The Serum [Paused]

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

***Siren’s View***

            I felt something. A sharp pain originated from my side, spreading numbness throughout my body, preventing my movement, preventing me from defending myself from my attacker. And then, nothing. I jerked awake, screaming “TERRA!” Something happened to her.

            I jumped out of my bed, and ran to her room. I pounded on the door franticly. When no reply came, I hurriedly opened the door and turned on the light. Her bed was empty.

            I tried to calm myself down, thinking She’s probably still at the party. She said she might be a little late, after all. But not this late. I could not help but to think What if the Outsiders or Collectors that she was hunting found her? I had to be sure that she was in trouble before taking action. I slipped out the backdoor, and headed for the shrine I built for meditation.

The shrine was simplistic, nothing more than a stone ring with an elliptical pond off center, and surrounded by different plants. I sat in the center of the stone ring (which was covered in grass), and faced the pool. I focused my mind on Terra, trying to bring her into focus. I felt nothing. Puzzled, I widened my search, and still found nothing. She was not dead, or I would have felt the residual emotions of a soul taken by death. It’s more like she disappeared off the face of the Ea-

I suddenly became fearful. She was no longer on Earth! Someone, an Outsider, took her. Oh no! If an outsider has her… The thought was not bearable to complete. My only thought was I must find her.

I refocused on the feeling of pain, Terra’s pain, which awoke me. I mentally delved in the pool, intending to spirit walk.

Everything around me faded away; the sky, the clouds, the plants, and the Earth itself all faded away. I was now standing on a road, surrounded by buildings covered in frost. While spirit walking, I cannot see people, but I can see the echoes their souls leave in an area. I saw Terra, her fiery spirit burning bright. I saw the characteristic icy sparkles of a Frostling, specifically Esmeralda. She didn’t! Terra was fighting with Esmeralda again!

But there was something else… I “looked” (felt is probably a better word) away from the fight, and saw a retreating emerald green light, one that warped the fabric of reality around it. It had a familiar feel, even though I have never seen that specific soul before. But I felt one that was similar… In fact, I feel it every day, every moment of every day: me.

Is that person like me? I thought. However, I could not dwell upon the soul for long, and mentally filed away the “appearance” of it, in case he or she knew what happened to Terra.

Turning back to the fight, I saw Terra’s spirit moving away from the battleground. Beside her, another soul, with the appearance of an amorphous black cloud, kept pace with Terra. The cloud suddenly pounced upon Terra, knocking her to the ground. They disappeared.

I woke up to the feeling of dew. The grass where I laid was comfortable, and I was tiered. I could not, however, continue to lie there. I needed to find the person the emerald soul belonged to.

****

He was not hard to find: his spirit acted like a beacon to all who can sense it (which, as far as I know, is only me). I can definitively state that the emerald green soul belonged to a male. On closer inspection, I was able to more thoroughly analyze the similarities and differences between our spirits. The most obvious difference is the “color” (souls don’t truly have a color in the scientific sense, but each soul feels like it has one): his was emerald green, while mine was a bright white color. In fact, everything else was different to (as was to be expected), except a feeling of power: both of us had vast reserves of spiritual energy. The only difference was that his was tightly bound within him. Unlike mine, I thought, sadly.