exasperation into the void, expecting no answer, but one came regardless.
From the depths of the darkness around her, a single sinister laugh echoed. Slow and rich, not like the howling chorus before. Accompanying it was the voice she’d heard in every nightmare. Its hunger grew with each nearing laugh. A heated breath crossed the nape of her neck as the voice whispered longingly, “I’ve found you...”
Savara couldn’t say whether it was fear or anger that pulled her back, but she dug down deep inside herself and clenched a fist. “I am not a daemon,” she hissed, willing her own lilac light back into her body.
“You don’t know what you are,” the voice replied coolly. “And It’s killing you...” it added with a laugh.
“I know I’m not your pawn.” She jutted her hand out in the direction of the voice. A wave of power rolled through her body, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and then fired out from her palm into the void.
The world stilled.
Savara’s hand trembled as she watched for the repercussions of whatever it was that she had done. Her heart pounded heavily against her chest. Away from the cues of the natural world, time stretched on infinitely. Not even her uneasy breaths told her how long she waited before something called back in agony. A yelp, innocent and fearful. What have I done?
Someone called out her name, muted and distant. This voice, unlike the wild chorus, had no echo. It spoke softly, begging and pleading for her to wake. Wake? I am awake... Though, slowly but surely, the darkness began to shift.
Her vision grew hazy as she became acutely aware of other sensations. The damp, mossy air filling her lungs, the pebbles digging into the odd crevices in her spine, the throbbing in her head that she knew would turn into a migraine.
And finally, with a brutally painful thump to the chest, she woke.
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TWINKLING STARS ABOVE, plush forest moss below. The still of an easy night embraced her. Each detail came with a sobering kind of calm. All was quiet again, but this time, a peaceful kind of quiet that perforated all around her... except the eyes staring back at her.
Savara blinked.
They hovered above her judgingly, those haunting midnight blue eyes, just like the shadowy figure they belonged to. Unlike the shadows that had attacked her before, she could sense his heart beating slow and heavy in his chest. Savara opened her mouth to speak when she heard voices calling to her from beyond the trees. She lolled her head to one side and spied Griffin and Sebastian making their way toward her. When she turned back up, the man was gone.
“Savara!” Griffin called, the orb of light in his wrist illuminating the fearful frown on his face as he rushed over to her. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
Savara sat up hesitantly, searching around for the figure that had disappeared into the night, but he—whoever he was—was nowhere to be found. He’d left without a trace, not even a footprint on the ground to show he’d ever been there at all. “Did you see him?”
“Who?” Griffin urged, not even bothering to hide the tension in his voice. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No, I must have imagined it.” Her attention turned to Sebastian moving through the brush to meet them holding something large and limp over his shoulders. With a sinking feeling in her chest, she looked around. “Where’s Jasper?”
Griffin and Sebastian exchanged a worried look, but it was Sebastian who spoke the dreadful words. “You lashed out...”
Nothing in the world could have prepared her for the sight of Jasper’s body dangling over his shoulders. All her fears, all the nasty little words the shadows had filled her head with, had come true. Her body trembled viciously. “I didn’t... I couldn’t...” she stuttered, reaching out for his limp hand.
“He’s alive,” Griffin assured. “But we must head back to camp. Brass needs to see to him as soon as possible.”
She nodded, accepting his hand as she got to her feet. Savara didn’t know how her trembling legs managed to march her back through the woods. Each step left them closer to breaking, and she was ready to let them, but she had to press on. She had to make sure that Jasper was okay.
Her heart sank as they drew closer to the canvas tents that peeked through the bushes. Griffin had assured her Jasper would be fine, that he just sustained light head trauma, but it wasn’t the trauma he’d sustained on the outside that worried her.
When he wakes, what will he think of me? she wondered. Will he even want to see me? Or will he have learned to fear me like the rest?
