Black Avatare

2 | PREY

It was hard to discern anything through the blackness—her mind was shutting down. The demon tightened his hold, arms as solid as her own, despite the streaming ectoplasm, and a metallic scent filled her nose. Panic rocketed up.

Just when she screamed, spacetime blipped. It was akin to freefall, followed by an odd sensation of detachment—as if she were floating in limbo, barely tethered to her corporeal form.

Binara struggled to cling on to consciousness, and a sudden vision overwhelmed her. All around was a desolate plain aglow with spectral essence—in quantities that were mind-boggling. Deodar cedars towered in the distance, tapering up into gnarled forms of black and grey. The foliage was devoid of color, taking on an eerie resplendence in the moonlight. She could sense the ectoplasm, permeating the whole landscape like a different kind of matter. It was so surreal, she might as well have been tripping.

As abruptly as it popped into existence, the phantasm faded, and she experienced a sinking motion. The spiritual aura plummeted to half its previous intensity. Strangely, she realized that she wasn't in the cemetery anymore, judging by the paddy fields stretching out on all sides. Within seconds, the arms that held her slackened and withdrew. She crumpled to the ground.

Binara blinked at the entity she had summoned. A jolt quaked her anew when he loomed over her, swathed in shadow. The metallic scent grew more pronounced, with faint notes of cedar and ambroxide. A drop of ichor, garnet red in hue, oozed from a cut under his jaw and fell to the ground. She homed in on his irises, shining silver in the gloom, too close for comfort. Is he going to possess me? Or torture me to insanity?

Her limbs locked, and her head swam. The rational voice within urged her to swipe at him and run, but fear paralyzed her—raw and visceral.

To her bewilderment, he backed away, losing definition as he dissolved into the night. Her mind cleared enough to make out the black cloak, swishing as it vanished into thin air. Then all was still.

Binara took a good minute to orient herself and stood up on shaking legs. She teetered on vertigo, almost falling back down. A lone star peeked through the clouds, and the wind hissed in her ears. She was on a path that snaked through the paddy field, where stalks of rice swayed to and fro, barely visible under the brooding sky. The darkness was all-consuming—the nights of Hevana were too hostile but for the nocturnal beasties and the phantoms that despised the light.

Yet, the danger paled in comparison to what just transpired. Binara staggered under the enormity of its ramifications.

Her plan had failed, but she had survived an encounter with the Black Prince.

The relief was immediate and short-lived. Try as she might, she couldn't make sense of what happened. Panic bubbled when she dwelled on how she had teleported to a field out of nowhere in the blink of an eye—an aberration that defied even her concept of reality. It was all too much to process.

She broke into a stumbling run along the path, her eyes trained on baubles of light that suggested habitation. At least she wasn't stuck in a forest or a shady alleyway. Pain pulsed in her head, throbbing to the rhythm of her legs, which weighed heavier with each step. The moan of the wind fueled the storm within, and she imagined invisible eyes following her.

She was a mere prey animal, stripped of all defenses in unfamiliar terrain—blind, clumsy and stupid. This wasn't supposed to happen—not again. Her inner eye conjured up her child self, running through the garden, lost in the mist. The boy in the well shouldn't have existed, but she had seen him, and all she could do was flee, as if she could outrun the scary encounter and her own freak self—much like what was happening now in the middle of a paddy field.