Emmeline, the girl in the storm

A universe without magic

Melekh held her firmly as she swooned. She could feel the throb of her own heart shuddering in her chest. He had missed it, but only just. Forcing her toward the table, he then pulled the knife out.

She screamed in pain.

Charon had disappeared from her sight. She fought with the pain to keep her grasp on consciousness as Melekh came down over her one last time with his knife.

Despite the brokenness and pain, she forced all her disorganised emotions into one messy ball inside her, and mustering every last moment of strength, she retaliated against the knife as it came down.

The knife exploded, and so did Melekh's arm.

He screamed in agony, but Emmeline had heard a different sound that drew her attention, footsteps on the stone. She looked up, and Charon was standing above her.

"Emmeline," he said, reaching a hand down to help her.

"Charon!" Melekh screamed as he closed in on them, the tattered shreds of his left arm hanging uselessly from his shoulder. "There is nothing you can do now. I have spilt her blood. She will bleed out. She will die. I have opened the gateway. My price has been paid!" he raised his right hand and threw lightning at them, as he had done to Thomas. Emmeline ducked, but Charon caught it full and confidently in his open palm. He buckled under the force of it, but withstood.

"I am not carrying you home," Charon said, stepping down off the stone, "and I am not watching you end her life."

"You cannot stop me!" Melekh shrieked. His body had began to shudder and deteriorate even as he stood before them.

"You're right, I probably can't, but I just don't think you are going to be able to kill her," Charon put an arm around Emmeline to help keep her up.

"She will die."

"I refuse to die," Emmeline replied flatly, griping the edge of the stone for support.

Melekh hit back with another jolt of power, which Emmeline returned ferociously despite the agony she felt. It knocked him over the stone, and he stumbled closer to the gap in the universe. He laughed at his success and lurched forward madly, throwing himself into it.

"No!" Emmeline screamed, but Charon held her back.

As Melekh fell into the gap, the world shuddered. The gap shrunk and then expanded, and they watched as he imploded within it, his body splitting into infinite pieces of darkness and dust, and then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

The gap did not close, instead it grew larger. And Melekh was gone.

Emmeline looked in distress to Charon, "Is he—"

"Gone." Charon replied.

"How?"

"He could not cross the gap without using both your soul and mine to do it. He may have shed your blood, but he didn't kill you, and I already took my soul back."

Emmeline nodded mutely. Silence passed between them, and then she gasped in pain and collapsed into him.

"It's over," he said confidently, resting his chin on her head as he held her.

It was only a moment before Emmeline forced herself up again stepped back so she could look into his face. "Your eyes," she said. They were healed, but the storm was gone. They were black and dark, and empty.

He smiled and pulled her in toward him. This time he kissed her, and his lips against hers were soft and full of life. She kissed him back only for a moment before he pulled away, looking up at the widening gap between worlds. He pointed at the cataclysm of light and dark within it. "My sight is in there," he said softly. "Once the gate has been opened it won't close until I pass through."

"So the gate is actually you?" she asked.

"Sort of, yes. And if it does not return to me, the gap will continue to grow and swallow everything," he replied.

"You have to go back."

He nodded.

"Will you return?" she asked, feeling it was an innocent question.

He bit his lip before he replied, "Not for a while no, and not to this same place in time."

Emmeline glared at the gap in the universe. "What is the point of all this then? Why is there even a gate?"

Charon shrugged again, "I really don't know, but without a bit of magic your world would seem a little dull and boring, wouldn't it? I've seen the legends and fairytales we create fuel your human imaginations with fire throughout every age of this world. Every good story comes from somewhere, and what would a world be, without stories to be told?"

Emmeline sighed, and took a step back from him. "Well I guess this is goodbye then," she said brusquely, squeezing her shoulder to stifle the pain and extending her hand to shake his.

"You won't come with me?" he asked, looking down at her hand and back up to her eyes.

Emmeline's mouth dropped open, just a little, "You want me to come?"

"If you want,"

She turned to look back at Thomas, Poppy and Gulliver. Thomas was well enough that he had crawled over and untied Poppy and Gulliver. With Melekh's death, the force keeping them unconscious had passed.

Emmeline smiled.

"I would never be able to come back—" she said, turning back to Charon.

He shrugged, and offered for her to take his hand.

****************

Day 31. I saved my most beautiful topic for today, the final entry in Emmeline's tale. It's been an intense 31 days, possibly the most consistently intense 31 days in my life. But I'm glad I've done it. It proves a point that in the strangest and simplest of words, topics and themes, that there is always a story to be told. So here we are at the final chapter, about to share our goodbyes over Fee's subject of the universe.