There's been a POV change! Since there are only 3 main characters (Kai, Lloyd, and Seiko) the P.O.V doesn't have to be third person limited/omnicient anymore. So only when we revert to Kai's POV will it be 3rd person, but then, since the book IS the book of the Yin & Yang, it will be told in 1st person between Lloyd and Seiko. You'll see who's POV it is, when in 1st, underneath the chappie title. :3
CHAPTER THREE:
LOVELY AND DARK AND DEEP
~ Yin~
I opened my eyes. Admittedly, the sunlight radiating off of the two separate suns practically stabbed me in the corneas, but I wasn't actually going to say that. I grabbed a hold of a tuft of something silky, soft, and warm, wrapped around me in a neat envelope that I could've shrunken into forever. It felt nice to stick my face into the grass beneath my body and inhale its extremely spicy scent, almost like when Cole was cooking something really gross in the kitchen. Except I would've preferred that over this.
Whatever 'this' counts as.
Seventy 'days', fourteen hours, twenty-seven minutes, and point-twenty-one seconds. That is how long it's (roughly) been since I got stuck in this godawful hellhole that consumes people whole. Don't ask me how I got here, don't ask me when. I'm just making an assumable approximation here. It's been one helluva ride, that much I could tell you. It's not fun sticking around here in some weird dimension where the grass is white, the earth is red, and the townspeople have the manners of a two-year-old baby. When you're fortunate enough to come across a town, anyway. They're scattered, leaving large, unoccupied distances between each other as though they are kingdoms scattered across the realm, all unattached to one another. It's like they don't even know the other villages exist, except for when you come across those once-in-a-lifetime travelers who've been around the block a couple of times. The nice ones who actually converse peacefully with you are difficult to come by. The two suns in the sky, every evening, set in a fashion that puts them straight across from each other in two different horizons. They never settle below the mountain ranges or the treetops. Instead, they hang out there for a couple of hours, then rise into a similar arc into the sky, slowly inching towards one another with every second that dies into past. You think the suns are directly across from each other because of the way your eyes perceive it, but they actually are inches away from each other, slipping past one another to go fall at the opposite horizon they'd sat in the night before. It was creepy, but I had gotten used it after watching the process happen so many times over. Those suns never actually went down in this stupid kingdom.
The kingdom of death.
A kingdom lead by Noel baka Smith. People kept referring to him as "the Prince of Darkness," but that had absolutely zero significance to me. I just thought of him as the baka, the idiot, and by his pretty pet name "Lameo." Listening to the news that differed between towns, it seemed that his coronation as King of the Underworld was in the near future. I wasn't really too interested, because the guy had practically date-raped me a month or whatever back. From what everyone said, it sounded like the baka wasn't interested in high-tailing the duo of prisoners he'd released with a wave of his hand. I don't actually think he knew I existed anymore because he thought I was dead.
The soft rush of water came into my hearing perception. I yawned, stretching out my arms into the air before I actually looked at them. Like usual, every time my eyes landed on them, I got a jolt of surprise, as it had been since my death. Before, my skin had been creamy pale, slightly colored by the blood underneath my skin. Now, it was as white as a piece of paper, without any kind of coloring. I looked almost like a drawing instead of an actual person, for fear that I actually was a walking corpse, but don't those things turn blue? I was literally colorless. The big blue vein on the back of my hand was no longer visible from its previous sights, nor was the blotchy redness of one's palms when resting on the grass. The imprints of the blades didn't make indents anymore. It was still a big Scooby-Doo mystery how I was like this, but Twinkies said it just made me look more normal in the Underworld because I looked less human.
Wonderfuk. And yeah, you read that right. There is a "K" in that. Kind of like wonder-fuck, just lack of the "C." This was wonderfully fucked up.
The red tattoo on the back of my right hand stared back at me creepily. It stalked me, attached to my hand at some random point-of-view that freaked me out when I looked at it. Twinkies had the same thing on the back of his, only his was a lot more "talkative" than mine was. Having a conversation with myself was one thing; having a conversation with my hand was another. He said he wasn't too bright on where it came from or why I had it. (He was such a big help!) He said that his came from being the "Ultimate Spinjitzu Master" or something like that, but I didn't think I was a Spinjitzu master. I didn't even know what that was.
