All Things Eternal (Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter 8: What Was Lost

“Skye?!”
Amidst the rubble and ash, Omari gasped as he returned from the coma he had been subjected to. The world had transformed in his absence, no longer barring any resemblance to the place he called home. Omari violently coughed as he forcefully expelled the soot that had filtered through his mask and rested in his lungs. “Skye, what happened?” Skye ignored his question as she shakily rose to her feet, drained from her exhaustion.

“I’ve…got to get to Emil.” The words lagged from her mouth as she left her brother where he laid.

“…Emil?” As Skye grew closer to Emil’s body, Omari lethargically rose to behold the destruction of his city. The city square was unrecognizable; a wasteland riddled with the dead and the dying and scattered debris. The crackling fire that blazed in the background rang in his ears like an untraceable audience, clapping with approval at his sudden defeat. “How…” Omari whispered as he slumped over. “How could this have happened?”  He tilted his head up to the heavens but the sky was darkened by the ash and smoke that filled the sky. “How did they know?” Omari sluggishly began to walk towards his sister, bracing his wounded abdomen with his right arm as he stumbled through the filth of the land. “It was that man who did this…where did he go?” Omari said tensely as he called out to Skye who was now laying her hands on Emil.

“I don’t know,” Skye said as she turned to face her brother. “He left.”

“Where did he go, Skye?” Omari roared as he looked to her. Skye turned to her brother again, displaced by the anger that bubbled underneath his black uniform. She watched him as his body flared with every breath he took; knowing the pain he felt from within surmounted the damage already done to his body. “W-we can still catch up to him. We can sti—”

“He could have easily killed us if he wanted too… Instead he said he only came to deliver a message. It’s over. Let it go.”

Beneath his mask, Omari’s eyes began to well up with tears as he caught a glimpse of the destroyed clock tower that lay in the background. The fires that sprung from the decimated structure served as a centerpiece for a morbid painting, splashed with agony and remorse, accented with the faint cries of those buried underneath.

Damn it. I...

Instantaneously, Omari warped to the base of the burning tombstone using the people’s screams as his guide. From underneath the rubble, Omari watched as the fire bled through the array of crushed limbs and burnt blood. “Don’t worry! I’ll get to you as fast as I can!”

Skye kept her attention split between her brother and Emil as she watched from where Emil lay. It hurt to see her brother broken, but in her current state, she was powerless to do anything for him.
Omari, it’s not your fault.

“Can you hear me!? I’ll get to you!”
Omari, yelled as he began to part the rubble that crushed the innocents who rested underneath. Piece by piece, Omari tapped into his remaining strength to free those that he heard beyond the burning flames. Inch by inch, he hastily made his way deeper and deeper into the heart of the destruction until the voice of those he heard resonated clearly with him.
Almost there.

From atop the burning building, a mound of debris shifted forward, sprinkling shards of fragmented metal and concrete on top of him, but Omari continued his mission, oblivious to the outside world. As the mound shifted overhead, a slab of concrete broke from the top of the building, but Omari wasn’t the wiser.

“
Omari!” Through her eyes, Skye watched as the burning javelin descended above her brother’s head.

Shaken by his sister’s shriek, Omari looked to the sky and bared witness to the pillar of fire that hurdled his way. Without a second to spare,
Omari jumped back and fell to the ground as the slab of concrete plunged into the earth in front of him, splitting the ground and separating him further from the voices he heard within the flames. “Damn it!” Wasting no time, Omari stood, stepped to the smoldering stone, and gripped his hands to the right where the fire had not yet touched.
There’s… still…time.
  “Rah!” Omari grunted as he tried to move the massive structure, but the construct was slow to respond.
Damn it, I’m spent.
Omari pulled back against the fallen infrastructure with all of his might but the structure barely moved. “Rahhh!” As Omari screamed, he felt the fibers in his abdomen tear in tandem with his failing strength, slowly reversing the minor healing Skye had already done.
I’ve got to save them.

