Darren's entire body started to shiver uncontrollably as the others slowly climbed down from their platforms. He balled his armored hands into fists, tried to keep himself from shaking like a leaf on a windy day but to no avail. His eyes still felt dry and burning, the tips of his incisors dug painfully into the soft skin on the inside of his mouth if he tried to close it. The voices of the werewolves were gone, silent and contained to whatever place they went to when they weren't being used. Yet the hunger was still there. Underneath the panic and the confusion and the guilt, there was still a part of him calling out for death and blood.
His spine jerked when he felt small, gloved fingers on his face, the cold metal of Kayla's finger armor scraping lightly against his skin.
"Darren, your teeth," she said and she sounded worried, almost desperate. "Your eyes."
He didn't know what was wrong with them, didn't want to. He wished she would take the metallic nails into the sockets and rip them out instead.
Vivien was right behind her, taking his chin in her hand to turn his face to her. Darren kept his gaze down at the inspection, not daring to face her.
"Look at me," Vivien commanded sharply.
Darren felt his breathing starting to get shallow and faster and swallowed hard to try to dissolve the lump in his throat keeping the air from flowing. It didn't work. He only managed to stop the airflow for a few seconds, making himself more desperate. He gulped down a lungful, forgot what he was supposed to do with it and held it in too long rather than releasing it.
"Darren," Vivien's voice was softer now. "Breathe."
She put a hand to his chest, pressed gently and he exhaled. After he inhaled again, she pressed his chest again and kept going at regular intervals, until his breathing had slowed and steadied.
"Now, look at me."
He finally did.
Darren didn't know what he was expecting, whether it was to find disgust stamped on her features or to simply get a slap to the face. He found nothing except curiosity. Vivien peered into his eyes, turned his face this way and that to get a better look at them from different angles, then let go of him.
"Your eyes are glowing," she finally said. "And I guess you know by now that your stupidly sharp incisors are even bigger and sharper. Has this ever happened before?"
Darren shook his head silently. He knew that if he were to speak, his words would come out fully sung. Vivien nodded and crossed her arms over her chest, kicked away the arm of a Flowerhead that was too close to her foot. Darren flinched and looked back down. He knew what was coming but he didn't want to face it. Kayla's arm wrapped around his waist, pulled him close to her and half of him wanted to push her away while the other wanted to desperately cling to her and beg her not to let go, even if he didn't deserve it. He flinched again, harder and more visibly this time, when he heard Joshua sigh and saw his booted feet coming his way.
"Guess we killed the Flowerheads."
It sounded like a death sentence. In a way, it could be. They didn't know what Aries did to the people who failed the trial, after all.
"No point in checking dead blood to at least try to prove my theory right, either," Vivien said.
Darren wanted to curl upon himself, bury his face in Kayla's chest but he was petrified, unable to move a single muscle. Forcing himself to, he licked his dry lips.
"I killed them," he corrected. "I'll tell Aries it was me..."
"Like that matters, Darren," Vivien interrupted.
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At the Fields of Fire and Blood
الخيال (فانتازيا)The world is dying. Heaven and Hell have broken and collapsed, creating a post-apocalyptic landscape that is part purgatory, part platonic world of ideas, blighted by the horrors of the human mind. The sun lies dormant in the east, atop God's tower...
