Evelyn Earth Part 55 "THE FINAL CHAPTER"

“Evs?” he sighed.

                “Yes, yes it’s me, are you alright? Are you in pain?” I said too quickly, my tongue stumbling over the words as they spilled out of my mouth.

                “I…I can’t see. It’s so...bright.”

                “It’s me, I’m sorry I don’t know what it is” I looked down at myself, at my hands that were gripping onto him so hard that my fingers ached. Reluctantly I disentangled my fingers from his ripped shirt and awkwardly tipped backwards so that the blinding light wasn’t covering him.

                “Evs, I think I met the Mother. She was…fat.”

                “Yes” I laughed as tears streamed down my cheeks, “she’s not what you expected huh.” I wiped the droplets from my face with a harsh swipe of my glowing hand. As if in unison Bas raised his own hand and rubbed at his pallid face. He turned his head to face me and narrowed his eyes before covering them.

                “You’re shining” he said, “what the fuck happened, why are you shining?”

                “I connected with the Mother and she made me ...she made me into the same substance as her heart.”

                “Like a diamond? I don’t get it” he coughed. It started off as a few haggard breathes and then escalated to a coughing fit that made him seize up into a foetal position. Small droplets of blood studded the ground around him.

              

Evelyn Earth Part 54

 My first instinct was to fling up a wall of darkness between them, but as I summoned up the last dregs of my energy I realised that it wasn’t enough. The force-field had taken every last drop of power that I had. I cried out as she collided with Sebastian. I expected a surging blindness, a bright flash of light or something supernatural, but nothing happened.

The next few moments flew past so quickly that I barely registered them. My body was on autopilot. My eyes saw that Bas had grabbed Ariel by the throat and transferred some of his miasma into her. Her face intertwined with dark slithers of power stood motionless against a background of chaos. Grigori howled and launched himself at the pair. I intercepted him midway swinging my arm across his face as hard as I could. His tiny frame went flying off to one side leaving me to face a furious Zadkiel. He was no longer the image of Zen and tranquillity, no golden showers rained from his fingertips; instead he clasped what looked like a blade made of sunlight.

Evelyn Earth Part 53

“I’ve never seen something like that before” Grigori said. He spun around on his heel and pierced me with his deep brown eyes, “how did you do that?”

I looked from him to Ariel to Zadkiel and waited for one of them to make a move, but all three stood their ground. Ariel looked more frantic than before. Her hair had puffed up around her head, slipping out of the braid and resembling a frayed mop rather than a rope, which gave her an altogether mad scientist appearance.

“I asked you how you did that demon” Grigori growled at me.

“I did it because I could. There’s a lot more that I can do that I bet you’ve never seen before” I replied, my voice cold as ice. I was still holding onto the mass of darkness around Izzy and Travis and it was taking its toll. Anything I said from now on would have to be a perfect bluff because that force field was draining the last remains of my power.

“You said you wanted to talk” Sebastian interrupted mine and Grigori’s standoff, “so talk.” His clipped tone had finally seeped through and I could tell that losing all three of his friends in the space of one minute had really pissed him off and ground him down. We both knew that we could die, but if I knew Bas well enough, he’d rather die angry and fighting than desperate and fighting.

“What are you doing?” Ariel asked after a long stretch of silence that involved all five of us exchanging mixed glances.

“Yes, what is it that you are doing exactly?” Zadkiel chimed in. He had continued to smile despite the fact that the situation had escalated to preposterously tense proportions. Maybe that was his way of easing his stress? Or maybe he was just manic.

Evelyn Earth Part 52

I crawled laboriously over to the edge of the pillar and stuck my head over the edge. I felt Bas’s hands on my shoulders making sure that I wouldn’t tip forward. Below us Sloan was standing with his feet apart talking loudly to three people that were shimmering with unearthly light.

One of them was a woman, I could tell from this height because her hair was braided into a thick rope that rested over her shoulder. The person next to her was too small to be anything other than a child or a dwarf. I remembered what Audrey had said about some of the Sun Soldiers being children and I gasped. I hadn’t believed her at the time, but there was proof standing right below me that the Sun picked its army because of their simplicity of mind.

The third person was a man, but that was all I could tell from this point of view. Sloan raised his voice another octave and was waving his hands around as if describing something to the trio. I slid backwards and rested my head on the surface of the pillar.

