The Peregrines

Chapter 18

(1500 worded chapter) 

"That was the start of the Hollow Wars," Emma said. 

"Soon we began to hear stories about creatures made of shadow. They were emerging from the ruined forests to feed on peculiars—and normals, and animals, and anything that would fit between their jaws-" Myron got cut off short.

"Once I saw one eat a car," Nim said.

"A car?" I said.

"I was inside it," he replied. We waited for him to elaborate.

"And?" said Emma.

"I got away," he said, shrugging. "The steering column got stuck in its throat," Nim said.

"May I continue?" said Myron.

"Of course, sir. My apologies," said Nim.

"As I was saying, there wasn't much that would stop these new abominations, save the odd steering column—and loop entrances. Luckily, we had plenty of those. So most of us dealt with the hollowgast problem by staying put in our loops, venturing out only when we had no choice. The hollows didn't end our lives, but they made them vastly more difficult, isolated, and dangerous-"

"What about the wights?" Jake asked.

"I imagine he's coming to that," said Emma.

"I am," said Myron. "Five years after encountering my first hollowgast, I met my first wight. There was a knock at my door after midnight. I was in my house, safe inside my loop—or so I thought. But when I opened the door, there stood my brother Jack, a bit worse for wear but looking like his old self—save his dead eyes, which were blank as unmarked paper."

Emma and Jake were sitting cross-legged, completely engrossed in Myron's words. Myron, on the other hand, had a haunted look in his eyes as he gazed past them. "He'd consumed enough peculiars to fill his hollow soul and turn himself into something that resembled my brother—but wasn't, quite. What little humanity he'd clung to through the years was gone completely, leaked away with the colour in his eyes. A wight is to the peculiar he once was as a thing copied many times is to its original. The detail is lost, and colour-"

"What about memory?" Jake asked.

"Jack retained his. A pity: otherwise he might've forgotten all about Abaton and the Library of Souls. And what I'd done to him." said Myron.

"How did he find out it was you?" Emma asked.

"Chalk it up to brotherly intuition. And then one day, when he had nothing better to do, he tortured me until I confessed to it." Myron nodded at his legs. "Never quite healed properly, as you can see," he said.

"But he didn't kill you," Jake said.

"Wights are pragmatic creatures, and revenge is not a great motivator," Myron said. "Jack was more obsessed than ever with finding Abaton, but to do it he needed my machine—and me to operate it. I became his prisoner and his slave, and Devil's Acre the secret headquarters for a small but influential contingent of wights bent on finding and cracking open the Library of Souls. Which is, you'll have guessed by now, their ultimate goal." he said.

"I thought they wanted to re-create the reaction that turned them into hollows," I said.

"Pff, yeah, 'Only bigger and better' Do it right this time,' " Jake said, making air quotes.

Myron frowned. "Where did you hear that?" he asked.

"A wight told us just before he died, he said that's why they needed all the ymbrynes. To make the reaction more powerful," said Emma.