THE JEALOUSY OF JALICE

Helpless.

The feeling shackled Hydrim through each moment of Dardajah’s interaction with Jalice. He had watched in horror as the dokojin stalked his Tecalica through the Black House, slinking through the shadowy corridors without so much as a sound. No amount of shouting had alerted Jalice or the mirajin who had accompanied her.

The only consolation came when Dardajah kept its distance upon discovering the mirajin’s presence. It had fumed at this revelation. When the mirajin became distracted by an infant dokojin regurgitated by Jalice, however, Hydrim detected a wave of relief from his captor.

Only then had Dardajah revealed itself to Jalice, leading her back to the room of twinkling lights like a lamb to the slaughter.

The unfolding vision confounded Hydrim at first, but his confusion quickly transformed into horror. Dardajah scrambled up onto the shattered remnants of its old cage just before Jalice entered the room. Yet she wasn’t alone. Phantoms of a youthful Hydrim and flirtatious Jalice circled the glass cage, conversing without knowledge of their older counterparts bearing witness. Dardajah played its role, ending the scene in cruel homage by slithering into the young boy’s phantom body like it had all those years ago.

Here the vision ended, and the past submitted to the laws of the present again. Dardajah rose from the floor, masquerading in Hydrim’s skin.

Hearing Jalice speak—his Jalice, not the phantom girl who disappeared in a fright—reignited Hydrim’s fervor to warn his Tecalica. He knew it was in vain. She never acknowledged his shouts or frantic screaming—not even when Dardajah shed the disguise of Hydrim’s skin and changed back into its true form.

Hydrim beheld helplessly as Jalice cowered in fear before the immense dokojin leering over her. The conversation between her and Dardajah became lost to Hydrim as he bellowed until his voice cracked like a dry leaf. Yet his sounds never touched Jalice’s ears.

“Let her go!” he gnashed at Dardajah, knowing that at least the dokojin could hear him. His voice spiked in shrill panic when he was ignored and the dokojin instead lashed out to souldrain Jalice. “Stop! You’ll kill her! I beg you—I’ll do anything. Just let her go!”

His cries morphed into wails as Jalice’s rigid form convulsed. A vacuum of colorful energy streamed out from her, caressing Dardajah like a glowing mist.

Hydrim couldn’t watch his Tecalica be annihilated. Yet his eyes never left her. He cringed in rhythm with the spasms that shook her. He flinched when her flailing limbs inadvertently slammed against the nearby wall.

How dare it mar her like this. Dardajah had gone too far. It could wreak havoc on the tribes and collect souls for its insatiable appetite—but not Jalice. Hydrim couldn’t let it do this to her.

Sheer aether light flooded the room. Dardajah howled—a sound of inflamed pain like that of an animal whose bones had been crushed. The light collided with the dokojin and flung it across the room, bashing it into the wall before instantly vanishing.

Hydrim’s vision focused along with Dardajah’s own as the dokojin sized up its opponent. A frail figure stood in the doorway, shrouded in a mound of drab cloaks and sashes. A long face protruded from these, the ashen skin beset by wrinkles that struck a bland contrast against the illuminated veins that webbed beneath. Glowing eyes swirled with a vivacious energy that matched in tone the vibrant colors lacing the figure’s veins.

Dardajah growled, a sound of volcanic depth. The words—if they could be called such—that erupted from the dokojin raked the air so violently that Hydrim expected the room to explode. It was a language of primordial genesis, expelling the same powers that had devoured the first energy sparks conjured by the universe. Insatiable, rageful hunger carved out each breath.

Even as the mirajin countered, emitting a melodious string of words that nevertheless thundered across the room, Dardajah’s hands grappled with one of the embedded skulls in its skin, wrenching it out to cast it across the room. The skull—boasting patches of rotting skin that flecked the floor with grime as it sailed—landed in the space between the two duelists.

Dardajah barked a stream of sounds, and the skull responded by cracking open in a spray of shrapnel. Copper smoke bloomed out of the fractured skull, filling the room with a thick cloud that drowned out the miniscule domes of light.

Hydrim’s mind scrambled to absorb the stimuli bombarding him.

While the dokojin had worked its dark spell on the skull, the mirajin’s song reverberated off the walls as fae swayed like a river reed. Arms lifted and bent at the elbow, weaving through the air. While hands and fingers flexed between the movements, orbs of light blinked into existence at the fingertips. Within a few heartbeats, a string of lights hovered frozen in front of the mirajin. A final flick of the hand traced an outstretched finger through the orbs, connecting them with streaks of light.

Hydrim knew that design. Awe trickled over terror as he identified the joined orbs as a constellation—the Glass Tree.

No sooner had he realized what the mirajin had conjured than a crescent wave of purple flames burst from the traced stars and sliced through the copper mist to collide with Dardajah. Hydrim cried out, the noise swallowed in the depths of Dardajah’s shriek of pain.

The copper mist resettled where the mirajin’s aether had separated it. Already the cloaked figure’s arms were dancing again, new orbs dotting the air.

