Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 3: Bridges, Chapter Fifteen: "Inside of the Iron HEaRt"

 

Chapter Fifteen: Inside of the Iron HEaRt

 

            The bridge stretched out behind them, long and black.  They stood before the cathedral at the far end of the bridge, black stones laid around them in rows.  Age showed in the smooth, roundness of the stones.  Grooves were worn in by time.  Gothic railing ran the length of the bridge.  Large arches held the bridge aloft in the eroded canyon.

            Pointed rooftops speared the horizon.  A set of enormous doors frown at them from ahead.  They were noticeably thick and stood slightly ajar.  The sky was dull and grey, and the light filtered through it.  It was Deidra’s shell blocking out the sunlight and draining the color from everything within it.  Things that were black were made deeper black.  Everything else was muted.

            The air was thick and suffocating, possessing a somberness that permeated even the stonework.  Alex felt it acutely, while Ellen had only a tickle of it in her spine.  Beneath it all, Alex could feel something else.  In the dense air, buried beneath the decades of hopeless oppression, she could feel Abraham.  It was a faint spark but specific, and it felt to her like the Emotion itself.  Alex realized then the truth in Deidra and Cornelius’ words.

            Alex took a step forward to prove that she could.  Then she looked back at Ellen.  “I can feel her inside,” she said.  “Come on, let’s go.”

            “She’s in there?”

            Alex nodded.  “She is, I’m sure of it.”  She turned back to the cathedral and smiled.  “And she’s waiting for us.”  Looking back at Ellen, she found her staring.  It was a strange reversal for them, Alex smiling and leading the way while Ellen trailed behind.  “Let’s not keep her waiting.”

            Ellen nodded and followed.  They walked together in silence, the sound of their footsteps their only company.  Alex was distracted, focused on other things, her mind fixed on the empty grey atmosphere.  Deidra was everywhere and overwhelming her senses.  Even when she felt Abraham, she only just barely felt her. Walking there made her feel blind.

            She dug through the cathedral interior with her soul and filtered out other distinctive presences.  There were others there with Abraham, but she couldn’t place them.  They had no faces for her, only intentions.  Abraham she knew, though she felt her only very faintly, and what she felt was bound by some invisible force.  There was also the force that bound her, quiet and gentle, but possessive a power in certainty and conviction.  Stronger than that, and struggling against Deidra’s overriding oppression, was a last presence composed entirely of hunger and hatred and completely empty underneath.  The emptiness is what frightened her most.

            Ellen stopped to look over the edge of the bridge and found canyon floor barren and dusty.  She gripped the railing so as not to fall over, and swallowed, and then she looked ahead.  The cathedral stared back at her, its towering spires looking almost like teeth.  She couldn’t feel what Alex could feel, nor could she understand the circumstances that brought her here.  Alex said that they had started this journey together, and while it had made Ellen feel good for a time, the more she thought on it, the less accurate it felt.

            Alex stopped to look back at her.  They stood together in silence, Ellen staring now at her feet while Alex watched her.  “Hey, Ellen, what’s wrong? We’re almost there.”

            “I,” Ellen shifted her feet as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks.  “I’m sorry that I got you involved in all of this, Alex.  If I weren’t so stupid, I never would have brought Abraham back with me, and then none of this would have happened.  You wouldn’t be here.  Shana wouldn’t be here, and Carolyne…”

            “Ellen? No.  No, what are you talking about? None of this is your fault.”

            “It’s all my fault!  I was acting like a damn child, finding a puppy and dragging it home for someone else to take care of.”

            “Ellen,” Alex sighed.  “Listen, Abraham wouldn’t have been safer anywhere else, and as for Carolyne, well, she made her bed.  I chose to protect Abraham myself, just like I chose to come here.  No one else made those decisions for me, and though it’s been tough—really tough—I think I’m better for it.  I think I’ve grown a bit, and I’ve needed to grow for some time.  We’re almost at the end now, so don’t give up on me just yet.”

            Ellen choked and leaned into the rail for support.  Her sobs were hard enough to leave her shaking.  She kept at it until Alex joined her, and then she tensed.  Standing tall, a few inches above Alex, she fell into the smaller woman’s embrace.  Alex rubbed Ellen’s back and soothed her while she sobbed.  It was the last thing either of them expected to happen, but Ellen was grateful for it all the same.

