Cold Hearted -- Chapter 2

Back pressed up against a tree, I breathe, waiting. I can hear her stalking me--I know it's a 'she', because when aren't they?--though I can hardly do anything about it. Wait her out. Just calm down and wait her out.

A twig snaps, and I know she does it on purpose. Even though I'm expecting the nerve-rattling noises, it still startles me, and I gasp. She already knows where I'm hiding, but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters when it comes to these things. You can hide all you want, but they'll always find you. It's a game to them; sort of like hunting for sport.

She's far more mutated than most Grandmasters, though, and I wonder what happened. It wasn't too hard to recall the flashing red eyes, either. What did red mean? Yellow was Warping, purple was usually Illusion, blue was Electricity...

Something touches my foot, and I wiggle my black boot a bit, looking down to see what had bothered me. At first I don't see anything, and begin to peek around the tree to get a hold on her whereabouts. Then something hits me. My boots were brown, not black.

Jerking my foot up, I hear a deafening screech as a translucent grey fog lunges from the ground to grip my heel. I scream, birds launching themselves into the air at the abrupt sound. Losing my balance, my grip on my rifle falters, the weapon falling to the ground as the mass tugs. My head slams against the tree as I'm thrown against it, my right foot dragged into the ground like I was a ghost. What in the--

Snatching up the rifle, I unload several shots behind the tree. I hear a few wet thuds, a whimper, and the black mass disappears.

Shadow Melding. Red meant Shadow Melding.

As soon as she's released her hold on me, however, I wished I'd just left her be. My foot solidifies, coming out of whatever realm the black mass had come from and into the real world. It comes back into this plane of existence far too fast, not giving the limestone and dirt enough time to shift, and--

A shriek of agony erupts from my throat as I shove my spine against the trunk of the tree, writhing in pain as my right like shatters like glass from the knee downwards. "Jaysus Christ," I gasp, gripping my thigh while still hugging the rifle. "Shit, shit, shit,"

I try to breathe, try to push away the pain like I was taught, but damn it to hell, it hurt way more than the Elites had let on. At least now I knew why they'd drilled us day-in and day-out: "Kill red-eyes on-sight, or run."

I wonder what would have happened if I'd let the Grandmaster wretch drag me farther down, or if she'd yanked head-first. Then I find myself quickly becoming nauseous and let the thought go happily.

"Does it hurt?" I hear her dark, chuckling words sift through the forest, but it sounds like it's made up of three voices instead of one. Closing my eyes, I suck in another breath, fighting down wave after unbearable wave of pain as I begin to dig my nails into the dirt around my leg. Part of me realizes I won't be able to dig myself out in time, and that when I get to the layers of limestone... "Of course it does; I know all too well how it hurts," she hums.

"End it already, for god's sake." I hiss loudly, adjusting the rifle so that I can whirl and shoot, but also ram the butt into her if she charges.

She only laughs, but it's a helluva lot closer now; just to my left, and up. My focus ascends instinctively to find her hanging from a branch in the tree, one arm hanging limp close to my face while the other twists behind her back strangely, her long black nails digging into the wood as she holds on. Her legs are bent, bare feet pressing against the trunk of the tree and slowly taking steps up the length of the wood. She was flipping herself upside down so painfully slowly, I wondered at how she wasn't writhing in horror.

"End what? The pain, or this encounter?" She smiles, her teeth laced with elegant silver designs and likely dripping with poison. I grit my teeth, shuddering at the way the red glowed in her eyes, the black pits making her seem demonic and divine at the same time. If you looked for too long, you could actually get lost in eyes like that, but not in a good way. More like a screwed-in-a-labyrinth-and-waiting-for-a-minotaur-to-kill-you sort of lost.

"Either would do," I grunt, mentally drilling myself not to release the rifle even though I desperately need to do something--anything--to my leg to make the pain stop. Gods, I might throw up if this keeps up. It was the sort of pain so deep, so raw, that you couldn’t even begin to explain it in any other way than to scream until your voice box shatters. "Preferably without me dying,"

"That would be ideal," she nods, smirking. It's an almost-human gesture, and nearly makes me think on how Grandmasters might not be all-gone. Then she drops to the forest floor with a snap and crackle of bones and joints that puts airy corn cereal to shame, and I toss the idea away, trying not to wince. She rolls her head to each side, popping her neck, then crouches down beside me. "You know, Grandmaster Eviandra recently picked up her own little pet. Fished her right out of the river."

"Who?"

"Mm," the Grandmaster nods, waist-length black hair swishing in its ponytail as her hands lunge forward, gripping my face. I fight back a shout, unable to lift my rifle to shoot her--oh, god, I can't move anything! Why can't I move?! "You'll know soon enough,"

Did she mean the missing persons? Because all of the Colonies had been reporting a high amount of Elites and Scouts going missing...

I hear something crack, and lock eyes with the Grandmaster as it dawns on me that it was her jaw. Her mouth opens horrifyingly, and my breath is caught in my lungs as the metal on her teeth liquefies, and intense heat blooming in the air. Looking down her throat, I see the vivid red lines of pulsating light that run down her tongue and deep into her mouth, the skin around the lights swollen, split, and scarred. White bubbles of inflated skin riddle her throat, popping as her jaw cracks again, her nails dig into the sides of my face, and she lurches forward.

I can't even scream when her teeth slice into my eyes. It doesn't even register that, though I know she's popped my eyeballs like jelly drops, I can still see all too vividly the blood gushing and the red lights flashing. Her lower canines cut deep into my chin, and finally the scream escapes my open mouth as she shoves my skull hard against the trunk of the tree, my body convulsing as she seems to grin.

Then she... I think she vomits, but there's poison in her nails and poison in her teeth, and my vision begins to black out, soft pulsing white lights lulling me deeper into unconsciousness.

The sickening sense of falling--of never being able to get back up--settles over me as wave after sickening wave of pain and agony hits me, even though I've technically fainted. It's so awful that I...

I wished she'd killed me.

And... I wished I'd never even lived at all.