Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 4: Covenant, Chapter Seventeen: Covenant part two, Eclipse

 Chapter Seventeen: Covenant part two, Eclipse

 

            Alex and Ellen stopped together at the edge of the bridge.  They set Abraham to rest on the ground, and Ellen waited while Alex went to Shana’s side.  Shana held Deidra and rubbed the older woman’s back.  Quietly, at Shana’s side, Alex whispered to her.  “Shana?”  Shana looked up at her and smiled.  Alex smiled back at her.  “I see.”

            Deidra collected herself.  She looked up at Alex after wiping her eyes.  Breathlessly, she said, “Good.  I see that you’ve got her.”  She stood and adjusted her dress.  Looking past Ellen, she saw that a massive, orange stone face had appeared in the cathedral’s place and expressed no surprise at seeing it.  “Then, it is time for us to escape.”

            “Right.”  Alex pulled Shana up to her feet.  “Here, come help us with this.”

            Shana nodded and followed Alex to the gemstone.  With Ellen’s help, the three of them lifted the gem and followed Deidra.  Cornelius stepped into their vision, brow heavy and jaw set.  His armor gleamed in the unmoving twilight.  “You’re helping them now?” He spoke in a tone of hurt concern.

            “Yes, Cornelius.  I know it must confuse you, but they are good people.  Unlike Abel.  Unlike me.”  She sighed but stared him, unrelenting, in the eyes.  His gaze was stern, set like his jaw.  “My life may be hopeless,” she said, “But they are still young.  They still have a chance to make things right.  You don’t have to help us, but I do ask that you do not interfere.”

            Cornelius stood stiffly, his back straight, his fists balled.  “You would betray the master now, when he is so close to achieving his ends?”

            “This is not a betrayal,” she said.  “I helped him only because I saw no reason not to, but now I see a reason.”

            He snorted and shook, and then he kneeled in the dust, his head bowed, and a fist planted to the ground.  “I was charged with your protection, my lady, and I am bound to your service.”

            “Yes, I know this.”

            “And that means I must follow you, whatever path you take.”

            She went to him and lifted his gaze.  Their eyes met.  She caressed his cheek briefly, smiling as she did.  He blushed.  She thought to correct his course, to assure him that he need not do this, but kissed his forehead instead.  “Thank you, Cornelius.  I think you’ll feel better for this.”

            He stood and crossed his arms, the steel plates of his armor grinding with his movement.  “It is only my duty.”

            She nodded and turned to the three.  “We’ll need to move quickly and find somewhere that he won’t think to look.  Then, we will break open the covenant and…”

            The air grew still and heavy.  Everyone but Ellen strained to stand.  Their breaths came to them with effort.  Arms weak, Alex and Shana let Abraham fall, and Alex went to a knee in a fit of shaking coughs.  Deidra braced herself on her knees to remain standing.

            “Hurry.  We have to go now!”

            Ellen looked between the four, suddenly crippled by the air itself, and strained to pull the covenant up on her own.  “What’s happening?” She looked at Deidra, fresh fear blossoming in her face.  “What did you do to them?”

            “Nothing,” Deidra said.  “It is Abel.  He’s awake, and he is coming.”

 

: Covenant :

 

            Isaac redirected spiritual energy into the soles of his feet as he fell to softened his landing.  Dust kicked up around him as he hit.  The hard stone beneath him cracked under his weight, but he held strong and stood as Crest descended at the other end of the canyon, using shadows to break his own fall.  The canyon wall broke and fractured as Crest used it to slow himself and, upon his landing, stood in a writhing mass of darkness that swirled around him in agitation.

            The sky split open.  Golden light spilled it.  It caught the walls and bounced back into the twilight.  The canyon seemed suddenly set ablaze.  The shadows waned around them and faded, returning only at Crest’s command.  He growled as he regarded the light.  “The witch turned traitor! I knew I should have killed her while the master slept.”  He fixed his gaze on Isaac.  “My work won’t end with you, then.”

            Isaac sneered at him.  The dust settled around them, and Isaac held his chakrams so hard that his fingers numbed.  A battle, this battle, was the last thing he wanted.  Riis’ lifeless body floating in the blood-clouded water of the university was fresh in his mind, but Ellen was more important.  This was the only way he could protect her, and so he would do it.

            Crest extended his hand and moved his fingers.  The shadows followed him, dancing around him, their own long fingertips stretching forward and cutting into the canyon walls.  “This place will be your grave, boy.”  He said it with manic glee, his face expanding and emoting more with each passing moment.  A growing lack of inhibition was degrading him.  His madness left Isaac feeling sick.  “I’ll kill you and leave you.  He’s awake now, so none of it matters.  None of us matter!”

