Stone and Unrest

  AERIX

  Lapis and Onyx arrived quietly, carrying baskets that appeared to be made of bones.

  I lifted my hand in greeting, an ancient custom, from what I remember. I lost track of which cultural gestures apply to each generation over time. Although it would take time to adjust again, I can't say I minded leaving my cave.

  Even with my natural comfort in silence, curiosity and hunger brought me to speak up.

  "What's in the baskets," I peeked over the rim of one.

  Lapis set down his and slid it over with his foot. "Dinner. Among some other things," he turned to look at me, revealing the tight set of his lips.

  The basket crumbled to bits and sank into the ground as the contents spilled across the floor. Boxes of cereal, packs of ramen noodles, and energy bars littered the ground. My stomach tightened at the sight of food, both from relief and concern. Due to my lifestyle, I can go months without eating, but it makes my metabolism unpredictable, which can be dangerous.

  "What's with the sad face, Sad Face?" I said, curious.

  Onyx rolled her eyes, "He didn't get to fight anything, kill anything, or dismember anything."

  Onyx came and sat next to me, helping my mood a little bit. My arm went around her automatically, as if reclaiming a part of myself I had been forced to do without. Her presence allowed a slight feeling of contentment to settle.

  I'm glad I sent her off with Lapis because it gave me time to think and focus on my little project. It was not as complicated of an issue as I had initially thought, seeing as I had finished formulating the abstract idea before the two of them returned.

  As expected, Lapis gets right to the point. "What's the deal with the master plan you had?" Lapis asked.

  Rolling my eyes, I gestured toward a faint fracture in the air I had been experimenting with. "My Perspectival Looking Glass Concept connects spaces, we all know that. But I noticed something new. Something intriguing."

  I leaned forward, excitement boiling my brain. "The light level of the location I'm viewing affects the light here. When I peeked at one of the brighter Indexes, the ambient light around me grew brighter. It means the fracture is a two-way street for light. That's our key."

  For a while, no one said anything, the only sound was the crinkling of plastic as Lapis still struggled with the cereal bag. "Well, I certainly think it's worth trying," Onyx encouraged. Lapis still said nothing, even when Onyx glared at him. She threw a cup of ramen at him.

  It bounced off his head with a THUNK! He looked up, blinked, and replied, "Yes," and went back to his fight with the cereal.

  Only when an irritated Onyx stalked over to him and ripped the bag out of his hands did he sit down to listen thoroughly.

  As I repeated myself, Onyx slashed her dagger across the bag, parting the plastic with not so much as a sound, and silently handed it back to Lapis before throwing herself back down next to me.

  Lapis looked thoughtful for a moment, his night sky eyes searching for the possible outcomes of our escape method. "I like it," he said simply, “Let’s get to testing.”

  ***

  “Again,” I told Lapis after my palm outward. A web of cracks emanated from the air at my command. Shards of reality fell away revealing the image of the room from the other side of a wall. The cracks glowed with spectral tints of Concept Energy, slicing through the fragments like sunlight streaming through trees in a forest.

  Lapis' first two attempts at triggering a Crystal Shift had procured mediocre results at best, so he was getting irritable quickly.

  Onyx was not exactly helping improve his mood, "Just stop sucking ass," she called lazily from the other side of the wall.

  Exasperated, he lifted his hand, index and middle finger pointed out, as Dark Concept Energy gathered and flowed from them, like smoke from a burning building. He flicked his other hand down his fingers as he closed them, the darkness poured across his fist and he smirked slightly, "Let's try this," He punched through the small Looking Glass and black sparks flew like fallen angels as the cracks spread and rippled under the power of the strike.

  I felt a jolt propel me forward as the front of the fracture began to peel away, turning black and curving back around us, shrouding us in the dark as the last shard fell away.

  When the buzzing of the lights returned, the weight of failure once again poured into my bones. Onyx returns from the other side of the wall, her expression defeated. I sat down and brought up my knees, wrapping my arms around them, letting the sorrow consume me. Before I know it, sorrow makes room for fatigue, and I plummet unexpectedly into sleep.

