Emily's Heart

Chapter 3 - The Apocalyptic World

3  Ciardha

The Apocalyptic World

Ciardha traveled as a dark wisp for weeks and gathered into himself the plentiful Lucent Energy that abounded amongst the human population. In her close-minded naiveté, his sister had gifted Lucent Energy to the humans she so adored. The humans called it love. Ciardha called it dinner. His powers grew strong on the feast as he converted the Lucent Energy into Dark Energy.

In his wisp form, Ciardha floated on the air currents and observed humans as they slept and ate, as they rode the bus and worked at their desks. He skulked in the dark corners of bars and in the shadows on the street. When he first arrived, he hid from the humans. But he soon learned that even when he hovered before their eyes in the brightest light of day, human eyes seemed not to see him.

While his power grew merely from feeding on the negative emotion he felt around him, Ciardha wanted more. I shall have so much more.

“I must walk among them,” he thought to Dorcha.

Dorcha had never known the power of speech. In her animal form she could only bray or let out her shrill whinny in response to her master. In her wisp form she knew not how to form her thoughts and send them to her master.

“You need not answer me,” Ciardha thought to her. “You are without the intelligence necessary to provide insight to me, anyway.”

Ciardha drifted in the lengthening shadows of a downtown twilight as he watched for a suitable body.

“There, getting out of that vehicle. He is strong. Full of power. And my sister’s energy is weak with him. Yes, he shall do nicely.”

Ciardha’s mark was a man of no more than thirty, tall and slim, with dark brown hair and molten chocolate eyes. His jaw was angular, his lips thin. The man was dressed in a black leather coat, which made his pale skin nearly glow in the first dark of night. The man placed his hand into the hand of the valet, smoothly passing along a large bill for the promise of a watchful eye over his luxury vehicle.

Ciardha’s wisp closed the gap between himself and the target nearly instantaneously. He had only to desire to be merged with the essence of that which animated the man’s body and it was so.

Ciardha felt a small resistance, like a hand pressing against him. But it lasted only a moment. Ciardha used the man’s mind to envision the intense power that Ciardha knew he would soon possess in this land filled with Lucent Energy. Like a snow fort melting in the midday sun, the man’s resistance gave way, and Ciardha possessed him fully.

“Follow me,” he thought to Dorcha.

A doorman held the large, glass door to the hotel open for him, and Ciardha walked stiffly through it and entered the marble-floored lobby. He felt confined by the fleshy form that was his new home. Have I but imprisoned myself again? It was a great annoyance to have to use legs to walk rather than zip from place to place on the wind, no effort at all. As he pushed the button beside the elevator to go up, his arm felt heavy. While he had appeared as a human in the Umbra Perdita, that body was but a façade, an illusion of form. How do these humans suffer these ponderous mounds of flesh merely for the sake of existence?

The sentient being that still resided inside Ciardha’s new body knew where to go. It guided him as he walked down a hallway, turned left and approached a door. Ciardha reached into the pocket inside his coat and removed a plastic card. He watched as his hand pushed the card into a slot in the door. He heard a small beep and a click, then he turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Ciardha entered a dimly lit room. As he scanned it, he saw a table with two chairs and a long piece of dark wood furniture on which rested a large rectangle that spoke and displayed moving pictures. In the middle of the room was a large sleeping platform. And on the sleeping platform rested a creature that Ciardha’s human form found pleasing to gaze upon.