Lifeline (Chills Fanfic)

72 - Autumn

Xander, Calla, and I are in the middle of going back to the lab when it happens. There is an explosion of pain that engulfs me. It cripples me. I scream, falling to my knees and I clutch my heart with one hand, my right temple with the other.

Calla hurries to my side.

I cannot hear her, even though she's right beside me. I can't even manage to get air into my lungs. Dylan's in trouble. He needs me now more than ever, and I can't get to him because of this soul-crushing pain.

"Dylan ... he needs me," I say through panting breaths.

"Alright, I'm teleporting to him," Xander says.

"No," I whisper softly, feeling like my very heart is being broken in half, I would've imagined blood being present when your heart is breaking, but no. There is no physical injury to me.

This is because of whatever is happening to Dylan.

Xander teleports the three of us to a field. As the pain receeds a little, I look around through blurry eyes, filled with tears. Calla helps me stand up, and I start to look for any sign of Dylan.

I can feel him. But where....?

"Looking for your loverboy?"

The pain in my chest and soul fades, and I turn around as Zeke approaches us, his sword held tight in his hand, covered in familiar-smelling blood.

Dylan's blood.

"What have you done," I growl.

Zeke smiles at me. "With his soul, I bind him forever to the Valley of Emptiness. And with his soul, I open a portal to Aestarial."

"You're insane," I say. "Free his soul. You ... you separated his soul from his body to open these portals? Why?"

"Because it is my destiny, child," he spits. "Not that one such as you could ever comprehend that."

"Don't do this, Zeke," I say. "Please. Don't do this."

Zeke laughs. "I have no choice in the matter."

He then begins the spell. And before I can even react, the world is turned upside down as Zeke opens the portals to Aestarial and the Valley of Emptiness. I've only heard of the Valley once before, and it was a terrifying story parents used to scare their kids into behaving, as it was said the bad kids go there, or something like that.

Lost Ones are what the souls trapped and bound to that other world are called. And to think that Zeke is turning Dylan into one of those ....

"No, no," I whisper. "No!" My shadows rain down out of me, swirling around Zeke and his bloodied sword. Zeke battles the shadows as they fly around him.

"Stop this at once, Autumn!"

Then I see her. The Siren lady smiles at me as she steps forward from the trees with a wraith at her side, a wraith who is holding what can only be Dylan's body in his arms. He sets my best friend down on the grass, but I know that is not what needs saving right now.

"No," I say. "Let him go!"

Zeke laughs. "So demanding of me, eh?" He then flares his wings and thrusts his sword high into the air, then brings it down in a bloody, flaming arc. He tears the air, cleaving it in two and manifesting a portal.

The portal he needed to open.

"No," Calla whispers.

Suddenly, creatures start coming from the portal's open jaws. They are ghostly, all of them are shadowed, glitchy forms. They run at us from all angles, and then they swarm around Calla and I watch, my shadows unable to help as they're immune to my dark power, as they kill her before my eyes.

"Xander, go, run!" I shout.

Then, he grabs me, and we vanish into nothing.