Chapter 68- Body Paint
The thorns tightened. Sarah's blood ran in thin rivulets down her calves, pooling on the floor in dark, viscous puddles that caught the dying light of her orbs and gleamed like oil.
She didn't scream. Didn't flinch. She simply looked down at Edward's hands, at the way his fingers trembled against her skin.
Red.
Sarah stared down at him.
"How pitiful, your emotions are far too weak."
The white orb above her palm pulsed once, twice, and the shadows in the corridor stretched toward Edward like living things, pulling him at his ankles, his wrists, his throat.
"You've been holding onto that for so long, haven't you? That little seed of jealousy. That quiet, gnawing hunger." Her voice was soft, almost tender. "Watching her look at him. Watching her want him. Knowing she'll never want you the same way."
"Shut your mouth." Edward's voice was raw, cracked. His hands tightened on her legs, the thorns digging deeper.
Sarah stared down at her own leg, the thorns still digging into her skin and drawing blood.
She gestured with her hands.
Splat.
Her own foot bursted instantly like a balloon.
Red
Across the wooden wall.
Her foot had exploded inside Edward's grip, leaving the thorns charred.
Flesh stitched back together, muscles intertwined and her bones grew back into place.
Her fingers found her hair, threading through the strands with a gentleness that made anyone staring at her shudder. "You've made peace with being invisible. With being nothing. With watching the woman you love fall for someone else and telling yourself it's enough just to see her happy."
Edward's breath came in ragged gasps. His hands were shaking now, the thorns loosening, the crimson light dimming.
[She's trying to get in my head. This woman. She's the devil in human flesh]
"You don't have to be nothing," Sarah murmured. Her amber eyes were very close now, glowing in the darkness, pulling him in.
"Shut up."
Smoke curled from the shattered ceiling. Emergency lights flickered in erratic spasms, casting the scene in pulses of red and shadow. Blood pooled in the cracks between floorboards, dark and glistening.
Sarah stood at the center of it all, untouched.
She tilted her head, studying Edward's trembling hands. The thorns on his hands had gone dark, their crimson light extinguished. His fingers were white-knuckled, desperate.
"How pathetic."
She raised her hand.
Not fast. Not dramatic. Just a lazy gesture, fingers curling toward her palm like she was beckoning something forward.
The white orb materialized above Edward's leg.
Not near it. Around it. A sphere of pure, condensed force that encompassed his right knee, his calf, his ankle. The light was blinding, searing, the color of a star's core.
Edward's eyes went wide.
Pop.
"FUCK!"
Blood sprayed across the corridor in a fine mist, catching the emergency lights and glittering like rubies. Flesh, bone, sinew, all of it simply ceased, vaporized by the sphere's impossible pressure. What remained of Edward's leg ended in a charred, smoking stump just below the thigh.
His body folded, collapsing sideways, his hands finally releasing their grip on Sarah's legs as he hit the floor with a hollow thud.
Sarah stepped over him.
Her bare feet left prints in the spreading pool of his blood, but she didn't look down. Didn't acknowledge him at all. Her amber eyes were fixed on Seraphina, frozen in the doorway, her hands raised but her expression slack with horror.
"I don't see what's in it for you to try to stop me here."
Seraphina had her guard up, her eyes glowing with a burning determination.
"What you're doing is clearly wrong, you're the bad guy here!"
Sarah tried to stifle a laugh. "I don't understand why you humans would ever do such a thing? Give up your miserable lives to stop the inevitable."
Behind her, Edward's body convulsed. His hands scrabbled at the floor, nails leaving furrows in the wood, dragging himself toward the wall as if he could somehow escape the pain that was only just beginning to register.
Sarah didn't turn.
She raised her hand again.
The white orb materialized above Edward's left knee.
Pop.
More blood. More vaporized flesh. The second stump was messier than the first, the sphere having caught only part of his leg, leaving ragged flaps of skin that hung like wet cloth.
This time, Edward screamed.
"FUCK YOU!!"
It was an ugly sound, raw and animal, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. His back arched off the floor, his hands flying to the ruin of his leg, fingers sinking into exposed muscle before jerking away.
Sarah blinked slowly, still unfazed.
"See what happens?"
She raised her hand a third time.
The orb materialized above what remained of his right thigh.
Pop.
Silence.
Edward's body went limp. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but there was nothing behind them anymore. Just shock. Just emptiness. His hands lay palm-up on the floor beside him, fingers curled slightly, trembling.
Now he can't run.
Sarah stepped over him again, moving deeper into the corridor. Behind her, Edward's chest rose and fell in shallow, irregular gasps, but he didn't move. Couldn't move. The stumps of his legs twitched occasionally, muscles remembering what they'd lost.
A flicker of movement.
Sarah's head turned, not much, just enough to catch the shimmer of displaced air to her left. Hoshimi, invisible, his mana signature suppressed to almost nothing, his blade already in motion.
She sidestepped.
