Celeste held her abdomen, fighting in vain to keep the blood in.
Dawn stood over her with cold silence, the woman struggled to understand what was even happening at the moment.
Her only cue was the white haired young man kneeling a few meters away looking at her like he had witnessed an irreparable wrong.
His facial features was unfamiliar but somehow she knew him.
"Mom.."
Only when the boy said these words did it click.
"Ives?"
He stood up and she gasped in shock, parts of his lower body was gone while further down his legs petrified into solid stone.
He had to forcefully pull up his leg with each step just to maintain movement. Celeste couldn't stand the sight, she mustered her own strength and dragged her fading body towards Ives.
Suddenly a heavy weight held one of her feet in place, Dawn matched down on her right leg keeping her from proceeding.
He didn't have an intention of even allowing them to touch for even the slightest second.
"I'm sorry." His knife rose and fell. Everything went black.
Celeste laid on her belly on the wet concrete, a knife sticking out the back of her neck.
"If a dead body is what pleases you then you can have it."
Dawn left Celeste and let Ives hold her deceased body. After what felt like eternity, he was reminded how the warmth of his mother's body felt.
"Is it done?"
A calm assertive female voice echoed from behind him, the owner stepped out in front of Ives.
It was Eva.
"Ives Rothschild. You have stood in violation of your oath and sworn duty as a member of the order of the veiled initates. Your actions have been reviewed by the shining ones and the council and the verdict is that your life is forfeit."
She said it like she was stating the obvious, Ives gave his response.
"I joined your little cult to help me get stronger rather I only found the ways in which you made me weaker and tampered with my life for your little amusement."
"The order does not exist to benefit you, such was never promised. Everything we have done was for the greater cause, you were always just a means to an end." Eva returned soullessly.
Ives chuckled out.
"You people are too deluded to see how stupid you truly are."
Eva gave him an angry glare, Ives remained lively even in his most critical moments. Ives raised his gun and pointed it at his head before pulling the trigger, the bullet that came out grew to the size of a trunk within a tenth of a second and blew off Ives' entire head.
Eva looked at the scene without much emotion.
"Is there any way to ensure they're dead?" Dawn meticulously asked.
"He needs to think in order to apply his aberration. No one can think without their brain. Destroy what's left then report back." Eva left the scene.
Dawn looked at them. Mother and son laying side by side in death. For a brief moment he desired this privilege but shook it off. Such thoughts were useless to him.
He threw several explosive charges and left the area, they blew up destroying the bodies. Or at least that is what they hoped to believe.
Somewhere in the rubble, a piece of charred flesh writhed then collapsed in on itself.
____________
She hovered on the edge of waking consciousness and non-existence for a brief moment then suddenly the world felt fully real again and so did Celeste.
The world around her was unrecognisable from the one she knew but she knew the arms holding her.
"Ives?"
The boy smiled with such honesty that it was unthinkable to even consider it being fake.
Celeste looked at their environment and was instantly mortified, sprawled across this starry void were buildings the size of mountains sparkling with a holy pristine sheen.
Then feathered humans danced in the background often times dissolving and reassembling like they weren't fully stable.
"Umm....?" Selene didn't know what to make of what she was seeing.
"I needed to make sure they wouldn't think to look for us. Putting an end to the fight would have been easy all I would need to do was simply make everyone's head explode the second I marched in but I needed to make the order think I am dead. I can't risk them editing events just to kill me or having to be on the run endlessly."
Ives explained.
"So you let them kill us?"
"Yes. Our bodies..."
Celeste studied her current form and realised that she was semi-translucent. She could even feel the void passing right through her but could pull on her skin and it would stretch like rubber.
"Should I be asking how you did this?"
"Yeah. I can materialize anything I envision, its not omnipotent since it requires considerable strain to even perform even the slightest feat. I am literally pulling against reality itself but I had enough strength and time to prepare this. I materialized a sort of pseudo- afterlife, a confined space separate from the normal flow of the universe where perfect copies of our mind and body would reappear in as souls after our bodies get destroyed like a computer backup. I am not sure how safe here is but it isn't going to be easy to get to. I hope so and the order won't hunt you anymore."
Ives waited for his mother to digest it all and when she did she sighed in relief.
"Don't you have more questions?" Ives asked surprised at her nonchalance.
"Not really. The order are the bad guys right?"
Ives nodded.
"Then that's all I need to know."
"What about...Umm?"
"How you did all this? Well. You said you could materialize your thoughts right?"
"But that isn't normal."
"Honey. I am a lab technician, I studied many weird things but believe me this is the least weirdest thing I had seen."
Ives couldn't hold himself any longer and pulled his mom into a deep hug, he sobbed slightly into her shoulder.
"I thought you were gone forever. The day you died, I wish I died with you."
"What?"
Celeste felt a flood of unfamiliar memories and experiences enter her mind, she remembered seeing Ives as a young man a little ways ahead then a sharp pain and feeling her body slowly grow cold and still.
She pieced it togther, she had been dead all this time and was now somehow alive. Her little boy was now an adult, having lived a decade without her.
"I'm sorry. I left my baby alone for so long."
She comforted her son.
"Your sister's family are devils. I went through hell for just breathing wrong."
Hearing this, Celeste's arm tightened around Ives.
"How could she? I hope she's dead."
"Yeah. I may have overdid it." Ives remembered the gruesome ways he disposed of his relatives, the cruelty he performed that night shook even him.
"If you didn't then I would have." Celeste confessed.
"You are my Baby. Don't apologise for protecting yourself." Celeste held his face and said into his eyes.
"Okay." Ives smiled at his mother's stance. She was exactly how she remembered him.
Their bodies began glowing, Ives held Celeste and pulled both of them towards a portal down below.
A flowing blue mass appeared in a room. Slushing with energy before slowly ejecting the repaired bodies of Celeste and Ives then it collapsed with a loud bang having expended all its internal energy and mass.
Celeste gasped.
"What?!" Ives turned to see what was going on.
Celeste's arms were wrapped around her breasts and her legs folded in to conceal her pussy.
She said barely holding back her nervous laughter.
"Baby. I'm naked?!"