“I can’t believe it, but I don’t think he’s told them that we’re up here” I breathed out.

“He’s covering for us” Bas said.

“Why?”

“There’s one thing about Sloan that you don’t know and that’s despite his vileness he’s as loyal as a dog. I’ve saved his life numerous times, and I have no doubt that he hates me for it, but he has never forgotten it.”

“I never knew that” I frowned, “I thought you said he had resented you from the moment the darkness entered you and not him.”

“He did, but he still wanted power even if it was association with it and not possession. I think if the chance presented itself and he could take the darkness from me he would, all loyalty forgotten.”

“But he wouldn’t give you up to the Sun Soldiers?”

Evelyn Earth Part 51

“This revolution will be the first of its kind. We can only learn so much from history, before we hit a road block of difference” I muttered to myself. Everything that I had read about ancient civilisations and their downfalls was whirling around in my head. In almost every case that I had studied humanity had exhausted the natural resources around them, which lead to their inability to continue living in the way that they were accustomed.

Slowly, step by step though civilisations re-built themselves and made the same mistakes as their predecessors—in our case on a global scale. There had never been a check and balance system that had extended to every living person on the planet. What if we, as Earth Warriors could create such a system?

“Everything depends on the actions of others” Bas said, “the actions of others with power to be more specific. If there are more Earth and Sun soldiers like Audrey then to put it lightly, we’re all fucked.”

“So we do what we can” I shrugged.

“We do what we can” Bas echoed softly. His fingers squeezed mine tightly and I felt the build-up of power coursing through him.

Evelyn Earth Part 50

It was not lost on me that I sounded like an extremist, someone who believed in an ideology to the extent that they wanted everyone else to believe it too. Not only believe it, but live it. Be trapped within it. I groaned inwardly.

                How did political leaders make these sorts of decisions? I had read about militant tyrants and fervent religious masses doing things that were at complete odds with each other, but were thought to be utterly correct.

                I couldn’t stop thinking about what the world would turn into if what we did turned out to be wrong. People were suffering all over the globe and they had been suffering for as long as anyone could remember. A select few nations had overcome obstacles as simple as clean drinking water, medical aid and education, which led to a new and improved way of life. And here I was saying that I was going to take us back to the pre-historic age where hunters and gatherers foraged for berries and chiselled arrow heads out of flint.

                 A new Earth meant no hospitals, no agriculture, no infrastructure and nothing of anything really. Was that something that sounded right? It sure as hell didn’t sound logical.

Evelyn Earth Part 49

I wanted the feeling of contentment that I received from that moment to live on inside me forever. I wanted it to be something that I held close to my heart until the day that it stopped pulsing with blood.

                I woke up in the middle of the night and gently got out of bed. Bas, I had started calling him that incessantly as a substitute for ‘baby’ which irritated me to no end, was sprawled across the sheets and breathing softly. He never snored, nor did he like to grab me and press his hot body against mine while we slept. It was so comforting knowing that I could move around and do what I wanted in bed, without the constraints of cuddling. Most of the time I slipped off to sleep easily, but tonight something had kept in a state of barely awake consciousness.

                As I lay in bed I could hear the sound of insects and the sway of trees. It was a chorus of things that didn’t allow me to move onto the next stage of deeper sleep. I padded my way over to the window and swung it open. They were old style French glass windows with six panes on each side and two ornate handles.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 48

Inadvertently we had faced the enemy and won, but now I wasn’t so sure about who was the enemy and who was simply other. For the past few months my life had taken a trip down the strangest road. Things had been revealed to me that I never thought existed, things that I had wondered about, dreamed about, but never dared imagine to be tangible.

                I was given a purpose by a divine entity. I had been chosen just like all the books I had read about heroines being selected for adventures filled with vampires or werewolves.

How stupid.

                This was the real world. It wasn’t filled with fantastical creatures that fought for good or evil, it was filled with humanity who was all of these things wrapped up into one tight bag made of flesh and bone. Humanity was disgusting and beautiful all at the same time.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 47

It coursed through us like electricity. Every capillary, every tendon absorbed the darkness. I shook my head back and looked upwards towards the blue sky. The power was overwhelming me the same way it had after I took in the vengeance from the railway line. The greed that was within me then still lurked inside my body, it didn’t want to stop the connection and spill a drop of darkness.

