Dream Beyond Life's Edge

One for a Gaping Hole

It's nearing a week, Alexia thought. Please come back already, Talia. Please... She bit her lips, smashing her impatience, then sighed.

Any sense of comfort Alexia might have had vanished when Talia did. She'd failed her vow. While the world crumbled around her, she, with all her power, still managed to change nothing. How dare she vow to never let anyone dear to her pass when safekeeping only one person she cannot.

Throughout the week, distractions were all she had done. She buried herself with Julius' problem. Helping Julius with his loss gave Alexia some reprieve, but it left a gaping hole in her heart.

And the investigation also helped to remind her. Never letting her forget the massacre of her village.

But at least, she was helping.

"Aqua-rus." The water barrier came to suffocate Alexia, to take her before the mana in Danberg could.

She pulled out a container and filled it with dirt, decomposed grass and leaves—what was left of them anyway—air, and wood before closing the lid.

One task given for the investigation was a full search of the area—homes, stores, farms, crevices, caves, fields, and gardens. So a month ago, Alexia began circling the village. She started from the Danberg's center and scoured outwards. At some point, she finished the village and went for the woods.

There was no point in doing that.

Everyday began with the knowledge that she would find only the mark of death.

Abandoned homes and bare, weeping trees loomed the dome's shadow. Long sweeping grass, leaves of all sizes, grim animals grieving on the dirt, they all persisted, leaving only their bodies. They puked not a scent from their corpses.

"Excuse me." Alexia broke into her neighbour's home and found the bodies laying in their bedrooms, peacefully sleeping.

Oh. This is Elsire's home...

Alexia dragged Elsire, her brother, and her parents outside and piled them near a flat field.

"Aqua-ras," Alexia chanted. A jet of water struck the ground. Dirt and sluggish grass spewed from it, spraying away and digging a hole. After the hole had become large enough, she laid their dusty bodies inside and covered them with grass and leaves and branches. "Py-ris." A spark was all it took to ignite a fire pit.

Maybe it was wrong of Alexia to burn the bodies as such. Elsire still had families who were alive, living in other villages, and she had burned their bodies without her family's permission. Their bodies weren't causing harm or annoyance either. They were only sleeping.

Well... it was too late to change anything. Elsire and her family's corpses wouldn't unchar. Neither would the other families she'd burned.

Walking away from the inferno, Alexia went to the next house—her home.

"Excuse me." On her dad's bed, Alexia found him sleeping. And she sighed. She knew this day would come when she needed to burn her own parents. But still... she couldn't.

"Gaia-ris." She made a coin and turned both sides a choice: one, she would do it; the other, she wouldn't do it. Then she tossed the coin into the air. It clanked on the ground, spinning a little before stopping.

She would do it.

Alexia carried her dad into the living room. She then searched for her mom to no avail. "Oh yeah, she's in the hospital..."

Fine. I'll deal with mom later.

Blowing wind shot from Alexia's palm, dusting off the couch which she then lounged herself onto.