The Moon's Fangs | 1

"Nolan? There's no way..." Etch stared at him, horror glazing his expression.

“Don’t shoot!” General Rhosyn boomed simultaneously as he realized it was his own son who strode into the gala. “Stand dow– down…” his sharp boom of a voice suddenly fell, like an unnatural force sucked the fire right out of him.

Others pushed through the crowd too, but just like the General, their movements slowed, turning sluggish and weighed down until they couldn’t move at all.

The guards around the room, who all had their weapons trained nervously on Nolan, went wide-eyed with panic as their hands seized up as if lightning zapped through their very veins. The invisible force strained their hands to the point of dropping their weapons on the spot.

They yelled out in a sluggish delay before being choked off, weapons clattering to the marble. Some dropped to their knees from the sheer pain of their fingers bending too far back.

Adrenaline pumped through my feet, my legs–instinct insisting I needed to flee.

“Reks.” I looked to him for answers, clutching his arm.

Alarm swarmed up my chest. His glamour was gone. As if whatever force in the room also had the ability to strip the guise, to override the mechanism. I saw him clearly.

Gone was Piren and the gala attire. Now a vitiate, the last vitiate, stood beside me. In his uniform with the gleaming upside-down moon, for everyone to see. To recognize and question.

Mine was no different.

If he heard me or noticed the glamours were now inactive, he didn’t acknowledge either. His focus remained entirely on the fossilized cobra in Nolan’s grip. It was as if the mere sight of the idol made Reks’ blood boil. But there was something strained about his expression too.

The veins from the tops of his clenched fists bulged, stemming up and disappearing under his sleeves. They stuck out against his neck too, as if whatever emotions he felt were being suppressed – unable to shove past a mental blockade.

His eyes blackened, void of echoed color or life. Murderous.

It was a look I hadn’t seen since the day I met him. When he thought me to be someone else. An enemy. No. This was worse.

I tried getting his attention again, but repeating his name and shaking his arm did nothing. Just like everyone else in the room, save for Nolan and I, were rendered nearly completely motionless.

My breaths turned harsh and erratic. "Reks. Reks, please!"

His eyes struggled to rove over towards me, lethal and agape, stuck somewhere in between hostility and alarm. Alarm, because he now realized my glamour was rendered inactive as well.

~Left Pocket. R-Run.~ he mentally reached out, voice strained into a struggled growl from the effort. ~Take m-my gate ri-ing and go.~ simultaneously, I caught the faint flare of his Guide traveling down his neck at a significantly decelerated speed.

~I’m not leaving you!~ I earnestly thought back to him, squeezing his arm with both of mine. I couldn't bring him to move, not a single step. There wasn't a chance in hell I'd use his only means of escape. I'd never abandon him.

The blackness of his eyes swirled dangerously. They went bloodshot as he fought the force caging him. ~It’s a tr…ap, Amelia. Go!~

I flinched from the fierceness, the raw fear riddled in his tone.

~I sense danger, Amelia!~ Nox warned, recoiling. ~I am not confident in my success, but I will attempt Luk's heroics!~ A bright, agonizing pain flared down my neck, cascading down my shoulders.

I seethed through my teeth from the pain, but I needed this to work - needed us to escape together!

Before I could protest again, to yell back at the stubborn man that I refused to run away and leave him behind, a pulse of energy rippled past me–through me. It was so intense, my body and mind hitched from the intrusive disturbance.

It doused the fire surging down my arms in an instant.

Something changed. Nox fell silent. Something under my skin felt wrong. Like something–a mental force, intruded where it was not welcome.

Invisible scales slithered up my bones, cold and commanding. It took control over my body in that single pulse. I couldn’t move. Not unless it wanted me to.

Reks’ stare went alarmingly wide as his hand jerkily moved towards the blade strapped to his thigh.

Through our commlink, I heard his own psyche bellow in protest, veins bulging, face snarling from the effort of fighting back. My breathing turned into short, terrified rasps. His hand shook violently. But his will was no longer in his control. Not now.

The invisible force coerced him into unsheathing his blade, to raising it as my own hand was forced to lift to him in offering.

His black eyes glistened with defiance, body trembling riotously. ~I-I can’t s…stop. Can’t dr–drop it!~

My vision blurred. ~It’s-s not your f-f-fault. N-Not y-ou.~ I tried to offer him comfort, tried to convey that what happened next, I would never hold against him. It was out of our hands.

Even still, Reks urged Luk to move faster, to stop this before it went further. Despite the odds, he refused to give in.

My heart lurched, tears spilling from my eyes from the gut-wrenching sound of how his psyche howled out in retaliation as his blade came down to my hand. The sharp edge sliced down the center of my palm, all the way down my middle finger.

The pain was like a sharp burn of ice. But Reks’ raw, hair-raising reprisal blazed like a sudden wildfire given vitality. A hellfire derived from where his darkness was forged.

Blood pooled from the long gash as the force influenced Reks to sheath his blade back into its place, strangely giving him the courtesy of keeping his blade rather than disposing of it like everyone else who had been previously armed in the room.

~Amelia, I-I’m s-sorry.~ pain edged his wicked inferno. ~Just… h-hold on!~ his Guide still moved at a snail’s pace. The swell of the twin heads worked on trailing down the corded muscle of his shoulders. How long would it take before Luk reached his wrists?

My heart hammered hard against my chest as my legs moved involuntarily, stepping away from Reks and instead towards Nolan. Nolan, whose eyes were glazed over in a bloodshot trance. Black root-like veins splintered up his fingers from where he held the fossilized cobra, spreading past his knuckles like a deadly venom gradually corrupting his body.

