Page 103 of Remnants: Disruption
Laugher breaks out around the room as if we hadn’t all just watched the same fucking video.
“I can feel your anger, Hiraeth,” Azazel’s monotone voice comes from where they still sit facing the crowd. “Are you alright?”
“I knew her,” my voice sounds hoarse. Like I hadn’t spoken in weeks. “The girl. The one the video paused on for the last hour.”
Azazel shifts to study the screen again. Then they let out a grunt before the screen turns off.
“That explains the destitute sadness at first. Explain the rage.”
“Fuck do you mean?” I say louder than I mean to. The lingering groups turn towards us. “They just bombed a fucking civilian neighborhood and slaughtered at least seven adults and a child. Do we suddenly not care because they weren’t Remnants?”
Now everyone left in the Cradle stares at us. I feel my breaths coming fast and hot. My chest pounds as I stare down at the expressionless mask.
“Alice wasn’t a Remnant. She was a girl who was working paycheck to paycheck. She was kind. She cared about people.”
She cared about me. So did Harlot. And Percy.
And they all died in this stupid fucking conflict.
I huff out a breath that sounds far more choked than I’d like.
“Calm down, acolyte,” Loki says from across the room. I whip my head towards him and this time don’t stop myself as the shadows flash into shape.
The lurking spirits answer a call I don’t really remember making. Yet, they take form around Loki. Their forms manifest solid as they launch themselves at the green robed man.
Shadows coil around his neck and lift him into the air and I appear beside him.
“Say it again,” I hiss.
The room explodes with red. I launch the spike and it narrowly misses Loki’s face, instead cutting a scar across his lower jaw. Blood flashes as he drops to the floor, coughing and sputtering slurs.
“Enough,” Mary’s voice bellows through the room.
Instead of shadows dying around her siphoning, they only waver. She stomps across the room, nearly knocking Loki over again.
“Stand down, acolyte,” she says, voice full of malice.
My seething dulls, though, as I see her eyes. Not anger or annoyance. I’ve seen both in the last few hours.
It’s fear.
Of me?
I nod and the shadows disappear, as do the spirits. But I still feel them. Like their true souls had gone wherever I’d pushed them to, but their essences had remained.
I’m using them like weapons, but hadn’t that been what the first man had wanted?
“If you attack a member of the council again, we will—” Mary begins, but I snort derisively.
“Fucking be my guest,” I hiss, baring my teeth, and stalking past her without another word.
I take the stairs, only barely noticing the way the eyes of the living and dead follow me as I do.
“That was ill-advised,” I hear Azazel’s voice before I feel their presence. Though it’s mostly because my entire attention is on the spirit I’m currently wrestling into the ever-after.
I’ve decided now to just accept the insanity. Either I’m smooshing them into nothingness, or they really are going somewhere else.
“Duly,” I grunt out, “noted.”
