Center of Attention

A Land of Metal and Malice

     I studied every bit of the drake, knowing fully well that she could see me. We were both spirits, both dead and gone from the physical plane all together. It flashed me a few stares as its feet had landed loudly on the spirit plane. A drake. In the stories Mom left behind in her journals, drakes were proud creatures of the mountains in the North that dominated the land. Most people forgot about them because dragons were the true heads of fantasy along with faeries and elves and dwarves. I could go on and on about what defined the stories of our time, but I left those thoughts to wither and die alone in the back of my head.
      I turned to Smallik. "Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"
     He nodded, leading the drake with a stroke of his hand. "I know that I'm dealing with a murderer. And the time I have left is very, very limited."
     "So is Firstien's. What do you hope to ask for from Brokilna? Immortality?"
     He had smiled. "I can only hope." He managed to say something to Firstien with a smile.       Every time he talked in the physical plane, his voice had sounded fuzzy, like a recording from far away. He turned back to me for a moment. "I just want the world to change."
     "It will."
     "I want to be with you and Firstien, smiling as we pass each other on the street."
     "I want that, too. I just don't know if seeing someone like Brokilna Sobe is the best option."
      "It's not about what's best," he told me with his eyes lighting up. "It's about what we've got. And he's it."

     Stars scattered the sky in the same pattern they've always done. That was one thing you could always count on. The stars in the sky would never change no matter how many years had passed by, and I kept staring upwards to distract myself from the growing fear that was at the pit of my stomach. Yes, the stars above could pull me away from the direction I was going. They could distract me from my thoughts about Brokilna among trees of metal with a sly grin on his face. I wondered what he actually looked like, and the stars had formed his face far away in the darkness. Those brooding eyes... They were like stars glowing in the night sky.
      I pulled away and tried to focus on the scales of the spirit of the drake. She had this stare of overwhelming amounts of protection, like a mother that was trying to keep her children in line. She might've been a mother. I gulped at the thought of her dying for the betterment of her children. It sounded like something Mavara would've done, and she almost had a similar attitude to my wife. Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I just saw the same pain Mavara experienced when giving birth to Ogillitiy.
     Smallik fluttered his wings as he continued to whip his head back and forth as he looked into the trees. Rather, I knew he was looking towards spirits that were talking to him. I wondered if the drake could talk in a language that he could understand. I doubted it. She was a large beast and he was just a winged creature with pink skin. A good friend, I should rather say. A really good friend.
     "Hey," I started. "Why don't you speak Faean that much?"
     He seemed to snap out of it, and he turned to me with those smiling black eyes. "It's the forbidden tongue in the future. Because humans can't understand anything but their own language, they don't let us speak in anything else but their tongue."
      That made sense. I kept saying that it looked like ancient gibberish. "Well, as a forty-three year-old, I will agree that it is definitely not something easily known just by staring at the words."
      "I will agree. I know few words. Curses and basic sentences. I made sure to learn the curses so I could curse at others as I robbed them blind on the street or say the words under my breath when an Enforcer decided to care about me." He was proud of that. "I can't believe that Vior was so sheltering to all of you. I'm sure that a few of you had to know about Ortim, right?"
      "My boss, maybe. Do you know anything of Vandilliball Kiskos?"
      He seemed to pause as the name had left my lips. "I... Yes. I... didn't know he was... your boss."
      I wanted to ask him more, but then I felt a ting of something at my feet. The drake seemed to bark at us, telling us that its time to guide us was no more. Smallik dismissed her with a final wave of his hand, and her spiritual figure started to disappear into the fog of the night. I wanted to tell it goodbye, too, but I just stared at the rigidness of the metal all around.
      It was definitely from another time. All of it made every individual branch look even more the same than a normal tree, and Viobin was right about the blades of grass encased in metal. Our feet clanked against the ground slowly. We both had seemed uncomfortable with what we were getting into, but we both also knew that there was no other way than this. This was is. Brokilna Sobe better have a damn good answer or life will be stripped from his eyes with one stab of my sap-stained knife. I promised that.
     As we seemed to be in the thick of it, I heard a scraping of a machine. It wasn't anything like Brokilna, so I let my guard down and let the scraping continue. That was a mistake. A large winged horse came rushing. Its body was made of pure metal, and it ran on its hooves with its teeth bared. It was coming straight for us. As Smallik had instinctively flew up into the branches of the tree, I nearly dodged the winged horse by dropping to the ground next to one particularly large tree. My back slammed into the metal bark, and I spit out what felt like the entirety of my saliva.