That was why I'd stolen a pair of work gloves from some dude when he wasn't looking. I hated it. I had tried to scrape it off, rub it off, use water to wash it off, even scrubbed it against the pale white grass underneath my feet as though it would rub off the red ink into the leafy canvas. However, my chances of removing my spontaneous tattoo were improbable. I had to deal with what Twinkies called "the Eye" like it was a part of me.
My nap—since the sun never went down, I couldn't really call it a midnight's rest—had been long and much appreciated. Yesterday, we'd walked from one town across a maleficent field of corny looking "flowers," only to spear through a grove of blossoming trees with poisonous acid dripping out the bark like maple syrup. Twinkies was intent on finding a certain something, but I don't think he knew what he was looking for. He said his Eye told him where to go. I had told him that he was stupid for listening to a talking tattoo.
Don't get me wrong, Twinkies is great company. It's just…He's not the same. Before, he'd been a determined, but emotionless, version of himself. His eyes had been blue. That much I remembered from the time before I…died. My memories of that part were hazy, like I wasn't living it correctly or something. He had this expression on his face all the time, something I think was extremely involuntary because he didn't know he was doing it. He looked like he was concentrating hard, like he was thinking about something. A man on a mission. I hadn't ever actually met Lloyd Garmadon before he'd "flipped the switch." He explained it to me as turning off the option to having emotions inside because of all the trauma he had experienced within the couple of months it had taken him to get bitten by a dark spider and then witness the third death of one of his friends, my older brother, Cole. It freaked me out to think that he let go of everything so easily. But I think that somehow, he got those emotions back during the time of my death. I just wasn't sure how.
The way he actually expressed emotion wasn't the only way he'd changed, though. Before, his eyes had been blue. A pretty blue. A nice blue. Now…they were tinted with red. They still had the main cobalt hue to them, but now it was mixed with this deep, bloody shade of crimson that pierced into me. He wasn't as nice as he was before. He was bitter, save for the muse that it seemed like he was conflicted with being bitter. I could almost sense that Twinkies wasn't happy about his unprompted mood swings. He was struggling to maintain a positive viewpoint, yet something was altering his ability to stay happy. He wasn't the same.
This sounds crazy, but I didn't want him to change. I wanted him to stay who he had been before, even if that was emotionless; it meant to me that he was at least normal. The red in his eyes he had yet to explain, the tint in his personality in need of spoken word. He was ashamed of what he was becoming and was far from admitting it.
I felt like it was my duty to keep him grounded.
Yeah. I know. Sounds weird, right? But I really did. I felt like that was my purpose. Like that was all I had come back for was to make sure he was okay. And that is—pardon my choice of words—completely oso. I am by no means a caregiver, or a suck-up, or a Mama Bear. You wanna do what you wanna do? Knock yourself out, I don't care what happens to you. Am I self centered? A lot of people have said that, and maybe it's true. I have only ever focused on survival as my key instinct. I would have, before I met Twinkies, gladly killed you in order to make sure that I stayed grounded another day on earth, as opposed to floating up into heaven or coming back down here into hell. I've never wanted to take care of other people before.
But I honestly, creepily, strangely, faultily, there-must-be-some-mistake-ily wanted to take care of Lloyd Garmadon and make sure he made it out of here alive.
And I had no clue why.
My outstretched hands fell onto my flat belly. I looked down at the material covering me, only to find out that it was the flowing white robe that Twinkies had gotten from the baka prince. It had become less of a pure color and more of one that had seen the end of its days, more ivory than pallid anymore. He didn't wear it anymore, instead resorting to the clothes I kept managing to snatch from carts without being noticed. Yesterday, I'd stolen him a new outfit to wear. (I tried to keep the robberies consistent because wearing the same thing over and over, in my mind, was nasty.) He ended up earning himself a pair of poufy, almost-Arabian-but-cooler pair of black pants, tucked into a pair of boots, matched with a white sleeveless shirt. It was a good thing to have, too, because of the sinister heat. I liked the silk of his robe, so I had kept it and used it for warmth. I got cold kind of really easy.
