Center of Attention

Immortal

     Wake up. Wake up, Smallik. I kept chanting that in my head so many times before I heard the scratchiness in the back of my throat. I didn't want to be alone. I wanted Smallik to hear me call his name, but he just breathed through the lungs that were breaking.
I heard what the faeries said. They were so upset as they talked about how his lungs were crushed and no longer working the same way as they were before. My mind was mush. A garbled mess. I kept imagining what it would be like if Smallik didn't live at all, if he lost it all right now in this moment. No, he couldn't. Firstien had to save him with immortality. Maybe he could gain it himself
     "Please... Please help him no matter what."

     Viobin dismissed the faeries with a small wave, and they fluttered back to where we came from with frightened glances. They were afraid of what she was going to do. She gripped me tightly by the hand and sat me down gently next to his unconscious body where I saw every single detail of his everlasting pain. His breathing was shallow, held back by the crushed lungs inside of him. My hand had passively reached out to touch him on his broken frown.
     "This isn't easy," Viobin whispered. "If he's getting immortality, you're going to have to be here when it happens."
     "What do you mean? Are you leaving?" She sounded so sure of herself that I was afraid of it.           She had surrounded her body with a wind until I saw her small body floating around with her butterfly-like wings.
     "I can't be here when it happens. All you need to know is that you have to be here to hold him down so he doesn't freak out."
     "Why?" I was terrified.
     "You'll see. Stay here. Don't move, and keep his wrists down no matter what."
     She fluttered away with a shiver. She was leaving me behind with nothing but a worried heart, and she was probably putting more grey hairs in my black hair. I had so many already, and I had to guess that it was only getting worse. An unnatural wind picked up around us, swirling like a tornado that wouldn't dare stop. Leaves that had lied discarded on the ground were picked up into the swirls. They mixed in, one slicing my cheek. Blood fell onto Smallik's face, and he flinched as it landed on his forehead.
     "Black..." Smallik had weakly put it. "magic."
     I knew what he meant. Viobin's voice started to vibrate the ground, and black hands had slowly started to rip the dirt around us. Smallik squirmed. He was weak, but I felt him try and pry away from me as if he knew that the hands were coming after him. Us. They grew large in size like a black mass, and they came crashing down onto the ground until every inch of dirt was peeled away from us into what looked like Hell below. There I went again, breaking a rule of the future. Instead of pulling away from Smallik, I gripped onto him until my knuckles were turning white.
     "Vaesain oan niersillit. Assa noe kiavi. Bliase soea noesa lill omi voorkae."
     Viobin. Black magic. The hands reached for my feet to pull me aside, but I kicked at them and screamed like a child would. I hated darkness. I hated being stuck in the darkness and forgotten and shoved aside, so I kicked with all my might while grunting with every breath I had. Don't look away from Smallik, I thought. Don't look at anything else that's trying to distract you. I kept my eyes looking deep into the white specs of his, hands holding on for dear life.
     The nails dug deep into my skin, gripping hard until I felt something staining my socks. Deep breaths. It's not real. It's just something that I was seeing so that I would let go of his wrists.
I was wrong. I felt a sharp pain hit me in my back and go directly through my chest. A large, blood-covered spear that was made of old wood had stabbed directly through my heart and into Smallik's. He and I both gasped at the same time, feeling each other's movements as we tried to pry the wood from the ground. As much as we both tried (neither of us in our condition was strong enough), we were stuck by a large, wooden spear, and I gave up trying to get rid of it. My own blood started dripping out from one end, but I didn't feel weak. Strangely enough, I felt some sort of power resonating from within it.
     How was this going to work? How was stabbing us both with the same spear going to make Smallik immortal? I just hoped it worked. Time was running out. I knew it.
     "Firstien, grab onto it now!" 
     I whipped my head around long enough to see a large black hand held out to me in a friendly manner, tempting me with a wave. I closed my eyes, knowing fully well something strange was about to happen despite the fact there was a log stuck into my chest. The moment my hand touched the shadows, an unearthly howl had cried forth from the depth of Hell it was coming from. It made my ears ring, and Smallik screeched out the same pattern. Did he feel the pain of the spear? I didn't. I couldn't feel anything.
     The hand that started the unearthly howl had called the other's to attention, and they all came rushing to us. No. Oh, god no. They piled on top of us until I was no longer able to see my own two hands, and I felt myself hyperventilating. I gripped the grass, ripping it up faster than I thought my calloused hands could go. I tugged on the spear going through my chest until I felt a rupture of something. It hurt. Oh, it hurt like someone had just ripped away everything important about me and lied it on a bedside table.
      The spear snapped in two, and I collapsed next to Smallik with a much worse expression.                Black magic... This was the kind of shit you read in fiction, not the kind of thing that happens to someone. I still didn't let go of Smallik's right arm, but my grip was weak. I could barely see anything in the first place, but now I could see stars forming in the corners of my eyes.
     "It worked!" It was Viobin's excited tone, and she started chanting more Faean. As soon as the words left her mouth, the darkness faded. Only barely could I see her running over the solid ground where the gaping ring of Hell had lied below. She looked at the both of us, grappling onto our wrists with excitement. The stars were taking me over, my eyes drooping.
     Viobin landed her soft hand on my cold cheek. "I'll see you again soon, okay? I know you two will probably be gone before you wake up, but I think I'm going to do the same thing to myself. I'm going to help my people, and I'm going to see you again no matter what. Okay?"
      I nodded, though her words were nothing more than slurs to me. "Okay." Then I felt the tug of someone pulling me away into the darkness of my own mind, and I had no choice but to follow.