                I needed it all.

                I screamed up into the sky and shook my head harder. My mind had to be stronger than this. I was my own person. If I let us self-destruct now we would have accomplished only one part of our destinies. I wanted to live to see the new world. I wanted to be part of its reconstruction. Who would be there to stop people like Audrey? Who would be there to monitor mankind’s intentions?

                I felt Sebastian’s vice grip tighten. He had less power within him so logically he should be able to hold more. I forced my head to the side and looked at his profile. His jawline was clenching periodically, I could see the muscles spasm under his layer of ebony skin. He wasn’t doing any better than I was.

Evelyn Earth Part 46

I was torn between scenarios. If I made myself known and confronted Audrey then we would most likely end up in a stand-off. I couldn’t guarantee that I would prevail in a one on one fight with her so that was out of the question. I couldn’t risk my life for someone that was already dying especially when I had an important job to do.

I could simply turn around and walk away, pretend like I hadn’t even come up here to look for them, but I had already gotten rid of the front door—a dead giveaway that someone had been in the house.  

The only thing I could really do that would cause the least disturbance to our plans was to combine the two scenarios. I slowly made my way back down the stairs and stood in empty doorway.

“HELLO!” I shouted, “time to get up lovers, everyone is waiting for you back at the well!” I placed my hands on my hips and assumed an annoyed expression, which fluctuated between nervous anticipation and worry. Audrey’s flame red hair flounced down the stairs followed by a flowing summer dress and ending in the slap of bare feet.

Evelyn Earth Part 45

Our movements were becoming more frantic, desperate even. He rolled me onto my back; our hands still locked together above our heads and kissed me with such ferocity that I was plunged into a well of inescapably good pain. It felt like we were spinning around in space amongst the stars he had been studying moments before.

                I opened my eyes and gasped in pleasure and surprise. His hands unclasped mine and travelled down my body removing items of clothing as they went along. A swirling liquid mass of darkness had formed around us, escaping from our hungry bodies and wrapping us in swaths of black fairy floss.

                I pulled on his long hair and yanked his head back to look into his eyes, which were burning with ebony fire. Even his lips had become rimmed in darkness.

                We were terrible monsters making love.

Evelyn Earth Part 44

He had been an only child living in a big house, so big that he had gotten lost under all the clutter that his parents kept. By the age of fifteen Sebastian had seen nothing interesting in his life. By the time he was eighteen he had still seen nothing worth mentioning. It was as soon as he packed his bags and moved out of his cavernous home in Wales that he began to live his life.

                From that point forward he swallowed everything with abandon. First it was the alcohol, the women and then the drugs. He moved from Wales out to London into a flat with four other guys just like him; young and fearless, but only out for themselves. It was only a matter of time before life seemed to be going down the drain with the left over beer so he packed up again and took a trip down to Australia.

              

Evelyn Earth Part 43

I turned back around and looked at the group of people I was left with. One of them I could kill right now, another I wouldn’t trust with my left shoe, three of them were useless and Sebastian was my only friend and I didn’t even trust him completely. I sighed.

                “Are we done fighting kids?” Sloan said sarcastically. I shot him a death stare and bared my teeth a little. Actually, make that two people I could kill right now.

                “Are we?” I looked at Audrey who had taken to twirling tendrils of her flame coloured hair around her finger.

                “For now” she cooed. I grimaced in annoyance. Who even spoke like that? It was a cross between the voice of a child and a whore.

                “Can I speak to you alone?” I said to Sebastian. He nodded in response, shot Sloan a reproachful look and followed me behind a slab of fallen concrete.

                “So she wasn’t what we were expecting” I said.

                “If you were expecting help then no not at all, that one’s like wild fire. She flares up and burns out unpredictably. When she first appeared your power outburst had already run its course through most of the city. She questioned me about it and before I could even reply she grabbed me and pulled out all my bloody memories. Everything she touches is instantly under the command of her power, and I mean instantly Evs.”

Evelyn Earth Part 42

As they approached us I was tempted to send out a slither of my darkness to brush up against hers, to see what she was thinking, what she was like, but I restrained myself. She would most likely see it as an intrusion on her psyche, and she would be right.

