COP S2.5 Uncorrupted
I gasped for air, trembling as I gripped the edge of the table.
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Previously on…
Asher revealed the secrets of the real history behind the purges and the Demeid. Senpanns are portal makers, even if they aren’t aware of how to make them. If a senpann infected by the Demeid makes one, then the darkness will spread over the land and nothing could stop it.
I stood atop a castle wall. A red sun cast its light over a gloriously darkened landscape. Piles of bodies, stacked almost as high as the walls, burned, the smoke thick with a putrid sweetness.
My body filled with a power roiling from deep within, leaking out over the land.
Someone took my hand, a burst of the dark power moving through me to join theirs. I turned, already knowing who it was.
Tass’ green eyes glowed, the fiery intensity backed by the same force that flowed through me. He nodded, though no acknowledgment was necessary.
Together, we focused out over the field, performing a ritual to open the final portal. The air swirled, growing darker as it grew wider until it filled the sky.
We were at the edge of the world, the darkness manifesting as its source emerged—
Light blinded me. A sea of fryn swarmed my body, a strange beat pulsing through my brain. I gasped for air, trembling as I gripped the edge of the table. A hand rested on the back of my neck, and my shoulders dropped. The vision of the horrible form entering our world, of me bringing it into our world, faded. I released the table.
Asher pulled me gently until I sat back in the chair, then kneeled down next to me. “What happened?”
Of course, I didn’t know. It was as if I’d been at the top of the castle walls, not sitting in a cozy cottage safe from the evil in the land. I stared at Tass, his face contorting under the scrutiny.
“What?” He asked when I wouldn’t look away.
“You…you and I…” I shook my head, not wanting to say what I’d seen.
Asher grasped my hand. “It was only a vision.”
“Then why are the fryn still freaking out around me?”
Indeed, they fluttered about my head, more hung around my shoulders and some had settled on my stomach.
“They just want to be sure the connection is broken. It is. The Demeid won’t break through again.”
Whatever the fryn were doing worked. I felt calm again, though the memory still terrified me. I explained to Tass and Asher what I’d seen, and what I’d felt, though I struggled for words. “It, it seemed inevitable. I wanted it to happen. I knew it would happen, no matter what. Tass and I, there’s nothing we can do to avoid it.” I looked down at the fryn resting on me and a sadness overwhelmed me. I didn’t understand how I could ever destroy a world filled with such beauty and goodness.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Tass asked. “What aren’t you telling us?”
I clenched my teeth, not wanting to let the words out.
“We need to know everything if we’re going to fight this,” he tilted his head and his eyes went wide, “and we will fight it. What else did you see?”
The fryn buzzed around me, helping me see there might be hope. “It isn’t what I saw. It’s what I—we—did.” I swallowed and found the courage to say the words. “The portal…I remember how we made the portal.”
Both men went pale. I’m sure I did to. If the Demeid could find me in the cottage, with all its protections, and show me what to do, did we even have a chance? I was left with the sense that if I hadn’t been protected, I would have actually done it. It would have made me. Was it just the fryn that made the difference?
“This is not good,” Tass said, only looking at me from the corner of his eyes. “How did it break through here, and why her when I’ve been exposed longer?”
Asher stood and shrugged his shoulders. “There must be a reason. She’s a better conduit somehow. We could theorize forever but I don’t know if we’ll ever really know.”
“Then what you said before. We can’t risk it. She’ll need to stay here.”
I was only vaguely aware that he was talking about me as if I wasn’t there. Exhaustion had overtaken me, and the calming of the fryn made me want to sleep right there in the chair. Their voices drifted into a faint background, while soothing music, mixed with a steady beat grew louder. It was the fryn, doing their magic on my mind.
“—sleep. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
The words broke through the music, just enough I could feel Asher and Tass lift me out of the chair and lead me to one of the beds across the room. When I laid down, I drifted off but this time I went into the light where no darkness could find me.
Laughter. Giggles. Squeals of delight. The sounds of a memory drifted to me in a dream. I felt the ferns brush against my legs and I was there again, feeling the pounding of my heart, the burning curiosity that made me disobey my grandfather’s command to wait for him at the bench. But I knew it had all happened long ago. I was just reliving it, unable to do anything different, knowing I wouldn’t change it if I could.
My short legs carried me towards the sounds, through the lush field of ferns into the forest of thin trees. Dim moonlight filtered through the canopy of wide leaves high above me.
A small light zoomed past me. Then another. Together they spun, turned around and circled me. It was as if they’d lassoed me, pulling me in farther toward the sounds.
