Darkness lurks beneath the surface of society, something that has been growing and devouring the innocent for decades. Luna Aurion stumbles on a human farm under the streets of a supposedly peaceful human city, but before she can report back, she is...
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Mer was alone in the darkness again. She wasn't too surprised that Vincent had been wrong about them 'holding onto each other'. It was like him to throw them face first into hell, but with his message to Neil on the line, less likely that he'd done so on purpose. Regardless of motive, she had to move forward or fall back into the void, and she took her first steps into the shadows.
The darkness wrapped her ankles and whispered at her feet, the words undiscernible but heavy with emotion as they grazed her skin. Wisps grasped at her legs and scratched down them with an infusion of such strong feeling that she had to stop after just a few steps. Rage, sadness, fear, condescension, relish–all spun around her in a cyclone of agony and glee of suffering. It made her sick, and she stopped to curl up on her knees.
"Do you think she's tainted?"
"It's cruel to let it live just to grow into a monster."
"Have you seen the father rampaging in the complexes?"
"Oh my goodness, yes. They say he likes to torture children."
"Maybe he'll do everyone a favor and kill her himself."
Mer covered her ears but it didn't shake away the gossip, the spite and fear. This wasn't real now, but it had been. People didn't change so easily and Mer knew the mages feared and despised her for being like her father, a creature of darkness. Rush loved her no matter what and crushed all of her worry, and he was here somewhere with her. Finding him gave her energy to stand and try to push on.
At least it did at first.
When she stood and moved, she came face to face with someone. Blond hair flitted through the darkness as long as the woman's knees, and blue eyes met Mer's, empty and void of life. It was as if it had been drained from her, and dark circles sank the woman's eyes into ghastly pits.
But she looked too much like Luna.
"Meredith," the woman said, her voice hoarse as if she'd been crying. "You are going to be such a pitiful creature." Hands reached for her, and Mer couldn't move as they sank in and came back out with a bundle in their hands. It was her, as a baby, in the arms of a ghost conjured by the void.
Her mother.
"I can feel the darkness, just like your father." Ruby Aurion touched the space just below the child's neck.
Mer leaned in with insatiable curiosity for how she looked in her mother's arms, the entire time ready for the illusion of herself to have empty sockets with the way this was playing out. They didn't. Nothing looked back but the innocent cinnamon eyes of an infant too young to understand the tears dripping from Ruby's eyes onto the child's blanket. Mer was so close that when Ruby turned to her, she could see every dark speck of blue in a pair of eye that would be vibrant if she laughed.