            Isaac stayed quiet and tried hard not to tense.  He watched Crest and waited for the coming strike, focusing all of his spirit into his Voice and letting it flow through him from there.  He created an ongoing circuit of energy which he could tap at a moment’s notice.  They watched each other in the hazy twilight, the sun casting long shadows before and behind them.  Crest moved first, jabbing forward with his hands and sending the shadows surging ahead.  A series of dark spears formed from the inky darkness and crossed the vast, dusty expanse of the canyon floor.

            Isaac jumped away, finding purchase on a jutting stone halfway up the canyon wall and hopped off of that.  The spears followed him, gouging out the earth where he stood and fracturing the stone just as he escaped.  Many more followed him, hopping from point to point along the canyon wall and leaping up at him in the air.  Isaac made a series of jumps up to the stone surface where the cathedral had once been and bounced away from the canyon’s edge.  The shadows followed, punching a trail of holes after him.

            Crest laughed madly from the canyon base.  “Is that all you can do? Run like a child afraid of the dark?”

            Isaac leaped off of the other side and slid down the far wall of the canyon.  He slowed his descent by driving a chkram blade into the stones and riding it down.  As he fell, he took the time to catch his breath.  The shadows receded, returning to Crest, where they writhed violently, reacting to his growing madness.

 

: Covenant :

 

            Deidra lifted her dress and turned sharply to the three women behind her.  “We must hurry!  Abel will be on his way!”

            Ellen, the only one of them able to stand, strained to lift the covenant on her own.  “Maybe we could talk to him? You know, reason with him?”

            Deidra gave a long, silent stare.  “Girl, are you mad?  Talk to him?”

            “What? It worked last time.  I was making real progress with that lady inside until that crazy guy showed up.”  Deidra scoffed, and Ellen, dropping the covenant, gave a pointed frown.  “Well, it’s not like you have any real solutions.  Besides, if we can talk him down then we can solve all of this and no one needs to get hurt, right?”

            “Wrong.  Abel has no heart to appeal to anymore.  He has no morals left, and no amount of pleading or propositioning will change him.  He wants her.  He NEEDS her to achieve his ends, and that is all that he has left in him—his purpose.  There is no reasoning with him.”

            Holding her frown, Ellen sighed and relented, seizing the covenant and looking in Abraham’s sleeping form inside.  She was small and peaceful, at rest inside of its red amber form. Alex, gathering herself, touched Ellen’s shoulder.  She was covered in sweat and struggling for breath, but she bore a weak smile.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “We’ll be fine.”  When Ellen nodded, Alex turned to Shana and helped her to standing.  “If we all do this together, then we will get out before he gets here.”

 

: Covenant :

 

            Isaac bounded over encroaching shadows and landed on a large stone at the center of the canyon.  It shattered beneath his feet, shadows appearing through freshly formed cracks. Writhing darkness fractures the stonework, following him through the air while the rubble cascades down the cliffside and gathers at the canyon base.

            Moving like liquid, the shadows part around him and then form together, capturing him and pulling him back down with titanic strength.  Isaac meets the compressing darkness with his right chakram, which flashes brightly on contact.  He is brought back down to the earth, landing on both feet and planting them on contact.  The hard rock beneath him breaking on impact, but he stands firm, warding off the tightening shadows.

            Crest conjures greater darkness, producing shadows in two thin waves which he weaves together into a lightless, spiraling point.  It spins, meeting the previous darkness and punching through.  Isaac narrowly reacts, leaping out of the way as the shadows slice into his side and tear his jacket apart.  He rolls to a stop nearby, holding his wound briefly before drawing the strength required to stand.

            He readied his chakram again, catching another blow but stumbling under the force.  Dark tendrils spilled off around him, eating away at the earth around his feet.  Isaac adjusted his footing and rooted himself, channeling his energy back into his right chakram and echoing the words which his soul speaks to him.

            In morning the sun rises gold, bringing with it great glory.

            His right chakram, smaller and rounded, without a blade and with a four-barred grip at its center, gave off faint, grey dawn light.  He released it, and the light, pulsing, suspended it in the air as it gathered.  It floated over him, leaving light where it moved, and then projected a golden dome of light around him that repulsed the darkness with repeated, cascading waves.  The shadows receded, gathering around Crest and fanning at his back.

