A Hero In The Dark

Chapter 153: Cry

I watch as the thick oily tendril pulls itself free from his body and retreats back to Phiri Dun-Ra's missing arm. Not because I want to but because I cannot look away. I wish I could.

His blood seeps into the grass and colors it red. His body goes slack and he gurgles blood.

"Dad... no..." I choke through the pain and discomfort of the slimy limb in my side. "please," I whisper then to the psychotic mog. "please. let me heal him."

Phiri Dun-Ra says nothing and only kneels down to pinch my cheeks, ensuring I keep her gaze.

"I am concocting a New World Order Emily," she says then. "I cannot have you, or anyone else, in my way. None of your Loric pals or human allies. None of your pathetic pets. Killing you today is a remarkable act of glory. I am that much closer to completing my goals."

I try to shake her grasp free, but it does nothing. I try to settle my tears because I don't like crying in front of her. But I can't. The thought of losing my Father is suddenly all too real.

So, I only close my eyes.

Close my eyes and cry while she squeezes my cheeks and breathes in my face, her foul stench all I can smell.

My heart shudders. My lungs moving so rapidly that it seems they skip several beats. It hurts. It hurts physically and emotionally, emotionally physically. It hurts. My heart shudders and breaks.

Breaks.

"Aren't you going to kill her Phiri?" another mog asks as he enters the yard.

Phiri Dun-Ra snaps her attention to the soldier, angrily so, and I open my eyes to see when she at last releases her grasp.

"I am figuring out how I want to kill her!" she says then. "Do not rush me!"

Then she turns back to glance at me, watching me lie on the hard ground under her limb and seizing in pain and agony.

I feel the tendril of ooze shift inside my body like a writhing mass of live worms. Moving about under my skin, crawling through my blood, infecting it like poison.

It only takes a second to glance up at the cruel trueborn and notice the blue light of my legacy lit in her palm.

"How ironic," she starts again, "that your life will end by the mere power you were granted to save."

She raises her palm; aims it at me.

I grit my teeth; try to prop myself up onto my elbows, try to say anything to stop her, try to block my face from the threat.

I succeed at nothing.

It isn't until I feel a slice of wind whip through my tangled hair and hear Phiri Dun-Ra shriek a surprised cry that I try and focus my eyes on what is happening around me.

She stumbles away from me, and behind her from high up above, I catch a glimpse of a nicely toned boy with blonde unkempt hair. His features matching perfectly to the mind I sought out not long ago.

A storm brews overhead.

"Never on your life Phiri Dun-Ra," he says, and I wish I could smile at his appearance. But even through my pain, I can't bring the action upon my face.

"John Smith," Phiri scoffs. "Here to save your girlfriend?"

The sound of thunder rattles the sky and a bolt of lightning summons and strikes the mog nearby, though it sounds like fifty bolts of lightning were bade instead.

The Mogadorian who chastised Phiri drops dead and bursts into a cloud of ash in seconds and I notice a glimmer in John's hand, quick to realize what it is when it is fully out of its sheath.

His dagger with the diamond edge, given to him in his Inheritance from his home.

As soon as I see it, John winks out of existence.

Gone in the open air.

"Where has he gone?" I wonder to myself.

And then, she screams.

Phiri Dun-Ra screams when John appears at my side to stab his blade through her heart. Straight through her back, into her heart, and pulling quick the weapon free. The blue spark of Loric Energy that travelled up my connection from my side to Phiri Dun-Ra is gone in an instant when John slices through the tendril. She gags and falls before dropping as dead as her comrade. Her twisted augmentations disintegrate into nothing but thick black ash and it isn't long until her body follows suit. Only remnants of bone and scar tissue remaining.

John comes to my aid and I feel his healing legacy force the black ooze out of my system for as long as a dozen seconds at the minimum. That is, until I remember.

I push his hand away and force myself to stand, keeping a hand on my side to apply pressure to the incompletely healed wound.

Then, I walk to Him.

Walk, then run, then sprint.

Sprint and fall to my knees at his side. Clutch his hand, watch his chest; watch it no longer rise and fall with life. His eyes closed in a sleep that he will never wake up from.

And there, I cry.

My cheek on his stomach as if waiting for him to breathe in but crying crying crying.

"Please don't leave me Dad," I think to his mind through the sobs. "Please."

I want him to hear me I want it to work. I know it doesn't, there is nothing my telepathy can connect to, but I want it to work I want him to hear me.

I want him to come back. I want him to stay.

"don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me" I repeat.

Over and over and over again.

Until I notice a small hand touch my Father's dark cheek. I glance up at it and to the body to who it belongs to. And there, my Brother kneels across from me, crying all the same.

All of a sudden, the yard is caked in silence. Coated in it as if trying to silence our cries.

I feel two hands on my shoulders and know instantly that it is my Mother's. I don't know where she has been during it all, hiding safe most likely, and I am then simply grateful that I didn't lose her too.

She kneels with me beside him and holds me by my shoulders and I pull my arms away from my Father at last to hug her close and cry in her chest. She reaches a hand out to my tearful Brother and pulls him in close into her touch with us.

And for a long moment, we just sit there and cry.

Sit there and cry. Together, the three of us. Sit there and cry.

Cry.