            They stayed together under that gray sky until Ellen settled.  When they had first met, Ellen didn’t understand why Alex seemed so sad all the time, and she never really believed that they could be real friends.  It was, to her, a struggle to even try, but like Alex, she was better for the struggle.  Alex made her better and now supported her in this dark moment, and for that, she was glad for the struggle.

            Alex patted Ellen on the head and looked her in the eyes.  “You okay now?”

            Ellen, sniffling and rubbing her nose, nodded.  “I think so.  I can go, at least.”

            “Then come on.  We’ve kept her waiting long enough.”

            Another nod, and Ellen said, “Okay,” and she followed Alex forward.

            They stopped, side-by-side, before the double-doors.  From where they stood, the cathedral towered over them, an imposing form of dark stone that shrouded them in shadow.  A large stained-glass window hung over head.  Alex saw in it the image of an avenging angel bound by brambles.  Ellen thought she saw someone through it.

            The doors were parted slightly, and Alex peeked in through the crack.  Pews lined the ground floor with large stone pillars between them.  A winding staircase led up on one side, where a second floor hung over the first.  Red light spilled out from above, obscured by the railing.  Inside, Alex could feel Abraham’s presence more acutely, like it was only just barely contained.

            Ellen, at Alex’s side, said, “She’s in there.”

            Alex nodded, distracted.  She could see something out of the corner of her eye, but whenever she looked toward it, it disappeared.  Something teased her ear, like a whisper only softer.  She thought it might be the wind, but it was persistent.  She stood straight.  “Uh, yeah, she is, I think.”

            Ellen tried to smile, but she didn’t wear it well.  She still felt out of place there.  “Then let’s go!”  She stepped forward, through the door, and felt a tingle in her spine.  Turning, she found Alex backed against the door and staring out, back across the bridge.  Looking past Alex, Ellen saw nothing.

            “Get away.  Go!”  Alex swung at the air.  She had tears in her eyes.

            “Alex? Alex! What’s wrong?”

            “I said go!”  Alex gave a wide swing that only just narrowly missed Ellen, who stumbled away.

            Ellen fell backward and landed inside of the cathedral, dust kicking up around her.  She watched Alex staggering toward her, eyes wide in a frenzy.  Pushing up, Ellen used a pillar for support as she got to her feet and scrambled deeper inside to escape Alex’s sudden pursuit.

            The door groaned and collapsed inward with a sudden flash, and Alex stood then at the threshold.  Her Voice was there, its blade gleaming in the dim light that chased her.  She glared into the cathedral, into the dust that rose around her, and fixed her gaze upon Ellen hiding among the pews.

            “Alex?”  Ellen peeked over the pews.  She had her hands up but knew that they would do nothing to stop her rampaging friend.  “Alex, what’s wrong with you? What is going on with you all of the sudden?”

            Alex growled and swung.  The air roared and, in a flash of light, the pew behind Ellen exploded into pieces.  Ellen ducked down to avoid the splinters and landed face-down on the cold stones of the floor.  Looking under the pews, she found Alex approaching, gasping and crying in her fury.  It reminded Ellen of Carolyne stalking toward her with the power of death held tightly in her hand.

            Alex stared at her opponent, his large body at rest on the ground, soaked in blood.  She had left him with a gash across his broad, hairy chest.  It should have been the end of it, but he sneered as he rose to meet her.

            Behind her was Shana, bloodied and bruised, limping at her.  She held one arm which had nearly been ripped from her body.  Blood dribbled from her fractured nose.  She shuffled swiftly in an attempt to keep pace with Alex.  They were walking together when Goliath had appeared.  Shana made a charge, but he dismissed her with a single blow.

            This time, Alex took the lead.  She charged him and lunged, but Goliath side-stepped the attack.  He taunted her as he moved, goaded her as he danced around her.  She spun around and called on her Voice.  In a blaze of light one of the pillars was sliced in two.

            Goliath fell but stared up at her, confident, as she put her foot to his chest.  She poised her blade for his throat.  He had died once, but it didn’t stick.  Staring into his eyes, she saw the malevolence in them.  This time, he wouldn’t listen.  Despite this, she still hesitated.