In the distance, amongst the bodies and rubble, a member of the Vanguard awoke in the midst of the aftermath. Rather than die a peaceful death, the solider instead reached for a crossbow dropped by his comrade in the heat of battle. With his sights set on Omari, the fallen warrior took aim as he covertly lined the shot that would leave one less threat to King Arius’s rule.

At the pull of the trigger, the steel-tipped bolt cut through the air with unmatched velocity, zipping past Skye’s field of vision and towards her distracted brother.

Sensing a change in his atmosphere, Omari dropped his shoulder but the arrow traveled faster than his body could respond. The head of the arrow penetrated through Omari’s armor and pierced through the top of his shoulder blade. The slab of stone he desperately clung to dropped as he rushed to cradle his wounded shoulder. In front of him, the arrow adhered itself to the stone exterior of the wall, coated with the fabric of his armor and his own blood. Omari turned and instantly locked-in on the armored assailant, separating him from the countless other bodies that littered the land. The solider fired another shot from his bow, but Omari was gone before the arrow could find its mark.

A wisp of dust and debris kicked into the wounded soldier’s face as he found himself mere inches away from the man he’d tried to kill. “S-stay back!” the solider yelled as his shaking hand struggled to load another bolt into his bow. Omari studied the face of the man who wished to kill him; taking note of the expression the man held in his eyes. His ferocity was bathed in fear, drenched in paranoia. The look in his eyes was that of a man desperate to survive. A wounded soul forced to fight for both himself and the ones he loved. Omari dropped his right hand from his shoulder, allowing the blood that poured from his shoulder to flow unrestricted. “Oh, you think you’re tough, you demon scum!” the soldier roared as he shifted his eyes between Omari and his bow. “I’m going to send you back to wherever the hell you came from!”

“Do you have family, too?” The marksman flinched as Omari raised his hand to remove the garment that covered his face. Beneath the shroud, his blonde hair was dyed crimson, contrasting against his hazel eyes that pierced through the man’s soul.
The marksman’s finger rested on the trigger, ready to fire at the slightest hint of aggression, but there was none to be found. “As you can see, I bleed just as you do. Death is something we must both come to terms with eventually. Let it be on another day.”

The foot soldier was left lost for words as he
laid before the bleeding hero. In awe, he watched the blood that streamed down from Omari’s shoulder bend along the contours of his armor and down to his fingertips, where it fed into a slow drip that pooled onto the land plagued with death.

In the distance, Skye watched as her brother stood in front the armed man, unaware of the full nature of the situation. Most of her attention had been devoted to Emil and restoring him from his critical condition.

As if he himself had reached an epiphany, the soldier slowly lowered his weapon from Omari’s chest. He remembered now. The actions he committed against the very people he had sworn to protect, both before and after the rouge Abnormal’s influence. “We are people, too. And as there are good people, there are also bad people. No king is needed to discern that.” Omari turned away from the soldier and began to walk towards Skye and Emil. “When the re-enforcements arrive, tell them to be sure to check the remains of the clock tower for bodies. I couldn’t get to them in time.”

“I…” The mouth of the soldier widened as he struggled to speak, but in the time that passed, Omari was no longer within earshot. The wounded soldier watched as Omari reunited with Skye and Emil before warping them to the old church at the edge of the city, leaving what was lost, behind.

***

On the second floor of the church, there was a loud thud. Hearing no doors or footsteps, Marona knew that Emil and the others had returned. “Wait here,” she said. “It’ll only be a minute.”

“Sure…” the blacksmith agreed, eyes glazed, still in awe at what had recently transpired. One moment, he was bound by a rope, seconds away from death. The next, he was spirited away to an unknown location, presumably to protect him from an evil he wasn’t even sure existed. In his brief time spent with Marona, he found out that the questions he asked only led to more questions. With the limited information Marona gave and his brooding sense curiosity, the unanswered questions only stirred in his mind.

Before Marona could reach for the door, it swung open from the other side. It was Omari who emerged from the center of the doorframe, alone. At the sight of his wounds and exhaustion, Marona’s heart sank as she tried to imagine what had happened after she left, unsure of the fate of her friends.

