A Tainting Light (The Manipulators Book One)

Chapter 4 part 2

Oxygen part two

We were walking on the dark black sand; staying pretty close to the edge of the air dome around us, until we got to a large rock covered with dried coral. It climbed up sideways to the very edge of the water and dropped off. There was nothing past it except a wide open sea. I climbed the rock and reached my hand down to pull her up.

"I got it," she said pulling herself up. "This is one of my favorite places I've seen here."

I could see why. There was something unreal about the way the dimmed light reflected with a bluish hue. We were at the end of the world staring at the next universe over. 

 We stopped talking for a while. She would pull small dots out of the water and place them on the rock, creating a sphere of water. There were waves of light on her face. She looked over at me, and I was already looking at her. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She looked down and tucked her lips in her mouth. I looked out in the water and a patch of pink was drifting just above us.

"Look." I nudged her shoulder and pointed overhead. There was a group of jellyfish pushing through the water just above us. Their stingers stretched about ten feet. They were mostly a light pink with thick ribbons of white coursing behind. They looked like birds flying above our heads. Peaceful and mindless travelers, and then they were gone. While I was watching the jellyfish fade, I saw a seeker to the left of Keegan floating in the water. Its mask consisted of browns and blues and the odd wings behind it were a scorched red.

"Keegan," I said slowly, "we need to le-" A shadow reached out from the dome and grabbed me, pulling me into the ocean.

"Finn!" I could barely hear her yell as she jumped into the sea. She moved fast in the water. The creature dragged me to the surface of the water and started to soar through the air.

Keegan was right behind us. She ducked her head back under water and then quickly propelled herself up on a pillar of swirling water towering up to us. She tried to drench the seeker, but the water went right through it. She tightly wrapped my foot with the cold water and a similar shadow was pulling on my arm. The seeker finally released me and I started plummeting to the waters below. The pillar of water curved towards me, and I was caught by Keegan.

We were slowly moving back down to the water. "What happened? Why did it just attack me?" I said coughing up water. "I wasn't thinking anything even close to dark thoughts."

"It's the keeper of darkness. She wants you. She wants all of us," she said, shaking her head.

She brought us back down to the freezing water, and propelled us to the island. It was the opposite side of the volcano and the lagoon. We were on the backside of colorful buildings. The ocean water passed through the little town. Out in the distance was an enormous statue of a sea serpent. It coiled up and down through the water. Dark skies covered the air just beyond that.

"What is that?" I asked.

"That's the border; nothing goes past that serpent," she said. "Are you going to thank me for saving your life?"

"Thank you," I said quickly. "Why are the clouds so dark over there?"
"So people can't come in or go out. There's a constant storm between us. Only the council can bring people in and out," she said.

"So, Sylvic's a part of the council?"

"Wow. Nothing gets past you. There's one member per city," she said. "We really need to start walking to class." She was not the same girl who'd been sitting on the rock. She did not want to talk or laugh. She was so serious and melancholy.