 

: Bridges :

 

            Alex stood over Ellen, her blade inches from Ellen’s throat.  They both panted from exertion, Ellen crying, pleading, begging for sanctuary against Alex’s uncompromising, empty stare.  Ellen stared up the gleaming silver length of Alex’s Voice and knew that she could die, that she would die, if Alex wasn’t stop.  Her gaze darted from corner to corner, searching even the shadows for answer, but there was nothing.  The walls watched stoically, and here she would die without meaning and without anyone to remember him.  She fixed her gaze on Alex’s dark, hollow eyes and didn’t see her friend inside.

            They stayed like this for a few long moments, Alex shaking, her blade a hair’s length from Ellen’s flesh.  Then, she winced and grimaced, a curse sounding under her breath.  Lifting her blade, she swiped the air and stormed away screaming.  “Damn it! Why can’t I? Why can’t I do this?”  She sliced a nearby pew in half and let the pieces collapse onto the dusty floor while Ellen shuffled away on her hands and knees.

            Ellen took refuge behind a nearby pillar and watched Alex flail aimlessly at the air.

            “Why wouldn’t you listen?” Alex turned, her eyes fixed once more on Ellen kneeling behind the pillar.  “Why do you have to keep coming at me? Why do you have to keep fighting us? Why?”

            Ellen stood slowly on weak knees.  “Alex, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Just stay way!  Stay away from us! If you insist on fighting, then I won’t hold back anymore.”

            Ellen stumbled away, retreating back into the shadow of the overhang.  There, she turned and ran, tripping on the way before she reached the winding staircase and hitting her knee.  Blood seeped from the fresh wound, and she had to sit back and yell before scrambling back to her feet.

            Looking over her shoulder, she saw Alex standing in the silence and staring at the ground.  Ellen let out a shallow breath and stumbled toward the stairs.  Pain shot up her spine with every step.  Seizing the handrail, she pulled herself up the stairs in a hurry and hoped that Alex couldn’t follow.

 

: Bridges :

 

            Alex stood at the cathedral’s center, fractured pews scattered around her, some still baring fresh, smoldering wounds from her spiritual power expressed.  Her Voice was at her side, gleaming faintly with waning heat.  The brace about her wrist caught the dim light cast by the torches and reflected it back.

            Goliath laid bloodied before her, his body cradled between the broken husk of a pew.  She didn’t remember killing him but saw no one else around who could have.  There was a large gash cut across his body.  Blood pooled around his enormous form, seeping into the stonework and making a long, circuitous pattern around him.  It beaded in the hair of his chest.  His eyes were open, pale and blank, his empty gaze fixed on her.

            She cried but didn’t understand why.  He was the one who had died, not her, nor someone close to her.  She wiped her eyes and released her Voice, allowing it to disappear in a dazzling display of light, and she stared at the body, her shoulders sagging, her hair in her eyes.  Once, he had been alive, but she had changed that, turned him to a pale imitation of life, the warmth faded and the skin grown waxy.

            It was hard to breathe.  She braced against a nearby pillar and vomited.  Her throat burned.  She stayed bent, panting and sobbing, wiping her mouth free of saliva and mucus, and she spit out her remaining bile.  The taste stuck on her tongue.  She looked at Goliath again, shuddered, and then turned away.

            She walked until she tripped, stumbled over another body.  Looking down, she found Carolyne at her feet, or what remained of her.  The body was similar to that of her friend’s, the hair similar in color, but she was ripped down the center, her entrails cold and dark between the two severed halves.  They pumped lethargically, the life ebbing from them.  Alex’s feet felt wet and cold.

            Staggering away, she caught herself against the pillar and held tight to it as her body was wracked with shivers.  She stammered, staring at Carolyne’s sundered corpse, blood splattered like a halo around it.  Using the pillar for support, Alex sunk down to her knees.  She wanted to look away, but she could not.  She whispered to herself, soothing as best she could, as she reached forward with a pale, shaking hand.  Blood ran now from her fingertips, from her knees.  She stopped to regard her hands, bloody and warm.  Alex scrubbed at her palms, rubbed them against the stonework and against her pants, but it just smeared the blood around.  She gave a renewed sob.  “Oh no.  Oh God.  What have I done? No, no, no, no, no.”

            She stood and ran for the door.  The air stunk now of old blood and rotted flesh.  She stopped at the door, now held shut by a more terrifying image still.  Three bodies were suspended along the door by long, thin metal spikes.  To the left was a pale body with slender limbs and long, long tawny hair.  The spikes were run through the throat, shoulders, and guts.  Two more were worked in through the wrists.  The waves of the hair were parted and clumped by dried blood.