Since we were living like homeless people and stole stuff rather than earned it, I stuffed my diminutive amount of belongings into a minotaur-skin backpack every time Twinkies wanted to get a move on. That's where I kept his robe, which I washed in public fountains or rivers. I stuffed inside food, my few pairs of clothes, and the grimy work gloves that covered my hands perfectly. It was a nice little way to transport my things.
This morning, I sat upwards, the robe falling away from my body with the heave of my weight into a sitting position. The sun was beautifully refreshing on my skin. The previous night came flooding back to me, and my cheeks would've turned beet red if there was a chance that could happen anymore. (My circulation was acting funny—I couldn't blush anymore, to my happiness.)
"I can take the lookout shift," Lloyd had said softly. "You can go to sleep."
"Why?" I'd demanded stubbornly. He was always staying awake at night. It made me instinctively suspicious that he was doing something he shouldn't be. "Don't think I can handle it?"
"Just trying to be chivalrous," Lloyd leaned against the dark oak of the tree. The blossoms had turned pinkish orange with the falter of the sun into the horizon. The shadows of their beauty were casted oddly with the angle. "I figured the girl wants to gather beauty sleep while the guy stares at the trees all the time."
"That's more like sexist," I'd argued. Crossing my hands over my chest, I waited for him to raise a blonde eyebrow before moving on. "Do I look like someone who gives a flying falafel about beauty sleep? Let me do it."
Lloyd had sank around our homemade fire, his legs bent, elbows resting on his knees with his hands clasped between them. "Alright. Knock yourself out and take the shift."
I had tried to stay awake, but an hour later, with the suns still dangling low in the horizon, I had felt beaten. Lloyd had been curled gently into rest beside the fire. I almost had envied how he was resting, but then took to staring at the trees, like Lloyd did, wondering how he lasted the majority of the time I napped. I had strived to stay awake until I'd felt my lids slowly closing, and the soft, gentle touch of someone's hands coaxing me onto the ground. Subconsciously, I'd known it was Lloyd's tender, gentle hands, wrapping around me his robe to keep my body temperature from decreasing, as it did now when I fell asleep, but at the time I had believed it was Cole. Cole, being the brother he always was, looking out for me. I'd wanted to open my eyes and look at him and tell him about how much I missed him, but sleep had suffocated those hopes.
I'd proved that I was really bad at fighting sleep. It was embarrassing. I almost didn't want to face Lloyd knowing that he was right and I wasn't.
I spotted him, soaked in daylight, doing something that I caught him usually doing in the mornings. His hands, wrapped around a thick branch of a tree beside me, popped veins visibly out his wrists as he yanked himself off the ground and into the air. His natural resources were his gymnasium now. He used his environment to his advantage to gain more and more physical strength.
The pull-ups looked difficult. I kicked off his robe with the fire smoldering beside me. Lloyd barely paused his workout, shirtless and sweating, to say, "Morning, sleepyhead."
I stuck out my tongue playfully, running a hand through my thin black hair. I caught a half grin on his face. I busied myself with digging through my backpack while trying to avoid looking at him. It was extremely hard to admit, but he was becoming well-cut with the exercising he was doing. I hated it when he ripped off his shirt while doing them because it made my life that much harder. Do you know how difficult it is not to gawk at him? It would go straight to his head if he knew I would look at him when he was shirtless.
I treated him like I did Cole a lot. I don't know why, but I acted like he was my brother, playfully throwing comments back and forth with him, cracking jokes. We teased each other but also watched out for each other. Was I trying to use him as a replacement for the brother I had lost?
I shook my head, digging through my pack. No. Nobody could replace Cole. Not even Twinkies.
I found myself a pair of clothes to wear: a ripped up dress. Women apparently couldn't wear pants in this realm (yay…not) so I had completely demolished this one into a short-sleeved, short skirted outfit. It was too hot to be wearing longer sleeves with a thick train. I embraced the tan material with a forlorn sniffle. I missed my favorite pair of sweatpants and T-shirts with stupid advertisements on them.
Lloyd had parked us next to a river yesterday. I looked to it, masked between trees. Thankfully, they manufactured soap bars in this era, which I (again) had stolen from a selling card with swiftness. I was faster than I had been before—and that was saying a lot. Although my movements before were jagged, sketchy, but really fast, they were now fluidic and graceful. I was able to yank stuff off carts and be gone before anyone saw me. I was really going to run with that ability.
