Author Games: Empty Night

Semifinals: Leo Wilder

Leo had never realized how important a heart was to the everyday functions of his livelihood until he no longer felt it being retained within his chest. He could reach his fingers up, feel them graze against the curve of the Sun and would not once meet his heart again.

There's this sort of panic that goes through your mind when you finally settle into a skeleton no longer containing a heart. When it is first ripped away from you, it is almost impossible to notice. The scars are fresh, yes, but your body stills holds hollow memories of what it was like to still have an organ steadily drumming against your ribcage. It takes a while before it truly dawns on you that there is no pace set for the blood pumping through your veins, no leader to tell you there are things left in the world to fight for.

Be glad you still have a heart.

Broken, scarred, sliced thin, or held together by pieces of scotch tape.

A heart is a heart, and it reminds you that there is a battle you must see through till the end. It won't let you back down when the fight seems almost impossible to win and it will never let you quit when you feel like it may all be too much.

Be glad you have something forcing you to fight, to endure, to persevere.

There was a distant, abrupt moment of discord that passed through Leo's mind as the ring of his cellphone erupted throughout his hotel room.

Why would someone interrupt your inner turmoil? Don't they know how utterly rude they are barging in at such a time?

Leo tightened his grasp on the bottle that sat in the inescapable prison of his fingers, bringing the cool glass up to his lips and taking a swig of the vile liquid. The flames that licked his throat made him think about how tough it must be to be a Dragon and have to endure such pain every time you spoke, but the thought was quickly eradicated and he set the bottle down on the table beside him to free his hand.

He reached for his phone, answering the call with a quick click of his thumb on the touchscreen before he pressed it to his ear.

"I've been trying to reach you for almost an hour, sir, are you alright?" a smooth, foreign voice resided on the other end of the call. Concern laced itself with their words, but not enough for Leo to think that they really knew him all that well.

That, and the fact that they'd given him the title that they did. He most assuredly was not a "sir" and anyone who knew him wouldn't deem him as such.

"Who are you?" his voice was gruff, the words scratching their way up his throat as if they'd been dying to be equipped. He hadn't spoken in almost two days, unless you counted the conversations that always ended in him questioning how much sanity he still held within him.

"Would you not be more interested in the identity of the little heathen that murdered one Dorian H'Langraash?" the voice was lilting, a sweet poisonous spell that entered Leo's mind slowly at first, drawing him out of his drunken stupor.

It took his mind a brief moment to process these words being fed to it.

"You know the identity of the individual in question?" Leo asked in return, rubbing grogginess from his eyes as he sat forward in his seat.

"Not exactly... not yet, at least, I'm performing the ritual tonight. It's merely a simple tracking spell, but I feel like involving someone who has been a part of the investigation would make the findings more substantial and concrete. Together, we could pin down the exact whereabouts of the murderer and their identity," the witch held a silent promise to the weight of her words, guaranteeing that Leo felt the gravity of her offer as it perched itself on his shoulders.