The feeling and the magic caging Cassius was too much to handle. He froze up, clenching his hands. He closed his eyes. Around him, the air turned into a mixture he couldn't quite describe to himself. He was falling, becoming victim to a beast taking over his mind and body.
He had to get out of there. This place, a safe space for when he was a child, no longer existed. His eyes watered and his shoulders shook. Tears fell down his cheeks, down his chin, down his chest. It was all gone.
Nothing could be saved from this monster raging through the Veil. It was dark magic that would consume all that he knew and loved about this world.
He pulled back, easing his way through the Veil. He wanted to hope, but that wasn't like him. He bottled his emotions and forgot them. He doubted he would ever forget this feeling. The ache inside his heart measured far greater than all the pain he'd experienced in his life combined.
Nothing Iza, Felix, or even Rexton did could have come close to the pain he felt now. The sharp pains were direct stabs to his heart.
The darkness he came back to wasn't the same. It held no comfort or magic that soothed his body and mind. The gentleness of the Eye had grown on him, even if it crossed more boundaries than he was okay with. He learned to open up to it in time.
From a small boy, he connected with it daily and learned more from it than he had learned from all the people in his life. An overheard conversation could never replace real education, but the Third Eye had an infinite amount of knowledge laying doormat for him to dive into.
He didn't know what he was going to do now. It was all a shock.
The strap bit into his skin each time he moved. He tried not to, but the edges of the straps were beginning to chafe and irritate his upper arms. The ride was going to be long to Keshtin. It was something like five hours from what he'd gathered from earlier years when Iza would leave the base.
Those rare occasions where they had to drive far made Iza more likely to burst out in anger. They were moment Cassius never hated. It was in those times that he saw the best of emotions across the man's face. Iza had a difficult time creating new ones—he wasn't creative at all—though he did well when Cassius talked back.
Cassius couldn't even remembered what he would say. It was probably something about how Iza had a stick up his ass. Like he wanted a stick up his ass even. It didn't matter. The memory was fond and a little sad for him to miss.
He was going to miss the base.
Iza, Felix, and the Shadows. The guards and the shitty food. They were shit. All of them and more. But they were home to him. The HIVE was a faded memory while the base was where his childhood had taken place. It was all he knew and now he was leaving.
The voice came out of nowhere.
Cassius glanced to his right. His eyes widened slightly at the sudden sound.
There, in the corner of the shadows, the Mekiah had turned toward him. He could only see the slight plains of their faces, but the voice sounded like a man's. It was a raspy mumble of words and from it, he could only pick out a few syllables.
He shouldn't speak to them. And he didn't want to either. But they were yelling for attention. If he ignored them, he felt he would be doing something wrong. Like he was the one that had put them in this place.
He wasn't an Exteru. He was a Mekiah like them. Even so, he wanted to face the other way, to turn a blind eye. They were another thing he wanted to disappear from his memory. All he could do was ignore them, but their presence was still present in his mind.
In the back, in the shadows of his dark thoughts, he saw their faces crying for his help. It wasn't these two. It was hundreds of Mekiah, children and adults alike. Weak to the bones and beaten by the Remu and the Exteru. Together with the beaters, he stared at the scene.
He was unbothered by it all. Just a lone bystander as his people were slaughtered left and right. It was nothing he could fix and nothing he should feel guilty about. It wasn't his right to save the enslaved. Nor was it his fault his ancestors hadn't been strong enough to fight against the Exteru. Whether it was right or wrong, justice or injustice, he didn't want any part of it.
But it felt like something was pulling him inward into this problem. The person spoke once more, their raspy voice a little more clear.
He shouldn't try to help them. He shouldn't even think about encouraging them. But the pitiful voice of the person would drive him mad if he didn't try something.
"I can't hear you," he said and almost immediately regretted it.
What was he even thinking when he said that? What were they going to do? And why did he sound like he was patronizing them?
He couldn't take his words back. Now, he could only wait for them to say something back.
A few minutes passed, the edge of the silence grinding at Cassius's mind. He should have let the silence go on and forgot about the two figures locked in the car with him.
When he got to the Capital it wasn't like he was ever going to see these people again. Why should he even feel sorry? There were worse off Mekiah in the world. These two might be going to live in some nice rich Remu's house. While there were women Mekiah being sold to sleazy old me. Or kids being sent off into the military. Why should he feel sorry for these two while others were being killed on a daily basis?
He had to think about himself. It was the only way he would be able to survive in this world.
Then, for a brief moment, a light flickered through the car. It flashed once and died in the following second.
Cassius blinked, holding his breath as he waited. His body was still to the point of shaking. There was nothing here but them. Whatever he thought was there, it wasn't real.
Even so, he couldn't shake the strange feeling at the back of his mind. He could feel a presence among them. It hovered close to him, almost touching. If he reached out with his hand, he would touch them. He couldn't force himself to test it. The thought of touching whatever was lurking there made his skin crawl.
The feeling died down and he began to feel the weight on his chest lift. The closest Mekiah mumbled another sound, almost like a muffled scream. It sent a chill down his spine.
He closed his eyes, willing his fear to go away. His heart pounded against his chest and he felt the walls push in against his body. The car rocked from side to side, shaking and groaning as they moved along the road.
