same. As soon as I settle in front of her, she sets her hands on her knees and focuses on me.
“You’re right about that at least, Toreon, but Sable doesn’t need to teach the world,” she says, giving me a smile filled with determination. “She just needs to teach me and Delta how to resist him. Then we can kill him, and all of this will be over.”
Toreon doesn’t respond in any way to her words, but they settle into me and stoke my hope like gasoline being fed to the flame of a candle. The accelerant of her statement feels like it turns my softly glowing wick from something barely there and soothing to a raging inferno that could ignite anything and everything.
“Do you think that could work?” I ask, and there’s no hiding the hope in my voice.
“I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot,” she quickly answers back with a shrug. “Now, how does it work for you? What do you do that shuts him out?”
I consider how to answer her, forcing myself to dip into difficult memories to try and trace step-by-step what’s happening to me and why his power can’t seem to get a foothold.
“Okay, so your tribulations,” I start, and she nods eagerly. “I think something similar happens to me, but instead of the darkness leaking in and helping me go full Annulus badass, it wraps me up and keeps anything from getting to me,” I explain, not sure if that makes any sense at all. “Like a cocoon. I can see and hear everything, but it doesn’t really touch me. Nothing hurts. It’s like I make some kind of barrier around me.” I’m not even sure if that’s what happens, but it’s the best way I can explain it.
“How do you control what the blackness does, though?” she questions.
I wrack my brain for answers and a way to understand how it all works. “For me, it’s always just done it that way on its own. But you mentioned Delta said she’d see the blackness too, but it never took over all the way for her. I’m hoping it’s this innate protection that we all have, but it manifested differently in all of us. If so, it must be the same, so maybe we can manipulate it, make it work for us in a more conscious, intended way.”
“That makes sense,” Medley states, licking her cracked lips. “Okay, let me try to see if I can call to it. I’ve never tried before.” She closes her eyes, and I can tell she’s concentrating hard.
I close my eyes too and visualize her grabbing her blackness like a thick cloak of armor and wrapping it all around her. I watch that action over and over again in my mind for a while until I hear Medley huff, and I open my eyes to find her looking back at me.
“I don’t know how to even find the darkness. I don’t feel it in my body all the time. It sorta just creeps in whenever I’m all riled up and I need it.”
I nod, knowing what she means, but before I can open my mouth to offer any other thoughts on the matter, a familiar sting at my back has my wings shoving out of me, and I know from what Medley’s explained, my hair has turned the same dark purple as my feathers.
“Ouch,” I mutter, looking over my shoulder at the appendages that just love to pop in and out of me whenever they want.
Medley jumps a little at the sudden return of my wings. “Well, look at me just jumpin’ the gun,” she announces, shaking her head. “We need to get your wards removed once and for all. They’re broken alright, which is why you keep going in and out, but let’s just shatter them all together.”
She explained to me about the wards Nefta put on us as babies. Too bad mine either never worked properly or fractured when I was a kid, and that’s how I was able to see demons. All that time, I thought it was my mind that was broken, but really, it was her wards. Thanks, Mom!
“How do we do that?” I ask.
“Delta had to go into Nihil for hers, but for me, they broke with her blood.”
I’m immediately assaulted with images of vampires from various TV shows and how they look as they bite into the neck of their prey. A shiver runs through me at the thought, and I have