I grabbed a bar, a gnarly color of grey but delicious smelling, and decided I was going to bathe. Picking up my pack, I raised a dark brow at Lloyd. He paused his pull ups to dangle in the air, waiting for me with a strange look on his face that made it hard for me to hold a straight expression. I snorted and rose to my feet, slinging the pack over my shoulder. Sometimes he was capable of making me have an instant good mood. The boy dropped from the tree to land neatly on his feet, harvesting a crooked smile. "I'm going over in this here river," I called over my shoulder, marching through the thin patch of forest dividing our camp from the river. "If you play peeping tom, I'm going to drop kick you into next week."
I heard him laugh. "I'll keep that in mind."
I tried not to consider how scary it would be if I actually did catch Lloyd peeping on me. I was pretty sure that I would do as I promised, but in the end, would it bother me? I wasn't someone who was self-conscious about my body, unlike the majority of my class of teenage girls. I actually didn't care much for how I was perceived in the eye of the beholder, especially when it came to guys. I hadn't actually ever thought about it before.
And I wanted to slap myself for it. Get a grip, Seiko! I told myself angrily. What are you doing, thinking about that? Did dying mess with your head or what? I stumbled through the underbrush, scraping my tender white feet on its excess branches. I felt one of the scrapes dig deep enough to bleed, and winced.
The river's color was a deep blue, comforting enough to want to slip into. I had always found peace in the water for some strange reason. I liked being in it, liked being surrounded by it. When I was little, I always begged Cole to take me to the community pool so that I could at least be with the water for a little while. Looking at the otherworldly water, I knew that I was safe, able to be safely consumed by it. I was always the best one at holding my breath for a long amount of time. Checking over my shoulder to make sure Twinkies wasn't watching, I swiftly ripped off my overclothes and dove into the water without waiting for another prompt.
The cool liquid covered me completely when I went under. It was refreshing. I would've swallowed gulps of it if it wouldn't have killed me to do so. I pulled my arms through the ordinary restraint of the water's current, feeling my insides immediately calm. It had been a very long time since I had ever had the proper option to admire my favorite element of nature. I pulled myself through the catch with a smile on my face. What lies underneath the surface was distorted by the fragmented water, turning the scene below into a murky, lighted arena. I watched small fish twirl through the weeds beneath my feet, feeling their gentle fins tickle my toes. I grinned when a strange red one with large eyes swam past.
My lungs could've taken the beating forever, but I decided I couldn't lollygag. My head broke the surface, bringing me out of the beauty and into reality, an ugly change if you ask me. I spotted, between the cracks of the trees, Lloyd kicking through the ashes of our fire while freezing the remaining flames with his element of ice. I marveled at it for a brief moment. I wanna be able to do that, I thought, swimming closer to the shore so I could grab my soap as well as watch him a little more. The muscles of his stomach had become more prominent with today's workout. Oblivious, Lloyd cracked his knuckles, staring at the blackened wood without even knowing he was being stared at. His golden hair made a halo around his soft face. Didn't he know how attractive he looked?
I shook my head. I wanted to smack myself across the face. I was doing it again.
I reached forward to snatch my soap off the top of my pack. No more, I pledged. No more staring at Lloyd. Glob, that was gonna be hard…No, no it will not be. You're being ridiculous. Knock it off, you stupid psychotic weirdo. Baka! You need to get a grip. What's the big deal, anyway? It's not like you're even—
I felt icy hands clasp around my ankle. With a shrill scream, I barely saw Lloyd's head snap towards me when I experienced them yanking me under, submerging my head beneath the surface. The sound of the world around me faded into a dull roar when the water flew over my head. Whatever it was that had me in a tight, strangling grip, pulling me further and further beneath the water. I didn't know rivers ran so deep. I glanced underneath, my cheeks expanded with my breath of air, looking for the thing that had me in its hands. I could feel the scaly fingers wrapped around my ankle.
