Those Who Shatter

Chapter 13: Pool Pushing Portals

Dear Jericho, 

Before you died, I had only lost three orbs. After you died, I grew neglectful.

My current count is up to nine. I've lost nine Orbs during my years as a Settler. Six in the time you've been gone; one for each month I spent without you by my side. 

Nine innocent lives torn apart by Shades I was unable to return to the Void before they wrecked their demonic havoc on the Peripherals. It sounds like a large number when you think of it in terms of statistics—in a group of ten people, nine of them have the possibility of having their mind destroyed from the inside out. 

Then again, statistics has never been my best subject. You know that. I imagine you're rolling your eyes right now.

"Nine out of ten would be the equivalent to ninety percent, Vera," you would say. "You are far better than a ten percent success rate." 

Am I, though? 

Still, in all actuality, losing only nine somehow makes me the current runner-up for the best track record within the Halls. Regardless, their faces will burden me from time to time—some wrinkled with age, others smooth and unlined—haunting the blank moments of my day.

They remind me of all I have to lose if I fail.

You had only ever lost three: your mother, your father, and your brother.

Somehow, your three have always seemed far worse than my nine.

O * O * O

"Jamison Clancy Miles."

I've repeated the name for days now; muttering it underneath my breath while I brush my teeth, churning the name through my thoughts as I slug through pre-calculus homework. I don't know why I do it. Every time the name burns itself into my brain, it makes me jumpy, causing me to develop a nervous tick of tracing the slight pale band my Settler's ring has left in its wake.

It gives me regret.

Stupid, I chide myself as I slide my feet into a pair of leather sandals. So stupid. It feels childish now, the tantrum I threw in the Orbs Hall in front of Eleanor—probably my one true friend I still have there—chucking my ring as far from me as I could get it to go. To be honest, I had been aiming for Eleanor's face. Now, I'm glad it didn't hit her, but it is a little worrisome that my aim was so terrible.

"Jamison Clancy Miles."

Without the ring around my finger, I'm blind to the Shades corrupting my Providence. Those demonic bastards will remain invisible to me. I imagine they would laugh about it if they carried the slightest humorous bone in their warped bodies. Most frustratingly, I can't even get my ring back. The Orbs Hall is now unattainable, just beyond my ringless hand's reach; unless I get summoned by Serah Mallory, Old Man Ewan, or some other uppity Seers, I'm stuck in the Peripherals.

Just like I wanted.

I'm not quite sure I thought that through.

Funny how Jamison Clancy Miles was nothing more to me than another burning name until I learned that it had Jase's face.

My heart thumps unsteadily. Is this how I treated all those others on my ring? As just another job to be carried out instead of an actual life? I think about how I made up lives for all those names without realizing they already had one. I grit down on my teeth, forcing my breaths to saw in and out until I feel my blood boil back to normal.

Focus.

Jase's name appeared on my ring multiple times before I tossed it; I can't help but wonder what demon has stalked him all this time. My father's many-eyed Occuli? A useless Drude? Another Obake stealing a cute cheerleader's face? The thought frightens me; my throat threatens to close, an anaphylaxis shock against my panic, as I picture burning tattoos, talons like dragons, hissing threats of stinking garbage following Jase around.