not alone [open]

The cold waves splashed over his feet as he remained silent. Something fluttered weakly against his ankles - bony white hands bent down to pick it up. A reddish leaf, freshly fallen, if he was seeing it properly. Perhaps it had drifted to the ground the day before.

A strange feeling bubbled in his heart, but it took all of his willpower to suppress it down. Numbing. Small pinpricks of light winked across the transparent fading water, mimicking the merciful sea that had been like a mother to him. With her many changing faces and occasional moods, it was a presence who could calm his fears and soothe his exhaustion. As he was a child, she held many mysteries to be explored. Reefs teeming with vibrant life, fishes of every imaginable color and shape, all woven into the great tapestry known as nature. A surf that brought peace and encouragement to go on, the scent of the sea and sun eventually permeating his entire being, through the soft breezes bearing faint tangs of salt to warm water that calmed his nerves, becoming a tangible part of his identity.

There was no shift of of sand here, nothing like walking down the fresh fallen snow. Time froze, with only the ripple of his own figure breaking the eternal moment. He eases himself into the water. Cold. But there was no discomfort. It was calming to just float upon its surface for a little while. The lake was kind enough to carry him in the right direction, out toward the middle where the flaring hues of the moon and stars melted into the watery black mirror like a divine painting. Rich swaths of color that were nothing that the morning sun could bring upon the sky.

Exhaling slowly, the blue-haired student purged all air from his lungs, the lake closing itself above him, shutting him into an isolated world, where endless expanses of water (unchanging and indifferent to the petty conflicts that raged above its shores) brought him into a dazed sleep.

The expected guests arrived, independent from the shining warmth that its true counterparts relied on. A passing memento to become nothing at all under the starlit night. Breaking the quiet solitude, their ghostly outlines ran thick through the nocturnal era. Their heart-wrenching shrieks. Not even the water could drown them out.

Ha-neul clenched his eyes shut, uselessly moving his hands to cover his ears, as if it would have make the swarm of silhouettes disappear and leave him alone. Within the fake maternal comfort of the lake, he closed himself off, silently pleading, begging. Please.

Someone else stood on the quiet shores of the moonlit lake. Ginger hair turned pink in the pale light with skin that reflected an almost sickly blue. The water called out to him, almost crooning. He'd come here to practice in the dark, lonely waves, with nothing else around save for a few fish. Krait's bright eyes fixated on his reflection, watching it distort and glitter on the surface. He broke eye contact with himself to follow a series of ripples in the water. Reading it was easy, but that didn't settle his unease. Water, once somewhere, was impossible to avoid or get rid of. And everyone seemed to treat the stuff so... casually. Carried bottles of it. The ripples were coming from a particular spot in the lake, close to another part of the shore. 'A fish?' No, surely he would've heard a splash. He took a step closer before hearing the shlop of the mud. He was getting too close.

Something pale just below the water's surface made his stomach turn. 'Is that a person?' Shimmying to the edge closest to whatever was in there, he peered further in. Oh no. Somebody was in there and sinking fast. His heart started racing a mile a minute, looking around for someone or something that could help. He couldn't go in there, he might as well commit murder! But there was nothing else. No one else. He balled his hands into fists. If he went to get help, it would be too late. So he threw off his shirt and jumped in.

Cold. Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold! Maybe focusing on that would help stave off his panic just long enough to reach whoever this was in the lake. Swimming faster and faster with disgusting ease brought him to another boy, with his hands over his ears. Did he decide to swim out here? One look at his own arm told him he didn't have a lot of time left, as it was now a salmon color in the muted light of the lake. He snatched the unknown boy by his wrist, dragging him along back towards shore. Soon enough Krait wouldn't even have arms anymore. The flickering shadows were more than disconcerting, hopefully they were normal fish instead of something else. He didn't even want to know what this school could possibly have in their grounds. 'Come on, come on.' They broke the surface and the cold bit at his elongating face. It was getting hard to breathe.