            Inside of his dome of light, Isaac kneeled and clutched his side, focusing on the pain and breathing through it.  Crest watched him outside, grinning viciously, arms crossed, cruel amusement written across his features.  Isaac palmed his wound and then stood through the pain.  “Why are you doing this?”

            Crest’s grin grew thin and feral.  His face distorted in a mask of sheer, agonized madness.  It looked to Isaac like Crest was bearing his fangs.  “Why? Because this is what I am.  A killer. A MURDERER!”

            Isaac swallowed.  The bleeding had eased as his healing improved.  The wound burned, and so did his limbs.  He was drawing heavily on his own energy, feeding it to his body to accelerate his healing and to keep him at pace with his enemy.  The shield was draining him fast, though, and soon he wouldn’t even have enough left to run.  He couldn’t escape anyway.  He was sure that wherever he went, Crest would follow.

            “I am a shadow, boy, a dark shadow cast by the light of perfection.  I am Abel’s darkness, his imperfections, the refuse left when he formed covenant with the lady.  To become God, Abel had to purge himself of—Well, of everything that used to make him human.  He had to become pure, and I…”  Crest raised his hands with wild theatrics, screaming to the sky.  “I am what is left!  I am the darkness of the human heart! I am the truth of the human condition!  Id without restraint.  Garbage left behind by a hedonist seeking to become God!”

            The shadows parted around Crest, boiling in his madness.  Isaac’s chakram dimmed, and he caught it from the air.  “And you’re okay with that?”

            Crest glared and laughed.  His voice caught on the canyon walls and echoed around them.  “Okay?  Am I okay with it? Does it matter? Life is what it is, you spoiled fool!  I am a husk, empty and alone, filled only with the darkest parts of a god.  Which, in a way, would make me the devil himself, wouldn’t it?”

            The shadows around Crest surged.  They sprang to life, swirling with a new madness all their own.  They writhed into a helix around him and sharpened into multiple points, floating in his periphery.  He laughed, and he laughed, and he had tears rolling down his cheeks as the pain consumed him.  “But don’t you worry your tiny little heart over me.  I was born this way; I was raised in darkness!”

            The shadows pulsed and lunged, each twisting in the air as they went for Isaac’s throat.

 

: Covenant :

 

            Alex, Shana, and Ellen followed Deidra up a hill.  Cornelius led them, his blade drawn, his plates scrapping with his movements.  The covenant had grown bulky and slick; their palms were wet with perspiration and losing grip.  Abel’s presence weighed on all of them, save for Ellen alone, who was leading the three with powerful ignorance.

            Increasingly, Alex felt futility in running.  No matter how far they ran, Abel’s presence remained ubiquitous.  It slowed them, thick as mud, and made the air solid as granite.  She could hardly breathe for it, and with each passing moment his gravity grew more real.  Wheezing and struggling to keep pace with her leggy, blond friend, she rasped, “How much farther?”

            “I don’t know,” Deidra wheezed, Abel’s approach affecting her similarly, “We just keep running until the territories change.”  She didn’t look back as she spoke.  Her dress dragged the earth, gathering dust on the hem, growing more tarnished with her movements.

            Ahead, a tall man appeared from the air.  They stopped.  His hair was a dark veil cascading down his white robes.  His face was an inexpressive mask.  He looked almost like a statue to them, save for the subtle movement of his nostrils and the even subtler movement of his chest.  His dark eyes betrayed no murder nor mercy.  In fact, they showed nothing at all.  “Give me the lady,” he said, his voice a calm monotone.  His lips hardly seemed to move at all.

            Alex shook, legs weak, and dropped the covenant.  Behind her, Shana fell to her knees.  They had been feeling him for minutes, but standing directly before him was so much worse.  Existing became a struggle in his presence.  It took all of their effort just to keep breathing.  Alex managed a few steps, clutching her chest, and wheezed her response.  “No.  I won’t let you hurt her.”

            Abel looked at her, and through her, and he said, “I will not hurt her.”

            “Damn right you won’t.”  Alex strained to breathe.  Each exhale was forced from her lungs.  She called her Voice.  It appeared around her wrist, blade extending, and she held it out in front of her.  It gleamed dully, as if even the light slowed before Abel.

            He regarded her calmly.  “If you insist on fighting, I will kill you.  Give me the covenant.”

            Alex swallowed.  Sweat poured down her.  It hurt to lift her arms.  Her vision blurred, and she swore for a moment that Abel had black, leather-like wings, but when she blinked, they were gone.  “No,” she said.  “No, I won’t let you take her.  We’re going home.  All of us!”

            “I see.  That is unfortunate.”