     Ding. Ding. I lazily hit the top of my alarm clock and turned over in my sheets. My warm sheets that were originally made for two people the whole time, but only I had occupied them for so long. Mavara had picked out this tacky purple color that she seemed to love so much with this reedy pattern that made no sense, and I let her because I honestly cared about the material of the blanket rather than the design. Though I complain. It's the one thing I could ever be mad at her for, the stupid sheets.
     "Dad."
     Slowly I opened my eyes, seeing Ogillitiy at the door with his black journal. It was clasped heavily in his hands like he was afraid I was going to grab it. I sat up to stare at him, eyes full of wonder as he was hesitant. Hesitant of what? I had no idea. My mind was foggy, and my chest hurt like I had banged it into something right in the center. I knew that I didn't because work yesterday was nothing more than paperwork and studying the gruesome fashion of how that body died and someone was taking out half of people's pupils. I shuttered for a moment before returning the focus back on Ogillitiy.
     "What's up?" I asked, trying not to stare at his journal with my owl-like eyes.
     He held his breath for a moment, but then the words were blurted out into the air. "I need you to hear the beginning of my story. Now. To see if you remember it."
     "Oh. Is it an old one? You know I know most of your stories like the back of my hand." I was lying, but I didn't want to discourage him.
     He grimaced, mouth thin. "No. It's brand new."
    Strange. He wanted me to know a story that he's never told me before? "Okay... Read it."
     His hands shakily opened to the first page, eyes dark as he had stared at the words with the faintest of light to guide him. "It must've been the year 4025, much far back to when we as people had begun to learn all the ethics of humanity. A man, bitter and afraid to be alive, had sauntered the streets much like we always had done on cold winter days. His yellow eyes were set on one foreboding thing: the end of humanity itself."
     It sounded familiar. I started to get a sense of terrible deja vu, and I couldn't pinpoint it. My eyes widened as I stared at him.
     "Let me read a bit more to you," he continued. "'However, this was not true. I was lying. Smallik Sorkitimah was not the man that wanted to end humanity. It was the author who wished for the destruction of it, and the author would try to manipulate Smallik to do his bidding. But it didn't work.'"
     Everything came flooding back like a waterfall of bad memories. I remembered Ogillitiy dying, the Eldritch, Ortim, faeries and Fae, and I remembered the blackness and the wound in my chest. I lifted my shirt to see the scar where the the spear had stabbed through me. I even touched the top of my hair to feel the small vine growing from it.
​​​​​​​      "I..." I gulped. "I'm back in 9127."