The final stretch brought them to the shore and Krait practically threw the nearly drowned kid forward. The gill slits forming on the sides of his neck screamed in pain when he pulled himself out of the water. His arms and legs were strangely short, no more than two feet long each, and his skin was nearly burnt orange and scaly. But he hadn't transformed completely. That was good, at least. With his body slowly returning to normal, he nudged a somewhat dry part - thank God skin was somewhat hydrophobic - on the other boy's shoulder. "Are... are you alright?" Krait had his head down as he lay on the shore, breathing heavily. He felt tired. And hungry. And maybe a little bit sick to his stomach. A few muffled curses came out of his mouth as violent shivers overtook him.

Unaware of the secondary presences, a lone figure stepped from the shadows of the trees. There was a silence in the air as she took in the air around her, the dark bags under her eyes mixing in with the long shadows the moon cast along her. There was a tiredness that could be seen just staring at her body, the way her shoulders sagged. A night without sleep...It wasn't uncommon for her, this being an almost monthly cycle. But it was the bundle of flowers in her other hand which raised questions of her purpose here.

The flowers were carefully wrapped up, a collection of royal colors; purple and blues that were each chosen carefully for their meaning...For their purpose. She was about to turn to walk along the edge of the tree line when her eyes caught two forms breaking out from the waters. The flowers dropped from her grasp as she quickly broke into action, racing down to the shore. Her eyes flickered, shifting into that of cat’s as they adjusted for the lack of light so that she could fully see what was happening.

Two students were crouched on the shore, one looking to be torn between torn between their normal form and that of a...Snake? Eel? Pity flared in the shapeshifter’s stomach, having only one memory of a slow, painful transformation. “Are you two okay, what happened?” she questioned as she came to a stop, checking the two over. The reason she had come to the lake so late so quickly forgotten in the worry over the students, the flowers she had dropped a simple memory as she waited nervously for an answer.

Chains wrapped around his veins, flaring up his lungs as pressure compressed against him, entire body throbbing in the onset of asphyxia. He drank in the air through noisy rasps. A heart desperately hammered in relieved numbness, weariness gripping dull glassy eyes. Ha-neul's fingers clutched the loosened gray fabric of his scarf, mind and hearing too fuzzy to make out the muffled words of the person who dragged him out of the lake, so instead, he mutely nodded, face turned downward to dampened muddy shores. Strength drained and words sank before he could part his lips, a hacking fit expelling the thin liquid from his chest. Another set of footsteps foraged to the lake's borders, breaking away from the hell that crawled around the dark scene, shadows of all shapes and sizes staring without eyes.

In a different place, in a different time, he would've elected to offer an imperceptible smile in thanks; now, only a plastered mask of blank apathy performed across his features, and his heartbeat violently throbbed, crashing into his hearing like a bitter avalanche, cold and unyielding. Loosened bandages tightened in a wrap over the wrist, silent mulls droning in the dark. A shudder, a sharp intake of air, a budding root of shadows. A game of hide-and-seek where crimson eyes glinted through their crosshairs. Rigid. Statue-like. A vivid imagination made to question whether it was a mind playing tricks or reality. Chills embedded into his spine. An out-of-focus world.

His fingers inched on the ground, long and desperate in a spider's gait, the hairs on the back of his neck standing in tall tale signs. Something, anything. He grasped only stones and soil, nothing that could kill. The dark shadows loomed over, blood red staining its extending claws with a lifeless touch to the dark-haired woman's shoulder.

The leader of a horde of fledgling monsters.

One glistening drop trailed down his forehead through labored breaths.

Say it. 'Behind you.' Two words. It should be easy. People could get hurt. Someone will get hurt. Say it.

Nothing.

Its shriek pierced the heavens - drowning out feeble gasps for air -, the start of a shadow wishing to devour the world in whole; only its bloody semblance for eyes and mouths melting into a crying face would elicit any sort of sympathy.

He was conscious at least. Honestly on the brink of death, but conscious. They were both practically laying face-first on the lakeside, looking more like the victims of a shipwreck than students. A lingering thought told him to lay there, to wait for the water to rise and sweep him back into his natural state. Something deep and ancient within his own head 'Get rid of your limbs, get rid of your lungs, your restrictions and responsibilities. Return.' His drained energy made the prospect all the more alluring.

