I'm watching the petals drift off a flower. One by one, they disconnect and fade away. One by one, they're snapped up by the wind and dragging out to sea. The waves blow higher, grey and angry. The flower wilts. And the world keeps on spinning. I'm clutching at the base of the flower, hands in the dirt. It's soft and smooth around my fingers, deeply moist and pleasant.
Magic doesn't penetrate dirt, see. The world would never allow it. Magic is a thing of the air, a thing of the people. To be of the earth is to be real, far too real. And when the gates of hell open and the hounds of war march, they'll start underground because the machines of man mean nothing compared to their might. I wonder how it is that I see such things. I wonder how it that anyone can understand me because every time I open my mouth, great gouts of fire burst out. I open my eyes and my gaze is an incinerating beam, a terrible destructive force. It breaks things.
I break things.
Like me. I broke me. I'm a porcelain doll falling off the shelf. Seconds away from the ground shattering me, cracks spiderwebbing over my fragile frame, a man desperately diving to catch me. I'll give him a little wave, just a friendly waggle of my fingers. No one can save me. I have no nobody and I am nobody, so really it all fits. Like I fit together, fragments stapled together with glue and gold. Healing over the scars just leaves further wounds.
I'm tracing my fingers over myself in the mirror, enjoying the curves of my skin. Enjoying the way the wounds make me. My flesh is grey and pale and broken and my head is hanging by a thread and my bones are wrong. But it's okay because I can close my eyes. I don't have to see. Don't have to know.
Blankets over my head, blank white walls of my room around me. My laptop sits on the desk, the sole thing I own. What am I really? Where am I going? My transcript is generic, the halfhearted stab of a student without a major, without a passion. And before that? High school, middle school, childhood? Memories are hazy and vague, a dark shape where a life should be. It's more like watching a film through the window late at night, staring into a stranger's apartment and wishing that could be you on the couch. You'd laugh and he'd kiss your cheek and tickle you and you'd hit him with a pillow and laugh all the harder. Oh, it would be so nice.
But you're a fire devouring the city. Watch it burn! Watch as buildings go up in flame and then down in rubble! Cement melts, sliding apart, sending gravel and bodies and glass over the streets, consuming the fleeing cars. Oh, you're so ferocious. So angry. So delighted, so powerful. There are others like you, dozens of them and you wave as you pass by. You're doing good work.
But maybe I don't want to be a fire. What fixes fire? The answer to that seems obvious. It's a good friend, someone whose hand can find my back, can hold my hair up as I vomit, can whisper joy in my ear. I'm crawling down the streets, looking for a friend, looking for anything. I'm staggering. I'm pressing my forehead into concrete. I'm screaming.
As a great dark cloud, as a formless mass of flesh and fang, I find the one person I ever considered a friend. She's standing on the street. She's smoking.
I think I say something resembling words, but it's taking so much concentration that I cannot tell what I said, or if it even was comprehensible.
Mallow's brow creases. She shifts slightly, uncomfortable. A chill runs down her spine where I touch it. She can't see me yet.
I try again, pressing myself up from the pavement, trying again to be human shaped. It's so hard. It hurts so much. I forget how arms works and so they multiply and fall away. But my mouth is where my focus is, that ghastly organ, full of sharp teeth and hunger. Croakily, I speak. "Mallow."
"Oh." She says. "Oh, Violet."
"Mallow, I'm lonely."
"Hey," she says, gently. "Hey. You're going to be okay." She reaches out for my face slowly.
"Mallow, please. Help me."
She looks so small, so weak, so human. So distant from me, as though I'm gazing through a telescope.
"What happened to you?" she whispers.
I don't know how to answer the question. I think she already knows anyway. She predicted it.
"Please," I say. "You're the only friend I've ever had."
There's someone approaching, a dark shadow against the night time air. "Hey," they call out to Mallow. "What's-" But then they sense me and stop, perfectly still. I suppose that's natural, the human response to my monstrous form. I'm a carnivore now, a hunter.
"It's alright, Monet," said Mallow. "This is Violet."
"Monet?" I repeated.
"That's right," said Mallow calmly. "This is Monet. You can trust him. He's a friend."
"Friend," I repeated.
"Mallow?" said Monet. "What is that?"
Doubt flooded my mind like a storm. I ran my fingers down Monet. I could see everything he was, would be. He was me. No. He was who I was. He was Mallow's newest protege, newest toy. "You," I hissed, "you replaced me."
Monet stumbled backwards, falling over in his haste to get away from me.
