THE JEALOUSY OF JALICE

The grace Annilasia had boasted on her way to the tent eluded her. Every muscle and limb felt detached, and her head pounded a cruel rhythm. She struggled to balance, stumbling on several occasions.

The forest, an unrelenting nemesis that mocked her intoxication, lurched with every movement she took. Her stomach clenched with the shifting environment. Standing still was no better; although it paused the swaying, the forest remained a restless sheet of bubbly motion, akin to looking through glass coated with rain.

Far stranger were the vibrations. She’d taken only a few steps from the tent when her skin began to tingle. The farther she traveled, the more acute it became, until it was a constant rhythm that changed intensity at erratic intervals.

Daylight offered small comfort from the sickening illusion. Sunlight crept through the clouds to banish the veil of darkness. Its arrival granted her orientation to her surroundings. Yet this, too, came with its own curse. All manner of color revealed by daylight’s arrival fluctuated from one hue to another. This only fed the queasiness that gripped Annilasia, and she partly wished it’d remained dark a while longer.

She staggered to brace herself on a tree, unsure if it would hold fast in the spinning forest. A cold sweat provoked a slew of shivers. Eyes closed, she fought to catch her breath. Even a slow walk had her panting like a hound.

Dying tarnished stars, this damn hopper’s weed is strong. Convinced that people who partook of the substance were beyond mad, she left the tree and pressed on, a firm grip on Korcsha’s book.

With the sun hidden behind clouds, and the hopper’s weed skewing time considerably as well, she struggled to measure how long it took her to find the bunker. When she finally glimpsed the structure, she froze.

One of the doors was open, suspended in the air on its hinges.

“No, no, no!” she yelled. “Sahruum’s ass, damn it!”

The book fell from her hands. As she fumbled for her sword, dizziness confounded her movements. She growled upon succeeding at freeing the blade of its scabbard. With uneasy steps, she crept towards the bunker. The unstable colors initially blinded her to the splotches staining the ground, but she grew still when she noticed the trail of blood.

Beast humping Tamers, is this Jalice’s blood? Korcsha had assured her that no one would find the bunker. Clearly someone had. But they likely hadn’t been prepared for the Tecalica’s resistance.

Annilasia glanced around, alert to a possible ambush. She rotated in a purposeful circle to study the area. The urgency of time sprang to mind, and she permitted herself only a moment of cautioned surveillance before edging towards the bunker. Still eyeing the forest, she called down the staircase.

“Jalice, are you down there?” She waited, but only silence answered, even after repeating the question.

“I will kill you, Korcsha,” she growled, peering down the stairs. “I will burn your eyes out if Jalice is dead.”

Annilasia calculated the possible variety of ambush attacks that might await her. She also considered the possibility that Jalice was incapacitated and unable to answer. Moving with heightened vigilance, she moved down the stairs. Upon reaching the last few, she slowed and surveyed the immediate area of the room beyond. The torch lay on the ground, tip blackened with ash.

A scream erupted from nearby, catching Annilasia off guard. She startled back and held up her sword. When no attack came, she glanced around the room for movement. Nothing—no warrior, no Jalice, no source of the scream. Annilasia gingerly edged forward.

What in black stars was that?

Her eyes fell on the supplies scattered across the floor in a frenzied mess. A sure sign of a struggle.

The scream came again, this time accompanied by panicked pleas. Harsh footsteps thudded against the floor.

“Let me go!” yelled a familiar voice, much like Jalice’s. “Stop!”

Annilasia spun on her heels and sliced the sword downward. The throb in her head amplified with the quick movement. With the hopper’s weed still wearing off, her senses and concentration remained corrupted by its influence. She studied the room, but the audible phantoms remained elusive to her eyes.

“Show yourself,” she commanded. “I can hear you.”

The entry room was empty. Of that, she was certain. She turned her attention to the rooms beyond, cast in darkness and untouched by the daylight seeping in from the open door above. Dread slithered through her, an unusual fear taking grip of her mind.

Something didn’t feel right. Her hands tightened around her sword as they trembled. She wasn’t alone in the bunker. Certainty of an attack pervaded her.

The moment, weighed by anxious anticipation, dragged on with no outcome. Annilasia berated herself for the unprecedented fear of the dark. She was a tillishu—nothing posed a threat to her.

She licked her lips and determined to move towards the darkness—but her feet remained fixed in place. Paralysis overtook her muscles and kept her rooted, like a statue cursed to its post. The only movement condoned was her shaking hands, and the sword bobbed in the air as a result.

There was something in the darkness. It dripped of death and violence, permeating the bunker’s space. Whatever it was, it wanted her. Needed her.

Violent images molested Annilasia’s mind: torn skin, contorted limbs, flayed bodies that thrashed under endless torture. New screams erupted in her ears, but these cries differed drastically from those from before. The earlier voices had sounded familiar, like Jalice. The sounds assaulting Annilasia now belonged to victims she’d never met.

Primitive instincts seized her. She dropped her sword—an act she’d never done under duress—and bolted for the supplies. The trembling became uncontrollable, hindering her as she blindly stuffed items into one of the discarded satchels while watching her surroundings. She had to get out of here.

She risked a glance towards the darkness, a mistake she couldn’t undo. Two large eyes stared back at her. They bulged wide in an unblinking gaze, crazed terror scratching within them.

At first, they appeared alone at the edge of the darkness—lidless eyes of horror trapped in locked witness. Slowly, a set of lips appeared beneath them. Gashed and split, they flashed open to generate a screech unlike anything Annilasia had endured. It was a sound of inhuman proportion, warped by a pain instilled by endless torment. Chipped yellow teeth lined the inside, where a slithering tongue oozed blood.