Footsteps and a voice made his head turn to press the side of his paling face and neck to the mud. The muck squeezed up the atrophying gills and into his throat where he was forced to taste whatever had washed up on shore as he hacked it out of his mouth. He fought against the primal wishes of his power. For now, he'd keep himself in check. He wouldn't do it again. Rubbing the lake water from his eyes, Krait half raised his now mud-splattered and soaked self up onto his knees to face the woman in front of them. Arms and chest shaking from the force of his rapidly beating heart and the biting cold, he tried to form a response, opening and closing his mouth as words struggled to come together as the adrenaline faded. Were they okay? He wasn't sure what had just happened himself. "I... W-", nothing came as his aqua gaze slowly moved to a shifting black mass forming behind the woman, forming all around them. Was this a hallucination? Was he dreaming? Digging his nails into his palm threw out the latter. They crept like ravenous wolves about them. Feeling a lump form in his throat, he tried moving the poor soul before him with trembling hands, patting his back to dislodge some of the water he must've breathed in. ‘Please, please get up.' Whatever these were, they didn’t appear like they’d be leaving them soon enough. They needed to get out of here.

The scream from the now most menacing shadow elicited another from Krait’s own mouth in response. Oh, how he wanted to bolt for the school and leave these two far behind him, but he wasn’t about to abandon someone that he’d just risked both their lives for. Nor did the shadows appear accommodating enough to let him pass anyway. Why were they here? The boy moved over to his trembling classmate defensively. Taking a mid-sized rock in his palm from the bank, he launched it in the nearest shadow’s direction. He was too exhausted to run, much less drag the other boy with him, so fending them off seemed their only choice. He prayed the woman had a better idea than throwing stones, if the big shadow didn’t attack her first.

Hosa was blissfully unaware of the shadow, far to worried about the students than to notice it until she recognized the terror in the two student’s eyes, causing a chill to run down her spine. Her cat-eyes widen at the unnatural - the unholy - noise that split the air behind her as she suddenly swirled in place and lashed out with her hand. While she had her own weapon, she rarely kept the dagger on her. Didn't seem becoming of a school teacher...And she rarely ever needed it with her gift being what it was. The nails on her fingers shifted, turning into claws as she sliced through the shadow-like creature that had snuck up on her.

Her wariness for battle was gone the moment she realized she wasn’t fighting a human opponent and that she was able to damage it...Her mind focused, drawing her attention fully into the shadows that lured toward them. A rock bounced off one of the smaller ones, no doubt thrown by one of the two students as she made a leap toward the leader of the bunch, her form shifting into that of a large, black cat. A panther, to be exact.

She rammed into it with all of her might, claws quickly slicing through it as she brought it to a quick end. Leaping backwards, she arched her back as her fur stood on edge as she made herself the biggest target for the shadow’s attentions. She bared her fangs as she let out a roar, her tail lashing as she stood between the shadowy horde and the two terrified students, her muscles tensed for when the creatures made their next move with her mind focusing on one thing - keeping these kids safe.

A whisper of acidulous words mumbled senselessly through the fragile paraplegic shell that was his body, throbbing in a rhythm of apathy. The infantile creature wailed as a baby would, only for its life to be ripped away by the cold embrace of the reaper before it received any chance to speak its first words, to take its first steps, to make its first friends. But this pain was nothing more than a superficial scrape against the knees, as a false sensation that was more of a luxury than it was tangible or real. A feeling like this was nothing more than a minor inconvenience, far worse coming through the succeeding dissonant chords of the next verse.

His scarf flounced against his tottering vessel. The rain of knives pierced to the gut, new windows and inharmonious melodies rattling a song of agony as his breath caught itself in a thistle of barbs. Face waterlogged until the soil below him stirred and drowned in its own pond, Ha-neul clenched his eyes shut, coiled and beat to death. Nauseous. Sickening. Pallid skin, now lighter than a sheet with the blood draining from his complexion, listlessly accompanied the breaths banging against his ears like thunder, raspy and hoarse. A strained sound of discomfort vocalized into the unearthly choir with a paper-thin quality, suppressed by the remaining semblance of control he had over his body.

