Crescendo. Lightning flashes. I am choking on water, trying to wipe away the relentless downpour in my eyes. My body feels achy and my hands warm. I shoot up to my knees, and plant my fingers against soggy grassy muddied by the flood of rain. No storm exists without Isis. She is close by. Thunder rolls. A bright luminescent catches my eye, forcing me to look up.
“Pyro!”
Isis is a lantern, a glowing light of pure energy hovering in the rainy sky. Her lightning illuminates the terrain. I see the scorched ruins of a castle scattered across the field where I’m kneeling. I don’t understand how I got here or why.
“Isis? Isis is that you? What’s happening? Where are we?”
Her voice is a hurricane. “Do not speak to me! You will be silent, murderer. Judgment is upon you!” She raises a hand and unleashes a bolt of energy toward me. I roll away, barely, while the charge rips through the earth next to me.
“Why are you attacking me? Please, Isis, stop. I don’t know what’s going—”
“I said be silent!”
A second bolt fires, this time stronger and faster. It punches me in the chest like a heated spear and drives me backward through the trunks of four trees. The pain is numbing. I sit up to my knees, choking on splintered wood. Blood from my back runs down my arms. I look up and see Isis descending toward me. My hands become fists. I am trembling. I must control it. I have to control it.
“You killed them, Pyro! You said you were going to save us. We trusted you. You were a fellow Sentry like us. A Derelict. Why did you betray us? You destroyed an entire city! Hundreds are dead because of you! And you attacked Tuck! Why!” Thunder rolled. “Why Pyro! Why!”
I stand up.
“Tuck? No! I was just with Tuck. We were flying over here to warn you … I—” My head is pounding. I am lost in the storm around me and the storm inside. Her words penetrate my soul and stab my heart. This can’t be real, none of this can be real.
The winds blast against me. Trees around me begin split apart and toss into the tempest. I grab hold of a root and use it to hold me down. Isis is floating closer. The heat in my body is rising.
“Please, Isis! Stop this! Something’s happening to me! I need help! Please!”
“Now you’re begging?” her voice thunders in reply. “What about all the people that begged you to stop? And you want mercy from me?” Voltaic energy gathers at her palms. “I will show you mercy by not allowing you to live with an entire city’s blood on your conscience!”
“No, Isis! I don’t want to fight you!”
Her brows tighten with disgust and her eyes glow with searing white. “Now you’re threatening me? Die!”
She discharges the electrical blast. I see the white moving toward me. I want it to hit me. I want it to kill me, to make me pay for what I did, but a girl appears in front of me and robs me of the pleasure. She crosses her arms in front of her, summoning a bundle of roots and vines that spring from the earth and form a bulwark that catches the lightning. She puts her arms down, and the vines return underground. There’s only one who can command Oranirock’s seed: my sister.
“Jade?”
Her blue hair glows in the flashes of light from the storm clouds. “She said she didn’t want to fight you, Isis!” She turns to look at me. “Pyro, go! Get out of here now!”
Thunder rolls harder.
“Stay out of this, Jade! This is between your sister and the people of Oranirock. She must answer for her crimes!”
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Ciencia FicciónA short story inspired by a drawing a friend gave me. When Pyro learns that everything in her world is fake, the product of a pen and someone's imagination, she seeks to escape. Her father Calligra, however, has other plans for her. Her purpose is t...