  My sleep isn't filled with pleasant fabrications of a dreaming brain. Instead, images flash through my idle mind—gifts, or perhaps curses like secrets from the very depths of the Earth. I get glimpses of the future: minor visions, usually vague, but over time I can often make sense of them. I would have expected the environment of this place to interfere with my clairvoyance, but as usual, the visions still came.

  I see stacked boxes with raw meat, but not like any I've ever seen before, a heavily armored soldier with the logo AID printed across the shoulder of his armor, a boy with silvery-white hair, wearing a black hoodie with a heart print on the front of it and purple lines around the sleeves. The pants were the same color as his hoodie with similar patterns on them and fell over his white, blood-splattered sneakers. His hands were outspread with fire and ice gathered on each, a mix of fear and loathing on his face, his pomegranate eyes were full of hate and bore the desolate look of loss. The boy looked alarmingly familiar. Another image showed a tall man with dark stubble, wielding a cleaver and screaming in rage, blood stained his dingy apron. The last image was a woman we had all seen before, and no longer spoke of, then everything went dark.

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  The scratching of the hat beneath my head wakes me from my sad little nap, and quiet breathing registers in my ear. I look over at Onyx, who has my forearm in her grasp, her breath on my wrist as light as a butterfly. In sleep, her expression is softer than usual, yet the attributes of her face remain sharp and cold in some sort of odd harmony.

  With some effort, I lifted my head farther and spotted Lapis sitting up with his legs crossed, his hands gripping the sides of his head. What was even stranger, is that I could sense Chaos Concept Energy in his direction.

  He was the Echo of Darkness, Love, Secrets, and the Moon, which I don’t think is something I could misremember after knowing him for so long.

  I scoot over, extricating myself from Onyx's arms, and moving to shake him. When my hand touches his, coldness floods my body. Failure is guaranteed. Whispering voices invade my head as my consciousness touches Lapis’, looking for any weakness, insecurity, or exploitation. You are useless. Every single statement seemed personal and targeted at me.

  I could see two figures that looked like Lapis fighting each other. One used the weapons of Sifyx, the other the claws and teeth hardened by anger; they appeared to have been fighting for a while now. The shadowy figure flung chains at the glowing blue silhouette, ensnaring him promptly. He fell to his knees and slid across the black void, the ghost with Sifyx planted a foot on his head.

  -I’m running the show; you don’t get a say.- Said the black silhouette.

  ~You can’t keep me locked up forever, Reezin.~

  The one called Reezin kicked his prisoner backward into a cage that had appeared in the dark and empty plane.

  -Yet here we are again.- Reezin said, disappointed it seemed. -Don’t distract me again.-

  I fortify my mind, giving my thoughts the hardness of the very gems that represent me.

  -Someone is here.-

  I control chaos, it does not control me. Perhaps my connection to Chaos was the only reason I was able to peek into his head.

  I snatch two crystals from off my hat and rush to a section of the ceiling that has functional lights.

  -Normie lighting cannot help you.-

  I pull one of the long bulbs down and snap it in half, I toss a crystal in it and press the pieces of the bulb together.

  -This is pointless, I’ve touched your mind already. Submit now.-

  I blow on the crystal left in my hand and begin to push it between my hands until it becomes a malleable paste, I apply it to the crack between the bulb, and it flattens out and hardens. When the crack is sealed, I place the bulb back in its socket and it flashes on blindingly, glowing pure white, the voices finally recede. It retains its light when I pull it from the socket again, I bring it over to where Lapis is and hold the light near him.

  His eyes snap open and he lashes out at the bulb, breaking it in half once more. I stumble back as glass sprays me in the face. Lapis picked up a shattered half of the bulb and stabbed it into the ground where I'd been standing. He snarled and threw the other with deadly accuracy; I spun around it with my hand outstretched and pressed my palm to his forehead.

  “Disruptive Concept: Chaos Conduction,” I invoke quietly. I reach into his mind with my will and push back against the voices in his head, quelling the chaos.

