VISION ✔️ || The Keepers of Astraela #1

14.2 || Of Horror and Bean-y Goodness

EVA

EVA'S DREAMS WELCOMED HER with smothering heat.

At first, she assumed the warmth radiated from Emrys' chest, but its gradual increase dampened her face with perspiration, sticking strands of hair to her flushed cheeks. She struggled to open her eyes with the herbs' haze weighing her lids. Her breaths rushed in labored heaves, though she wasn't sure if it was from the heavy air or the thundering heartbeat in her ears.

A crimson flash erupted from the darkness. She stumbled back faster than her legs could carry her and crumpled to her knees, skin scraping on stone. The blaze seared her face, but when she cupped a hand against her cheek, sticky sweat met her fingers.

Fire had come in direct contact with her face. She had felt the flames licking her skin.

How was she not burned?

Footsteps scuffled across the stone. A hooded man in black leather armor stared down at her, golden eyes casting an eerie glow across unnervingly-familiar features. Embers clung to his hood while he slid it off his head to reveal midnight hair that framed his face in a ruffled mess.

Emrys.

Her breathing hastened. The deeper she forced air into her lungs, the more they burned, overcome with ash and dust until she couldn't withhold her strangled coughs.

"I... can't."

The words came from her own mouth, yet the voice was different. Deeper. And despite its breathless rasp, it spoke with confidence she'd buried in years of meekness.

Emrys' fingers twitched eagerly. "You can, Thana."

The chilling, monotonous drone sent shivers down her spine. A sadistic smile stretched his lips into an unnaturally-wide grin that split deep into his cheeks. He flicked his wrist, and hellfire spilled from his fingertips, engulfing the room in its blaze.

Eva flinched as her arms—Thana's arms—threw themselves in front of her face. A wall of shadow rose, meeting his blaze in a clash of crimson and onyx. While it kept him from searing the flesh from her skull, it didn't stop the heat.

Perspiration dripped into her eyes, and she forced them shut. Through the darkness and the dull ache in her arms, she hardly felt the tingling that traced her hand in gentle side-to-side motions. Her mind flashed between the blackness inside her lids and the sight of Emrys' thumb stroking her hand.

The real Emrys.

Not the twitchy, inhuman ball of flames she was trapped with.

She clung to the sensation. Even as the suffocating heat diminished and her eyes opened once more, she grounded itself in his soft caress. Blind faith brought hope that it would somehow guide her back to him.

Eva's arms trembled when Thana thrust them outward, sending the wall of shadow straight into the Emrys-lookalike's chest.

The man skidded backward, shoes sparking off stone. He hardly wobbled from the impact and instead planted himself firmer on the ground.

His gaze was unmoving. Robotic.

"I won't," said Thana, her deep voice rumbling within Eva's chest.

She pushed herself up, unsteady on legs that felt too weak to support her body. Her eyes flicked upward to meet the endless void above them. No matter where Thana looked, there was nothing but vast emptiness.

Smoke poured from her fingertips, curling at the edges of her vision. Thickening plumes filled the room with gray haze.

"Do you hear me?" Thana's voice echoed in the dead space. "I won't!"

A mechanical laugh erupted from Emrys' mouth in short bursts. His head twitched and thrashed, nearly detaching itself from his neck before coming to rest at a sickly sideways angle; his eyes bulged from their sockets in wide-open delight.

"We always hear you," he hissed, "and that little voice inside your head."

Thana's breath hitched. As she brought a hand to Eva's chest, the simple touch sent spikes of energy through the core of her being. It was as if their souls had intertwined, spiraling around each other with reckless abandon.

Despite years' worth of dreams, the feeling was entirely new. Renewed strength oozed from her pores, seemingly personified by the smoke that clouded the air.

"Stay away from her." Thana directed her rant toward the ceiling, the walls, and anything else that would absorb her demands. "If you lay a hand on her, the depths of Hell will rise to meet you."

"Oh, Thana." Emrys' voice had become unrecognizable, morphing between screeching highs and devilish lows. "We're already there."

With each step, his twitching grew more violent; his fingers sparked with malevolent delight. It must have been a game for him, watching his prey fight back before dragging her into his fiery pit.

"We aren't the ones you should be concerned about. The others are less... considerate. Once they find her, they'll capture her. Torture her. Rip the very skin from her bones... and you'll feel every tear."

"No!"

Thana's cry split the air. Weightlessness overtook her body as columns of smoke rippled from her pores, lifting her feet from the ground. Shadows erupted from all sides, wrapping around the man to consume him in darkness so thick that his maniacal laughter was muffled under their deafening roar.

She couldn't keep it up much longer.

The harsh expulsion of magic weakened her by the second. Searing pain sliced through her skull. Somewhere in the distance, a shrill cry emerged from the darkness, twisted in bone-chilling agony.

A dozen cries passed before Eva realized they were her own.

With a sharp gasp, the smoke ceased, abandoning her in mid-air. She dropped to her knees, palms scruffing hard against the stone. Thana's column of smoke barreled back at her, funneling into her pores in thick, black tendrils. It forced its way up her nostrils and down her throat until breathing was no longer an option. It expanded her lungs to capacity and shredded their barriers to allow more room for its asphyxiating mass.

Through its suffocation and the white-hot pain in her skull, Eva searched for it. For the soft back-and-forth motions across her hand. For the warmth of Emrys' chest.

Nothing.

Eva's chest caved from dread's weight. Her body writhed and wriggled in a futile attempt to escape her suffering, but her movements only slowed. Smoke clouded her eyes from within, subjecting her to a deeper darkness than she knew existed.

A voice echoed in her mind. Once filled with determination, its strangled tone had been strained beyond measure. As she descended further into the darkness, one word repeated, increasingly softer until the howling smoke drowned out the sound of Thana's voice.

"Eva..."

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