Rising Shards

Jeans stood across from me. Looking only at me. She held the black mask in one hand, and I remembered it from the last night I’d seen her. The night she slashed my hand with her sword and broke her bloodsaber over her knee. I never wanted to see that thing again, and now it was like it stared at me along with Jeans.

“Nobody move!” Oka called out. “We don’t know if that line’s still active. Or what that mask can do.”

“And…she can,” I whispered, feeling almost out of breath from the dread weighing on me. “Projections…her power.”

“Right, thank you Zeta,” Oka said. “She can make illusions too! So nobody—”

Jeans held the mask up, and dark tendrils erupted from it, instantly washing away most of the class with a wave of Elka. In an instant, before any of us could plan anything, the others were gone, taken some place I couldn’t begin to imagine. And before I could really even react to that, I heard Lillia and Kalei scream as they were taken too. Oka’s grasp on me suddenly got more intense as I felt the tendril grabbing her too. I couldn’t move, though. While I could feel Oka being pulled away from me, I was frozen in panic.

“Zeta!” Oka screamed, desperately holding onto me. The grip of the Elka was too strong, and she too was lost into the abyss.

And I was left alone with Jeans. My knees trembled as she stepped closer to me. She took her time, clearly relishing in my reaction.

“What did you…?” I whispered.

“I brought them to a place of despair,” Jeans said. “This mask—my instrument in finally creating the Harmony—feeds off of despair. It’s in its name. I call it ‘The Starlight Despair’. Pretty good, right? Not that you ever supported my creativity, really. So they’re not at Wildfire Hearts. They’re with the mask.”

“What are you talking about…?” I asked, feeling faint.

“You don’t understand, but that’s OK. What matters is that we’re together again.”

Jeans let go of the mask, and it remained in the air, floating as it glared down at me. She knelt in front of me and giggled. She hugged me, and even though it was technically a warm hug, I felt like I was being constricted by ice cold snakes.

“It’s just you and me again. Like it always should be.” Jeans said. She let go finally and stood up. “I guess I should go back and explain a bit, right? You were always a bit slow even on your best day.”

Before I could respond, Jeans drew her bloodsaber. Like the one she broke, this one had Elka sloshing around inside it, and I assumed it’d make the same terrible sparks and probably worse if she ignited it. Still, my eyes shot down to the bloodsaber on the ground. Jeans held the tip of her sword under my chin.

“You don’t need that,” Jeans said. “I’m not mad at you. I could be, you know. You betrayed me and hurt me worse than anyone’s ever hurt me.”

I hated myself in that moment. I tried to get myself to do anything other than cower and cry, but I couldn’t. I was face to face with Jeans again, I was alone, and she was immediately back to trying to break me down, this time with a bloodsaber at my neck. She finally put her blade down and looked around to the massive veins in the sky.

“Sixteen systems,” Jeans said. “All falling apart. All doomed to fall away to the void’s harsher tendencies. I saved them. I would have saved them even faster if you weren’t so weak, Zeta.”

“I’m…I’m not…” I stammered.

“This is just the start,” Jeans said. “I’m going to save so many more.”

Jeans held her free hand forward, creating projections of the beautiful beach she’d brought me to. With children playing on it, cute animals, rainbows and sparkles all over it. From her hand, it made me sick to see.

“Back home, my power is just a projection,” Jeans said. “But here, my dreams are real. And I can finally fulfill those dreams.”

“What about Ovie?” I said.

Jeans thought for a moment.

“What about her?” Jeans asked. “I’m not surprised you beat Ovie when she pathetically tried to fight you. You were always better than her at everything.”

Jeans projected images of us together, looking happy. With me looking so happy my projection self had tears in her eyes. On the other side was Jeans and Ovie, looking miserable. Ovie in particular looked greatly different than the last time I saw her; instead of short, pink hair, it was grown out and messy, mostly black with some pink streaks still remaining.

“She was so inattentive. Insensitive. You’re more in touch with what I needed. More intimate than her.”

Jeans changed the images to her and I holding hands, hugging, kissing, more. My mind had to race to remind myself she was doing her trick again. The images she showed weren’t real. They didn’t happen. It was just her making me think they happened.

“You cheated on her with me.” I said. “You hurt her at least as much as you hurt me.”

“I’m allowed to get what I want,” Jeans said. “You both hurt me so much, I deserved a chance at real happiness. And I think I can finally get it. So what do you say, Zeta?”

“What do you mean, what do I say?” I said. How could she even be attempting this right now?

“Well, you have a choice,” Jeans said. “Try to destroy the mask and go back to your quiet, little life at Rising Shards. You’ll fail. You’ll end up with me, but I won’t be happy. I won’t forgive you. We’ll be together, but it’ll take a long time for things to heal on my end.”

Jeans spoke with such hurt in her voice that the tendrils of doubt entered my mind again. Was this all really my fault?

“Or,” Jeans said, holding her hand out. “You can open your heart to love me again. To swear you won’t hurt me again. To embrace this new world I’ve made and finally be proud of me for what I’ve done, instead of slowing me down and never believing in me.”

With the mask still looming next to her, Jeans smiled. “It’s just so good to see you again, Zeta. I hope you feel the same.”

I wanted to scream at the small part of me that was relieved to see her, the nearly extinguished flame in my heart that still wanted some kind of reconciliation or closure with Jeans after everything else between us had burned down. But even in that flame, I still remembered all of it. All of the pain she’d put me through. All the heartbreak. And even in that small flame, I still thought of Oka, and how devastated she would be if I took Jeans’ hand. If I did to her what Jeans did to Ovie, but worse.

“What’s taking you so long?” Jeans asked. “This should be an easy choice. Don’t you love me like I love you?”

There were a lot of things I wanted to say in response. None of which were “I love you, too.” Even the ember that wanted reconciliation didn’t want her to just say she loved me than have me accept her new horrible void amalgamate. I started to speak, but the words couldn’t form. Jeans wouldn’t listen, anyways.

I grabbed the bloodsaber and swung at the mask. I thought I was moving swiftly and had a clean shot at it, even igniting the blade mid swing, but in a flash Jeans ignited her own blade and blocked it, rage instantly contorting her face.

“Bad choice,” Jeans said, her arm trembling in rage as she blocked my blade. “The worst choice.”

She flung me back with a swing of her bloodsaber, knocking me to the ground. She marched towards me, and I couldn’t summon any will to do anything after my attempt.

“So you really hate me, don’t you?” Jeans asked. She picked up Minty and ripped the blood collector off before tossing it back before my feet. “I don’t know if I’ll ever recover, but I’ve learned some things since the time you abandoned me.”

Jeans swirled her bloodsaber around, and the mask beside her started to rumble.

“I learned how to get what I deserve,” Jeans said. “It’s time you learn what a nightmare really is instead of just inflicting them on me.”

Tendrils shot out of the mask once more, hitting me like an ocean wave. The ground shook, and wreckage from around us joined in the mass of Elka swirling around and slamming into me. I was fading quickly. I tried to swim up, and up, but my body was failing me. Things were getting foggier and foggier. I couldn’t see Jeans any more, or the mask. This was it. I was going to drown in this pit of despair, unable to climb out.

“It rained the day it ended.”

Silent hopelessness filled me. Like the line from Jeans’ favorite film that I had grown to hate, I was completely, unequivocally alone.