            From the right door hung the unmistakable form of Shana.  Wearing the tattered pajamas, stained by blood and violence, that carried her through the Emotion, she was suspended by a large metal rod rammed through the core of her, between her partially exposed breasts and right through the breastbone.  Two more spikes supported her at the shoulders, and two more were worked into her waist, through the hip bone.

            Between them, suspended slightly lower and almost within reach, was a small body still dripping blood.  It had dark hair and pale skin, eyes like enormous marbles, black and empty as they watched Alex without judgment, without life.  There were too many spears worked into this body to count at a glance.  It looked to Alex like a human pin cushion, and she recognized it only on instinct.

            Alex fell to her knees, sobbing and gasping, screaming when she got the air.  Her screams were the wounded wail of a lonely animal, of a lost child, of a survivor resenting their own survival.  When oxygen ran thin, she fell into writhing gasps that forced convulsions on her body before collapsing onto her back and staring at the ceiling, alone.

            The sky opened.  Shadows parted long enough for a flash to fill the room.  Glass shattered, the stained shards landing around her, bouncing and shimmering like chromatic diamonds.  A shadow passed over her and landed hard beside her.  Alex leapt to her feet on instinct and rolled to the side.  She fell hard into a pew but hardly felt it as the body came into view.  It was long-legged and very pretty.  Blood and glass had gathered in its blond hair, and as its head lulled toward her, she could see bruising across the pale, dead face.  Its teeth were knocked in.  Its skull was split open.

            Alex wheezed.  Looking around at her failure, she found all the bodies watching her.  Her voice evaporated inside of her as she sunk down and stared ahead, gaze fixed on the far wall, the rest of her world dissolving into periphery.  She sat there, surrounded by the bodies of friends and enemies whom she had been unable to save.

 

: Bridges :

 

            Ellen wheezed as she stumbled up the stairs.  They seemed to be never ending, and her injuries only made the climb worse.  Adrenaline carried her, though, as did the fear of being caught by Alex in this manic state her friend was in.  From where she was, Ellen could see the cathedral’s second floor and swore it was no closer than when she had started climbing.  She gripped the handrailing and stared up at the ceiling, however, refusing to look back down.

            Alex was on the first floor, screaming and crying in a corner that Ellen couldn’t see.  She sounded awful, so awful that Ellen hesitated.  This hesitation died in the memory of Alex’s uncompromising dark eyes and the violence she was capable of.  She remembered the way Alex’s blade gleamed.

            Ellen sighed.  She was near the top.  A red light spilled out and onto the stairs.  Alex had said that Abraham was there with them, but Ellen had yet to see her.  The first floor was too dangerous for a real search, and while the second floor offered sanctuary, Ellen doubted that Abraham would be waiting up there.  She wondered what state they would find Abraham in, if Abraham could be found at all.

            Her bones ached and her lungs burned, but Ellen ignored the ache and the burn and pulled herself higher, toward light and away from the sad, lonely wails of her friend below.

 

: Bridges :

 

            Alex crawled her way to the door, nose crinkled, the smell of iron and rot thick in her nostrils.  Alicia hung, suspended above her.  Blood caked the jagged steel imbedded in her body and pooled at the tip.  Tiny red pearls had splattered across the floor.  A few hit Alex on the head, cold and slick.

            Next, Alex stood and swallowed a sob.  Another droplet hit her forehead and made a slow crawl down her skin.  At standing, Alex’s head was at level with Alicia’s ruptured chest.  She reached up and grabbed at a spike with both hands.  The sharp form of the steel dug into her palms and left a shallow laceration as she tightened her grip.  Dried blood flaked off underneath her fingers.

            Bracing against the door with one foot and planting the other against the floor, Alex gave a tug.  The steel rod broke smoothly, and she fell to the floor, half a rusted spike clattering across the stonework at her side.  The rest remained firmly imbedded in the door, the very edge of it visible inside of Alicia’s pale, waxy flesh.

            Alicia’s corpse clicked its cold, dry tongue.  Bright, foggy eyes rolled around in gaunt sockets and stared down at Alex through clumped tawny hair.  “Poor, little Alex, just can’t let things lie buried where they belong.  Always pulling open the closets to find the skeletons inside.”

