Center of Attention

Miscommunication

     I could feel it. The grass underneath my back had brushed against me lightly as I heard Viobin above with curses passing her tongue in Faean. She and I both knew that this wasn't an easy fix despite the bright tone that Sivill had. I could hear him, shuffling in the dirt with his own half-baked curses going passed his mouth as worms and snakes went across his nubby fingers. They brushed up against my skin as he opened my eyes wider to stare into their dark advances. Even I wouldn't let my father that close to my face, but there was no way to get him to go away.
     I was immobile.
     "If you dare hurt my son, I will unleash a hell upon you so great, that you will be burning for the rest of your living days," Father had hastily growled, gripping Sivill by his arm in a vice-like hold.
     Sivill pushed him off. "That won't happen. Trust me."
     "I can't trust you. You're trying to kill the human race because you hold a damn grudge. So, no, I don't fucking trust you."
     "Then why let me help your son?"
     Dad went quiet. For a moment, he looked into my strained eyes, and then he turned back to Sivill with an answer. "I don't have any other options."

     After a while of worrying, Smallik had eventually landed me on a rotted stump that sat wide enough for us to sit. Too close. We were way too close to each other, but it was calming nonetheless to sit and stare at the yellowed trees as they swayed in the air. The few faeries that stood in a daunting manner were frantic as they watched the blackness from Ogillitiy's body spread across the grass and made it decay, and a few times they whizzed passed our faces with terrified expressions written across their faces. Viobin had ran with them in her small form to make sure they weren't interfering with whatever Sivill was doing.
    Sivill was doing... something. He would pass over Ogillitiy's body with metal stakes he had stashed away into his pockets, and he'd poke them all around his figure until there was nothing left of them to put around his body. He started saying something under his breath in Faean. I turned to Smallik, but he was just as awed by what his brother was doing. Brother... Besides their identical faces, there was nothing about them that looked similar. He did mention him being a half-brother, but still.
    Whatever Sivill was doing, it wasn't what Viobin had done in the past. In fact, it was completely erratic as he moved around with his hands waving around like he was waving. My legs were trying hard to sit still and watch, but there were moments when Smallik would stare at me to sit down and watch. It was hard. That was my son.
    "Okay!" Sivill yawned, stretching his back out with his hands curling in the air. "Firstien, I'm going to need your help with this one."
    I stood, but Smallik gave me a look that told me not to go. There was a part of me that wanted to stay on the rotted stump. My body was ready to just lean into Smallik defensively as Sivill gave up on asking me to get up, but I had to. In my head, I was chanting that my son was going to be okay. When he died, I thought it was the end of the world. Now, he had the chance of actually dying, and Sobollum couldn't take us back anymore.
    "What?" I asked, approaching him.
    Sivill gripped my hand in the same way I did to his arm earlier when I gave him that warning.    "You need to be the one to chant the words. It only works when your blood related."
    I tilted my head. "Viobin did it to Smallik and I just fine. We're not related."
    "No, listen. This isn't the same thing that Viobin did to you two. This is a different method."
    Sobollum, who had been disappearing in and out of the woods with the faeries suddenly lifted his head. "What?" he had questioned. "I've never heard of any other way to grant immortality than the faeries."
     "Well, when you're a Center, you learn these things."
     He was starting to forget that I was also a Center. He handed me a piece of paper with Faean scribbled all over it like a child would have done, but it was readable. I guess. I still had no idea what any of it had said at all. My fingers gripped the paper, and my hands were shaking from all the tension.
    "Read that," he said to me. "You're going to get your son out of that junk whether you want to or not."
    My eyes had darted to the first word. Vom. That sounded sinister, and I didn't even know what that meant. My eyes glossed over the words, and I looked back up into Sivill's eyes.
    "We'll step back," Sivill had stated, running back to Smallik who held a hard stare at Ogillitiy's body.
     I took in a deep breath. "Vom brikare miniss. Nomae libiraey somitae, atta voiceks nottabain."