The creature's hands looked like scaly snake hands, topped with black claws, coiled around my leg. The sharp tips dug into my skin hard enough to cause little red tendrils of blood to run into the water, looking like smoke off a candle. It felt like the creature was working something into my skin with repeated scratching. What is it doing? Fear caught in my throat. Whatever it was, it was wrapped in the safety of the weeds, barely visible except for the hands that dragged me under. My arms scrabbled through the water as I tried to fight back, kicking my feet and dragging myself up. It only worsened my situation to be pulled further down. The murky waters were looking less and less inviting as I grabbed at the water like it would save my life, but whatever it was seemed intent on killing me today. I looked downwards again to find myself staring into the dark underbrush of the weeds, only this time, I saw a pair of vicious green eyes staring back. Familiar green eyes.
I screamed underneath the water. The air I had was gone, leaving my lungs empty, a terrible move right about now. I pawed at the water again. I can't get up! I thought, heart pounding, head becoming lighter and lighter. I looked back down. The eyes stared back.
I waved my hand as if to deflect their gaze. In response, there was a strange sweep in the current that changed. It seemed like with my movement came an angry, black wave of shadows, smacking into the hands. The grip slightly loosened. And underneath the surface, I heard a shrill wail of agony.
I froze. Had I done that?
I waved my hand again, feebly this time, but I saw the shadows roll off my swift movements in torpedoes downwards. The creature screamed, muffled, once again, scaring me half to death, but the grip was far from as strong as it had been before. Determined, I kicked with all my remaining might to wrench off the sunken-in claws from my flesh.
A tendril of blue lightning shot from beside me. I jumped, afraid that I'd be hit with it, but instead it selectively attacked the arm of the creature. The attack jolted it from letting me go. I glanced up to see Lloyd, swimming down towards me, his hair circling him in a real golden halo now. His arm wrapped around my waist as he used a final element-based attack to fend off the clawed, scaly offender. His hands brushed tenderly at my bare waist—thank God I wasn't completely naked!—before he yanked me up with a propelling force that stole away time by shooting us through the water. I held onto him, staring in fear and shock down at the foggy waters searching for some kind of evidence that the creature who had grabbed me was still there, but whatever it was had retreated back into the weeds. I reeled from the fact that I had done something in those waters. I had done something.
Whatever I had done was significantly powerful. The only action I'd performed was waving my hand, but somehow, that creature had gotten hurt. I'd made shadows crawl through the water and hit it. How was that possible?
My grip on Lloyd tightened, even after he'd broken the surface of the water and pulled me towards the shore. I found that my whole body was shaking with cold, fear, disbelief, and six-thousand other thought-induced emotions. Lloyd dragged me onto the shore, pressing me against the white grass. I stared at the sky. My breathing turned into pants, and I realized that I needed to breathe in every ounce of air I could get. I reached for his offering of the white robe as a cover up, which I thankfully snatched. Shoving my arms into the sleeves, I tied it around my waist, absolutely aware that Lloyd had just seen me practically naked. I was so glad I couldn't blush.
"What was that, Seiko?" He asked, pushing his wet hair out of his face. His blue-red eyes were wide. I stared at him. Instead of answering, I felt my stampeding heart start to slow, and shoved my face into my hands.
"Are you okay?" He asked softly. I nodded.
"I just…need a second," I said slowly. I really did. Wrapping my head around this was extremely hard. I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes. "Did you see that?" I asked suddenly. "Did you see what I did?"
I snapped my head up to weigh his reaction, but Lloyd looked confused. "No," he answered deliberately. "What did you do?"
How do you explain to someone that you just manipulated shadows into attacking something that attacked you?
I scrubbed my eyes as if to rub away the shock. I had to have imagined it. There was no possible way that I had done anything to that creature. Lloyd had electrocuted it; that was all. But the lie seemed hollow and empty. Forcing myself to believe that I hadn't done anything was more difficult than it usually was.
"Geezus," gasped Lloyd. I raised my head. "Look at your leg!" He pointed, but instantly grabbed it to pull it into his lap. I finally noticed the prickly sting of the holes that had been created by the monster's claws, the soft trickle of warm blood staining my colorless skin. Inhaling sharply through my teeth, I reached forward to prod the wound with my hand, but stopped.
Lloyd saw it too. He looked into my eyes for a brief glance before both of our gazes were glued back to the message of blood written across my calf's skin, pouring out the engraving of what the fiend's claws had printed:
I WILL RETURN FOR YOU
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oh, and deviantart has been updated with "Of Yin & Yang"s COVER! MWAHAHAHAAHAH please go look. :3 Thanks for reading!
