Twenty-Nine: Calex
Arrows of Love Rain Down from Above
When Your Spell Works too Well
Calex would shamelessly admit: he was glad Euna's ears were plugged, because, when the first vine snapped, he screamed like a small child. Plunging over the side of the cliff towards certain evisceration could make any chap tremble in his trousers. He was sure Hercules himself would have called out for his mum.
So, when their organic bungee cord snapped, and he felt their decreased descent spiral into a freefall, Calex panicked.
The vortex beneath them oscillated tumultuously. The skin on his face felt like it was flaking. Any dried blood tore off and sucked into the eternity of nothing below. His scarf fluttered violently in the maelstrom, twisting and tangling with the other assorted vines dangling off Euna. He was scared he'd drop Soul Pain and wondered if it even mattered anymore, since he and the bow would hit destruction at the same time. Gravity worked that way, right? A simultaneous fall into certain death?
"Euna!" he shouted.
Another vine snapped. For some reason, he had a feeling she wasn't panicking the proper amount.
Calex could barely breathe between the scent of poisonous flowers and his own hyperventilation. Somehow, he thought he was ready to die when they jumped.
He'd been bloody mental. He absolutely wasn't ready.
And he had no idea how to stop their fall.
Another tug at his legs as another vine snapped.
Their descent slowed more. Wait—slowed? Calex vaguely remembered something in physics about letting things snap under the strain of deceleration to relieve the burden or—or—whatever. Was that right? At the moment, he wasn't thinking about ringing up his tutor to see if that was right.
He frantically glanced down—up? They were inverted, so up?—at their feet. He caught a glimpse of Euna's face: the sweat beading on her forehead, her brow furrowed in concentration, and her mouth open in a scream that he couldn't hear. He could see Jack's head spinning along Euna's belt and assumed Jack must have also been shrieking. More vines shot from their feet, connecting with the edge of the cliff—
Calex wished he hadn't looked up. It was worse to see the cliff they had jumped from attached to nothing. Their foundation was a sliver of rock that seemed to hover, ready to crack off into the same nothingness they were trying to avoid.
More vines shot from their legs, plunging into the underside of that jut of rock. Four more snapped. Their plunge slowed more, so Calex could better comprehend how little would be left of them once they hit.
His black scarf tore from his throat, was caught in a wind tunnel downward, and tore into scrap fabric before those scraps ripped into particles too small to conceptualize.
His mouth was moving. Shrieks—apologies—he was apologizing to Gretchen and Winston, his stepdad and half-sister, for not calling home to say he was safe, for being too ashamed to contact them, for not letting them know what happened to Tom and Tiwa, for not being there to set up the funerals, for not supporting them during the hardest time in their life and reminding them what Tiwa would have said: Mum would say they would make it through this—that, one day, they would remember how to smile with sincerity and mirth.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh vines held.
Euna, Jack, and Calex came to an abrupt halt.
There was no time to celebrate. He wanted to exhale in relief, but Euna grabbed his face to look at her.
Her face was contorted in pain from the effort of keeping them stationary. She mouthed one word. More likely, she screamed it, but everything sounded like a dull echo with his earplugs in.
"FIRE!"
Then she shoved him away.
Their leg entrapment severed. He almost screamed again when he spun away from her, twisting uncontrollably without her stabilizing the vines that connected his legs to the cliff.
Nausea hit him hard. He thought about all the times he'd ridden on Vinyl, his unicorn, and needed to spill the contents of his stomach onto the pavement. [footnote]
Calex swallowed. He couldn't do anything to fix his stomach now.
What he could do was release Reyna and Axel's emotions that he had clenched in his fingers.
Now that he was away from Euna, he had space to fire. Calex held Soul Pain out. With the smearing colors around him, all exploding and smudging into blackness, his bow's golden sheen glistened more radiantly. Despite the spinning, the weapon focused him, like the bow could aim more than an arrow. He gained control of his nausea.
He was a son of Eros. Primordial god of desire. The god that could bring other gods and full nations to their knees with a whim. According to that mythology, he was a direct grandson to this massive existence beneath him.
Here, dangling about fifty meters over a cliff near collapse, held by a couple of vines and roots that could snap any moment, with all sound dulled to a subtle din, and the circulation in his legs cutting off, Calex felt a sudden calm.
He was going to prove himself a worthy hero and do something no hero had done before.
Calex focused on the vortex under them. Everything slowed down. He didn't feel like he was spinning anymore. Kaos itself seemed to quiet as he drew his bow. He visualized Persephone's rosewood box, either in Euna's hand or pocket, dangling maybe three meters from him. He concentrated on the violent desire tingling across his fingertips that he'd stolen from Reyna and Axel.
A crimson arrow blazed to life, notched along the golden arrow rest, painting his fingertips a deep shade of mahogany.
Calex fired.
The arrow flew downward.
For a horrified moment, Calex thought it might shred, like his scarf had.
But the arrow made contact with something. The red shaft did dissolve in a way familiar to Calex.
Anything for that box, he thought, trying to contain the feeling to a portion of Kaos.
A splitting headache struck him.
The nausea returned.
He could see it—for a split second—how Kaos thought, if you could call it thoughts, and why those god droplets had ruined Euna's head. Time lost all meaning. The existence of others, even the gods, too much to conceive—
Calex fought back, remembering his mother's face, Merry's laughter. He focused his power just on that box, and just a tiny section of Kaos. The anchor point. Something ephemeral that mattered.
This wasn't enough.
Another crimson arrow burned along his bow.
He fired.
Kaos was like Thanatos. A living being that needed to learn the beauty of the temporary, despite experiencing centuries as seconds. And, if Calex failed in convincing this creation god and forcing Kaos—her, he realized, it was a her—to love another, they'd all die.
Another arrow.
He fired.
His body felt like it was on fire. Pain crushed his chest. Normally, his bow felt natural and light in his hands. Pulling the string felt like dragging a boulder with a lasso of floss.
Everything shook.
Calex felt lightheaded when Kaos took form. His last arrow struck, and Calex could feel the fire ignite in Kaos. Out of the swirling mass of nothingness, a cluster appeared, like the constellation of a hand.
It was a hand; it was the size of a building.
That hand was reaching for them.
Thanks for reading! I hope all of you enjoyed! :D After all this is over, I feel like Calex needs a day to go home, drink some tea, and watch an Arsenal v. Manchester United game with Kally. Too much bungee-jumping over a vortex of death for one person.
Stay tuned next week for Calex's chapter, Power Naps and Why I Don't Like Them.
Footnote: Mel betanote: "I was hoping it was going to be a badass scene of them holding onto each other, straing and concentration faces to the max, and Calex cooly shooting his arrow while she held them stable."
Jack: I will never let my characters look cool without consequence. Also, that is going to be the name of my next garage band XD
