When, one day, the world just suddenly ends, Em stumbles into the nothing, an empty void that lies beneath the surface of reality, the sole occupants of which are malevolent shadow beings called glowdarks.
Only a select number of individuals possess...
"What do you think?" I cock my head to the side. "Edible?"
"Anything's edible if you chew hard enough." Comma cracks her knuckles. "So do you want to do the honours, or should I?"
"I got this." I take a deep breath and creep over to the boulder. My shoes slide in and out of the puddles noiselessly. The scaly rodent continues to nibble on the fungus flakes, unaware of my presence.
Slowly and carefully, I position my hands just above the rodent, getting ready to snatch it up. I attack, and just as my fingers close around the rodent's scales, the crack in the boulder opens up wide, revealing a set of rotted teeth. The boulder chomps down on both the rodent and my hands.
I flinch, unable to process what's just happened. There isn't even any pain, at least until the boulder starts grinding its teeth along my wrists, trying to sever my hands. Then I scream. Next thing I know, Comma's hacking away at the boulder with her chakram.
The boulder spits out my hands, keeping the rodent for itself, and then rolls away, picking up speed as it goes.
"Good going," says Comma, absorbing her chakram back into her aura.
My hands throb, and I can barely feel my fingers. "What the hell was that?"
"The lousiest hunting I've ever seen in my life."
I kneel down on the ground and slide my hands inside the ooze puddles—that numbs the aching a bit. Above us, the clouds start to drift together, blotting out the sun. A cool breeze starts to blow downwards. We glance up. It's tough to make out from down here, but it looks like little bulbs at the tips of the branches have opened up and they're blowing cold air down onto us. I notice a series of bulges along the trunks, where the hollow trees have filled up with air.
"This place just gets weirder and weirder," I mutter.
Comma tugs down on her toque. The wind grows cooler, forming little frost clouds when it collides with the ground.
I hear a crack.
The puddle I've been soaking my hands in freezes over. I try to yank my hands free, but they're stuck in the ice. The ice cuts off circulation, and my hands go numb again as a sharp pain shoots up my wrist.
"A little help?"
Comma rolls her eyes, summoning her chakram again. Her face tenses up as she does so—even though it's been months since Selina siphoned off a good chunk of her powers, she still hasn't recovered from it. She hesitates.
"Now would be nice," I say, wincing as another wave of pain courses through me.
"Bit of a problem," says Comma, looking down. "I'm uh... stuck." Sure enough, her right foot is caught in one of the puddles. "Just a moment." She kneels down and slams her chakram into the ice. The blade chips, and Comma curses.
The temperature drops even further as more and more trees gather above us, spraying us with their frigid breeze. My teeth start to chatter. There are a lot of things I wanted to be when I grew up. A popsicle wasn't one of them.
Comma keeps hacking away at the ice. That's just like her—now knowing when to give up. Me, I'm ready to black out; the pain's already more than I can withstan. I close my eyes, losing a little more body heat with every exhale.
"If we survive this," says Comma, "from now on, we turn back when our gut tells us to."
"Agreed," I utter, feeling the warmth leave my body.
Comma's blade whacks against the ice again, and again, and again... and then stops. All I can hear now is the howling of the wind.
And footsteps.
I force my eyes open. A figure comes into view after passing through one of the arches. If my heart weren't already frozen stiff from the cold, it would've stopped at the sight of her.
She stares at me from beneath her light green hoodie. I stare back, mesmerized by her eyes—her left iris is a deep indigo, her right a soothing hazel. I can just barely make out her short, dirty blonde hair beneath the hood. The girl—somewhere in her mid to late teens, if I had to guess—approaches us, her footfalls so light that they seem to hover over the puddles.
The girl slides something out of her belt. My vision's starting to black out; I have to squint to bring it into focus. It's a guardless hilt. No blade. The girl closes her eyes and a luminescent beam shoots out of the hilt. Is that a freaking laser sword?
I can feel the heat radiating off of it—it takes the edge off the biting cold.
"Em!" Comma shouts, but too late; the girl closes the distance between us and brings down the blade. It plunges into the ground, its heat spiraling outward. The ice starts to thin, and I manage to pry my hands loose.
I back away. At least the rest of the puddles have all frozen over by now, so I can crab-walk without fear of getting trapped again. The girl sets Comma loose as well.
"Thanks," Comma mutters, albeit reluctantly.
"We should go," says the girl. The beam of her sword flickers and then dies out like a flame. I miss its warmth already. "The golems will be here soon to eat anything caught in the puddles."
"Golems?" Comma asks.
The girl nods. "Whatever you're picturing, they're worse."
"Maybe this place isn't so strange after all," I say, my knees wobbling as I force myself to stand up. "I'm Em, by the way. And that's—"
"Save your breath unless you want to be frozen dinner." The girl turns her back on me and starts heading in the opposite direction. Comma and I communicate via a series of glances, not all of them pleasant. We decide to follow the girl.
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Author's Note:
"The End" was written on November 27, 2015. So it's been just about a year since I started this. The anniversary has me feeling nostalgic for the early days of the story, as you can probably tell from reading this chapter.
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