“Where are the others?” As she spoke her heart dropped deeper into the pit of her stomach, causing a flare of nausea to stir up within her. The words left a bitter taste in her mouth, almost as if she had uttered a curse to the nations. 

“Skye and Emil are behind me. I just had to be sure that everything here was okay.”  Omari stepped through the doorframe and collapsed in one of the spare chairs in the room as he clutched his bleeding shoulder. Behind the hollow space that Omari no longer blocked, Marona’s eyes widened as she saw Skye on her knees nursing Emil.

“Emil!” Marona fell to her knees beside Skye and looked to her with questioning eyes. “Is he…dead?”

“No...” Skye weakly replied. “But this all I can do.” Skye removed her
mask and deeply exhaled. “He’s stable now…and should be able to heal the rest on his own if he doesn’t aggravate his injuries. Can you help me up? I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah, sure Skye.
No problem.” Marona hoisted Skye’s arm over her shoulder before they rose in unison. “Are you going to be okay?” Marona asked as they slowly began to walk back into the room.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine unless one of them gets hurt like that again.”

“What should we do about Emil?”

“It’ll be best not to move him till he wakes up. It shouldn’t be long from now.” Marona scrunched her brow as an image of the wounded Emil flashed in her mind’s eye. In denial of her newly found reality, Marona looked over her shoulder and saw Emil lying virtually lifeless on the wooden floor. “He’ll be okay, trust me.” Heeding Skye’s words, Marona turned forward and walked Skye back to the room where the blacksmith and Omari were sitting. “Bring me over to my brother, if you can.” Marona complied with Skye’s wishes and walked over to where Omari was resting. “Move your hand, Omari.”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t do this to me...there’s a chance you’ll bleed out if I don’t tend to it soon. You don’t have to protect me anymore. I’ll be okay.” Omari glanced at his wounded shoulder and then to his sister, who hung loosely from Marona’s side.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Marona carried Skye over to Omari where she then placed her hand over his wound. Skye winced as the wound on Omari’s arm began to shrink, pushing through the pain that stemmed from her body.

“That should be enough,” Skye exhaled as she removed her hand from her brother’s shoulder. “Your clavicle was split in two, but it’s better now.”

“Thank you.” Omari rotated his shoulder cuff, ignoring the soreness that reduced his range of motion.

“Ha…no problem,” Skye responded faintly. “Hey, Marona… Could you put me down over there?” Skye’s finger pointed to a chair not too far from her brother’s.

“Yeah, sure thing, Skye.” Marona ushered Skye to the chair, all the while confused as to what left them in such a state. As Marona walked Skye, she studied Skye’s face, but the expression she saw gave no clues to the secret that was locked away. “Okay, here we are.” Marona gently discarded Skye’s body to the worn seat cushion, unsure of just how fragile she was in her current state.

“Thank you.”

“Skye…Omari, what happened?”

“There was a riot and we couldn’t contain it. All caused by one man…another Abnormal we never got the name of,” Omari explained.

“How is that even possible? Just one?” Marona asked, baffled by Omari’s story.

“The others didn’t see it, but I could,” Skye interjected. “His powers seem to manifest on a psychic plane.
The polar opposite of Emil’s and Omari’s. This man seems to be able to manipulate the emotions of those around him by the using his aura to enhance his psychic field. In addition to that, at the core of his field, he seems to be able to manipulate his energy into psychic projections, increasing the blanket effect that he chooses to enhance. These projections also have the capacity to undertake physical characteristics at will, for either offense or defensive maneuvers. His projection of choice seemed to be something that resembled a snake, but I assume that he can shape his energy into whatever he sees fit. That’s how he was able to defeat both Omari and Emil.”

“That’s insane.”

“Before our operation began, he was already spreading his influence, and by the time we realized that something was wrong, nearly everyone in the square was already affected. Another thing I noticed is that the more people his snakes tethered with, the stronger he seemed to become. Before I was able to sense him, he was certainly in the area…but it wasn’t till after he ‘fed’ that I was able to pinpoint his location.”