The
Bonding
By
Jalil
The shadows of the
trees made the darkness seem solid and heavy around him as Sabin
crept silently on, but despite the oppressive darkness Sabin
wanted to leap and dance for joy. Tonight he would finally put a face with the
voices that have spoken to him for so many years. He was going to be face to
face with a creature from another world! His mother would have locked him
inside for week in fear of his safety had she had even and inkling of an idea
of what he was up to. Sabin, on the other hand,
positively bubbled with excitement at the possibilities.
After walking a ways, he stopped suddenly. He couldn’t have said exactly why he
stopped except that it felt right. Aside from the important bits he remembered
from his dream, he was going purely on instinct and feeling. Recalling the
memories of his dream he picked up a broken twig from the forest floor and then
swept away the debris until he had a clear patch of dirt. On that be began to
draw. What, he couldn’t say, except that he’d seen it vividly time after time
in that dream where the voice had whispered to him. It seemed to be some kind
of sigil, though, with its intricate lines twisting and curving into a spherical
shape until after he had finished drawing an unbroken circle around the design,
the lines quite resembled an almost featureless face with three pairs of eyes
tangled into a knot-like design, giving the impression that the face was
trapped or bound somehow. Sabin could’ve studied that
drawing in the dirt for hours, but a glance at the luminescent moon peeking
through the trees overhead told him his curiosity about the symbol would have
to wait. The whispers had been clear about the importance of timing.
Careful of his
drawing in the dirt, Sabin lowered himself to the
ground and began the incantation. The words meant nothing to him particularly,
but he found as he spoke them they reminded him of nothing more than the sound
of the whispers that had guided him thus far. Now there just one final key to
make it work. Desire. But that was easy enough; Sabin’s curiosity gave him more than enough of that. Still
he fed his desire, his drive, his need to know what was beyond until he felt he
must burst with it. From here the process was almost unconscious, coming
naturally to him as he focused that desire on the symbol he had drawn. What
happened next he couldn’t see with his eyes, but he could feel it. As if a dam had burst from him, the desire he so focused
upon flooded forth into the symbol. Something wasn’t quite right, though. It
felt like pouring a single cup of water into a bottomless pit. Wasn’t his
desire enough? Hadn’t the voice told him that all he had to do once he spoke
the incantation was want it to happen bad enough? He knew there had to be a way
to fill that pit, that void. Something told him that if he couldn’t accomplish
that, he couldn’t bring the creature to this world. He had to bridge that gap,
but how?
Desperately he
searched his mind, his feelings, his very being for something, anything he
could feed into that gap between worlds, but what? Then he sensed it, a
vibrant, energetic feeling within himself that he had passed over twice as if
his mind didn’t want to consider it. Only now he realized, this he could tap
into, even draw on. He could use it. A small voice cried in wordless caution to
deter him, but he was so close. So close. He couldn’t quit now, not without
trying. Bracing himself he stretched towards the warmth of the energy well he
had found and plunged in. There was a brief moment where he felt like he wanted
to laugh aloud and cry in joy and scream in sheer exhilaration all at once, but
the pure life-filled joy quickly became a muted buzz and then nothing as he
willed it to fill the void and finish what he had started. The night was barely
cool and yet he felt a sudden shiver, as if someone had walked over his grave.
Again that voice of
desperate warning sounded in his head, but Sabin was
only focused on one thing: It was working!
No longer did he
feel like he was trying to fill a bottomless pit, but instead that gap he could
sense but not see was being bridged! Just a little more and…
A yawn cracked his
jaw unexpectedly, and he felt so…cold. Wasn’t it warm out? He shifted his eyes upward,
but his head felt like a heavy weight on his shoulders. Where was the moon? It
had grown a lot darker than he remembered. Just a little more, though…
He felt like he
couldn’t breathe, like something was compressing his chest. The darkness around
him, he thought it suddenly felt heavy. His lungs felt like they were burning,
but it was a distant thought. Was it even his thought at all? No, he had to
concentrate.
Mother…she would be
furious if she ever found out. Wait, was something moving? He thought he saw
something, but everything seemed dim and gray. No wait, something was
moving, rising up. Ironic, he thought, that it resembled that face in his
drawing so, those three pairs of eyes rising, or was he falling? Yes, he was
falling. Maybe if he just laid back and closed his eyes for a
moment. He was so tired and his scalp tingled. At least he thought it
did, but his head felt so stuffed with wool that he couldn’t be sure. If he
could just sleep…just for a while…
Darkness closed in
around him. Yes, he would sleep.
--
The anju rose from the ground, six eyes twisting to find its summoner. A wicked grin split its shadowy face emphasized
by a jagged row of teeth. What a gullible young fool, so caught up in his
curiosity that he sacrificed his own soul. Already the boy’s body was showing
the strain of casting the spell that had been carefully planted in his dreams,
the long mouse-brown locks seeming to be drained of their color leaving his
hair starkly white. A good sign for the anju.
If the body was going into shock then death would follow very soon. Oh yes, the
poor fool was killing himself and he was too blinded by his heart’s desire to
stop it. Just a moment more. It had been patient this
long, and haste now could very well make it regret ever conceiving this idea.
Finally the boy
slumped down into a heap. Those blue-grey eyes stared blankly up at the sky and
the chest no longer rose and fell. Good, it was done, and now the anju could reap the benefits of its scheming. Finally it
would have free reign on the world of mortals to feed on fear and flesh to its
heart’s contentment. Eagerly it seeped into the body looking for the hole that
would be left by the boy’s missing soul. There. It could feel the new
sensations, senses so vivacious compared to its own such as smell, taste, and
most of all touch. How it must be to always have such vivid sensations, and
coupled with the anju’s own acute senses it thought
it might be overwhelmed at first.
It continued to get
a feel of the body, reveling in this new sense of aliveness, when a faint
pulsing feel caught its attention, like the fading light of a dying dream.
Curiosity drew it nearer until it felt like it could reach out and touch the
dying light. It hadn’t even realized it was trying to touch it until a
particularly strong pulse made it draw back in…fear. Yes, it certainly knew
what fear was. Suddenly it wished nothing more than to be away from that
guttering light. It wasn’t sure what would happen if that light, that warmth,
regained its strength instead of dying out, but it didn’t want to find out. It
tried to turn its attention away, hoped that by ignoring the pulse it would go
away and leave the anju to its newfound freedom.
Instead the next pulse brought such a strong feeling that stopped it cold.
Live!
It was impossible!
Purely impossible! The boy was dead, it had watched him die! Watched
this precious body grow cold as his life drained away.
Live!
The fear the anju had felt moments before exploded into terror. How
could this be happening? It had been so careful, hadn’t it?
Live!
It could still
escape. There would be another chance. It was immortal, infinitely patient. It
could find another.
Live!
If only it could
leave the body. Why could it not leave?! It forced itself to face the growing
pulse that echoed through its own body now, and it knew.
Live!
It had chosen the
boy because he had the ability, the desire. It could have laughed.
Live!
That very desire was
going to trap it. Not free to indulge itself on
mortals…
Live!
…but instead trapped,
patching the very soul it thought destroyed. Trapped by a
foolish mistake.
Live!
It could have
laughed, had it known emotion. Had it known irony, it would have laughed
until it wept from it.
Live!
Instead, as it felt
the boy’s growing desire to live pulsing through it like blood through its
veins, as it felt itself being anchored to its new body…no, its new prison…
Instead, it howled in a wordless fury.
LIVE!