Nocte Yin: Anti-Villain, Anti-Hero and Anti-Everything Else

Chapter Fifteen

A drum.

A banner.

A sword in the darkness.

Nocte woke with a gasp like a swimmer coming up for air. In her hands were the Keys, shaking with each tremble that chorused through her body, with every chill creeping up her bones. It was a nightmare, she told herself, just a nightmare and nothing more. But a part of her feared that it hadn’t been “just a nightmare,” but something more sinister, more dark, more true, and such words instigated a fear in her heart, in her soul, she had not felt for a long time, a loss she dared not recollect.

She pulled the feeble blanket up to her neck and, shaking, drew herself up against the couch in search of some respite. The pouch of herbs resting at her heart, a living charm unto itself, pulsed with each breath she took to calm herself with. In the darkness, curtains shielding her from the moon outside, Nocte wanted to cry, wanted to fall and sink and never wake, for the Keys, solid and large, reminded her of her stranded self.

Nocte ran her thumb along the edge of the Key, feeling the smooth cut of metal, the bulge of the glittering jewel, the magic that was no more, and closed her eyes against the tears. It had been two weeks, a long, lonely two weeks, since she had first arrived on Earth, and she was bitter, sour and acidic to the touch. She had tried the Keys many times, sought for a signal through a cell phone that was battery-less and hoped that, perhaps, someone would come and get her but-

Nothing.

It was not so much as the academy’s forgetfulness that ribbed Nocte the wrong way, but it was the others she cared about. The others that were her friends, her loyal subjects — her family. And that was the most scouring truth in this mess: her family didn’t care. They didn’t care enough to search for her, didn’t care enough to send letters, to make phone calls, to stop by and see the first blade of rice rise from the land that she had ploughed with her very own hands. They didn’t care.

She pressed the flat surface of the Keys against her forehead, now warm to the touch.

How ironic, she thought with tears straining to break from her grasp, that she had fought so hard to be apart from the Yin Clan, and now she wanted so badly to be a part of it.

A single word divided by a single space, and in that space was nothing.

She felt it now, more keenly than a week before, the pressure — the desire — to return to Erisire, where home was foreign, but at least it was attainable. At least on Erisire, whether she was at Evil Academy or at the very peripheral of the northern tundra, the concept of home, of those walls, those pillars — that warmth of hands and smiles — was waiting for her at the end of her journey. A simple carriage or Teleportation Stone was all she needed to go back. But here, on Earth, with broken Keys and a busted cell phone, there were no other options. There was no single possibility of finding home, of coming close to the home she had given up. There was nothing here on Earth for her.

She drew in a sharp breath, a cutting wind that seeped through her teeth and pulled at her ribs, and opened her eyes to the still darkness of the room. She could hear, vaguely, Alex’s snore in the bedroom alongside Chantée’s even breathing. Home was different for them. It was not so much as a place, but the people. For Nocte, it was both. She wanted to be physically in her old room, before the inauspicious day of her father’s death.

She curled into herself as if she had been punched in the stomach and suppressed a sob. Quivering, she slipped the Keys under the cushions and pulled her feet out from the blanket to touch the bare, cold wood floors. A chill, more physically born than the chill from her dreams, ran up the back of her calves as she stood, swaying. She did not bother with her glasses.