Just to note down, I started writing this immediately after the last chapter went up.
Time me. See how long it takes me to do about 2000 words this time.
The boy on the beach looked almost dead when she found him.
Most of his skin had been melted off, somehow, leaving diseased-looking purple flesh underneath. His legs were almost completely gone, and one of his eyes was fully exposed.
Thankfully, he seemed unconscious enough (dead enough?) that he didn't react to being moved off the grass and up, far away, to the nearby medical wing.
She had never seen this boy anywhere around before. It was as if he had suddenly fallen from the sky. But, by far, he wasn't the weirdest person she'd ever seen. There've been far weirder. Like that one guy who is up late at night every night making spaghetti on the roof for no real reason. That was weird.
He'd been comatose for about five days now, with no signs showing waking up. Not asleep, not quite awake, either.
Maybe he had something to do with all of those weird meteors that were suddenly all over the news in the last few days. That would make more sense than anything else recent, to be entirely honest.
There had been more than a few dark clouds in the sky. It was mildly disconcerting, but nothing incredibly important. There had been black clouds before, and it wasn't a big deal. Probably just the volcano in the south acting up again.
In any case, it was probably a bad sign of some sort that those clouds began appearing right as he turned up by the beach.
Non-humans and hybrids have varying (and strange) reactions to certain substances.
In the dream plane, Ender could see certain things. It wasn't as if he was awake yet. He wasn't even aware he was still alive. But he could see things.
He couldn't make out voices, they were all a mess. Sounds blended together, lights shone far too bright, everything was a huge mess.
But some things could still be distinguished. Like the red line leading from where he could feel his hand might be, leading to a strange aura not too far away.
Or the crackling, blackened clouds so far above. They writhed like snakes in the sky, twisting like hurricanes through the sky, gnarled and glaring, whirling faster and faster.
They were staring at him. Into his soul.
His soul.
They could see him?
Seeing. He could see something now.
White. All white.
A new person, blocking the clouds from view. They were still watching, but it didn't really matter.
This person was interesting. Their aura, rapidly fading with his returning vitality, was white in colour, but for only a second, there was a strange black star on the inside, concealed. Like the bloom of a black flower, or a crystal of shadow.
It was gone now.
He was staring up at a bored-looking face. A girl, by the looks of it. She had black hair, brows eyes, and a stare dead enough to petrify a cockatrice.
"Oh good. You're awake."
And that's when the pain started.
It wasn't too much. Not more than he'd been in when he was making his mad aquadash with rapidly dissolving limbs and everything else, but still enough to make his face contort noticeably.
"Woah. No moving for you. Only listening. Can you do that?"
"…Yes."
Talking hurt.
"Good. Then let me explain. Here's the short version: you've been unconscious for five days, give or take, after I found you lying near the beach with critical injuries. What happened to cause that, by the way? What kind of acid bath did you take? Don't answer that, I can tell talking hurts. All things considered, you've made a miraculous recovery, somehow. Normally even the Doc's best healing salve takes a while to start working on injuries as bad as yours, but with you it just took like magic."
She stopped talking for a second, pulling out what looked like a phone from her pocket (his eyes hadn't fully repaired yet), and typed(?) something out quickly.
"Ah. Yeah, that makes sense."
She turned back to him.
"You're Enderfolk, aren't you?"
Hybrids do not have to be part human. There have been other crosses in the past, such as Endoomers (between Doomfolk and Enderfolk) and Ribbonwings (Bonefolk with Phantomlings).
Pitiful.
They had failed to neutralise the threat.
Pathetic.
The king looked down upon the sole remaining warrior, eyes ablaze with dark fury, malice incarnate. A dripping shadow, condensed and solidified hatred. Calling it a monster would be far from appropriate. It was leagues beyond that.
It was a nightmare.
The target was still alive. Worse, he had reached the mainland. And even worse, he had received the first of the first. The cursed twelve, the demon's jewels. This would never do.
It was a step on the path to being overthrown.
No. This was… inadequate.
As the nightmarish anthropoid raised his hand, an unearthly screech pierced the heavens, drilling down into the head of his disorderly subordinate.
Shadows have begun infecting the planet.
It was a day later.
Another day too late to save them.
The shock was beginning to get to him. Everyone he had known was suddenly gone. Dead. Particles dissipated, vanished into the sub-ether.
And suddenly, it was all gone again.
He no longer felt bad about it. Sure, he was still holding to his promise of raining bloody vengeance upon the sole living perpetrator, as well as whoever commanded this, and maybe also anyone who got in the way of that. But he wasn't even angry.
It was sort of an empty feeling.
It was weird. He had gone his entire life with those people. And now his memories were all that were left.
A vision pulsed through his mind. A boy with strange hair, bound to a glowing machine by pulsating cables. A symbol. Flat lines and circles. Curves, corners, points, two dimensions to three, to one, to three, to more.
And just like that it was gone. He was standing exactly where he was, staring blankly ahead.
Who was that?
What was that?
Now, of course, he had a sort of renewed purpose. That symbol didn't mean anything to him right now, but there was a sort of tugging feeling that someday it might save his life.
A boy hovered in the strange room, his viewport showing him the progression of events.
He smiled to himself.
Things were about to go down, and he was the mastermind of all of it.
He didn't care for good or evil – well, he did, but this lesser squabble didn't concern him all that much. It was all part of his plan.
He cast his view across the land, examining the locations of the future. A dense forest town, an eternal ocean, a land of shadows. A balloon, flying high in the sky, and a mountain cave so far down below. A chamber full of mysterious mechanisms and curious gadgets, and a dilapidated ghost town, in which nobody fully alive had set foot in years. A castle of shadows, a great plain, a forest pathway, a mountain in the sky, the depths of the void. But some of the places he knew they would go were places that he could not see himself.
He knew that things were on the verge of happening, but it was all he could do to keep quiet.
Just as he liked it.
After suffering a major headache midair, almost bringing him crashing to the ground, Sonake landed. He knew that They weren't very happy, but there was nothing he could do about it. His prey had eluded him, fleeing towards the planet like the coward he was, leaving him to trigger the explosive that blew the whole city to shreds.
So overall, yeah. Things weren't going to plan.
Until, of course, he saw his target standing right in front of him.
"Well, well. Luck herself shines on me today."
Right, yeah, whatever. Not nearly 2000 words. Not even 1500. But whatever. It's not like it really matters.
What pleases me right now is that things are progressing a lot better than they were in the original. Please, if you want to cringe your eyes out of your skull, be my guest and (re-)read it. You will absolutely be disappointed.
In any case, time to stop rambling.
Ender OUT!