 

: Covenant :

 

            Shadows descended from the sky like rainfall, crumbling the earth where Isaac stood.  He appeared from the rising dust, sailing through the air, and landed breathlessly away from harm.  Dust kicked up around him.  There was a new tear at his jacket, around his shoulders, where he had been touched by the darkness.  Fresh blood soiled his shirt.

            A tongue of darkness lashed out and licked the ground, crushing what it touched.  Isaac fled, leaping and landing a few feet  away before stumbling to a stop.  His head was loose, his blood thinning.  He fell to his knees, holding the canyon wall for support as the shadows followed him.  He lifted his right chakram and deflected it with a sphere of light.  The shadows bit into the canyon wall nearby.

            “Come now, Isaac, this just won’t do.”  Crest sauntered forward, his boots clicking on the hard, dusty stones with each step.  He was smiling in hunger.  “If all you do is run, then you’ll never make it out alive.  To win now, you’ll have to kill me.  Nothing you haven’t done before though, right?”  Crest growl and thrust his palm forward.  The shadows around him surged, churning the soil they moved.

            Isaac rolled to the side and down a small hill, stopping when a large slab of solid stone caught him.  He heard a pop and felt two of his ribs snap.  Wheezing, he pulled himself to standing and held his side as pain shot through him.  The earth came up fast, and he caught himself on a knee and balanced against the stone.  He was like this when his shadow betrayed him, passing over him in a series of small blades, blood following after it.  He pushed himself from his support and sprinted away.

            Isaac thought to stop, to turn and finish the battle, but Riis’ face flashed in his mind.  He saw her pale skin and pale eyes.  He saw the cloud of blood that spread through the water around her.  He had taken a life before, and he didn’t want to do it again.

            Each footfall brought pain.  Blood ran down his face and neck.  It saturated his clothes.  He planted his foot and turned, intending to give a half-hearted effort.  He threw his chakram.  It spun through the air, sliding along the surface of the fanning shadows.  The shadows receded to reveal Crest’s vicious smile.  “There we go, boy!  So, you do have some fight left in you!”

            Isaac drew a deep breath and called his chakram back.  He caught it in his left hand and shouted, “How’s this for a fight!”  Throwing both, he sent them flanking and charged up the center. 

Crest laughed and flexed his hand, churning the shadows around them before summoning them at his sides.  The shadows erupted around him, knocking the chakrams up but never intercepting Isaac’s approach.  When he was close enough, Isaac balled his fist and leapt forward.  Crest lifted one hand and the shadows swirled around him and slammed into Isaac’s chest, throwing him back. 

Isaac bounced across the earth before sliding to a stop.

Crest lifted his hand and called the shadows into a flat curtain above him.  “If you won’t even try, then I am wasting my time.”  The shadows spread like smoke around him, diluting the sunlight.  He brought his hand down, and the darkness hardened into sphere and fell from the cloud, leaving an inky contrail in their wake.

Isaac called his Voice to him and pressed them together.  He conjured his shield and watched the earth around him dissolve.  The storm of shadows gradually depleted, leaving Isaac surrounded in a ring of tiny craters.

He slumped, energy fading.  What was left in him was forced into the pumping of his heart and the rattling breathes he stole.  His father had taught him to fight, to meditate, to control his power.  At a young age, Isaac had learned to knit his wounds closed with focus, but these wounds were deep, and each rushed movement tore them back open.

He watched Crest watching him, the other man smiling.  He wanted something from Isaac, wanted what Isaac refused to do, and he wouldn’t kill Isaac until he knew for certain that Isaac could not give it.  His plan was to leave Isaac with no recourse.  Isaac winced and pushed himself to a slouch, and then he closed his eyes and focused.  The words echoed through him, and he spoke them carefully.

The sun rises red, a screaming soul of fire burning the sky!

One chakram gleamed while the other remained inert.  He threw the one which shined and counted after.  One-one-thousand and it built speed; two-one-thousand and it shined brighter, its glow growing sinister; three-one-thousand and he threw the second; at four-one-thousand, he charged.

Crest frowned in response.  “This game again? I suppose you didn’t learn.”  He lifted his hand and gathered the shadows in his palm, and then he sent them forward with elemental force.  Their attacks met, and Isaac’s chakram tore through the darkness, casting the shadows aside.  It cut a deep path before the current swallowed it.  Losing momentum, and light, the chakram spun out and dug into the ground.

The second chakram flipped on contact with the shadows.  Stopping in a vertical position, it released a wave of light that stopped the shadows.  Isaac met it and taking hold of its grip pushed his way forward.  He used his spirit to push through his pain and, once in range, dropped the shield and leapt over the shadows.