It was as if the longer he touched or held the idol, the bigger the toll it would take on him. The more it would take from him.

~N-No!~ Reks screamed out through mentally gritted teeth as my body was forced closer to the idol one agonizing step at a time. ~Fight it, Amelia! L-Luk… damnit–h-hurry!~

Everything inside me pitched from his panic, his fear.

Every instinct demanded to turn around and run, to get away. But that cold, sentient energy slithering through my bones held all the control, all the power. And it writhed in the pleasure of that reign.

My back faced him now, but through our connection, I felt Reks fighting back against the force. He retaliated against it like a war of two minds. How he fought back, I didn’t know.

I tried to summon strength like his, tried to will myself to stop walking towards the idol in Nolan’s arms, tried to push back against it… but it was like stopping the ocean with only my hands. Futile.

My ankle twisted, losing one of my heels in the attempt.

Blood trickled down the length of my finger, curving down my palm to dribble to the floor as the force pulled me close enough to touch Nolan or the fossilized idol.

The root-like venom branched up both his wrists now and his fingers were fully blackened, as if dipped in black paint. The roots continued to grow and thicken, faster than before. Nolan’s hands trembled, as if somewhere inside that trance, he felt great pain.

~Amelia–Amelia! H-Hold on!~

Another tear slid down my cheek. ~I can’t.~ my reply came out weak and brittle, a sad excuse to match my own strength. My hand rose at the force’s volition. It trembled as I tried to fight the losing battle.

Nolan showed no reaction to me, showed no reaction to my bloodied hand reaching over to smear my throbbing finger down the cobra’s head. My finger and palm stung as I left a coated trail of crimson down the ridge of its nose, then into the hollow of its carved mouth, between and around its elongated fangs.

It absorbed my blood, drawing it into its shell.

My breathing came to a standstill as tiny cracks splintered from the blood smear. Like a timelapse of land cracking after years of severe drought, each crack furled out of control. It moved to shatter itself entirely.

“Amelia!” Reks’ voice smashed to the surface in a roar, a roar so loud it shook the very walls–no–the walls were trembling.

My body tensed up as control returned in full, stunning impact. I gasped out, falling back from the release of pressure.

Not just for me, but for everyone. A mayhem of unleashed shrieks lit up the room as control came back to everyone all at once–just as the cobra broke free of its fossilized shell, like an archaic monster breaking free from a millennia of solitude.

Chips of its shell fell free, exposing the iridescent sheen of its white-opal scales, sharp gleam of elongated fangs, and vertically slit pupils encompassed by dominant red eyes. Only a handful of fragments of the shell had fallen before it came alive and moved with uncanny speed to strike–strike me.

Nox's instincts erupted through my veins, and my other heel made it into my hand. I chunked the heel at the striking cobra, lightning zinging through my arm as tendrils simultaneously looped around me like racing comets.

The cobra dodged the heel, but the obstacle slowed its strike long enough for Luk to reel me back and against Reks, into his awaiting arms. He curled me into his tight, protective embrace.

When the snake missed its mark, it fell out of Nolan’s hands and onto the floor, still confined to the shedding shell. The moment it came out of contact with Nolan, he collapsed to the ground. The black root-like darkness came to a hard stop an inch over his forearms. It looked as though black gloves had melted onto his skin. My heel impaled his top right peck, though he showed no sign of registering the pain.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Reks rasped against my ear, squeezing me tighter against him. Blood oozed from the crooks of his arms. Luk must have exploded out of him the moment control came back.

I gripped his arms, cherishing the warmth and safety he brought. Blood from my own hand slicked his arm from where I held him, but I could already feel Nox working to heal the cut.

“No, Reks. Please.” I turned to look at him, voice barely a tremble of a whisper. “You saved me.”

He pressed his lips together in a tight line, as if to shove the guilt he felt to the side.

Before he could relay that to me, we both noticed eyes–so many eyes staring at not only the shedding cobra, but on the two of us as well. Our glamours were no longer working. Whatever the serpent did must have fried the tech.

Many of the faces studying us looked confused, terrified, and pensive.

~They are attempting to read you and Reks Arlen’s identity cards.~ Nox informed me, though its usual matter-of-fact tone had turned drained of energy. ~The Circle, in particular, are reading you two as unidentified vitiates and nothing else.~

Reks stiffened around me.

Many guests fled, but quite a number had stayed. Several of the esteemed council, Nikoe, Danika, Shion, Etch, along with many I didn’t recognize watched the scene with wide eyes, bearing witness to the unfolding of events.

Some of the guests even went to their knees, as if to pray or worship the re-awakening cobra.

"Is... is he alive?" the question fell as a quiver past my lips as I stared at Nolan lying motionless on the floor.

"Barely." Reks whispered his response, leveling his breaths. "He needs immediate medical attention."

Then Nox chimed in. ~Sio is a deathly poison to any who try to wield it and are unfit to be its host. If Nolan Rhosyn were to come into contact with it now in this state, his life will end.~

My breath lodged in my throat.

As if in answer, the cobra’s low-rising hiss of displeasure pulled our attention back to the nightmare before us. The opalesce serpent shook off the last of the chipped pieces of the shell, like it had been nothing more than an old skin to shed off. Old scales to be rid of.

Unlike Nox’s forearm-length form, this serpent was twice the size.

Hood fanned out wide, color reflected off its opalescent scales as it turned back towards Nolan, who hadn’t moved since his collapse.

Gasps flung through the crowd as their restored idol slithered over to Nolan, towards the back of his neck to strike.