Annilasia quivered and fell to the floor. She scrambled back on her heels and palms, unable to break her gaze from the nightmarish anomaly. Even as she moved away, the bloodied lips and lidless eyes shot forward towards her.

Her heart stopped at the absence of a body. The organs were disembodied, forsaken by a host. Upon reaching her, they bobbed in the air, mere inches above her face.

A warm breath clogged her nostrils with a putrid stench as the lips persisted in an incessant shriek. The eyes followed the drift of her gaze with frenzied jerks through the air. Annilasia whimpered, desperate to escape the terrorized stare, but to no avail.

She had never screamed in fright in her life. She wouldn’t dignify life’s curses with her whimpers. But what confronted her now was unlike any trauma she’d experienced. When her back pressed against the wall, horrible realization choked her bravery. She couldn’t avoid the agonizing eyes or silence the curdling wails.

Annilasia screamed. The sound burned in her lungs and scourged her throat, extinguishing every other emotion and any thought.

A sickening realization poured over her like thick tar. Her ears hadn’t detected the primitive scream she’d unleashed. The forced air had billowed past her quivering mouth, but no sound had followed. The shriek of the gashed lips before her was so deafening that it had drowned out her own.

Before she could catch her breath, the gaze of the discarnate eyes flickered down to her gaping mouth. They dove in a hungry plummet, leaving no time for her to react. The two globular organs disappeared through her lips and lodged instantly in her throat.

The abandoned lips snapped shut, ending their shriek before darting after the eyes into Annilasia’s still agape mouth.

Annilasia gagged, eyes bulging while her hands clutched at her enlarged throat. Desperation coursed through her, but no amount of struggle purged the foreign vermin. She writhed on the ground as they squirmed inside her. By some cruel miracle, they slipped past her throat, freeing her airway.

Annilasia lay on her back panting. Revulsion crawled through her. She stared with wide eyes at the ceiling, her mind refusing to grapple with what had occurred. A mindless instinct hijacked the mess of emotions. She bolted to her feet, threw the satchel across her shoulder, and dashed up the stairs.

Frantic strides blinded her to the book she’d dropped on the forest ground. She unknowingly stepped on it, and when she shifted to keep running, the object flew forward. Her leg shot skyward in a sharp incision. The world lurched as she sped towards the ground.

She inhaled sharply. Every muscle clenched in the fight to breathe. Desperation to flee the bunker quickly overrode her pain. Wobbly legs threatened to give way as she forced herself to stand. Her eyes happened upon Korcsha’s book, and without much thought, she grabbed it. Tears streamed down her face while muddled thoughts seeped through her shock.

Follow the blood, find Jalice. Just follow the blood and her tracks.

The impetus that had pushed her to flee didn’t last long. Blurred vision from the tears produced a careless stride that caught her in a tree’s root. She fell face first into the dry mud, bringing a string of pain into her cheek and forehead.

Visions of the bunker incident flooded her mind. Annilasia wailed and tried to push the memories aside, but the cruel flashback bombarded her without mercy. She convulsed, turning onto her back to thrash at the invisible assailants. She could feel the bodiless eyes despite her mind’s fortified effort to deny that the phantom organs had entered her. The screech of the lips scratched in her ears.

“Make it stop!” she screeched in turn.

Another scream crushed her lungs as she continued to flail at the phantoms. The emotional toll dissolved her vigor and eventually extinguished all remaining energy. Her arms fell limply to her sides.

Fresh tears trickled into the scrapes on her cheeks, producing flashes of pain. She lay there for some time, forced by exhaustion to contemplate the incident. Logical explanation failed to piece it together. Too many open questions circled in her mind like buzzards above a decomposing carcass.

She pondered the possibilities and trembled. Maybe a dokojin had attacked her, or some other entity of the Apparition Realm. The hopper’s weed might have fused her more strongly with that place than she’d thought.

But I wasn’t really there. Secondhand smoke from hopper’s weed couldn’t fully translate a person. At least, that’s what Annilasia had believed until now. Surely she couldn’t be attacked by an entity of another Realm without fully translating.

But it had seemed real. Those monstrosities had looked real. Had felt real.

Her breathing became erratic and laborious. Annilasia rubbed her hands feverishly around her throat. Dying stars, that thing went inside me. If it meant to kill her, she had no doubt it would be a painful death.

Her hands shot down to tug at the armor and garments that shielded her abdomen. She peered at her skin, expecting to find a mark or wound as indication that her assailants were within her. Finding no such proof, she released a haggard sigh, convinced that the whole incident had been a side effect of the hopper’s weed. Her breath fluttered while she wiped away tear streaks from her cheeks.

That it had all been a figment caused by the hopper’s weed was a flimsy explanation. Her mind had been welded with that other dimension, meaning it could affect her, and her it. That’s why hopper’s weed was used. Despite this, she kept reminding herself that nothing had occurred after the assault. She had yet to experience any altered thoughts or sensations since its occurrence. At most, she had simply seen phantom impressions of another Realm. She hadn’t necessarily been affected by them.

Despite her efforts, she couldn’t silence the gnawing fear that she’d encountered something more than a hallucination. The idea festered in the abyss of her mind, a persistent reminder of the peril she possibly carried with her.

With this cycle of reassurance and doubt clashing inside, Annilasia stood. She wrestled down the abhorrence that lingered. Duty overtook her anxiety. She had to find Jalice, and Delilee was counting on Annilasia to keep the plan together. She couldn’t allow whatever had happened in the bunker to hinder fulfillment of her part.

With the satchel slung over her shoulder, burdened by Korcsha’s accursed book, Annilasia entered a steady stride. The weaving trail of blood and boot prints guided her away from the bunker and the trauma it had brought her.