                “Evs you’re alright” Sebastian said smiling as he came up to me. He was about to embrace me until he saw Owen and Manoel standing behind me. Instead we stood facing each other awkwardly.

                “Not as alright as I wish I was” I replied, “but good enough.” My voice wasn’t as warm as it usually was, it was tinged with cold caution and Sebastian picked up on it instantly. After being connected so many times we seemed to be able to sense each other’s emotions without even delving into our darkness.’ He frowned and glanced behind me once again falsely assuming that my discomfort had something to do with my companions and not his.

Evelyn Earth Part 41

“You can’t compare our agenda to the Sun soldiers. We don’t even know what it is, we’re just speculating at the moment” I grumbled.

                “But you do know that they have the ability to teleport large numbers of people. To trap people in these flocks and to burn people from a distance” he re-capped.

                “If what the visions me and Snow saw from the other two warriors are anything to go by then these angels are leaving destruction in their wake. Not the clean destruction that I can create, but the fire and brimstone type. We saw charred bodies, burned fields and leaping walls of fire. Now what would you prefer? Being consumed by my darkness or being burned alive?”

                “Neither” he said firmly, “I’d like to continue on living thank you very much, but I see what you’re getting at. Have you considered that these Sun messengers might want to turn the Earth into a similar, what’s the word” he paused, “habitat, as the Sun?”

               

Evelyn Earth Part 40

Manoel cleared the way into the building, which turned out to be shoe store. No wonder it had been left intact, who wanted to loot shoes? Thankfully there was a line of leather ottomans against the back wall and we settled down on them.

                “Ah this feels like heaven” Owen sighed as he stretched out on his back, “I’ve missed cushioned surfaces.” I smiled faintly.

                “Do you remember all the trouble we went through getting my mattress down to your container?” I asked.

                “Mm seems like a life time ago.”

                “Everything happened so quickly” I whispered, “It all went by so fast. I don’t think I got a chance to process it all before it was gone.” Owen sat up and I felt his eyes on me. The torches were propped up in a shoe rack and spluttered with every passing minute.

                “I’m sorry about how I reacted to you that day” he said barely audibly, “you were right, I had known all along that something was happening, something big. I just didn’t want to believe it. You have to understand Evie, the world had ended I had lost my family, I was so far from home and I couldn’t go back and then there you were. You were a shining light in my life and I didn’t want to believe that you were a part of the darkness. I still don’t.”

Evelyn Earth Part 39

“Are they all as deluded as you?” he asked blandly as he stood up, “all of these people with these horrible powers. Do you all think that you can magically change the world?”

“You’re an idiot” I spat back at him, “it is people like you who have allowed our world to get to this point. This is not magic! This is nature, nature at its essence. It is tangible and it is real and it will be the thing that saves us all.”

“How can a power that kills, destroys and disintegrates things save us? That’s like saying a nuclear bomb is a good thing for fucks sake. When has force ever brought about peace? You should know about history Evelyn, tell me that please, when has war or global destruction, ever brought about world peace?”

“If a nuclear bomb targeted everything that was wrong on this planet and left no traces of its presence then it would be a fair comparison to our power, and it would be a good thing. A GREAT thing!” I threw my hands up above my head, “I’m done talking, we’re leaving, Manoel lets go.”

“You’re just going to walk away from me again?” he said in angry disbelief.

Evelyn Earth Part 38

“Evie I don’t know what to do, what do I do? Tell me what to do goddammit!”

“I don’t…arghh!” The searing pain ripped through my shoulder and I tasted blood as I bit my tongue.

“Hold on okay, just hold on. Hey you! Yeah you mate, get water. WATER!” Owen yelled at someone behind me. A familiar voice yelled back in panic and Manoel’s face appeared above Owens. His eyes widened in horror before he stepped out of my line of vision. All I could see now were the orange and ochre spots. They were multiplying all around me as if they wanted to smother me in their warmth.

                “You’re on fire, you’re on fire Evie and I don’t know what to do, its burning two holes right through you and I don’t know how to stop it” he said frantically. I felt his hands touch my face and I tried desperately to focus on his yellow eyes, but everything was so blinding.

