Rising Shards

As I swirled around in the darkness, flashes that looked like lightning bolted around me. I wasn’t sure if I was knocked out or dead or somehow still conscious swimming around in the Elka. In the flashes, I saw Jeans and I meeting in the hospital, blood from my fangs. I wondered if my life was flashing before my eyes until I saw strange images I had never seen before. Waves of strange energy destroying a natural landscape, massive cities held up by giant robots, other villages of Exumi, a masked being with a flowing cape, green vats with things that looked like organs inside of them, and an empty glass case with a bloody handprint on it.

I woke up on my back, faintly aware my ankles were underwater. A wave hit me, and I snapped upwards, grasping the sand in my hands and coughing up whatever water had joined my lungs on my journey. I had washed onto a rock formation and could barely see anything. 

“Hello!” I called out, hoping I was really awake and not in another layer of a nightmare. “Oka! Kalei! Anyone?” 

It took me a few seconds to see that the liquid surrounding me wasn’t water, but instead the dark substance that filled Jeans’ sword. I quickly pulled my legs out of the Elka and crouched.

My backpack somehow washed up near me, and I checked inside to see that miraculously, everything inside hadn’t gotten wet. I told myself that if I made it out of this, I’d write a letter to the Brambler Travel Co. for their incredible quality products and for not lying when they said something was waterproof. 

That is, if I could make it out of this. I had the bright idea to search my backpack for the white disk Dr. Diast had given me to go back to a safe spot. I tried clicking mine, and got nothing.

“Of course,” I said. “Why would you work now?”

With my eyes adjusted, I could see I wasn’t underground. I was presumably still in the wasteland, but it looked different than before.

This didn’t feel like a natural night. Obviously, the giant lake of Elka in front of me would be a big giveaway to that, but that wasn’t the only sinister appearance of the area. I could see trees at the edge of the liquid ahead, and they were all dead, like cracks in the world clawing up to dim light. Even the red blood moon was obscured.

Behind me, the lake sloped downward, silently pouring itself into a swirling chasm deep below that made my stomach throb in pain as I realized how doomed I was. I didn’t know what would happen if I spent any more time touching the Elka. I sat stranded in the middle of a maelstrom of dark void stuff in a place I didn’t recognize. Not only was I alone, my body felt like it had declared open revolt against me. 

I felt around and found Minty near me. I tried to ignite the blade, but Jeans had ruined the blood collector.

“I’m sorry, Minty,” I said. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt like that.”

I put her back in the sheath, vowing to keep her safe. I rolled over, and in the distance, I could see something glowing. A faded light that grew softly before fading. That was the only light I could see.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Someone has to come save me. 

I was heaving in the dark. It felt like something was inflating my intestines and they were about to burst.  

How did I end up here? I’m in so much pain.  

I felt my mind go faint as it sped in fear.

“Someone! Anyone! Please!” I yelled.

I didn’t get a response. I shivered. Did I die? Would something tell me if I died? I felt around more and noticed strange grooves in the stone I sat on. My phone’s batteries were dead, so I couldn’t use it for a flashlight. While it didn’t have any kind of connection to back home, my wristband still had power, and I activated the home screen on it to light up the etchings in the stone.

There were drawings of seven people on them, each with a name beneath them. They all had fangs. The writing was kind of hard to make out.

“Dagro Akuar.” I read under the first etching.

“Neut Galatia. Kara Valor.”

“Tik Moonheart.”

“Anastasia Tarian.”

“Arctus Kathron.”

I sighed. It was too bad the more heroic sounding Atrians Mawiril talked about weren’t there. They’d do a lot better than an anxious high schooler who just got her fangs a few months earlier and could still barely use her powers.

“Arctus, I really messed up. I’m a pretty crappy Atrian, huh?” I said, patting the etching of him. “I wish you didn’t get poisoned. I bet you’d have some big fix for all this. I mean, all I’ve ever seen you do is give me advice as you fixed a bloodsaber and get poisoned, but presumably you’d be a lot better at this.”

I remembered the first time I met Arctus, back at Rising Shards.

“I know you said you hoped I got away from Jeans,” I said. “But she found me. And I wasn’t strong enough to stop her. And you’re probably like dying too from that poison. If I just, I don’t know—”

“Zeta?”