            “Alicia?”

            “Your entire life you sat wallowing in your own pity, keeping to the dark corners of the room, never leaving, never living, and the moment you go out and make the effort, you go and get yourself killed,” Shana’s corpse said crustily from the other door.  “How many people have died for you now?”

            “She didn’t kill me,” Alicia’s corpse said, “But she sure as hell couldn’t save me, either.”

            Alex held back tears.  Her stomach ached she had cried so hard that she was about to wretch again.  It took solid, slow breaths to calm her, and those were hard to come by.  She held her hand to her mouth and swallowed bile.  “I didn’t.”

            Shana’s corpse cackled.  “Oh, poor thing, we’re making her cry.  That’s what you do when you lose someone, isn’t it, Alex?  You curl up and you cry and you worry about how sad you are and how alone you are, and you never give one single thought to the dead.  All of your thoughts belong to you and yourself.”

            “She always was selfish,” Alicia’s corpse said.  It stared emptily at Alex’s quivering body.  “I was sick, Alex, sick, and still you depended on me, used me, hung on me like the parasite you are.  Come to think of it, maybe you did kill me after all.”

            “I didn’t!”

            “You killed me,” called a high, hoarse voice from behind her.  Turning, Alex shuffled away into the solid form of a pew.  Slowly, and with stiffness belonging to the dead, Ellen’s corpse turned its head about and cast its pearly eyes on Alex.  It had a large smile that showed all of its bloody, broken teeth.  “I wouldn’t be here if I had never met you, and I wouldn’t be dead if you had been there to protect me.”

            “If only you had the strength to stop Carolyne in the first place,” said Shana’s corpse from the doorway, “Then none of us would be here.”

            “If only,” Ellen’s corpse added with a rasping laugh.

            Alex pushed up from the pew and ran around Ellen’s body, ducking between pews and coming to a halt as two more corpses turned their dead eyes on her.  “You spent so much time trying to fight me,” Goliath’s corpse called from ahead, its head bouncing as it tried lift-up to look at her.

            “Shut up!”  Alex fell to her knees before Carolyne’s blank, empty eyes.  This corpse didn’t say anything at all, and at the back of her mind, Alex felt deep down that was so much worse.  Curling up, she hugged her knees and continued to cry.

            A cold hand came to rest on Alex’s shoulder.  Slowly, with effort, the fingers curled gently, and Alex turned to look up into Alicia’s corpse’s face.  “It’s okay, though, we never expected you to survive without us, anyway.  You aren’t a survivor, Alex.  You’re a coward, and a weakling, and even among us, you’re the deadest body in the room.”

            Another hand, cold and rigid, alighted on the other shoulder, and something with Shana’s voice whispered into Alex’s ear, “You’re already dead with us, Alex, in spirit, so why not go all the way? Cross that final line and really commit.  You can’t live with one foot in the grave forever, and you said not so long ago that life is all about making decisions and sticking to them, didn’t you?”

            Alex fixed her vision on Carolyne’s corpse.  It didn’t stare back.  It sat limp, motionless, empty eyes without judgment.  A shadow fell over her like an omen and, when she looked up, she saw something wearing Abraham’s tiny frame.  Cheeks sunken, neck twisted at an odd angle, it said, “You promise you would protect me, and you couldn’t.  You’re not strong enough to protect me, Alex, you’re not strong enough to protect anyone.  But it’s okay, because we’re here to protect you, now.  We’re here to help.”

            “No,” Alex whined when she finally found her voice, and she hugged her knees more tightly to her chest.  “No.  No!”  She hid her face between her legs and kept repeating the word as her mantra.  She repeated it until the voices died in the dead air, and she kept repeating it as the hands retreated. 

Once alone, she lifted her head, she found Carolyne’s corpse now eying her.  It sat up and shuffled toward Alex, stopping with their foreheads together, their lips nearly touching.  Alex couldn’t feel its breath, and she thought for a moment how strange that was, but then she remembered that it was dead, and she could smell the death on it and, beneath that, cigarette smoke.  Carolyne’s corpse grabbed Alex by the head and screamed, “You should have died back there, not me!"

 

: Bridges :

 

Ellen ran as much from the screams as from Alex’s vengeful strikes.  She hobbled to the top of the stairs and there came to a stop, breathing hard and hanging from the rail.  The second floor was a long, wide platform with four torches lit to show the surface.  Gargoyle’s watched from the walls, their gemstone eyes catching the light and shining.  A large red stone was set into the center of the platform, its surface producing a light of its own.