Evelyn Earth Part 37

The Earth shook, one thunderous boom after another sent seismic waves throughout the area. My eyes would focus on one falling building before losing sight only to regain the vision of crumbling walls. Sounds swam in and out of my consciousness, voices, screams and gentle whispers. I couldn’t feel the sun on my skin anymore. The darkness churned inside me, restless, but unable to break free.

                My throat felt dry. I tried to swallow, but my tonsils were so swollen that only a rasp of air made it through. I summoned up as much saliva as I could and gulped it down only to choke. A coughing fit took hold of me and I clutched at my neck in pain.

                I felt a hand on my back and instinctively shied away from it. Where was I? It was dark and the ground I was lying on was freezing. I barked out the last remnants of air left within my lungs and inhaled deeply through my nose. The hand returned to stroke my back and I shrugged it off before rolling over. I was expecting to see stars, or feel a breeze on my skin, but a decaying ceiling stared back at me sending wafts of mould to overwhelm my senses.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 36

As the last remnants of his flesh evaporated into the wind my mind caught up with my body and I realised that there were still two guns trained on all of us. In that moment I knew that my reaction would have to be faster than the scavenger scum’s and for that I had to let go. So I did.

Two gunshots boomed mere metres away from me, but they sounded oceans away. I felt time stand still as my black dragon burst its way free out of my chest, thrusting my arms outwards and snapping my neck back almost to breaking point.

 Everything became still and quiet. I tried to open my eyes, but my lashes fluttered freely—it was simply pitch black.

“Is this death?” I whispered to myself. My voice broke the silence and I could hear Luiz’s wailing, diminished to a scared whimper, overshadowed by the rapid voices of frightened boys.

Five more gunshots fired off in quick succession. They sounded muffled and delayed, but there was no mistaking them for what they were. I felt each of them hit me, one after the other after the other. They entered the embodiment of my darkness and were swallowed up by it.  

Evelyn Earth Part 35

I needed to get back to Sebastian and tell him everything that I had learned. I knew that he would feel the same way about this as I did because as much power as we had within us and as much reverence as we held for the Earth we weren’t willing to begin a genocide of the human race. There were no two ways about it, if we started on the slippery slope of killing whoever was in our way then we would end up not caring about killing everyone. The fact that this was not only a possibility, but a probability made me shiver.

I relished the idea of being an Earth Warrior, but I didn’t want to lose my humanity in the process. I couldn’t just become a mindless destruction machine because the Mother had found me compatible with her ideals. It wasn’t who I was.

I stood up and brushed the chalk-like remnants of the rock from my fingers. All the boys were looking at me expectantly and I realised that they were counting on me to help them.

“I have to go and find my friends” I said pointlessly, they all stared back at me blank faced, waiting for me to do something, but it was bloody impossible to mime that out so I just turned and started walking away.

Evelyn Earth Part 34

After a moment’s pause though I realised that it would be useless to track down Sebastian and the others as they could be anywhere. Frankly it would take too long. My best option was to follow the group of men and find out what they were doing. It was my job after all. If they had ill intentions towards the Earth then I would need to neutralize them. How did you even determine such a thing though? It was all so confusing.

                I grumbled to myself as I paced up and down the roof of the shop. I really didn’t want to get into a fight, but my inner instincts were telling me to run after the men.

                “Dammit” I whispered before taking a step towards the edge. I concentrated a small mass of darkness in my legs and the balls of my feet and stepped off the barrier. I landed with a thud on the sidewalk and a rim of concrete dust billowed out around me. I left two size seven foot imprints behind me as I launched into a run.

                

Evelyn Earth Part 33

“It’s people like him that we can’t rely on” Sebastian seethed, “I don’t even know if I can rely on myself. We are all human after all. Our emotions could change what we believe in in a split second” he spun around to face me “we aren’t reliable Evelyn, how could She have trusted us with so much power?”

“Calm down” I put a hand on his chest and a flicker of my power transferred to him. I felt the fear and indecision that was broiling inside him. We weren’t much different after all, not on the inside. We were both caught up in something so tremendously huge that our tiny human minds couldn’t full comprehend everything that was going on.

“I think we’ve talked enough for today—too much actually. The other warrior will be here by nightfall, all we have to do now is wait, wait and not worry about all of this.”

He nodded in agreement, but his face was still creased with concern.

