NAOMI
As they stepped to the exit, Naomi clung to the slack of Achim's shirt. She knew what carnage lay outside, in the alley beside the saloon, and she watched Achim's sharp eyes go wide the instant he opened the door. "What happened out here," said Achim.
Solid earth had been raised and pulled into the shape of a spire and the heights of the newly erected formation reached beyond the shallow skyline. It was an anomalous thing, but the clues of its origin were quickly found at its base. Naomi watched as Achim's gaze fell from the spire peak to the earthen sphere below, and her jaw clenched. Encased in that shell of granite was Brielle, an unsuspecting witch with the force to fold stone like fabric, but Achim, glaring at the shell, could call lightning on a whim.
As if imbued with an innate knowing, the dark boy quickly discerned the dangerous nature of the earthen shell and extended a hand before Naomi. He then eased her backward, his gentle nudge in confusing contrast to the darkly ferocity displayed in the tavern. Naomi was comforted, but, with red blood still rolling from his hands, she thought of Brielle
"Achim." Naomi spoke on quivering lips. "Y-you need to know"--
Achim's attention turned to her mid-sentence, but his eyes remained cold. Naomi was stung by a static chill and her voice froze over. Her breaths held in her chest and Naomi stepped away from Achim with a limp in her step. Naomi staggered. The bullet that bit her earlier left wounds that she nearly forgot, but the limp drew Achim's eyes to the crimson that caked her heel. The punctures in her hand soon became visible to him as well and Achim's sharp eyes slimmed into a severing edge. "Where's Brielle," he asked.
There was gloom in his question. A palpable threat that loomed like death. She saw the mortal specter in Achim's pale gaze and she knew what she had to do. Protect Brielle. Alas, Her tearing eyes betrayed her when she glanced at the shy girl's prison.
Achim's bladed gaze sank into the stone sphere and he knew that Brielle was inside. "I thought so," Achim growled. Again, he pushed Naomi back, but she saw his bloody, killing hand trembling. "Listen Naomi. I've never seen anyone do anything like this before." His voice was brittle, his words wound in anxiety. The dark boy clenched his fists "...If she comes for you again, I'm not sure if I can stop her."
Achim had his back turned from the sun-kissed girl, but Naomi did not need to see his face to identify the fear. Afterall, she had not been far from the feeling. But even so...
"W-wait," said Naomi. "She wasn't the one who attacked me. Brielle saved me using those rocks she moved. A-and then she imprisoned herself like that because..." She bit her own tongue. "I'm scared," said Naomi. "I know you are too, but I don't think Brielle's bad."
"It doesn't matter whether she is or she isn't," Achim responded. His pale gaze returned to the self-crafted cage. "Brielle's in there right?"
"She is, but she made it to keep herself from hurting me!"
"So she is dangerous," said Achim. He approached the sphere with the blood on his palms boiling. Lightning danced between Achim's fingers, flickering with power as chaotic as his will to use it. To stop him, Naomi grabbed Achim. "Let go of me," he shouted.
A series of shocks pierced every cell in Naomi's hand. The sting shot through her arm, her very skin tingling at the threat of static destruction. Naomi's grip loosened, but it was not the pain that eased her hand. It was the ire in the dark boy's brutal demand. "Achim! I told you—"
Achim seized Naomi's wrist and bent it just shy of a sprain. He then wrenched her hand away and shouted, "NO, NAOMI! I TOLD YOU!" The suddenness of his violence was an amnesiac in that Naomi forgot her strength, her ego, and herself before his harsh words. Achim continued, the boy barely maintaining his composure. "...I told you to do what I asked, Naomi! I told you and you refused to listen! NOW LOOK WHAT HAPPENED! LOOK, NAOMI! LOOK AT EVERYTHING THAT YOU DID!"
The entire city went still. She had never seen him so angry, not even as he killed those men inside. The ire in those moon-blazed eyes was heart-stopping. The way his nostrils flared, the utter loathing he expelled when he bellowed with rage. Achim quickly calmed down by taking up a pace, and, before she knew it, he was calm, but he was not in control. Naomi could feel his power. The static-choked air strangled her as his essence leaked into the ether. It hurt, burned like scalding water, but, worse than that, she could feel his unabashed contempt for not just what she did, but for who she was.
"A-achim," she whimpered. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have"--
"Don't." Achim's voice was winter's wind. "I don't care about what you have to say, and I don't care about whether Brielle is good or bad." He walked to Brielle's prison slowly, deliberately. "She knows something. If nothing about Adlai, then about me and these powers. If she has them too, she must know something. So I'm gonna break through this shell, and do what I need to do to get what I need to get." He took a breath and stood staring. It was calm. He was calm, but Naomi saw the latent storm when Achim struck the stone sphere. "So shuddup! Do as you're goddamn told! And STAY! BACK!"