      There was a clapping. The winged horse had suddenly stopped baring its teeth, and it turned its head to the direction we were heading. Its wings had dropped down to its sides. It started to trot away, away into the dark where you could no longer see it.
      "Firstien Istinti."
      Flashbacks of that broken apartment had hit me as he started to walk through the metal trees. I saw his face. His eyes were a bright green, and his arms and legs were almost all metal. He was tall, taller than me. I hated him for that. I hated him for a lot, and I knew that he was smiling widely because he knew that I was pissed. Grab your knife, I thought. You're going to need it to kick his ass. Return the favor of death, and maybe Giartt won't be so kind as to bring him back to the beginning of his own day.
      "I apologize for my pegasus," he laughed a little under his breath. "He's quite the protector."
     Grab it, Firstien. Why the hell are you filled with so much cowardice?
     "A faery said that you could help us fix the future," Smallik had growled, showing no steps of backing down from this fight. "Is that true, or are we wasting our time with an old feud since you decided to kill the Center?"
      He raised his metallic hands. They were long and muscly. "I do believe I have an answer. It's to kill the both of you. Reset you."
      "I'm not dying again!" I shouted. "I know Viobin wouldn't have set us up."
      "She wouldn't have, you're right. But that doesn't mean I won't."
I threw my knife, and it pierced his metallic wrist. Black blood had started to flow from it, and he howled out in pain. Bad idea. The pegasus had returned with more fuel added to the fire than before. I was sure that I couldn't dodge it this time because my back was already in pain from the tree before. Dammit. I should have just aimed for his neck to watch the black blood gush out from his voice. Smallik had flown into the trees again and extended a hand out towards me to grab before the pegasus could reach me.
      I latched on and missed its metal head by a near inch. The tree, however, was hit badly by its metal skull.
     I stared at Smallik. "This was a bad idea. A real bad idea!" I yelled. I was going to die. No matter how many times I protested the idea, it was really going to happen all over again. There were so many curses that I wanted to say under my breath, but I couldn't.
     I really couldn't. 
     Smallik's grip loosened. "You can't die!" He gulped. He was trying too hard to keep me up in the tree. "You're the Center! You can't die now, not when we've gotten this far!"
     "Neither can you!" I yelled at him. "Flutter the fuck out of here and forget me! Even if the world goes into a reset, we can always come back and change it!"
      "No. I will not have that! I don't want to form a relationship with you again. I want this one. Only this one!"
       The hand that had been holding onto the tree had reached out for my hair. The vine. He pinched the end. It began to grown into a massive portal to the land of the faeries underneath of me, and I started to fall into it. Smallik had dropped like a dead fly to the ground, hitting his head against the metal. The pegasus neighed out in excitement, rushing right for him. He didn't get up in time. He stared forward into the eyes of the beast. It pinned him against the tree with the metal of its head, banging against his rib cage.
      "Smallik!" I cried out, trying to keep hold of the ends of the portal.
      He could barely breathe. "Go..."
      "What about the immortality? What about becoming a God?"
       "Petty dreams..." He gasped. "That's all they were..."
      "No, dammit! It doesn't end like this!" I gripped onto the metal grass. "No one else has to die, and no one else will die!"
       It was a bright light that suddenly came from the end of the portal. Tiny faeries emerged from within it and started producing large gusts of wind that pushed the pegasus backwards. Viobin, in her tiny form, stared at me.
      "Get Smallik!"
       That's all I needed to hear. I suddenly had the strength to escape the portal, and I gripped onto the limp arms of Smallik. He passed out. He probably couldn't breathe from being pinned against the wall that hard. I followed Viobin into the portal, landing into the soft grasses of their world. Dropping Smallik onto the dirt, I collapsed onto my knees.
        Viobin stared at Smallik. "Sei vis loe."
       Wind started to erupt around his body in a similar fashion to the way mine had done before when she fixed my cuts and bruises. It surrounded his body a lot longer than it surrounded mine, however. I stared expectantly at his body, analyzing the cuts and exhausted features. Right now, I cared about nothing else. Right now, he was the only thing in the world that mattered to me, and I was so afraid that this would be the third death in my life that would break me beyond belief. The air had left him, and Viobin stared at me. Her tiny figure was now a larger one. Her eyes showed concern.
      "I'm sorry," she apologized.
       I nodded. That was all I could do before everything started disappearing. I was too old for this, for this kind of fight.
       My head hit the warm grass, passing out in desperation as I heard the calm breathing of Smallik next to me.