There was a short, stocky woman with close-cut hair and a boyish face at rest beside the large, liquid-like gemstone at the platform’s center.  She sat with her legs crossed and her eyes closed.  Ellen though her quite beautiful, in a non-traditional way.  The woman was at ease, her repose in meditation as she whispered to herself in a quiet voice tinged with remorse.

Ellen sat watching her while gathering her breath.  She thought to go back down until she heard Alex’s continued screaming.  Using the railing for support, she pushed herself to standing and limped across the platform, toward the shining gemstone and the woman.  As she approached, she slowed and winced so that her eyes could adjust to the light.

            Suffer.  Guilt.

            She stopped a few feet shy of the woman and strained to hear the woman’s whispers.  Leaning forward, she gazed into the gemstone and found a body inside.  It was a small body, with dark hair fanned out around it in a black halo.  The bright red light bled into the white of its body.  It was difficult to see at first, but Ellen recognized the body to be Abraham at rest, curled up into a fetal position and caught in the gemstone like a bug might be caught in amber.

            Doubt and death.

            That caught Ellen’s attention, and she looked to the woman now while Alex cried below.  Alex’s words, though muffled, were those of someone begging, and it slowly fell into place as Ellen made the connection.  She didn’t understand everything, but she knew enough to realize that this woman was in no way normal, and also this woman was somehow hurting her friend.

            Standing in the red below of the gem’s light, Ellen watched the woman and listened to her whisper, repeating the same words like a mantra.  From what Ellen could tell, the woman didn’t possess the raw, destructive force of someone like Carolyne, but Ellen didn’t know what this woman could be like with her eyes open.

            Gathering herself, Ellen took a deep breath and lifted her chin to look confident.  “I can do this,” she whispered to herself, and then more loudly, and also more confidently—she hoped—she said, “You!  You’re the one hurting Alex, aren’t you?”

            The woman didn’t respond.  She simply continued her chanting.

            Ellen frowned at the woman’s lack of response and reached out timidly to shove her.  “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

            The woman jerked into wakefulness and looked on Ellen in mixed horror and surprise.  Falling backward, she shuffled away from Ellen and toward the platform’s railing.  “You!  How are you here?”

            Ellen’s stomach did a flipflop.  She felt like running but didn’t have the energy to do it, so she stood her ground.  “You’re hurting Alex, aren’t you?  Stop it!”

            “I wasn’t hurting her, but I was…” The woman stood and rounded the gem, putting it between herself and Ellen.  The red-light made a mask of shadows that distorting her boyish features into something demonic.  “I can’t let you take her.”

            Ellen looked down at Abraham’s sleeping form, unmoving in the gemstone.  “Why not? What do you need her for?  Because that Abel guy wants to become a god?”

            “She will save mankind,” said the woman.  “Not directly, but she is vital to our progress.  With her, Abel will ascend, and he will bring the world with him after.  This is just the first step, but it is the most important.  With him as our example, not only will he be a god, but we will all become gods.”

            Ellen put her hands on her hips and stared at the woman overtop the gemstone.  “Gods? You’re doing all of this for that? Doesn’t that seem a bit silly to you?”

            “Silly?  It’s necessary, and it is inevitable.  We will all become gods in our own right, someday, and have been moving toward it since Eve first tasted of the fruit.  We’re just giving humanity the push it needs.”

            “Okay, but why? I mean, what right do we have to become gods? And assuming we even can, how does hurting us, killing us, or kidnapping her help anyone at all? Wouldn’t that just, I don’t know, make us worse?  Wouldn’t that take us in the opposite direction?”  Ellen pointed down at Abraham and shouted, “You tell me how in the hell this is supposed to be helping Abraham!”

            The woman went quiet.  She stared at Ellen for a long moment. “Abraham?”

            “You don’t even know her name?”

            The woman’s gaze followed Ellen’s finger.  “I didn’t even know that she had a name.”

            “Really?”  Ellen frowned. “Well, she does.  She’s just like you.  She’s alive and breathing, and she bleeds, and she feels, and she came to me, lost and scared and alone, and she was running.  From you people!”

            “I thought she was just a catalyst.”  The woman said it without certainty or conviction.

