Worlds of Waves and Shadows

Fifty Seven

The abyss was darker than Kaenisa remembered and much quieter too. There weren't any foreign voices whispering about things that made no sense or hauntingly familiar faces she had never seen before.

And this time, she actually remembered how she had gotten here.

Kaenisa remembered the pain shooting through her body when she'd been flung aside by the mutant, and she remembered thinking that she didn't want to die.

And then she'd hissed into her ear to switch.

Kaenisa didn't really know what happened next, but as soon as she had let go, the agony and exhaustion had all disappeared, and she was here.

There was a mountain of doubt in her mind as to whether she was dead or if she had managed to keep them alive. But if it were the latter, then she was definitely going to have one big, hell of a mess to deal.

Kaenisa sighed. Would it kill her Darkside to simply behave?

Then, as if she had read her mind, the ground began to shake, and before Kaenisa could even comprehend what was happening, she was already falling.

—————

His whole being throbbed with a dull, consistent kind of pain. As if it were sore from doing days and days of physical labour to the point where an aching body had simply become normal. As if the ache had been ingrained into his bones.

And the clearing fog of oblivion made his eyelids flutter, trying to welcome reality. Which turned out to be a burst of glaring, harsh light trying to scorch his eyeballs into blindness.

It was as if the world had decided to attack his senses all at once. And his body did not make things any easier, muscles protesting in pain at the slightest of movements.

Then, it all returned to him with a headache, ramming into his head like a train.

Deimos snapped out of his groggy state as if sleep were a dangerous thing, with only one name at the tip of his tongue.

"Kaenisa–" He gasped, jolting up straight, shocked at the sudden, intense bolt of agony that ran through his body before erupting into a bout of coughing, further aggravating his pain.

"Lay back down." A commanding yet calm voice ordered, "If you want to recover at all, that is."

Deimos couldn't care less about recovering at the moment, but the fact that someone was in his room made him pause.

Deimos took in a quick, disoriented scan of his surroundings, which happened to be not only vastly unfamiliar but also extremely white. So much so that it was actually hurt his eyes to watch.

Because everything ranging from the curtains, the bed that he was sitting on and the chair in the corner of the room, was washed in an alarmingly mundane shade of white.

The only pop of colour was Ms Mehta, clad in a traditional Indian attire consisting of a kurta painted in a cheerful shade of yellow and blue. But her dressing was in sharp contrast with her face, which bore a blank, tired expression. Somehow, she looked...older, wearier than Deimos remembered.

Her deep, chestnut gaze was earnest, tinged with the care a doctor would often have towards a patient.

Deimos blinked.

Kaenisa.

Ms Shefali sitting here had to mean that she was okay. Right?

That she was alive.

"Where am I?"

"Still in Russia."

The dull ache in his temples had now crept to the back of his neck.