  Tendrils of Chilling, heartless words push back against me, the voices regaining their hold on Lapis' mind. I see his thoughts and memories wash over me in waves of chaotic shattered pieces of his psyche. His battle with Onyx, his mother’s picture on the wall, and moments from the Celestial War. Dark Concept Energy was flooding his head yet tearing at my mind only. Like he was accepting seclusion to protect himself.

  I closed my eyes and shoved back with the mental force of a bulldozer and try to give him something else to focus on; anything outside the domain of reason. I think of the thing he cares most about in this world, the one person he will never need to hurt, Nova Seren Ortus.

  The thought settles into his mind, prioritized above everything, causing the voices to go silent. The image of Lapis' wife stops his thrashing and trying to viciously stab something with the jagged glass in his hand. His breath catches and I bring the memory into sharper focus.

  In Lapis' mind an image of Nova began to form. The Echo of Light, hate, Sun, and revelation was dressed in a white skirt and an undone white blazer jacket with gold buttons. Her tied blouse and heels were also the color of morning snowfall. Her hair and skin tone were nearly identical to that of Lapis', but in a way looked lighter and fuller of color, like sapphire. Her blue locks of hair spilled down her shoulders like waterfalls on snowcapped mountains, and sun-shaped earrings that caught the light and threw it off in dazzling rays of gold. Delicate white eyeliner trailed her brown skin, and her face was set in a slight pout; but her eyes glittered with amusement.

  I think I’ll call her Sapphire.

  So that was her, the Scion of Celestia. She looked shockingly similar to Lapis, they could have been twins, as odd as that sounds. It made sense to me why Lapis and his wife were sometimes called the Mirror Twins; they look similar but represent the opposite. She quite literally was the light of his life.

  I amplified the memory, and Lapis opened his eyes. The chaos was calmed.

  The shattered bulb fell from his hand, and he looked at me, ordering me with his eyes, his face damp with sweat, "This is between us." He drops to his knees and stares off for a moment, muttering his wife’s name, as if in a trance. Dealing with a divided mind must be exhausting for him.

  I nodded my head and brushed myself off.

  "Also, wipe your arm," he called to me.

  The feeling of warmth and pain spread down my left arm, I paused to look down at the gash across it and back at the glass bulb embedded in one of the walls. Guess he did hit me, I thought numbly and jogged past Lapis.

  “Don’t ask," he said, his voice shaking.

  "I don’t even know what I would ask, I’ve never seen anything like that. I have a few psychological records that I’ve studied in the past that this reminds me of," I mentioned, looking back at him.

  "Nothing needs to be said," he finalized, and as if to accentuate the point he pressed his middle finger to his lips.

  Tired of trying to deal with Lapis' issues, I kneel and lightly shake Onyx awake, everyone had gotten enough sleep anyway.

  Lapis didn’t even have to sleep because he could absorb energy throughout the night, or in this case from any of the dark spots of Verestia.

  Onyx opened her eyes with no urgency, and the content expression disappeared from her face. She looked so calm and happy I almost wish I'd left her asleep. Onyx looked around, a barely coherent expression on her groggy face. After wiping the gunk from her eyes, she squints hard at my arm, repositioning her glasses. Her eyes widen as she spots the blood running down my arm, red, like human blood, but sparkling and brighter.

  “What happened?” Onyx demanded.

  “Nothing important,” I said lightheartedly.

  Onyx sat up so fast her crown of bones did not follow; but she didn’t seem to notice this and stormed over to where Lapis was standing to inspect the testing area. Her eyes glowed a violent green, blazing with fury as she unsheathed one of her daggers from within the folds of her dress. With the speed of a viper, she struck out at him with the blade…

  …and met only smoke.

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  Perspectival Concept: Looking Glass: By using the reflective nature of Crystals and the disorder of Chaos, Aerix can briefly shatter the visual distance between locations. This allows them to peer into other spaces and ignore most physical and some Conceptual barriers.

  Disruptive Concept: Chaos Conduction: Allows Aerix to manipulate the level of pre-existing Chaos in a given area or situation.