"Woah! Okay, let's just stay calm," said Mallow. "I didn't replace anyone-"
But it was too late because I was metaphorical and anger is a far stronger metaphor than rational discussion. It pulsated through me, a narrative of vengeance drawing me in over one of respect. I screamed.
"Violet!"
I shoved. I kicked. I bit.
"Violet!"
I was a pebble on the roadside. She picked me up and cradled me in both hands. Her voice was firm, commanding. "I didn't replace anyone."
I tried to speak, but pebbles can't talk.
"I gave you what you asked for. Nothing more and nothing less."
Monet stood on shaking legs and approached slowly, cautiously. "What happened to her?"
Mallow frowned. "I'm not sure yet. I think she died."
I wanted to scream that I wasn't dead because I was still here.
The tears came so suddenly, they were almost a surprise. Voice trembling, Mallow whispered, "I should've stopped you. I should've stopped you, Violet. I'm so sorry."
I didn't want to be a pebble, so I stopped being one. "How did you do that?" I asked.
She hummed a little note, somewhere between confusion and comprehension.
Something was off. I could sense it. I spoke in the way of the trees. "How did you turn me into a pebble?"
Warning flashed in her eyes. "Violet. Come on. Let's go home."
"No."
"Please?"
But I wasn't seeing reality as it appeared to be, I was seeing it as it was. I knew. "You're a witch."
She held steady as anything. "I suggested you would be calmer as a pebble and you did the rest. It was nothing."
"You lied to me."
She sighed and gestured at Monet. "Could you give us some privacy, please?"
"No!" I snapped. "Stay. Listen."
"Violet. Please calm down. You're going to be okay. We can help you."
"You lied to me!"
"I could not have helped you. I did not have what you needed."
I could feel the anger boiling through me, rippling with chaos and energy. It ached to be released, to brutally sink into flesh. The air tasted of blood and it was delicious.
"Monet, run!"
He turned and fled, feet hitting pavement as my tendrils hit his back. I plucked him from the ground, tossing him into the air, just as a demonstrate. It was just a demonstration. I was just showing her where the power lay. I shifted and twisted, roiling beneath him, growing mouths and fangs and eyes wherever I needed.
Mallow reached forwards and simply plucked him out of the air. She stood between us, hand outstretched, palm empty and up. "You're going to be okay," she said.
But I wasn't. Because there was only one person who had ever known that I existed and she'd lied to me. She'd replaced me. She hated me. Of course she did. It was obvious, it stunk from the curve of her lips, the determination in her eyes. How could she not? How could anyone not?
No.
I wasn't going to fall apart. I forced myself back together. I felt my flesh melt and slide apart, but I compressed it anyway, dragging myself inwards. I would not hurt anyone. I was not a monster. Not yet, anyway.
"I'm sorry," I said through trembling but very human lips.
"I know," she said, stepping forwards to hug me. "It's so hard, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
I embraced her back, wrapping my fragile arms around her soft body. She was warm. She was quiet. She was soaking wet, dripping with liquid. I stepped back, her body flopping forwards onto me limply. Blood poured from the gash through her chest, from her arms, from her face.
I shrieked something.
And the ghost laughed, because the ghosts always laugh. Because blood was what it wanted, what it got. It pulled its talons from her back, leaving her to fade into my arms. I could see it, see how roughly it intersected reality.
I was going to destroy it. I was going to crush it into a ball and throw it into the fire and spit on its corpse. I was going to press my hands onto Mallow's back and keep her blood in no matter the cost, no matter what it took. She would live. She would live if it killed me. I screamed at the ghost. I expanded, my claws sharp and wild. I surrounded it, cutting wildly. It fell to shreds because however tough it thought it was, I was stronger.
It said something weakly. I didn't hear what because I was violently yanked from reality itself, falling through the world. There was a nail in my head tied to a rope tied to a diving hawk. Mallow's bleeding body grew distant above me. I tried to scream but my body wasn't mine anymore. I was nothing. I was the void.
The cat was out for a walk. The cat was trying to enjoy the night air. The cat was trying not to think about where the girl had gone. It was so important the girl was consumed. It was vital to the success of the whole, necessary for proper reconstruction. There was no other way for it to put itself back together. The cat was not going to think about such things. It was not going to think about the weakness inherent in the fragile remains of the whole. It was not going to ask itself what had been ripped out. It was not going to ask if something once shattered could ever be the same again.