The blade passed through empty air, close enough to stir her hair. Hoshimi's outline flickered as he adjusted his trajectory, bringing the sword around in a reverse arc aimed at her throat.
Sarah leaned back.
The blade passed inches from her chin. She could feel the cold of it, the hum of its divine light, the hunger in its edge.
Her eyes narrowed.
[On top of the sword inside him, that magical weapon, I can feel my sister's mana radiating from it.]
She backed away, her back against the wall, her eyes suddenly widening as a wide smile spread across her face.
"You humans can be so cruel! Even to your own progenitors!!"
She reached out, not with her hand, but with her will. A white orb materialized directly in Hoshimi's path, and he ran into it.
The impact threw him backward, his invisibility shattering as he tumbled across the floor, his sword clattering from his grip. He hit the wall, slid down it, and didn't get up immediately.
Sarah's crimson gaze shifted.
Seraphina had moved while she was distracted. The girl was closer now, her hands raised, her mouth open, mana gathering in her throat for a sonic blast that would shatter eardrums and crack bone.
Sarah's fingers wrapped around her neck and slammed her down into the wooden floorboards.
"Augh!!"
Sarah stood up, wiping the blood off her hands.
"I'm feeling rather…infuriated."
Her eyes wandered over towards Hoshimi's blade.
Snap.
A white orb that materialized in front of Seraphina's mouth was smaller than the others, no larger than a marble. It sat there, hovering inches from her lips, absorbing the sound before it could form.
Seraphina's eyes went wide.
She tried to step back, but her feet wouldn't move. The orb's pull had her anchored, pressing down on her shoulders, her chest, her legs, pinning her in place like a butterfly on a board.
Sarah walked toward her.
Slow. Unhurried. Her bare feet made soft sounds on the blood-slick floor, each step deliberate, measured.
"What an impolite little thing, that useless sense of justice, it's something that's also going to get you killed."
She stopped inches from Seraphina's face. Close enough to count the tears tracking down her cheeks. Close enough to see the terror in her amber eyes.
"You say you're free, free from corruption, but isn't that what your little sense of justice is? A sort of propaganda to ensure that you aren't a hazard to the rest of your species, an insurance so that one will die for the others to survive."
"Shut up!!"
Sarah reached out. Her fingers brushed Seraphina's cheek, wiping away a tear.
"You really are pretty aren't you?" she murmured.
Seraphina's eyes lit up with a burning hatred, her arms reaching out towards her.
"Go kill yourself!!"
Sarah blinked.
Black.
"AHHH!!"
Her yell was a desperate screech, her arms twisted and turned, Seraphina's bones cracked and turned into mush, blood dripped down her forearms, her fingers were bent in all sorts of directions, her usually straight forearms were mangled, her breathing became labored as she dropped down towards the floor as if a heavy anvil was sitting on her back.
A flicker of movement.
Hoshimi, up again. His blade back in his hand. His face blank despite the blood running from his scalp, his shoulder, his side. He ran towards her, stabbing her straight in her gut.
Sarah didn't turn, blood dripped from the corner of her lips.
She simply raised her free hand, wiping her lips and snapped her fingers.
The white orb that materialized behind her was massive, the size of a carriage wheel. It pulsed once, twice, and the wave of force that erupted from it threw Hoshimi backward like a leaf in a hurricane.
He hit the far wall, thirty feet away and kept going, crashing through the plaster and into the room beyond. Dust billowed. Wood splintered.
Stay down.
Sarah turned back to Seraphina.
The girl was crying now, silent tears streaming down her face, her body trembling against the orb's invisible grip. Her disfigured hands were still raised, but there was nothing behind them anymore. Just fear. Just despair.
Sarah leaned in close. Her lips brushed Seraphina's ear.
"I need to keep you alive," she whispered. "After all, even I don't want to face the repercussions of breaking an Oath."
She stepped back.
The orb in front of Seraphina's mouth pulsed, and the sonic blast that had been building in her throat released, not outward, but inward, collapsing back into her lungs, her chest, her heart.
Seraphina's eyes rolled back.
Her body slumped, the orb's grip releasing her, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap of tangled pink hair and too-large sleeves.
Still breathing.
Sarah looked down at her. At the slow rise and fall of her chest. At the blood trickling from her nose, her ears, the corners of her mouth.
For now.
A sound behind her.
Edward.
He'd dragged himself across the floor, using his elbows, his chin, anything that would move him forward. His legs, what remained of them left wet trails in the blood. His face was gray, his eyes unfocused, but his hands kept moving.
Still fighting.
Sarah watched him crawl.
"Why are you all so stubborn!?"
She pressed the heel of her foot into his face, it dug into his eye, drawing blood.
The heel of Sarah's foot ground into Edward's eye socket, and the sound that escaped him was less a scream than a wet, rattling gasp. His fingers clawed at her ankle, nails scraping uselessly against her skin.
"I'm going to kill you!!"