I could hear my grandfather’s voice in my head, warning me to stay out of the forests at night. Telling me story after story of bad things that happen to those that follow the lights or the voices.
There was nothing to fear though. The lights had told me that. Excitement swelled inside me, the first hints of magic patterns appearing at the edge of my vision. I couldn’t see anything straight on, but as the lights zoomed around me, just at the corner of my eye the strange matrix appeared then faded. It was as if something shifted inside me, an energy that flowed from within, connecting me to the creatures, to the land…to the world. I went from seeing myself as a tiny, unimportant person in a grand world I didn’t understand, to knowing I was a critical connection to an even bigger world. One I saw differently from everyone else.
The woods thinned, opening onto a small grassy clearing exploding with light. At first I looked away, my eyes burning. But the creatures urged me closer. So many of them gathered together they created a solid light floating just above the ground. Some flitted back and forth, moving away then back again like a swarm of bees at their hive. There was a pressure in my chest, like something wanted to get out, that energy inside me was balling up. The creatures told me to let go, to look again and see. Their voices sounded inside my head, wispy yet clear and helped me let go of the tinge of fear that had set in, at what would happen if I set the energy free.
But I did.
The mass of light grew brighter, overlaid with intricate interlocking lines, circles, swirls and curves. Though it was made up of uncountable number of creatures, the pattern itself was singular, though shifting. As one flew away it stretched and moved with them. One high above in the canopy remained connected by two lines and a circle that travelled up to it and back down again.
I dropped to my knees and tears flowed down my face. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my short life, and still was as I experienced it again as an adult hitchhiking on the memory. A group of fryn separated from the mass and flew around me, lifting me back to my feet and urging me forward until I stood next to the hive. I wanted to touch it, reach out and feel that energy shifting in front of me, but they said no.
An uneasiness took over then. Though the memory of my first meeting with the fryn had been buried until recently, it had remained vague until that moment. I remembered I had placed my hand into them, and they had welcomed me. Refusing me was not part of the memory, but born of it.
Instead, the light split open, peeling away to the sides. A shape, strange at first, took form.
A body, prone on the ground, lay still. Dark brown hair covered the face, but I knew from the clothes it was me.
I gasped, my breaths coming quick and shallow. The fryn surged around me, their calming effect working to clear my head. This wasn’t a memory. I hadn’t seen myself that day. I’d played, danced and sang with them until my grandfather’s harsh voice sent them away. He’d found me cowering in the opening in the woods, confused and empty in their absence. He’d scooped me up and put me in the carriage. It was days before I’d spoken to anyone.
Two of the fryn kept rapping me on the forehead. They wanted me to scan my body, the one laying on the ground. I brushed them aside and pushed down the nausea building inside me, afraid of what I would see.
Knowing what I would see.
Studying my own pattern was one of the first things I had done, once I found out what I was seeing. Even though I hadn’t looked since encountering the Demeid, I’d felt the shift. Something out of place. Something moving inside it, wearing it away, changing it.
I took a deep breath, leaned over my body on the ground, and focused. The familiar bits were there, but underneath a darkness like smoke permeated the spaces between the lines and shapes that made my pattern. Going deeper my pattern disappeared, coalescing into the pattern of the Demeid. I dropped back onto my feet as if it had physically pushed me away. The fryn gathered behind my back, pushing me up then lifted my hand. My ten year old hand with it’s pattern flowing, full of life. Uncorrupted.
My heart pounded, understanding finally reaching my dulled mind. With both hands I pressed onto my body’s back and pushed. The fryn’s energy flowed with me, forcing down the smoke that tried to resist, to leak around and into my younger self. Sweat rolled down my temples, my palms burned, heat spread up my arms.
I trembled, spasmed, as the Demeid fought against me, reaching deeper within me.
Until it touched my core.
Light flared.
Coolness like water from a mountain stream in spring surged outward, covering me and my older—current—body on the ground.
I breathed, not having realized I’d been holding my breath during the encounter with the Demeid.
I rolled over and sat up, my younger self disappearing as my current body returned to awareness.
Fryn circled around me, their sing-song sounds exuding relief and joy.
I smiled and laughed with them like the first time I’d encountered them. Somehow they’d cured me.
No.
Not cured. My pattern was almost normal. On the surface it matched what I’d come to know as myself, etched with all I’d learned and experienced, but the pure one from my youth pulsated just beneath it. Still, deep within the Demeid was still there, as if lingering behind a closed door, searching for a way through. We’d locked it away, the fryn and I, in this strange dream reality I still didn’t understand. In time, it would break free.
I needed to fix things before it did.
Next episode on Saturday February 8, 2024.
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