What followed was a vicious series of attacks. Achim bombarded the earthen construct with so much force underhand and foot that thunder broke upon the entire slums. Naomi could only watch the violence now as the dark boy made lighting with every strike. Guilt, fear, and the force of his assault pushed Naomi away until her trembling fingers clung to the wall. She knew nothing of the wild boy before her, and, as the cage began to crack, Naomi found herself drowning beneath the thickening tension. It was not a battle that she foresaw, but a massacre. Naomi could see the deadly ordeal so clearly now, the moon-eyed assailant coated in viscera and sin, and it wrung her heart with pain. The thought could not be conjured into the real. Naomi would not allow it, so she ran on her bloody limp to the center of the coming carnage.
"ACHIM, STOP," Naomi screamed.
The sun-kissed girl seized the moon-eyed boy and, using every ounce of her superior strength, she pulled the killer from the kill. Alas, her interference was miraculously timed, because Achim was wrenched away just as the beast he sought to brutalize, burst from its earthen egg. Rocks and shrapnel tore into his thick skin. Blood was drawn. The amount was minute, but the boy never bled.
Quickly adapting to a situation that proved immediately perilous, Naomi was snatched up and out of range of the piercing rain.
After being carried by Achim, Naomi found herself being set down in the safety of the saloon, but Brielle - No. The Beast - tore into the tavern drooling from an unhinged jaw laden with jagged teeth. She did not have time to fear before The Beast pounced, and Achim, fleeing fast, whisked them both to a position of advantage. Achim bounced from wall to wall with The Beast snapping its malformed canines at his ankles, but Naomi had to be forsaken for the bout to begin. He threw her out of the pursuit with quick calculation and sent Naomi sliding toward the bar.
She crashed, slamming into the shelves, but Naomi paid little mind to what minor injuries she suffered. On pure instinct, she shrunk herself and scurried over the sturdy counter - the best shelter the saloon offered in the impending battle.
After properly curling her body to protect her vitals from debris and detritus, Naomi peeked over the counter and saw a clash of elemental forces. Naomi could see the static that sprang from Achim's heel and the earth splattering about the bar, but Naomi saw only blurbs of The Beast's savage wiles and Achim's thoughtful dodging. Both were simply too fast for her untrained eyes.
Naomi may not have been able to see him, but Achim's full grace was on display. He twirled between strike after hailing strike and struck back with a pin-point attack that caused The Beast to bellow in pain. Each attack hampered the slobbering monster and, for a time, the thing seemed sane, but the lucid moment never lasted long. Its feral mind was too fixed on a singular purpose: Devour.
Achim's swift blows slammed The Beast into booths, tables, and brick walls until craters began to form, but no deterrent stuck. The severity of the injuries it sustained was a moot point. A roar was all it needed for bones to pop back into place, for severed skin to stitch closed, and for its primal rage to replenish. Achim harshened his assaults in tandem and, for a time, his foe fell further and further on the backfoot, but soon Naomi could see the damage as it was delivered.
No longer had Achim's motions been a static-tailed blur. She could now see the artful methods in which he ducked and danced around attack after monstrous attacks. His movements were so smooth that she was enraptured by his technique, and blind to the occasional stumble. The one-sided-battle soon became an even tug-of-war, and Achim was beginning to fumble as every action cost him breaths that he could not recoup. Before Naomi realized what happened, Achim was panting profusely.
The dark boy's victory could no longer rely on his quick feet, but his deft parrying hand and a combo of counterstrikes. Though the task took an increasing toll, Achim dealt all the damage he sought to deal. The Beast though, desire-unending, seemed unstoppable. It lunged again and again, biting at the places where the boy had been, until, after a single mistake, Achim's shoulder was caught.
Blood burst from Achim as the devil's teeth dug into flesh, but his hide proved far thicker than either knew. Boy and Beast wrestled back and forth, safety vs consumption, but all it took was a decisive snap of the jaw for Achim's torso to give. Naomi saw Achim buckling, struggling, fighting to pry the maw open just enough to be rid of its toothy grip, but it was clear now. Achim was going to lose. They all knew it, and The Beast contorted its feral figure further, snapping its own bones and rending its very flesh, in order to swallow the dark boy whole.
"ACHIM," Naomi screamed. "FIGHT! FIGHT!"
"SHUDDUP," yelled Achim. "I KNOW THAT!"
His aggravation at her held firm, even when a few inches inside of the demonic horror's mouth, but Naomi's words were not for naught. As if roused by the remembrance of long-forgotten duty, the dark boy made one last willful effort. Shouting himself into a rally, sparks began to fly.
Static splashed from Achim and enveloped the demonic mouth in an electric hue of white and blue. It was not immediately clear to the untrained eye – Naomi's included – but the convulsing creature was on the receiving end of a desperate electrocution. Achim mustered all that he had to fell the hungering devil, but even when he gave it his all, his best efforts only reverted The Beast to a mostly-human state.
A fatigued Achim attempted to rip himself from the black-blooded jaws, but The Beast, burning and sizzling, clamped down until the boy's bones finally began to break. Naomi could hear his shoulder blades snapping, cracking, giving beneath the bite. It was slow, tortuously so, but certain. A final, decisive pop burst from the dark boy's body, and, as the air stood still, Achim went limp in the monster's grip.
