Cloudy Sky: The Unlucky Thirteen

45 - Hidden Behind Stone

"Vienna?" my voice sounds faint even to me, and I hope it's just from panic, but the way she flashes a glance at me says otherwise. It's concern, but she masks it under a casual air. She's not fooling anyone, though. Vienna's always been the one caring after us, and no matter how much she's changed, she can't ever just drop it.

"Capri, you okay?" She rises from where she'd been sitting, legs crossed. Her arm is no longer bleeding, but there's blood crusted all over it.

"I think ..." I manage a weak smile. "I may have touched something poisoned."

Vienna touches my shoulder, "Sit down. Isn't earth magic stereotypically healing?"

"Yeah, but I'm corrupted magic, and whatever you want to do will just crumble," I mention. I can feel a headache coming on. I raise my hands to rub my temples, closing my eyes briefly before reopening them to glance around.

"Oh, I forgot that," she muses. "Then you'll be fine. You probably won't die."

I stare at her skeptically. "What am I supposed to do, then?" I don't believe her. Poison, after all, isn't meant to cause a simple stomachache. The side effects should be worse than that.

She ponders this for a moment before mentioning, "Wait for everyone else to return. We'll see if you can keep going. Where's — oh, there's Leilani and Taurus. Perfect. We're missing Pisces, Aquaria, Carina. Ari and Peridot. The rest we have."

"Should we check on those three and Ari?" Scorpio's casual voice sounds faraway to me as he purposefully omits Peridot's name. I close my eyes and lean back. The tingling in my fingertips is becoming almost unbearable. I just want it to stop.

"Ari and Peridot are fine," Leo interjects in a freezing voice. "They don't need to be checked on. Somebody go and look for those three."

"I'll go," Gemi volunteers. "Scorps, let's go." There are dim noises of Gemi trying to cajole Scorpio into following him. He's only answered by grumbled excuses.

"What's up with Ari and Peridot?" asks Vienna, sounding confused.

"Uh ..." Leo mumbles. "They're alive. You don't need to check on them. We just need to get Sagitta therapy."

"Great, well, let's wait until Pisces comes back." Vienna's voice is heavy with sarcasm as she mentions her ex.

"Pisces is not a therapist, he's a simp!" argues Sagittaria, her voice slightly choked. Leo snorts and mutters an agreement.

The silence that falls after this is oppressive. Everyone's silent as Gemi drags a quietly protesting Scorpio towards one of the hallways. I feel the tingling in my fingers begin to settle. I don't know if this is poison, but I don't like it by any means.

Colors swirl behind my eyes, a silvery blue, a chocolate brown, forming into shapes that I can't quite place, but they're wrong. Beneath my fingers, I find the gritty surface of tree bark. I move my fingers along it as if to calm myself, but this is a hallucination, isn't it? The tree is odd. I can only see the thick tree trunk, but in detail. And there's something carved into it.

I stop there, my fingers tracing the shape as I struggle to think of what it could possibly be. It seems to be a curvy, odd n with a loop at the last leg of the letter.

Something I'm sure that I haven't seen before. I know there's no symbol like this as far as I can remember.

But the images fade away before I can wonder what they are, replaced by a curious girl's face. She has long, straight moon–white hair that surrounds her face in a halo. Sky–blue eyes peer at me innocently from a chalky heart–shaped face. She looks so innocent, but also as if she's trapped in a wall of ice. I can't place her species, but then her pale pink lips part and she hisses in a ghostly whisper, stressing the last word, "Know me for all Eternity."