Travis, Gerard and Izwan came into the clearing led by Sloan and Sebastian’s features instantly resumed their previous hardness.

Evelyn Earth Part 32

           

“Why did you disconnect?” Sebastian growled as he himself extracted his consciousness from the Earth’s web.

           “There’s no point in standing around now playing Pictionary when the other soldier can make his way to us and we can speak in person” I replied.

           “You can be a real piece of work sometimes. You bloody well know that we could have continued searching for more warriors. We could have seen the full potential of this glowing map She’s made for us.”

          “Do it yourself if you fucking want! You speak as if you’re so sure about everything. Why do you think the second warrior tapped into our connection at precisely the time when we were connected? And for only a split second for that matter! They knew we were there somehow, and I for one can’t feel the web if I’m not connected. What if it was a false cry for help?”

         “You can’t know that. It could have just been a coincidence.”

         “Why does our Mother’s web glow Sebastian? Why does it fucking glow? What I saw in the vision she sent us was silver, it was fucking silver and hard like ore trapped within a rock” I exploded with irritation. He refused to analyze the information that was in front of him. Maybe he did just see things clearer than I did, he saw what he thought he was meant to see whereas I was bombarded with contradictions and confusing flashes of facts.

          I watched his face as he worked through what I had just said.

         

Evelyn Earth Part 31

“Wait, I have one more thing I wanted to ask you” he looked at me intently, “when you think of killing thousands of people do you feel as if it’s the right thing to do?”

                “When I’m in tune with the Mother I think my own beliefs get hijacked by her. I feel like I should do anything, anything at all for her benefit and that includes killing.”

                “But when you are just you, just Evelyn…”

                “I don’t know” I shook my head from side to side, “when I think about my friends, your friends, people I actually know I don’t want to kill them, but what happened with Marla that was just wrong, but here I am the next day and I can already feel the memory of her fading.”

                “It’s the same with me. I can’t help but want to protect my friends and if I had family I think it would be a completely different story.”

                “What do you mean?”

                “Are you close with your parents? Brothers? Sisters?”

                “No.”

                “Maybe that’s why we were chosen by the Mother, because we had no real familial connections of our own. No real long lasting friendships.”

               

Evelyn Earth Part 30

“It really pisses me off when you say shit like that” I growled.

“Sorry love, just an instinctive reaction of my surprise” he shrugged, “I just assumed that you were more…well informed. Or that you had at least seen something.”

“Clearly not” I looked down at my hands. Why had I stayed cooped up for so long? Was I that afraid of the outside world?”

“After the first few chaotic days everyone was out robbing each other blind. Power had been cut off everywhere and there was no sign of aid, until the angels arrived. At least that’s what the people started calling them.”
                “Angels?” I whispered.

Evelyn Earth Part 29

The strain of holding time in place was beginning to take its toll. The darkness itched to destroy that which it was wrapped around. By merely swathing Marla in it I was tantalizing the Mother’s vengeance. She wanted Marla to be consumed.

                “I won’t be able to hold onto her much longer, what do you suggest I do?” I asked Sebastian through gritted teeth.

                “Everyone up on the ridge!” he yelled. Gerard, Travis and Sloan all moved to follow him. Their actions vaguely reminded me of soldiers shifting to the position given to them by their commanding officer, and I guess that was what Sebastian was. What did that make me? Another soldier? I sure as hell couldn’t command my people, I had already lost two and the others were on the brink of walking out on me. Toya was probably scared out of her mind, watching over Owen who was tied up like a prisoner and Marla…well Marla had balls, for all the good they would do her.

                “Okay Evs release her” Sebastian called out to me, “she’ll end up shooting empty air and then we’ll deal with her like…natural people” his voice dripped with sarcasm at the last part. I pulled the power back into myself slowly, careful not to snag Marla in any way. Just as I was about to finish the process a high pitched scream jolted me. I lost control.

Evelyn Earth Part 28

Even I was surprised at my tone of voice. It felt surreal, as if the Earth Mother’s pent up rage that I had absorbed was speaking through me.

“You can’t get ahead of yourself love, self-destructing wouldn’t have done any of us any good, not just me” he replied casually. He pushed himself off the ground and looked down at me with a placid expression.

