Crescendo.
I hear heavy breathing. My eyes flutter open to the dim light and the gray sea on the horizon. I am flying. I see Tuck. I am holding on to him. His back is to me. He has an arm clenched over his side, hiding a deep wound. I can hear the struggle in his lungs each time he takes a gasp of air.
“Tuck? Tuck, what happened? Why are you hurt?”
Tuck takes a deep, trembling breath. He stifles a hacking cough and swallows. “We lost, Pyro. The war. We lost.”
The moment his words drop my heart sinks into an abyss.
“Antares, the Seven,” he continues, “all of them. They’re all … gone. Calligra’s forces wiped out most of us, but the rest—” he pauses.
“What? The rest what, Tuck?”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t your fault, Pye.”
“No. No! Not again, Tuck! Tell me it didn’t happen again!”
I raise my arms to bury my head. A sharp prick of pain in my shoulder stops me. I look down and see it is bandaged.
“I had to shoot you, Pye. It was the only way to stop you. I’m sorry.”
“You should have a killed me.”
“Don’t give up on me like that!”
“It’s over, Tuck! And it’s all my—”
The phoenix sounds a sudden, shrill cry. I see the unthinkable. A black, inky barb is protruding through its neck. The wings stop and the phoenix limps over.
“No!”
“Hold on, Pye!”
We drop through the air and plummet to the beach below. We hit the sand hard. I tumble off, disoriented by the blur of motion as my body pitches through the sand. When I finally stop, I am face down, with the edge of my forehead soaking up the beach’s shoreline. I am choking on salty water, trying to gain my equilibrium to stand. Then I hear the voice, the voice I have for so long feared and hated.
“Pyro. Pyro. My dear child, why are you afraid?”
Am I in a dream again, or is this the unreality? I see the ghost on the beach. I see the blotch stain of white, sifting through the air like runny ink. He is the lord of this illustrated world. The environment contorts to his own twisted will and demented thought. A rainbow of splashed color now mixes with the gray in the sky. The sun has returned its false light, but it is painted blood red, and only half of it stands—a shell of its former glory. It feels real, but I know it’s not. They are mirages just like him.
“Child, my dear child. Why are you in the sand?”
He lifts me to my feet by an invisible force I cannot see or fight. The hooded apparition mocks me from the shadows of his white cloak. He dares to touch me. He dares to laugh when the anger makes me cry.
“I have given you everything, and what am I asking back, but to fulfill your purpose? Embrace your destiny. Unleash the firestorm. Bring salvation to us all.”
I remember this part. This is where the dream ends. But this time, it doesn’t end. I look down. My hair is glowing orange.
“What’s happening to me?”
“The time has come. You are to destroy us all, just as it was purposed.”
“Let her go!” Tuck calls from behind.
Tuck, no. Don’t try to fight him, please.
Calligra tosses me down. He cackles, and if I could see his face under the shadow of his hood, I know I would see his wide grin. He casually turns around.
YOU ARE READING
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Science FictionA 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...
