Immortal

26. Brotherhood

I could barely keep up with Eliam as he ran toward Silvas. My throat was sore from the choke hold I had been locked into moments before. The artificial blood had begun to dry already. I lost sight of Alaric, I could hear alarms going off in Silvas. Movement, reactions, and before long, fire was being returned. They were fighting fire with fire, and I wanted to help them. I didn't know how much longer Alaric could go on casting Ice down from the skies. I wasn't even aware that he knew how. "Eliam!" I called out into the mayhem. Trying to get my brothers attention but failed. I was feeling my own body shut down, it gradually began to feel heavy with every step.

I collapsed. "You were supposed to die." Her words whispered themselves into my ears. "Why can't you do as your told!" Eliam's words came again tumbling after. Why couldn't I just follow simple orders? Why did I question everything? I finally puked. On my knees, sweating, with screams and bullets being fired in the background, I puked into the grass. I didn't care to fight anymore. This fight wasn't mine.

It is your fight.

My brain nagged at me, I wanted to run from reality. It was what I had begun doing here in Silvas. Forgetting my responsibilities, letting go of my family, erasing my past. Embracing the illusion that living here would set me free from the oppression I knew. It came back for me though, every piece I had tried to erase came back. It roared in my face, mocked me, challenged me to fight. I didn't want to keep going. Exhaustion was felt in every part of my body, it curled itself on the insides of my bones. I couldn't keep up with this chaos.

I had to keep up. I was expected to keep up.

I wiped vomit from my lips. I accepted simple facts my brain was already making for me. 1) I had to fight. 2) I had to survive. 3) I was going to help Silvas. Those were the only blind truths I could see. There were so many lies swimming in front of me. So many half truths being uncovered. I felt the point of a gun at my spine. I waited for the trigger to be pulled, to feel searing pain through my back and stomach. I wanted to hear the explosion of it going off at close range. There was nothing, noise seemed to gradually mute itself gunfire looked like fireworks in between the trees. Everything became white noise again, I could almost see a clear glass in front of me reflecting the contents of a different room.

I was staring at a younger version of myself. A version of me who was peering back at me through the glass of a different world. Fine embroidery and furniture behind him. His small hands pressed against the glass. The younger me was squinting hard, their breath fogging up the glass.
I could see the beginnings of a maze somewhere behind him and then the loud unsettling ring. A high pitched ring that hurt my ears, I would hear it in my dreams and wake up screaming. I watched him step away from the glass and scream, and I did the same. I tried to keep eye contact, but the glass I was seeing shattered. Bullets broke it into a million pieces and I realized I was hallucinating.

When I looked up I could see Eliam's outline in the dark a few feet away. He was in the middle of a fight with an art form probably twice his size. It swung at Eliam who dodged and stalled. The art forms movements were slow and ragged, it depended heavily on its size to survive. At its size it would have trouble getting back up if knocked over. I saw no anxiety in Eliam's face as he kept it distracted. His movements were smooth, quick, well trained, he picked out its favoring side and weaknesses.

My brother was toying with this art form and trying to look less skilled than he was. He was delaying the final blow to make it appear like a struggle. I had seen this somewhere before, I knew these movements but I didn't know from where. Something gleamed from above, if this art form fell on him it would crush him. I opened my mouth to warn him but someone else had swooped down from the tree line. They shoved themselves off the chest of the art form after a gun was fired in its face.