The cat was not going to ask why it could taste blood on the wind. It was not going to ask why sirens wailed in the distance. It was not going to ask why the giggling of children echoed from the dark shadows that flickered at the corners of the street. The cat was not going to ask these questions. The cat was afraid it already knew the answers.
"Once upon a time. There was a girl. She lived a short sad life. Nobody loved her. And then she died. Alone. Does that sound familiar?"
His voice was as gross as ever, but strangely intoxicating now. I struggled to stand, to open my eyes, to feel the reality of the world.
"Ah, Violet, Violet, Violet. What am I to do with you?" Dr. Rosario leered down at me, crooked glasses perched precariously on his crooked nose. "Poor little toy. I think you've had, shall we say, quite the rough time of it."
I tried to move, but I couldn't. I tried to speak, but I couldn't.
"But see, that's the funny thing about names. It only took me a few days. But I got you! I sure did get you. And the funny thing about monsters is that sometimes, when you call for them," he trailed off to chuckle, way too pleased with himself. "Well. They come."
I wanted to scream.
"Sit up." His voice dripped with power. Something resonated in me and without hesitation, I obeyed. "Oh, look at that. Good girl!"
My lips were frozen on my face, my hands clenched tightly at my side.
"Tell me," said Dr. Rosario. "Did you find your monster?"
My voice came out scratchy, croaky. "Yes."
"Aha! Clever little thing, aren't you? Listen," he held up a leatherbound book, bringing it up towards the light. "They call it many things. The Gatekeeper, The Boundary Walker, The Tender, The Source, and so on. This is a calculated ploy by the beast, a powerful defensive mechanism. For this denies the binding power of names, the useful control of being understood. It defies explanation, defies understanding. It defies us, even now on the eve of our triumph. For we stand poised to capture it, to study it, to dissect it to component parts and partake in its power for our selves." He paused, grinning dementedly. "Isn't that just fascinating?"
It wasn't an order. I felt no compulsion and gave no reply.
"I suppose you're wondering what happened to them? It ate them. Isn't that funny? For decades, people have hunted that abomination and for decades it ate them instead. It hates wizards, you see. Some of us even think that's how it hunts. It forces you to disconnect from reality, to lose your very sense of self, until at the very moment you think you've won, you've lost. Isn't that incredible?"
I tried as hard as I could to move. It didn't work.
"Ah, look at me rambling again. What a waste of time. I suppose you're wondering why I've called you here. Stand."
I did so, jerkily. We were in a room decorated just as tackily as his office. Plastic skulls dangled from the ceiling. I stood in the centre of a circle of candles and chalk, a children's coloured chalk box tossed behind him.
"Come on!" He led the way out of the room and I followed dutifully. My body wasn't mine.
He sat behind his desk, reclining in the chair, it squeaking perilously beneath him.
"You're going to lead me to the beast," he said. "And then we're going to pull Salloxdin's Soul Orb from whichever crevice it felt like stashing it in. And if that abomination won't give us the orb? Then we're gonna pull whatever power we can from within it."
I stood, waiting. I could sense that he wasn't done yet. It was like there was a nail in my head, a tugging sensation, a spot my mind couldn't move from.
He laughed. "Because did you hear? Pendragon made a move." He laughed louder, a belly laugh the shook the room. "Apparently he pulled the stars from the sky and threw them right through the Dammara cabal. Don't suppose," he chuckled, amused as anything, "You have any idea where he got that kind of firepower.
I couldn't help it. The words snuck out my mouth before I could even comprehend them. "He captured Ram."
"Oho," he said. "Ram. Now that's a name. And let me tell you, names are very useful things."
He placed his hand on my shoulder as he guided me out of the room, as he guided me to war. "The ghosts are out tonight, sweety. They're riled up as anything. Must love a good war as much as the rest of us, huh?" He laughed. "Funny thing about war. Good time for a looting."
We were out on the street and I could almost feel it. I could almost feel Ram over the city, Mallow lying the concrete and bleeding out, Monet clutching at her body. I could see my roommate crying on her bed, alone and broken. I could see the subway. I could see trains rattling down rickety tracks, headlights glaring. I could see flowers.
I could see nothing because the last thing I heard was an order to stop thinking. I was not a person. I was a sword and swords don't have thoughts.
Swords just cut.
The city could feel the tension in the air. There was something foul tonight. Something evil. It was a night for staying inside, for huddling up to loved ones. It was a night for boarded up windows and spiked baseball bats. It was a night for blood. It was a night to remember.
The wizards were at war tonight.