(Solitude - Felsmann + Tiley Reinterpretation - M83)
Somehow we managed to sneak our way past Madame Blainey and out into the cold night air. The stars twinkled brightly, twisting shimmered shards between the thick black sky and lending luck to our skin as the earth shifted and steadied within the Floo system.
The wind felt too cold.
The air too thin.
My lungs too barren.
My heart too heavy.
Ominis had kept his hand on the back of my arm as we crept along the ground. Boots crunching, breaths staggered, thoughts hurried, motive steady.
The familiar entrance to the catacombs pulled from the earth, highlighted in a thick, moonlit fog. The silhouette of a figure paced quickly back and forth just ahead of it and though my hopeful heart wished it to be Sebastian, reality instead offered his twin.
Anne's hands were shaking. Her night gown covered in a coat two sizes too big and a thin blanket, the edges of her fingers stained in dark ink.
As we stepped past the last tree, her pacing ceased and her head snapped in our direction, wand raised and shoulders thrown back. Her powerful demeanor only crumbling as realization slapped her features.
"Oh Ominis. Atley." Her breathless greeting clung in my throat as she dove into Ominis' arms and nuzzled her nose to his neck. His grasp on my arm absent for the first time since we left as it pulled her into his chest, tight. His own eyes pressed closed, brows knit tightly together.
I found myself running my thumb across my own wrist, craving that comfort from my other half.
"What's going on? You-" She pulled back from the hug and wiped a tear from her cheek, her eyes flicked to mine and a shiver slithered along my skin at the fear just beneath them. The familiar brown a reminder in and of itself of the truths I now knew.
Of the core reason we were truly here to begin with.
"He's inside the catacomb. I've never seen him like this. He won't listen, won't speak more than the same words over and over." Her fingers fisted in Ominis' shirt sleeve. "And the inferi-"
"The inferi?"
"They're everywhere..." A certain sort of absence glazed over her eyes. "I- I thought he was being attacked when I first saw them but-" She clenched her teeth together, forcing a breath through her nose as Ominis' fingers squeezed her shoulder. "-then he showed me the relic and said he'd learned how to use it..."
Words tasted sour on my tongue. "Sebastian somehow... created them?"
"He's controlling them." Her brown eyes wide and bottom lip shaking.
Ominis pressed his eyelids shut, tilting his head to the side as a muscle in his jaw shifted. "This is... powerful dark magic. Creating inferi is incredibly difficult, but controlling them?"
Anne tugged herself from his arms and pulled us towards the entrance. "Sebastian's gone too far. He's is in real trouble now... We need to hurry."
We let the chill of the night bite at the back of our necks as we nearly sprinted into the catacomb head first, wands raised and all thoughts united on our Sebastian.
Everything felt a slowed blur, as if time had been left behind with the light of the stars.
The walls of the catacomb flitted with shadows.
Wall hung torches had tumbled to the ground, igniting the dried wood beams and bits that littered the floors. The heat a heavy welcome to an unruly warmth. Flames danced and sung through the chaos, flits of light marrying tumbling shadows and holding steady the air of foreboding. The rippling oranges and reds overshadowed the broken bones and backs of the undead.
The inferi gnashed fingers and teeth at us from every corner, spines and ribs uninterrupted by the heat or the smoke, only tumbling upon being set ablaze by the blasting curse or the fire making charm.
The three of us wound through the maze of tunnels and odd rooms, crawling through the dirt and fighting through the creatures and terror weighing down our own bones.
Around
and
around.
Fire
singed the tips of my clothes,
flames
kissed the edges of my shadow,
smoke
tied a noose around my neck.
The final room came in to view, packed thick with flames, moving bones and tucked directly in the center, the silhouette of my shattered heart.
His hand held the relic, fingers clenched around the small pyramid, glowing brightly against his skin. His shoulders heaved through an invisible struggle I could only imagine stemmed from the effort to control the dark arts seated below his chest and within his palm.
The flames danced over my eyes, heat searing to my skin - burning, aching. The magic prickling beneath my veins now boiled within my blood, smoke in the air forcing my breaths to gasps and chokes.
And through it all, my eyes locked to Sebastian's.
His warm brown eyes studied mine through clouded determination. His troublesome grin tipped the edges of his confusion though it felt anything but warm. This smile was something far worse, far less the boy I knew and loved and far more that of darkened understanding. It dripped with a pain I knew too well, a pain I'd hoped the world had saved only for me and I was tossed back in time to the first instance my heart had crumbled for him. The knowledge that this boy I'd given my entire heart too, could feel the world as heavy a burden as I...
yet perhaps I had been wrong.
Perhaps his heart endured a far heavier weight than any of us could ever imagine. A pain of guilt and responsibility unnecessarily bestowed upon himself with needlepointed fear.
His heart torn entirely apart by a world unfair and burning,
cut deep by a knife sharpened by pure intentions and unrestrained love.
His eyes rimmed red, bags beneath dark as the night. Flickering flames kissed his nose, casting shifting shadows over his face - over his aching eyes.
The stars outside surely twinkled in remembrance of what once was,
slowly burning alive until our reality caught up to theirs
silent,
deathly cold,
gone forever.
His lips pulled up at the edges into the smallest of smirks though something full and dark twisted his features.
War and peace,
a hurried chaos.
Our second of eternity broken by crackling desperation.
His words pressed against the smoke.
"I told you I could do it."
JE LEEST
Me and the Devil: Sebastian Sallow
FanfictieSebastian Sallow is a tortured soul with the world on his shoulders whose only mission is to save his sister Anne - at any cost. Atley Barlowe is a budding new witch who also carries the world on her shoulders as she travels the road less traveled t...