The ground started to shake, and the trees began to recoil backwards as my voice had started to ring in the back of my throat. Smallik had stood up with the vibrations as they shook him where he stood. Viobin had clutched to him to make sure he didn't reach out into the fray.
    "Allumo. Sikare brikare sittisvort kilim ors, atta likis nottabain," I continued. The next part was mostly in my language. "I call upon the elements of the darkness that resides in that book, that resides in my son. Norvis. Lightning. Nobliae. Ice. Viagortsi. Fire. Lamis. Earth. Bring forth the world that resides into that book until... Vaesain oan niersillit. Assa noe kiavi. Bliase soea noesa lill omi voorkae."
     From the ground came large, black hands that ripped at the remaining trees. They were expansive, covering the large sky above as their pointed fingers ripped through the still air like it was all nothing to them. Slamming onto the earth, Smallik had ripped away from Viobin until he was pushing me to the ground. My head landed on Ogillitiy's blackened chest with a thud, and I felt the blackness encroaching on my hair until it had started to grow over my mouth. Smallik pulled me up, ripping it off of my mouth.
     "Damn it, Firstien!" Smallik had said. I could barely hear him as he said anything due to the blackness seeping into my ears. "You're making this worse! If those hands manage to take the book, they're going to do what Sivill asks them to do!"
     The hands started to slam against the ground, closer to Ogillitiy's body. No. I couldn't let that happen. Slowly, I started to reach around Ogillitiy to latch onto his book. My fingers wrapped around the binding, and I lurched backwards as the book landed on my blackened stomach. This was like liquid sugar, slow and hard to breath in. I imagined sugar was hard to breath in, anyway.
    "Give us the book."
    The voice was vibrating from the floor. The hand had approached us, the fingers coiling around my legs. They started to crawl up my pants leg with fast speed, and I kept a firm hold on the book.
    "You summoned us to take the book," it hissed as its palm pressed against my chest. "This is your problem. You took us to the real world."
     I grimaced. "This isn't what I wanted! I just wanted to fix Ogillitiy!"
    "You can't fix him any other way. Give us the control. Give us the power."
     My hands loosened, but only barely. Thoughts of everything that happened started to run through my head. I remembered my first morning, the look on his face as he read so happily from this book. The memory of him attempting my murder, the thoughts of him wanting to help after realizing his mistake... All of that had went through my mind. My fingers slipped over the first few pages as I saw what they said.
     "You're the Center, then?" he asked. "A damn Enforcer? Why do we have to be so fucking unlucky?"
     "What do you mean by Center? Do you mean where the children are? You haven't touched my son, have you?" I shakily asked. I was an Enforcer. I was supposed to be stone cold, but the thought of my son being in someone else's hands had me lose my strength.
     "Oh. So the poor Center doesn't even know what he is?" A grin slid across his face, and I only could tell by the creases. "This makes this even more interesting to do this, then."
    He released the trigger on his gun, shooting me directly in the heart. It didn't take me long to drop dead, falling into the nothingness that was the afterlife. I didn't even see myself bleed or see what my attacker looked like.
     I was dead, and I wouldn't even know what he meant.
     That happened. I remembered thinking those things not too long ago, and I remembered being afraid of Brokilna as he attacked me there in that building. I flipped a few more pages, closer to the end.
     "B-b-b..." Brokilna had started saying. Foam was coming out from the inside of his mouth. "V-V-Vand... Mas-ma-mass... g-g-eno-..."
     "Mass genocide?" Sobollum had inquired. "Is that what you've planned to do in Ortim while we were being distracted by you? Pitiful." Sobollum turned to me, flicking his long ears. "Dittas. You two have to find the group called Dittas because they're the same group that Brokilna and Vandilliball had themselves involved in."
     "Where?" Smallik asked, clearly still shocked from the bullet.
    "That's not a question I can answer."
     Brokilna had furrowed his brows, reaching out to try and grab up weakly. "V... Vand... K-k-kill... y-y-"
     I sat up, staring at the hand as it pulsed there on my lap. This was my story. "Center of Attention" was the story I had been living in this moment. There was a part of me that wanted to turn the pages to the end just to see how it would become, but I refrained. There was a part of me that was afraid.
     "I can't give this to you," I protested. "This is my story, and I'm not giving it back."
     Those words were probably in the book, too.