“The urge must be stronger in you, but I haven’t forgotten my humanity just yet. I still remember my friends.” He gestured behind him, as if on cue Travis exclaimed anxiously; “Self-destruct? What the fuck do you mean self-destruct?” He was standing a few steps behind Sloan who I assumed had been arguing with Sebastian whilst I was in the throes of my power overload. I searched behind them for the rest of the group; Gerard was leaning up against a fallen piece of concrete rubble, but the rest were nowhere in sight. That’s when I realized that I was in the open air.

Sunlight beat down on my head and I craned my neck backwards, closing my eyes to get the full force of the heat on my face. I exhaled slowly and then breathed in the warm air that danced and writhed in languid currents around me.

Evelyn Earth Part 27

It wasn’t at all like the first time. The first time I had fallen into the thick mass of pitch black, I had been embraced by it like a long lost daughter. This time it felt as if I were forcing myself into its heart. As I ran, my steps began to take on a lethargic quality until I was wading through the mist, exerting more and more energy until I felt drained. I decided I had come far enough and so I stopped.

Everything around me moved and shifted, but it didn’t induce dizziness, but rather made me feel at peace. I was in a dark cocoon, which I had to now figure out how to absorb. I spread my arms out to my sides and let my fingers feel the almost liquid mass at it slipped in an out of my reach. I took a deep breath and watched as tendrils of the darkness were inhaled into my mouth. This wasn’t the way though, I couldn’t stand here and try to breathe in such a large force of power, I needed it to rush into my body quickly and surely.

Sebastian would know what to do, I thought to myself, maybe he was already in here with me trying to steal the power out from under me. I creased my brow and concentrated, there was no way in hell that I would let him beat me to it.

Evelyn Earth Part 26

Everyone was looking at us. It could have been simply because we were the only thing to look at in a 3km radius, but I gathered that it was most likely because of me—me and my reckless actions. I straightened up, but let Sebastian’s hands rest on my forearms. I was still too unsteady to stand on my own and I felt like the slightest breeze could send me sideways, spilling me into the water and washing me away.

“I’m sorry” I said slowly. I didn’t know what else to say. Not only had I destroyed the docks, but I had put an end to the camp that Old Mal had started, the camp where we all had a safe slice of private safety, until now.

Sebastian’s men didn’t seem the least bit fazed. After all, this place had meant nothing to them, just a one night stop over on their journey to wherever it is they’re heading. They had probably already seen Sebastian in action before and known what all this meant. I doubted that my tiny group of survivors would even be able to comprehend what had just happened.

Marla looked furious, her whole body was visibly tensed and if it weren’t for Toya’s desperate grabbing at her arm I’m sure she would have lunged at me, for all the good it would have done her. Even in my disoriented state I could have sent out a bolt of darkness that would have devoured her whole.

 Mal was still slumped on the ground and looked the most traumatised. A silent dejected trauma always seemed worse to me than the hysterical trauma that Toya was exhibiting. Old Mal had lived around this area most of his life and in one glorious moment his home went up in black flames leaving nothing behind.

Evelyn Earth Part 25

She was waiting by the water-side. Small droplets of rain hit the ground sending out arks of dry specks. They fanned out in one glorious motion before falling and in turn creating smaller arks, which also fanned out and fell.

She looked out over the horizon summing up all that lay before her. Things had changed since she last set foot here, many years had passed and she could sense that more change was on the way. Change that she could not control since Fate was not under her command. Her distant brother had seen the plan she had put in motion. He had seen the hatred she bore towards the beings that were slowly eating away at her flesh and he had sent his own power into chosen messengers to slow her vengeance.

She saw them created on the rays of the first light only days after she had initiated her destruction. As he rose majestically over the horizon she realised that he would never allow her to rid her body of all life, he valued the humans much more than she did. So be it. Next time she would not let things get so out of hand before she acted.

Her warriors had been spread out all over her heavy body by now, but they were unfocussed, some stronger than others. Some were completely unaware of their purpose. She looked down into the depths of the ocean. She had been lying dormant and content for too long, so long in fact that she had forgotten what it meant to be awake. She shook herself, sending out ripples of seismic activity. Even that took too much concentration. If she didn’t act fast, act now all her soldiers would have turned to dust and all this effort would have been wasted.