For the pain ran deeper than mere cuts into the flesh and bone, claiming the few fragments of his awareness beneath their warped twisted smiles; with a maniacal cacophony of murky sobs, they simmered and blistered through the dark open void of the night.

Why? Uncried tears flooded him from the inside, amplifying nullifying the bleeding pain. Why? The final flames in his heart smothered with a thousand-yard stare. Why? Fingers, cold as stone, dug into the skin beneath his bandages. Deeper. Deeper. Deeper. As if to wake from a terrible nightmare and snap back to a blissful reality that wouldn't appear. Why? Why? One year. He only managed to go one measly year before someone stumbled upon this wreckage. Why? Why? Why? Breathing became a waking dream as every pore on his body threatened to strangle him between vigilance and numbness, his heart falling into its familiar rapid cadence.


Breath hitched, muscles tensed, crimson liquid dripping from the tips of his fingers, the full force of pain came with each disposed shadow and he refused to scream. Water surfaced to his eyes, coating them in a sheen that glistened like the stars, never falling as his disheveled bangs overshadowed the top of his face. The wretched cavalcade multiplied. Another, another, another.

Ha-neul shuddered, immobilized, paralyzed by the phantoms of torment rushing through him. Only his breathing indicated that he was alive. Only his open eyes said that he was conscious. An inaudible gasp slurred together the sounds, only the beginnings of a word forming with a feeble murmur: "St..."

Their faces continued to weep in discordant mockery. They were the products of his mortal strife, and he, an unwilling ring leader of this maddening circus.

Wide eyes watched the woman disappear only to be replaced with a huge, dark-furred cat and slash and strike the mostly faceless figures. He could only hope she had complete control. Krait’s fingers objected to working in these conditions; the cold kept them from moving as easily as he would’ve liked. What could he do? He was entirely unwilling to transform himself, there was no possible way in this frozen Hell that he would chance giving in to the beast inside his own skin on the off chance that it would choose to fight the shadows first and not eat the other two in the process. He looked away from the inky things in a manner not unlike a child hiding from imagined monsters by fleeing beneath his blankets. Instead, he focused on the - relatively – safest option: overseeing the person he’d saved. With shaking arms, he lifted the other boy upright. Eerily enough, his eyes were wide open, yet his body only moved to breathe. His skin was deathly pale where there wasn’t mud to cover it. ‘Did I not pull him out in time?’

A great hailstone formed in his gut. With hands less steady than those of a man nine times his age, he wrung out the waterlogged scarf wrapped around his classmate’s neck like a constricting snake, his own skin turning scarlet wherever the water ran. Maybe dry clothing would help warm him back up? ‘Not working, not working! Is he in shock? Hypothermia? Seizure? He needs to get to the infirmary, whatever’s going on!’ Without an inkling of an idea for anything he could do otherwise, Krait pulled him into a strange hug, not thinking much of the contact besides how he was still currently without a shirt. Bile rose at the feeling of more horrible water flowing over already frigid and red-streaked skin. Something warmer going down his side made his goosebumps intensify until he almost looked like a plucked chicken. A slow look down showed him rivulets of diluted red and his complementary gaze followed it to the limp student in his arms. How did he get hurt? ‘Did I do that? Or did I just not notice it before?’ A strange feeling washed over him as his body reacted to the constant contact with the water, and again a little voice called out from the recesses of his mind. He bit the insides of his cheeks to keep focus but regretted it as the trembling of his jaw from the cold almost made him bite holes in them instead.

“M-M-Ma’am?” His teeth chattered in his head louder and with more vigor than the sound of dropping a bag of stones on a tin roof during a thunderstorm. He was about to bite his tongue too. “I can’t get him up. He’s hurt somewhere too.” The calling of the creature in his head was becoming more forceful and difficult to ignore.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Krait muttered the little mantra not only to the mysterious boy, but to himself as well. They both needed to hang on just a little longer.

