Rising Shards

I tried to shut my eyes, but they felt warm with liquid. When I opened them, I saw red. When I tilted my head downwards, it looked like blood dripped from my face. I couldn’t tell if it was from my eyes or my forehead. I could taste blood in my mouth as well and coughed. My fangs had grown to the point that I didn’t think I could close my jaw like normal. My body looked like a nightmare; I could only stand to look down to see my arms, which rippled with changes, my muscles shifting like waves, fur growing out, my hands growing ferocious claws. My veins glowed like a bloodsaber’s, blinking with each rapid beat of my heart. In addition to my blood, I saw the oily Elka on my arms as well, I don’t know if I coughed it up or if it was coming up through my skin; both options were horrific.

It felt like the room was shaking. The blood written on the walls moved as well, seemingly pulsing in tune with my heartbeat. The words looked like they had peeled off of the wall, swirling around me. I felt something tugging at my mind, like someone was in the back of my head trying to pull me out of my own body. The spinning, flying words mushed into something in front of me, over the center of the table. Ovie and 09 looked on, I’m not sure if they were concerned, but they looked slightly more rattled from what my blurred vision could see than my parents, who eagerly looked into the shadow in the center of the table.

I don’t know how I knew, but deep in my soul I could feel it. I was opening a gate to something. That shadow in front of me could only be made when I was in this monstrous form. And someone or something was approaching from beyond that gate.

“She’s still resisting it.” Dad said.

My mind felt like it was dimming out. Even in this state, I knew that if I didn’t do something, I’d be lost to this. But I couldn’t do anything with my body. All I had in the moment was my mind and spirit.

“Don’t fight this, Zeta,” Mom said. “We need this. We need you. The void needs you in the coming battles. Endora needs you.”

I heard it before. Jeans said something similar. That I had to be in pain for something she had to do in the void. That my own parents would sound like Jeans, that they’d remind me so much of her, that lit a new fire in me. I couldn’t give in to whatever this was. Despite the burning feeling from the blood, I clamped my eyes shut. I forced my mind away from the darkness reaching its claws out to me. I thought about my friends. I thought about all my hobbies. The things I wanted to do, the places I wanted to be. I thought about the things that brought me peace. I thought about Kalei, who fought off Endorans like this. I thought about Dr. Diast, who was always there for me. About Stella. And of course, my light. My Oka.

The shadow flickered and started to dissipate. It was still there, but it was no longer becoming more complete, it now was like a bunch of misshapen puzzle pieces bouncing off of each other.

“It’s not working.” Dad said.

Mom sighed. “Fine.” She dipped one of her weird needle devices into a different teapot and stabbed my right hand. It burned worse than any pain I’d ever felt as my body rapidly turned back to normal. The walls turned back too, and the shadowy gate in front of me flickered away. In the instant before it did, I thought I saw deep red eyes open.

“She really is just like her sister.” Dad said as I wheezed and heaved, spots on my skin smoldering as blood and fur fell from me. “What a shame. Maybe we should have stepped in earlier.”

“What’s done is done.” Mom said. “Fine. Four Endorans and a clybrid is probably better than just another Stella.”

I felt my mind come back to me. Slowly, but I felt myself returning. That self wanted to scream at my parents that being anything like Stella wasn’t an insult, it was a compliment.

“I told you.” Ovie said. “You’d have better luck using it on 09, even if whatever you pumped into Faleur probably doesn’t even work on clybrids.”

Mom sighed again. She looked at me not with disdain, but with disappointment.

"We got some data at least, right?" Dad asked.

"The bare minimum of what I was hoping for today."

Having the bare minimum of reuniting with her daughter just being 'getting data' from me made me feel like my spirit had just been ripped from me.

“I wish we could end the day under better circumstances,” Mom said. “But we have to go now, Zeta.”

“You can’t just leave me here…” I said, my voice weak and pathetic. For some reason, they turned the chair away from the table, so my back was to the kitchen. I now faced the little living room of the hotel.

“You could have gotten out on your own,” Dad said. “We didn’t leave you here, you left yourself here.”

Ovie and 09 left. I hated that they were both there to see me like that. Dad walked around behind me and wheeled out the waist high console they said brought them around the void.

“Did you get them all configured already?” Mom asked.

“Uh huh, and their blood is in the canisters,” Dad said. “I guess it worked out that we didn’t get Zeta hooked up again to this.” He began typing, casually whistling as though he didn’t just attempt to turn me into a monster. “Alright, all set. Ready to head out?”

“Mhm.” Mom said.

Dad knelt by me one more time. He wiped tears, or probably mostly just blood, from my cheeks with his thumbs.

“This isn’t goodbye forever, Zeta.” Dad said. “We’ll see you again, and hopefully soon.”

Him trying to seem sentimental did not land moments after he scolded me.

“You can’t…leave me…” I said.

"We're not leaving you," Dad said. "We're always with you. Even if you didn't show it just now, Kathron blood runs strong through your veins. I think if you learn more about your lineage, maybe next time you'll be more receptive to what we're trying to do here."

The two went back to their console, and Dad clicked away a bit more. The device began to hum and rumble, like a busted washing machine. Five beams shot out from it towards the outside, presumably to Ovie, 09, Aira, Laenie, and that other girl. Two more beams went to Mom and Dad. Items around the room began to fade as the machine’s hum got louder. The machine shook more and more, and I worried it’d bump into me. It began to fade as well, alongside my parents, who had the nerve to actually wave goodbye to me.

“Always remember, Endora is a part of you.” Mom said.

Then in a flash, my parents and their machine vanished.