            “Catalyst, gods, and all of this nonsense!  Look at this, look at where you are, and look at what you’re doing, and think, really think about all of this, and tell me it’s right.”

            “I was just trying to…”  The woman looks up into Ellen’s eyes.  Her tears catch the light.  “I was just trying to help us, to fix us.”

            “People aren’t broken.  You can’t just fix us, and you definitely can’t do it like this.  You want to make the world better, the only way to do it is by being better.”

            “You,” the woman’s voice died in her throat.  She leaned back and held her temples, staring into the hazy red light of the gem.  Abraham slept inside soundly, a child tucked into bed, a god at rest.  “You’re right,” she said, “We’ve gone too far.”

            Ellen smiled.  “I am, so come and help me to get her out of there.”

            The woman, surprised by Ellen’s candor, laughed.  “Alright, I guess I can do that much.”

            The shadows on her face spread and merged with the shadows behind her, forming into a solid mass.  Her head jerked back and, from the ground below, the shadows lurched.  They speared her through the chest.  Blood sprayed from her in a fountain from her neck and rained down across the red gemstone, obscuring the light.  It ran down her torso and thighs.  She gurgled, hovering a few inches from the ground, and then fell.

            Crest appeared from the shadows.  They slid off him like oil and formed into a cape.  He examined Carla with his cold, dark eyes and smiled mirthlessly.  “You always had a big heart, Carla, and now it’s all over the floor.”

            Ellen stood, shaking, and stared, while Carla clawed at the stonework and struggled for breath.  She mouthed for Ellen to run but it was pointless.  Her air had run out.  All she could muster was a desperate wheeze before she went still.  Ellen’s legs felt wet and warm as they gave out from under her.

            Crest turned his smile on her. “And there you go, just like a child.”  He laughed.  “But, then, fear is never flattering, is it? Well, no point in wasting an immobile target, is there?”  The shadows curled.  He lifts his hand and they swept forward, mimicking his movement.  From the darkness appeared a slender fin that flowered forward like water, the edge a fine blade.

            Ellen watched the shadows flow toward her, watched their gradual progress as they spread around the gemstone.  Her heartbeat lasted an eternity.  She saw her life stretched out before her, the entirety of it, the good, the bed, and everything else, and one thought preoccupied her mind: “I’m going to die.”  It played on repeat.

            The room grew dark as the torch to her right was snuffed.  Death grew closer, a sweeping form rushing at her.  There was a gleam and flash, and a purple disc landed at her feet.  It cast a solid light that repelled the shadows, which rushed against it like water crashing against the shore.  They met with tidal force, and the shadows fanned harmlessly around her.

            Strong arms encased her and lifted her.  Ellen landed a few feet away, nearer to the stairs, and then was deposited carefully to the floor.  Isaac kneeled beside her and held her by the shoulder.  Their gazes met, and she stared back with the uncertainty of a newborn.  He was breathless.  “Ellen! Are you okay?”

            Legs wet, heart racing, Ellen struggled for breath.  The words were lost in her.  She nodded.

            “Thank God.” He hugged her.  “I didn’t know if I would make it in time.”

            “I think you did.”  Ellen spoke absently as she hugged him back.  Her arms were weak.  She didn’t want to let go. “Isaac, you saved me!”

            “Actually, I think you saved me.”  Isaac stood and conjured his other chakram as he turned toward Crest.  “I’ll explain later.  First, I need to settle this.”

            Crest’s featured changed upon seeing Isaac.  His smile grew earnest and vicious as the shadows around him boiled.  “Van’s child!”

            “Ellen, things are dangerous here, and they are about to get worse.”  He extended his free hand and his first chakram dislodged itself from the ground and returned to him.  He caught it by the grip at its center.  “You go, and you take Abraham with you.  I’ll take care of him.”

            “Right.” Ellen stood and, once she was certain her legs would support her, added, “Thank you, Isaac.”  She walked hesitantly forward, eyes on Crest.  He passed Abraham absently, his gaze fixed wholly on Isaac.

            Ellen stopped beside the gemstone and looked inside.  It was built into the cathedral, or more accurately, the cathedral was built around it.  The surface was smooth and had no discernable openings.  It clearly wasn’t meant to be removed.  She ran her fingers along the surface, seeking a place to grip it that she feared wasn’t there.