A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 50 The Tearing

As he thought about this, as he grew more awake, the silently howling storm began to slowly resolve itself into a flat floor once again. A floor now painted with swirls, simple lines blazing with meaning, complexity and depth woven into their relationships, one line to the next, a never-ending pattern of power.

Callin recognized these lines, too. They were just like the lines on the wall, floor, and ceiling in that corridor by the Torn. Lines that told a different story than these. These were his mind, his story, his thoughts. Those had been created by the Torn. They told their story.

There was a difference between his story, and that of the Torn. His was so vibrant with color, so splashed throughout with life itself, that it stunned the senses. And the Torn's lines, their mind-painting, had been devoid of all color. A terrible gray, so devoid of life that it hurt to think of it. The Torn had not named themselves because of the way their powers tore their skin off their bodies.

They were the Torn because the true essence of life itself had been torn from them. Torn from them the day they had been forced to blend their powers together in ways so unnatural that they barely existed in the normal realm. They were all twins, a Weaver and a Flayer each, tied to each other and torn from both their life-force and reality itself. Forced to exist yet not.

It was so unspeakably evil, so unimaginably horrible, that Callin found himself sagging down, tears washing his face with a torrent of pain. Their never-ending torment was incomprehensible.

The front lawn of the mansion was a dream within a dream. The mansion rose up out of the night air, fire licking softly at its front, the towering head of a dragon of symmetry, its jaw gaping wide to assault the darkness with the light of the fire of destruction.

A group of creatures were pacing around in a circle in strange, scuttling steps, long bloody strips above them swaying to their inner commands. Swaying with intricate, deep meaning. A dance that wove a story of life and death, entwined.

A black-haired ninja with frigid eyes stood watch over a group of teens, unsympathetic to their cries of agony.

Smoke drifted about, skeletal fingers sifting through the air, uncaring.

Figures on the lawn were beginning to stir. They filled the night air with the chorus of their pain as they unwillingly broke out of the blissful arms of unconsciousness and faced the world about them, facing the teeth of their wounds.

Callin forced the sobs ripping out his chest to stop and lifted his head. Ahleena stood over him, a dark angel, pinning him with the freight train of her icy gaze.

"Ahleena...?" He whispered, shakily getting to his feet.

She followed his movements with her eyes, no expression, not blinking. So focused she seemed unreal. Holding herself so still, so tight, she had nearly stepped out of reality. He wondered if he were dreaming her.

"What...what are you doing?" He said, looking her up and down in disbelief. She had stepped so far from the natural changes and movements of reality that she almost looked like a Rift Wraith! She didn't answer him. And then he noticed their link.

Their link, an ever-shifting stream of psychic power that was woven throughout both of their minds, weaving their powers together, was frozen. It seemed to shimmer with power and darkness, looking like a great bridge spanning a chasm with no bottom and no end. It was both lit by power, yet devoid of all color. A wretched, empty gray. The exact same screaming hollow color as that corridor of the Torn.

And he understood. She had done this. She had frozen their link, and in so doing had nearly sacrificed herself to that same fate of the Torn. And he knew why.