Extreme fear can neither fight, nor fly.
- William Shakespeare
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Aris started to back away, her eyes wide and her gut terrified.
"I-I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you right. What did you say your name was again?" Her voice was hoarse and shaky, her blood curdling from terror.
"No, you heard me correctly." He took a step towards her as she took one back. "I think we should go and talk somewhere in private. You'd like some answers to all the questions you must've been having lately, wouldn't you?"
Aris wanted to do anything but go somewhere alone with this man that seemed to cause her to cower for reasons she didn't know, but she also needed answers. It was too much of a coincidence that he happened to be named Osiris, and just happened to show up out of the blue, seeming to have some sort of information about something.
She nodded after a minute of contemplation, causing him to smile. "Wonderful, follow me. I'd rather have this conversation sooner than later." He led her out the back exit of the gym, but not before she shot Rosalie and Emmett a feigned reassuring smile, though knowing them, they'd be by to check on her any minute.
Not wanting to get them involved in whatever this was quite yet, she quickly sent them a text telling them not to follow, and that she'd let them know if she needed assistance.
The boy led them outside and around the back of the school, until they finally reached a park bench and table a little ways away.
Aris could recognize an iridescent from miles away, and the sun that caused his skin to change colors for half a second was just confirmation of her suspicions.
"Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?" He asked, causing her to nod. "I know what you are, and I'm assuming that you know what I am as well." The resemblance between the two of them was striking. If they hadn't been complete strangers, one might think that they were siblings from their matching raven black hair and freakishly pale skin. "I'm also sure that you've figured out by now, or at least have thought that I've been the one causing your nightmares, correct?" He didn't bother to wait for an answer before continuing. "Me putting that information into your nightmares wasn't an accident, Aris."
She took a deep breath to settle herself, finally meeting the strange man's eyes. "I'm very confused right now, and I have been for a while, so if you could just start from the beginning as if I knew nothing, then that would be greatly appreciated." Her voice was slightly frantic as her heart raced out of terror, the anxiety of the idea that maybe her nightmares were a premonition after all might've been coming true.
The boy rolled his eyes in annoyance, but nodded. "You'll come to realize that I'm not a very patient man, Aris, so I'm only gonna explain this once." He chastised. "I'm Osiris, I'm iridescent, and I work for the Volturi."
She slumped her head in her hands, her ears ringing, and her eyes watering as her worst nightmare was confirmed.
The Volturi had found her.
"Now, I'm not here to turn you into them, unless you choose to disobey me." He spoke softly as if to calm her nerves, though there was a warning undertone to his words. "If you follow the instructions that I give you, then there will be no need for me to turn you in. I'll simply just return to Volterra and tell Aro that you and I got into a quarrel and I killed you, and then they'll have no reason to have any suspicions of your whereabouts or whatnot. Since Aro can't read my mind thanks to our wonderful ability to block out vampire gifts, then he has no way to prove that I'm lying." He smiled, placing a hand on Aris's shoulder which she shrugged off.
"How the fuck did you find me? And what 'instructions' do I need to follow for you to go away?" She spat, meeting his eyes which looked sympathetic, though he could've been faking it for all she knew.
"Ah Aris, clearly you haven't learned the full potential of our abilities yet." He smiled, only about to answer the first part of her question. "Did you know that the iridescent can track other iridescent's through dreams, or more specifically, nightmares?" He asked curiously, to which she shook her head. "It's quite amazing actually, and that's actually why the Volturi rely on me so much." He leaned back, embracing the sun as it peaked out from behind the clouds. Rather than his skin changing through shades of pinks, and purples like Aris's, his danced between blues and greens. "I'm the only iridescent that they've captured and haven't killed. Before me, they went around just solely hunting us for food, rather than using us to their advantage. That was because they didn't know how useful we could be, but after finding out that I could help them in finding other iridescent's, I've become sort of a... prized possession of theirs, if you will." He spoke proudly, as if this was the biggest accomplishment one could achieve.
"How does it work? The tracking other iridescent's, I mean." Aris asked, doing her best to keep her tone light and casual, though it was still obvious that there was nothing but sheer terror behind it.
"Well, I guess in a way, it's like how a lot of vampires have gifts of their own." He shrugged. "I simply just sense out in the world if there's an iridescent somewhere, and from there, I enter their dream. At first, I have no idea where they are, but, as morbid as it sounds, my 'sensing' of them gets stronger when I cause fear. So, when I was causing nightmares for you so great that you were almost too terrified to leave your house, it was fairly easy to narrow down to your location." He explained. "It's hard to put into words until you experience it for yourself, but it's as if I feel a pull, or a magnet towards those who I'm tracking, and when they feel fear, the pull just gets stronger."
As much as she wished she didn't have to be having this conversation, Aris listened intently, struggling to process that this was all real and happening.
"Osiris, you don't have to do this, you know. Why don't you go after someone who has a horrible life and would love to join you all, or why don't you just leave the Volturi? You don't seem like a bad guy, so I'm struggling to understand why you're doing this."
He looked at her with sorrow in his eyes that she once again couldn't tell was feigned or not. "Trust me, I'd love to leave, but it doesn't work like that. My choice was to either join them, or die, and they'd hunt me down for the rest of eternity if I were to escape." He sighed. "As for your other point, that's where I was headed next with this conversation." He continued. "I guess, by basic moral standards, I may not be that bad of a guy, considering how I was sort of 'forced' into the situation that I'm in now. However, like anyone else, I have my fair share of bloodlust like a lot of people."
Aris looked at him curiously, willing him to continue further. "I have my fair share of wanting for revenge, which just so happened to work out perfectly with pinpointing you." He poked her in the shoulder, a smile on his face that irked her as she waited for him to elaborate. "See, I was captured by the Volturi a little over two decades ago, and that's also when I started hunting iridescent's for them. Since we're pretty rare in this day and age, I've only ever been able to narrow down the location of about twenty of them or so, and like you suggested before, they were all people who seemed to be not too happy with this world, or their life. They were all either drug addicts, old, or just not using their gift of being iridescent to their full potential. I mean, several of them were just solely living around humans, so none of their abilities had even enhanced slightly. Such a waste if you ask me." He sighed sadly. "Anyways, you aren't my usual target for tracking down, seeing as you're young, you're beautiful, you've been enhancing your abilities greatly, yada yada yada."
"So why would you come after me?" She asked, still struggling to understand his motive.
"Well, when I was doing my research about you after narrowing down to your location and finding out who you are, I was on the verge of abandoning my mission and just going after someone else for the reasons I listed before." He explained. "But then, luckily for me, I happened to stumble across some information. I happened to find out that the Cullen's also live in this wonderful town with you." He motioned around them.
"What do they have to do with anything?" She asked apprehensively.
"Aris, I'm going to give you a choice here, alright? You have two options. Usually, I would just capture the iridescent without giving them a way out, but if you choose to do what I ask, then you have my word that I'll leave this town, and you'll never see me again. You can go on with your life here, living out your iridescent life in peace." He shrugged.
"Okay, what do I have to do?" She asked, thinking about how she'd do nearly anything to make this real life nightmare be over.
He sighed, turning towards her and meeting her eyes.
"I want you to kill Edward Cullen."
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A/N: Okay, Osiris is officially canonically transgender because I completely forgot that in the important info chapter I said that only women can be iridescent. So yes he is a man, but he was born a woman so he CAN be iridescent.