A Vision of Happiness: Rise of Evil (Book 6)

Chapter 11

VISIONER

Visioner felt a guilty pang in his stomach as he glanced at Mink's empty seat. He pushed away the feeling.

She'll be safer, He thought. But...I'll miss her.

He remembered his fight with Mink and felt a tinge of regret.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so harsh. But how could she even think that Brightness is the murderer?

Visioner sighed, scrawling down the answer of the question on his scroll. He couldn't push away the image of Brightness, back when they had been in the cave with Destroyer and Starspeckle. His sweet, strange sister, sidling up to his side to sleep, offering him a slice of her rare orange. Her pale violet eyes looking up into his dark purple ones, unspoken questions and statements flashing by. 

How much she had changed since she had come to Jade Mountain. 

No, Visioner argued. She's just coping with finding out she's an animus and about Destroyer and the truth of the world.

He peeked at Brightness seat, which was also empty. His younger twin sister hardly came to her classes anymore, and when she did, she didn't focus on the lesson and stared at a wall, her eyes faraway. 

When the gong sounded to end the last class of the day, Visioner pushed himself up, whispering a goodbye to Webs, and left the cave. He limped towards the cave he had once shared with Mink. Scorpion had moved into Sepia and Deathstalker's cave, and he was alone once again. 

When he entered his cave, he was startled that Mink's spot was empty. Of course, he'd prepared himself for it, but he hadn't expected Sunny to completely clean away the spot. The soft polar bear fur nest was nowhere to be seen, all of the mud sculptures were gone, and the only scroll that remained on Mink's scroll rack was the guide around Jade Mountain Academy. 

He froze as he saw the splintered remains of the painting he had given Mink during their first week of school. Sunny hadn't cleaned this up- it had been hidden behind the scroll rack. 

Visioner made his way to the shattered painting. Numbly, he picked up a scrap of the canvas. A bright, sky-blue eye stared up at him. 

Feeling as if the entire mountain had crashed onto him, he brushed the pieces into a big pile of wood and canvas paper and set it alight.