All four paws were planted firmly on the floor as Hosa stood with her back arched, lips pulled back in a snarl as she dared any of the shadowy beasts to draw closer. Her eyes kept nervously flickering across each of their faces, a mockery of sadness that caught her off guard and caused her to be wary of whatever these things were. In the few seconds she had, her mind raced with questions as she sought the answers. What were these things? Why were they here? Things from the portal? No, wait, all connection to the Island had been closed for fifteen years and she doubted it was possible for them to get this close to the city without being seen...

Which left only one answer - a gift. Gifts were so varied, there would have to be one that could create such creatures for any number of reasons. Her mind raced through the rather large list of gifts as she sought for one that seemed like the correction answer...It was cut short as one of the creatures drew to close again and she destroyed with a quick swipe. They weren't powerful, even if they were numerous. For a second, she wondered how long she would have to hold the line before a voice caught her ear. Her ears perked before swerving to better catch the sound, her whiskers twitching as she glanced over her shoulder to stare at the two students as the more alert one spoke. Her eyes widen as he revealed that the other student was hurt.

Shit. There wasn't any time to hold the line. She had to take action, fast. She spun with a roar, dropping into a crouch as she leaped into the fray. She had to take out these creatures fast then so that the student could get help quickly. It didn't take long for her to scatter the shadows, leaving her standing there and panting in her large cat form before she turned and started heading toward the two students. Her ears were flat as she made sure to hold herself in a non-threatening manner - seeing a panther walking toward one had to be terrifying even if you did have a gift.

As she reached the two, she took a few steps into the water, bushing her large shoulder against the two to push them further into land and out of the freezing lake. After a few shoves, she shook her head, circled around as she leaned down and gently grabbed onto part of the injuries student's shirt and, picking him up like a mother cat would do to move him further from the shore. She flickered her tail as a sign for the other to follow, only going a few steps before she lowered the injuries one to the ground and went back to her human form. She sighed as she shook her head, leaning down next to the student as she pulled off her coat and started to wrap it around his chest in an effort to slow down the blood that was already staining his shirt.

"What exactly were you two doing out so late by the lake?" she scolded as she gently pulled the blue-haired student onto her lap to more easily tie her mock-bandage. "There is a curfew for a good reason, you know. If I hadn't been here..." she drifted off for a second, glancing over her shoulder to stare at the forgotten flowers she had dropped when she first noticed the two. Luckily the bouquet looked still to be in one piece and would continue to survive its purpose but...She sighed, shaking her head as she glanced over at the hurt student. That was when the injuries caught her attention, staring down at one of the few that she could make out as she realized that she recognized the cause of the wounds. She would know - she often  made the same types of wounds herself as she stared at the faint scratches...Awfully mirroring the ones she had caused to the shadows. She paled slightly, growing very silent as she started to fearfully realizing that she might have been right about the shadowy creatures being created by a Gift...

Injury after injury made its impression against his skin, the pain pouring over his mind and body like raindrops. They ran. They rolled. They became puddles. Another shadow twisted and turned impossibly in the darkness and slipped away like a stream, away from the flow and into the shrubs, his tattered mental state lulling back into a calmness as shallow as a creek. Dusted silvery eyes gazed blandly through dark flowers and blurs where his perception had gone awry, registering their presence but not truly able to detect where they were. His heart struggled to beat steadily, and the breaths he gave barely visited and exited thin lips, a cling to consciousness lingering with a feeble grip on the lifeline.

What had started as a soothing voice (muffled and disconcerted as it was), scolding and chiding all the same, grew into a deafening silence, the hazy blurry mist clenching at his chest left him in a fleeting instability. Blue flames lit inside his mind, with another sharp intake of air and coughing, falling with a featherweight roughness as he registered the weight of his head against someone's lap. Blink. Shutter. Blink. He could barely make out the outline of a face, and in a desperate attempt to break the screeching quiet, Ha-neul formed the semblance of words, the shallow and nearly inaudible syllables mumbled through lips that enunciated each slowly, cautiously, weakly.

"My... My apologies... I-"

Unable to finish with the falter in his volume, coughs fell over his figure in a violent fit, the ring finger of his bandaged hands twitching slightly from where they lay limp on the ground.