Chapter 25: Darkness

RENA

Aellisa was fiddling around with that letter, trying to reprogram it. It was slow to be done, however, as it had been more than a few days of writing out formulas, and something seemed to be draining her concentration. And then suddenly, I felt it too.

As an immortal, I had been centuries without so much as a common cold, but now I felt very stuffy. It was as though I had been in a hot dry room for weeks, and now I felt dehydrated and with a several headache. I had the equivalent of a migraine, only instead of light streaming in my eyes, there was persistent darkness. Not only that, there was nausea, fatigue, loss of focus, and extreme muscle weakness. "What's wrong?" Alicia asked me. I explained all of this, in addition to the fact that we supernatural beings couldn't get sick in the first place. "Okay," she said, "I want you to try to meditate. You need to focus, and try to figure out the source of this problem.

It took some time to do this, because I was fighting my own body and its sickness. But I shut out worry about my own body, and simply concentrated on my breathing. One breath of air, in. One breath of air, out. Another breath of air, in. Another breath of air, out. And so on, gradually my breath got slower, and my mind relaxed and focused. I traced the sickness outside my own body to a reddish black cloud. I traced the cloud outward from there, as it extended from our current location in Dark Hedges, Northern Ireland. It was heading north toward the North Pole from the looks of it, but I traced it from its source using pure concentration. It traveled south from Northern Ireland to Ireland proper, then to Spain and Portugal, through several countries in Africa, over a vast stretch of ocean, and then turning slightly left when water became ice. I started to nod off, and entered a deep sleep, yet my vision never broke. I saw the darkness gather around a Statue of Darkness. I stared at it, and suddenly I saw more of them, one by one, until I had measured five in a star circling this southern rim of the current Earth. This imagery reminded me of watching Sailor Moon with Alicia, where Crystal Points were infected with darkness so that in the future, Crystal Tokyo would be corrupted. The nightmarish way that these images played out caused me to scream and writhe like I was being electrocuted. Where before I was simply feeling worn out, right now I had a sort of dark sludge in my system, and I was violently ill. I was bleeding from my eyes, and had sudden fits of projectile vomit, defecation, and crawling backwards on the ceiling. I was possessed after all. The effect suddenly broke from my body. I couldn't feel the darkness anymore. More importantly, I couldn't feel the influence of the statues anymore.

ALICIA

I watched Rena struggle through, and I felt sad for her. I couldn't let Rena die! I had to do something. I used the Brush Knee Twist Step to sweep away the corruption that was sucking into her and making her bleed and vomit. The tornado of light was an excellent tool of exorcism, and the sickness was dispersed from her body.

Rena had revealed to me that what she actually wanted was to stay by my side. I had learned that day that I had a choice, as I could simply let Belial be to live out his life. Or at least, I thought I did. Now it was looking like Belial had seen us as a threat, regardless of any action we took against him.

And so, I made up my mind that we must definitely try to stop him. Javert was going anyway, as she was pissed, and would follow him to the ends of the Earth regardless of her inability to stop him. But I had thought maybe it would be okay to sit this one out. If Rena was dying, he had forced my hand.

---