"A-achim?" Naomi called to him, but the boy's eyes were glazed. The Beast, victorious, drove its teeth deeper into his shoulder with its only resistance being the toughness of Achim's flesh. Naomi saw it all. The blood those jagged jaws drew was a hue of fresh red, and the color splattered across the tavern when the monster pulled out its first bloody bite. Achim's smooth skin was tougher than cold steel, but it ripped beneath those serrated incisors easily.
As the tavern air infiltrated his open wound, Achim reached for a part of himself that was no longer there. It was as if his sunken eyes did not see the severe injury, not until his trembling fingers ran through the bleeding bite. Only then, did that dark boy react.
Naomi would never be able to describe the sound that emanated from Achim that day. He was a stranger to small pains, to say nothing of the slow tearing of tendons, and the confusion that veiled his painful wails was something she has scarcely heard since. But even if his screams were something she did not know, Naomi was certain that she never wanted to hear them again. Her heart, broken as badly as the dark boy's spirit, could not endure it.
The Beast was going for the second bite and it clamped onto Achim's arm hard, but, In an act of desperation, Naomi leapt over the counter and charged. Her rage was blinding, her need to protect him as all consuming as The Beast's desire to feed. With all her strength, Naomi bashed her fists against the monster's skull. Begging, pleading to the creature to release him, Naomi did not realize that the feral thing beveled beneath her strikes. It reacted to her hits by tightening its toothy grip, but Naomi kept going. She smashed and smashed, punched and thrashed until the bones in her fists splintered and her face was freckled by the black blood that sprang from what she only assumed was The Beast's unyielding body. Alas, the bite persisted, but The Beast, misshapen with every blow, had to acknowledge Naomi the more her fists dented its skull.
With sclera colored black by the hunger-lust, The Beast drilled its gaze into the sun-kissed girl. It released Achim in anticipation for another attack and, just like that, Naomi's fist was caught in hand and. The two struggled against each other butThe Beast slowly bent her wrist backward. She fought it with one hand, then two, but Naomi's great strength was nothing before the demon's desire to do harm. Worse still, she might have won the struggle if she had the same dark intent, but how could she fight The Beast when it wore Brielle's tender face. No. It was not that she could not beat The Beast. Naomi could not hurt Brielle. Not after her treatment of the shy girl and the grace from whom she was given.
Naomi's will waned, sapping the strength from her arms until her limb's buckled at the bone. Soon, they would buckle no more, and then...Snap. The brief bout ended with a pop that saw Naomi's arm bent beyond use. She looked at her contorted limb, but, before she had the chance to scream, The Beast seized her by the leg and lifted her feeble frame high off the ground. She was weightless for only a moment, but a moment was all it took to see her mistakes in full. "Achim, I'm sorry" was the last of Naomi's clear thoughts.
Naomi was slammed to the ground with such force that the stone cracked! The Beast did not stop though. For the damage she dealt it, the spiteful devil abandoned its meal and splattered Naomi into every hard surface available. Again and again, it slammed her limp body against the ceiling, counter, and the crimson pools on the cold stone floor. When The Beast finally dropped her, it did so with malicious abuse, slamming Naomi onto her back before throwing her into a table. The furniture exploded on impact, leaving the broken girl coated in her own blood.
"NAOMI?!" She thought she heard Achim. "NAOMI," he shouted.
The dark boy's cries were desperate, but there was no way for her to answer. She was alive, if barely, but the very thought of responding came in stilted imprints of intent. Her brain produced only blurbs in this battered state and her vision was turning into a comatic mesh, but the lasting images showed a boy, once decisively defeated, coming back from the brink.
"GET AWAY FROM HER," She heard Achim hiss. The demand was so harrowingly powerful that it cut through Naomi's blinking consciousness. Her gaze glimmered with a shot of clarity, if only for a moment, and then she saw it. In order to protect her, Achim, still severely wounded, took a third bite from The Beast in Naomi's place. Again the two played a game of push and pull, but Achim was not the player he had been before.
Like last time , the dark boy stuck his hands inside The Beast's serrated maw and attempted to free himself in a final effort. Fueled by a willful fury, Achim amassed miraculous strength that allowed his hands, now thoroughly punctured by the inhuman teeth, to hold The Beast's mouth and hold it in place. A storm of sparks followed and, in a flickering flash, Achim electrocuted The Beast for a second time before a forward kick was planted center sternum. His static charged attack sent the beast careening clean through the wall and the saloon rattled from the impact. A support beam split from the ripple and, beneath the sudden shift in weight, a deadly game of domino began. The building would have buried her, but the last thing Naomi saw was Achim reaching for her rescue.
The tickle of his static touch was tender, and the wind whistled through her hair like a lullaby. As she drifted away from her dreams, Naomi only wondered how heavy she was. How heavy she had been.
. . .
The last few chapters have been a bit of a ride, and one I enjoyed building toward. There will be more to come in the next few chapters, but, for chapter 25, you maybe surprised by the sudden detour. I hope you enjoy it.