He wanted out of there right now. He didn't want to be there longer than he had to be. A few more hours and he thought he might lose his mind.
He shouldn't even think about talking to them. They were bad news, throwing off bad energy he didn't want hanging around him. He didn't believe in the supernatural or the legends about the gods that ran their lives. He didn't even believe the stories about the Exteru being sent from the heavens.
It was all nonsense to scare the Mekiah from rebelling. And it worked. But not on him.
He didn't believe in any of it but being here, feeling the dark energy and the darkness seeping into the car, it made him uneasy.
It took him back to the days when he would be locked in his room for days. The darkness had never scared him, never threatened him like it did now. He could go for days in his own mind with the Third Eye as his only means of escape. For years, he'd become this person that couldn't connect with anything, not because he didn't want to, but because there was no one to connect with.
His family wasn't even a memory anymore. His mother's touch and the voices of his siblings were close to being nothing but a vague dream he had once. One day he wouldn't even remember had a family once.
When that day came, he wasn't sure if it would change anything or if he would become a different person than who he was now. So many things had changed and evolved. It was changing all over again, turning upside and inside out until it was distorted beyond recognition.
This was the doing of something greater. It had to be. If it wasn't and this was all by chance, he was the unluckiest being on the planet. It was a one in a million chance.
A tap came from the side of the car, opposite of the two Mekiah. He looked up in that direction, cursing his poor vision. It wasn't his fault he couldn't see in the dark, but it still frustrated him.
The sound happened again. Louder. Sharper than it had been before. He stared in the direction, concentrating on the spot.
The shadow...it wasn't just a shadow.
He took in a sharp breath. He tensed as he made out the shape of the shadow. Tall and broad, not something that could be mistaken. It couldn't be a trick of the eye.
It hovered above the bench like it was peeking through the car. The thing had the same energy as the shadow he'd seen before, identical even. It had to be the same thing.
The metal clinked again. It rubbed against his skin, irritating it to the point he thought he had open wounds on his wrists. He bit through the pain to just keep his eyes on the figure. His heart raced as it raised its hand. The moment it moved toward him, he jerked his head back. He hit the wall behind him and the chain went taught. The shadow stopped. It hovered in the center of the car.
The air turned light. He breathed in and waited for it to make its next move. He could do nothing to defend himself. His magic didn't exist at that moment.
But the shadow didn't come toward him again. It hung in the air, almost hesitant on what it should do. The magic drew back from the air, sucking in like it was being pulled from the car. Cassius hung onto every last drop on reflex, but when it was on its last string, it ripped from his hold and disappeared. The shadow hovered and then he realized why it seemed so familiar.
It was the beast from that night. It had bitten him.
All the fear he'd buried deep inside rushed to the surface. He yelled out and claws as much as he could at the bench. There wasn't anything he could do. The metal dug into his skin the more he tried to escape, but he was blinded by the black mass coming toward him.
He needed to get away. Screw trying to keep calm or trying to be the person he was before. Without his magic or the Third Eye, he was nothing. He had no strength.
The being stopped. It turned its head as if it were looking for something, but it made no other move. Cassius pressed as far as he could against the wall of the car. It was right in front of him, a ghost that could do anything to him at any moment.
The side of his neck burned like it knew or was expecting for the next bite to come. He cried out once more. The pain grew stronger. The teeth ripped through his skin. Blood ran down his shoulder and he could smell it. The strong metallic flavor pushed at the back of his throat.
It was in his mouth, all over his tongue. Through the darkness, its eyes glowed that blood red. Chills ran up his spine like a knife cutting through his back.
The moments following that were a blur. The shadow ran straight for him. He held up his hands to cover his face, but he forgot that his hands were chained between his knees.
He shook his head back and forth, screaming as loud as he could though he could not hear a sound. It grew closer and then it was right in front of him. The planes of its face took shape with what little light there was. It was the same one as before. He knew immediately. He would remember that face until he died.
It opened its mouth. The sharp white teeth paired with its glowing eyes looked every bit like the things he'd heard in stories. The words from the Exteru and Remu passed around like a disease and he wasn't exempt from it. An image had festered in his head and here it was, reflected like a dream.
The being came closer until its teeth pushed against the side of his neck. He saw that night flash before his eyes. The pain ripped through him over and over until he felt his mind begin to slip away. The teeth hovered. His screams fell away.
His breath escaped him. He fell back, weightless. It moved back until it met his eyes. He stared at it, panting and lost in his thoughts. There was fear in the back of his mind, but it was a fuzzy feeling.
Oddly, he couldn't look away from it. His body was burning and it ached. If he wasn't so weak, he would have reached out for it, lifted his hand. He didn't understand why he would want to do such a thing.
And then it was gone.
The shadow fell into the dark, disappearing just like it had appeared. He watched it, still gasping for breath as the thing that haunted his dreams receded into nothing. It happened so fast he couldn't grasp what had happened.
One moment he thought he was going to die and the next he was coming back to his senses. Slowly, his hearing came back. The steady rhythm of the moving car. The rattling of chains on metal.
It was still dark. Surrounding him, caging him in like it had done before. He didn't feel safe. He felt only fear. Now he knew it could find him no matter where he was. The being that had instilled more fear in him than years of being abused.
But the fear was overshadowed the building feeling in his chest.
His magic was back.