Anxious anticipation at the coming attack shot through Hydrim, but it was rage that pulsed through Dardajah. With a gargling roar, the dokojin craned its neck and stretched open its jaw, spewing a stream of dark fluid. Hydrim recognized it as the same substance Jalice had vomited in the corridor. Sparks of light shot out from incandescent knobs on panels cursed with the bile’s touch, while the panels themselves sank into puddles under the acidic deposit.

The mirajin panicked, rushing to finish its latest constellation, which sent a weaker halo of energy at Dardajah. Dodging the next spray of bile proved impossible, and when the substance inevitably contacted faer buffer of layered clothing, the liquid ate through it like lava. The mirajin retreated, and Hydrim noted its somewhat obvious attempt to veer Dardajah’s trajectory away from Jalice with another hurried celestial motif of joined orbs.

Jalice. Shame pummeled Hydrim for forgetting his Tecalica’s fate and coupled with an overwhelming compulsion to rush over to her—to rescue her from this chaos. He needed to be with her. The desire burned through the panic and terror induced by the aether duel—enough so that his aura defied its confinement within the dokojin. A savage cry flared in his lungs and scorched his throat as a single, focused purpose drove the sound forth: Get to Jalice.

He never expected this conflict of yearning to influence Dardajah in the least. Yet a ripple of instability shook their joined aura, startling both Hydrim and the dokojin. Unable to divert enough attention to restrain Hydrim, the dokojin was keeping all focus on eliminating the mirajin’s threat, leaving the Sachem to grapple with this newfound advantage. He thrashed against Dardajah’s hold, howling with a desparate need to break free.

Bursting from the dokojin’s shell like vermin from a cocoon, Hydrim flew across the floor, slipping in the black fluid produced by Dardajah. When his tumble ceased, shock paralyzed him. He waited for the acidic bile to eat away at him, yet seconds passed with no pain. Looking across his nude form, revulsion rose in his throat. A film of dark ooze glossed every inch of him, some of it coagulating in thick globs.

His eyes traveled up under the instinctive need to survey his surroundings, and quickly landed on Jalice, who lay a few yards away. Everything else—including his apparent immunity to the acid, and the cacophony of the aether duel—succumbed to the sheer incentive to be with Jalice. He scrambled on hands and knees towards her, fighting against the slick terrain.

Around Jalice, a hedge of clean ground untouched by the dokojin’s projectile was now tainted as Hydrim trekked across it. Filth-ridden hands clutched at her blouse, and the cloth sizzled but didn’t deteriorate under the minimal film on his hands.

“Wake up,” he growled as he shook her.

Eyes closed, her head and arms rolled limply in response. He moved his left hand to her hair, which curled and crackled under his touch. She’d dyed it, no longer boasting the fiery strands he knew so well. His eyes flickered back to her face.

“Wake up,” he hissed, shaking her again as he continued to chant the command. His voice and movements hastened with each repetition, escalating until his grip slammed her violently against the ground. “Why aren’t you waking up? I’m finally here. Wake up!”

A deafening clash split the air behind him, breaking his tunneled focus on Jalice. He twisted around, wide eyes soaking in the fray.

A chaotic vortex of colored aether swirled behind Dardajah, towering at a height equalling the dokojin’s. A circle of separated orbs linked it together, similar to those conjured earlier by the mirajin. The power of a thousand winds ripped through the room, siphoning into the gyre of energy. Tendrils of aether snaked off the vortex’s base, latching around Dardajah like chains.

Hydrim’s gaze veered to the mirajin, who stood opposite the dokojin with arms and hands uplifted in rigid posture. The mirajin stared back at him. The impulse to slink from those overwhelming eyes, swirling with as much intensity as the vortex, seized Hydrim. He glanced away in compromise, his gaze happening upon the thick rope traveling from Dardajah towards himself.

Disgust roiled over him at the details of the rope. Not a rope—a cord, organic in texture and covered in the all-too-familiar black fluid. Disfigured bumps and canyons marked its soft, rubbery composition. His eyes traveled up its length to the alarming open gash where the cord joined to Dardajah.

Hydrim followed the cord back. Shaking hands reluctantly clasped it, slowly trailing its path behind him. He released a scratchy wail as he felt it flesh out across his back like an umbrella.

Dying stars, it’s an umbilical cord.

Hydrim looked back to the chaotic duel. The vortex had managed to tug half of Dardajah into it already. The dokojin clung to the edges, roaring in defiance. The cord connecting Dardajah and Hydrim twitched in response to the violent wind.

Realization struck him. Hydrim stared at the mirajin, who, oddly, still beheld Hydrim rather than faer opponent. Perhaps the mirajin had high confidence the vortex would succeed in swallowing Dardajah. Or perhaps its unwavering gaze on Hydrim held some other meaning.

“Don’t do this!” screamed Hydrim, hoping his pleas would spare him the sealed fate he shared with the dokojin. “Save me!”

The mirajin made no move to do so, and the inevitable unfolded within the span of a single breath.

Dardajah’s grip on the vortex released, allowing the wind to drag the dokojin in. The slack of the cord snapped taut and yanked Hydrim through the air. He howled when his grip tore free of Jalice as he sailed across the room and through the gaping mouth of the vortex.

The last sight he beheld was the mirajin’s steely gaze of vibrant colors.

Then the vortex sealed shut, plunging him into darkness and the biting roars of a furious dokojin.