Moving Along Remastered

Chapter 39: Origin Point

Warning: The following chapter contains depictions of extreme violence and torture. Viewer discretion is advised.

Moving Along Chapter 39: Origin Point

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My eye blinked with a stabbing dryness that came from falling unconscious with it wide open. Tears welled up in it to soothe the irritation. After a few gentle rubs with my paw, my vision cleared to the sight of where I'd fallen to Zuboi. Floating structures still drifted around me without any direction. Still orange sunlight filtered through a layer of clouds that shined bright enough for me to lift a paw to shield my muzzle. With my white furred paw silhouetted against the rays, I could see scarring like tiger stripes along my arm. Wounds that I'd been inflicted with healed, but not without evidence of the damage they'd done. The pain in my ruined eye had gone away and when I pressed a gentle paw against it, I could feel a long groove against my fingertips. It'd never open again.

That was the least of my or anyone else's worries, though. I could feel it. Even though everything looked the same, I could feel it. The emptiness. When you know without a shadow of a doubt that you're alone without any form of confirmation. I could feel the wind blowing through my ears without the sound of life to accompany it. As I stood up, there was only the scuff of rubble underneath my boots that could be heard. No other movement far and wide. A dark scaled figure lay motionless in a pool of silver a few platforms away that I had to force my longing gaze from. There wasn't undoing what had been done.

Red fur on my arm stood on end that leaned in the direction of what I sought most. Dread creeped up my spine to the back of my neck fur as I slowly turned my head. In the distance, only one good leap away to a rooftop, was dark furred shape that was muzzle down. It lie so still I would've thought there was no life to be seen had the smallest breath not shifted its form. Less than a second went by before I was crouched next to the wolf and cradling his head against my chest. "Ziro??" I gave him a light shake in my arms. He made a light groan from being shifted around. His wounds had stopped bleeding though they remained fresh gashes. "Ziro, come on, wake up!! You have to stay with me!!" But even as I begged him to stir, I knew from the clawing fear in my chest that he wasn't there.

What I held was a body without the soul of the wolf that I loved. He'd already been taken from me before I had a chance to fight for him. A heartbroken whine rose in my throat that I had to force back down into my squirming stomach. I allowed myself an indulgent kiss on his forehead while I held him close to me, willing him to come back. In the midst of my misty gaze, another body lay across from us. Sirine's lithe shape lay on her side, her paw stretched out to her brother in desperation. She hadn't made it far. Without me, the fight to survive had been short. Now they were...

"They're not dead you know," the cold reassuring voice of Zuboi spoke to me from above. I glared up to see him descending on a large platform. His red eyes bore down at me in restrained hunger. All of his scales had a faint glow threatened to burst in a shimmer of white light. Behind him, two books rotated around each other with their pages flipping themselves as though read through by an unseen reader. My paw reached back into my bag on instinct to find it empty. Zuboi nodded in response, "yes, I've reclaimed what has been rightfully mine while you were passed out. Half of that at least." The lizard narrowed his eyes at me which I returned with a death glare.

"So you've succeeded then?" I growled scornfully, every bit of hate I had in my heart for him pulsed through my veins. Fera's fire burned just beneath our skin. "You absorbed every last soul on this planet and robbed them of their existence?" The knowledge that only two living beings had their souls intact only made the rage come easier. Only this time, instead of clouding my judgement, I felt it harmonizing with my determination to defeat him.