Isaac spiraled through the air and called his chakram back from the dust.  On landing, he caught Crest across the palm and left a deep gash in his hand.  The shadows fell like liquid but without mass.  Isaac spun again and this time wedged his blade into Crest’s chest.

They stopped together, Isaac panting, Crest smiling.  Blood oozed out between Crest’s teeth.  He staggered back while the shadows receded, dissolving into the sunlight and returning to from where they came.  Isaac jerked the chakram out and then stepped forward, driving both into Crest’s collar bone.

Isaac felt light-headed.  More than that, he felt wrong.  There was fresh blood on his hands, wet and warm.  He stared Crest in the eyes.  “That good enough for you?”

Crest stared, gasping and grunting, and then began to cry.  Grabbing Isaac’s wrist, he held onto him like a child.  “Yes.  Finally.  Do it.  Kill me now.”

Isaac wrested his hand away and let Crest fall.  He watched the blood pool beneath him.  “What?”

“Kill me now.  I want to die.  I have to die!”

“Why? Why would you want that?”

“Because this is a half existence.  I am a mistake, just the discarded longing of a mad man.  I am his regret.  His sorrow.  His pain.  His guilt.  I am his sins and his repentance.  I am everything that he ever held back.  The Emotion took those discarded things and made them real, and they made me.  I was never meant to exist.  I am nothing, nothing at all but a sad little mistake.”

Isaac stood over him.  He watched Crest cry and bleed into the dirt, and he gripped his chakram tight.  With a wet, raspy breath, Isaac gathered himself and kneeled.  “I can’t,” he said.  “I can’t kill you.”

“You can.  You’ve killed before, so you can do it again.”  Crest whined and grasped at Isaac’s pants.  “You have to.  I can’t go on like this.  If you leave me now, then you will never be safe. I will hunt you.  I will kill you.  I will make you suffer!”  His voice was strained, desperate, no longer possessed by malice.  He was begging.  “You have to.  This is such a pitiful existence.”

“No.  I won’t.  I can’t do it.”

“Then you’ll die!”  Crest lifted his uninjured hand and conjured an ethereal needle made of nothing.  He grabbed it and lunged forward, meeting the sharpened point of Isaac’s chakram on the way.  His throat parted.  Fresh blood gushed out of the wound and across the blade.  Isaac sat rigid, a pin-prick of darkness hovering only inches from his eye.  Crest laughed.

The shadows parted, peeling away in wisps of smoke.  Crest fell.  Isaac stared, watching the life leave him.  There was no blood this time, just light and darkness.  Despite this, Isaac felt dirtier than ever.

With Crest gone, Isaac stood and stared up the cliff face.  He could feel Abel up above, and he knew the battle wasn’t over.

 

: Covenant :

 

Alex shuffled forward, putting herself in front of everyone else.  Deidra grabbed at her shoulder on the way, but Alex jerked free from her, her Voice fixed before her and trying desperately to remember everything she had learned to that point.  She had fought Goliath, and survived Carolyne, and she tried her best to think of Abel as just another opponent standing in her way.

It didn’t work.  He stared at her, empty and unfeeling.  “This is my last offer.  Reconsider.”

“Hell no!”

“So be it.”

Alex told herself not to hesitate.  She took initiative, moving first, her blow meant to maim, not to kill.  The tip of her blade drifted sideways, aiming for his shoulder, but she missed wide.  Her attack sailed harmlessly past him.

Abel flexed his left hand and from the air produced his Voice, a dark spear bearing the emblem of a demonic face upon the neck, where the blade met the shaft.  The tip shifted in color, at times gleaming a sinister red before fading into a prismatic blue.  The air around the weapon bulge and fluttered.

From standing, he lunged, a smooth clean motion that drove his weapon into Alex below the sternum.  He tore through her like paper, the sharpened point of his blade exiting through her back and moving a foot out of her.  His Voice only narrowly missed her spine.

Alex jerked, faulted.  To start, she felt nothing.  The pain came after.  It was brief and replaced only by a fullness in her chest.  She glanced down and watched him withdraw the weapon.  She watched blood and bone leaving her body and then, unsupported, she fell.

She hit the ground and kept falling.  The world grew hazy.  She was cold and, without his spear inside of her, suddenly empty.  Her senses faded slowly, likes candles being snuffed.  Touch went first, and then sight, and then smell, and as the taste of copper faded, she heard Shana scream.  Then, she heard nothing at all.