Refracted Senses

Oracion's POV

I look from the shattered window, remembering the sun's about to rise as I remember Ira. "Drink the cure so we can move on." I advise him while going down the steps to pick up Eragon's head.

"Spit." I order him as he attempts to release the glass shards from his bloodied mouth. "Why is it you're still able to...live?" I ask.

"M-y power was an anomaly" He coughs out through blood, "It came to me in a dream, there wasn't a figure, there wasn't a shadow and there wasn't any form of life. It was just a voice echoing the words, "Wait for him." When I described it to Aluca she seemed to recall something...not long after is when she disappeared from us." He explains. 

"Hmm" I hum out, picking him up by the hair and carrying him along with me.

"What do you hope to get through me? I'm not sure you understand the limits that I have, whatever's plaguing your village's memories is beyond me, a beast that could rival...them." He continues to ramble as I past by Ira, noticing he's still holding the vial.

"Drink it Ira, that way we'll go back to the way things were." I encourage him.

"You protecting us all the time?" 

"If that's what I have to do, for us." I walk to the hole in the wall that Eragon created earlier, narrowly avoiding the crumbling rubble.

"We're in a different place than we started right? I'm sure...you'll need me to help at some point. I'll save it for when we're closer, how's that sound?" He tries to reason, one that I'm not fully against.

Each step I take feeling heavier than the last as my body's healed but whatever will I had that kept me going is very much vanishing. "Whatever you want Ira, let's leave." I breathe out, trying to retrace my steps through the castle.

We both walk in silence with him lingering behind me ever so slightly, treading over the blood soaked carpet and dripping walls. Ira's palm every now and again being placed along his chest as if he's struggling to breathe. The mist still lingering around, still guiding me even. It's almost like he's fighting death just to spite me in these moments. His head in my hand but his body elsewhere...still he continues to breathe and bleed. 

I stop for a moment after witnessing a blur along the wall, stepping back to acknowledge myself within the mirror. The white tips in my hair gradually spreading further along my head, my fangs barely allowing me to close my jaw and my eyes still partially dyed with a putrid red as veins bulge around it. 

Ira walks into frame alongside me, gazing at his own appearance and touching his face while looking at my own. 'We dragged ourselves into this place with the intention of changing what we had back home...but is this the change we needed?' I think to myself before continuing through.

Whilst we walk through this last hallway, I can't help but hear Eragon hum at something in curiosity. Following suit of where he's facing, I look towards Ira. His hand weaving in and out with the mist, influencing it almost.

After one final turn, we step into the entrance hall where all the vampires and humans from the castle gather in front of us, some with standing with malice and others standing with complete bewilderment. I grip Eragon's head tighter after I hear him sigh in annoyance...boredom, whatever it was, I don't have it in me to care anymore. 

"Com-" I hold my breath as I hear a sort of hissing behind me.

"They oppose us." I can hear Ira's glee.

With the mist beginning to revolve and my body nearing its limit, I dread to look at where the sound is coming from. But...nothing could of prepared me for the scene that played out before me.

"Kneel." Ira commands, solidifying the gas and reforming them into shackles for them all.

He begins walking through them as they quickly shuffle out of the way of his path as he makes his way to the side with hanging daylight cloaks. 

"I gave him no more than 20% of his total blood composition." Eragon informs as we both stare in awestruck. "Did your friend have that much potential to begin with...or did something change?" He begins to ask himself as I grab a cloak for Eragon's head, covering him and preparing to head out. 

Even despite the shackles, one individual in particular manages to drag himself in front of the door. Holding a fist to his chest as an odd sign of respect, "In the name of Er-r-a-" his jaw slows down as Ira gently waves his hand across the vampire's face. "-g-g-o-n-" he continues even despite his previously pale white skin beginning to bruise some places and harden to the point of cracking in others.

"How much can I take before you eventually fall?" Ira asks, forcing the man's blood vessels to raise along his skin, pulling ever so gently but indefinitely. 

"Ira" I clasp his shoulder, causing him to stare blankly at me with eyes similar to Eragon.

"I-" He coughs, splatting blood along the floor and dropping his influence over the man. They both drop to their knees, but as Ira begins regathering his composure, he looks over to see the victim showing no signs of healing. 

"We're leaving." I quickly pick him up by the shoulder with a hand under his arm, attempting to hurry him out of the castle before the rest of them break free from the clear limits of Ira, something that was far less apparent in Eragon's skill.

As we open the large doors, the vampires scatter away while the humans cover their eyes away from the blinding sun, both reactions leaving us undisturbed in our way out and past the disintegrating body of the one Ira left behind...something I'll question for the future.

-

The open field leaves nothing to be desired as it's all open for us to gaze at. Burned wheat and other vegetation as blue cracks trace from the castle, possibly from when it continuously moved along the world. Tying Eragon's head to my belt, I can't help but acknowledge just how vastly empty it is.

'You don't know where you're going, how are we getting back?' The thought constantly peers through my mind as if I haven't heard it a million times already. 

'Do you even know how long it's been?' 

'What if they don't want you to return? What if it's all peaceful now that you're gone?'

'What if the thing toying with all their memories has found a way to make it permanent? What if they don't even remember you?' It continues questioning my existence, causing me to scratch my head of hair, praying something would make it stop.

"Forward, closer, you're going to get there." Is all I can keep telling myself. 

I look up through the brightness just as Ira stumbles over something ever so slightly, causing us both to look down by his feet. A place in the singed grass that takes the shape of a cube. Picking it up, it continues to bend the light that makes it near invisible to our eyes. 

We attempt to look ahead, squinting as we acknowledge the various shapes through the terrain that seem to leave some sort of space within the grass. Some shaped like simple statures that stretch up like a pillar, guiding the light through it like a pane of glass but still very much being there. 

I slide my hand along it, feeling the chipped texture of stone gradually crumbling to my touch. "Place it under your cloak." I ask him, and so he does. Hiding it from the light and revealing the perfectly cut rock I assumed it to be, it doesn't show anything unique or abnormal about it that should be making it react this way to light.

He removes it from this cloak, letting it rest back into the grass and much like before, it blends back into the environment. I kick it far, not knowing what else to do with it. Losing sight as it pings into the sky but not long after hearing a sort of 𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 as it hits another material not far off. I speed walk towards it, not wanting to lose track of where the sound resonated from.

I find it amazing what my body reacts to in times like these, where I'm lost, confused and continuously wondering. But it seems to me that the answers have one again found me, as the metal that was hit rung bells within my head. A necklace with the initials M and Z, once again appearing before me as it finds itself within my palm.

"Mean anything to you?" Ira asks.

"At this very moment? It means everything to me." I answer honestly.

As I stand up from my kneel, I find myself putting my ear to the necklace as some sort of static emits from it. "Mousai?" A man's voice speaks out from it.

"Who's that?" I ask in response.

"Who?" The necklace repeats. I turn it over, noticing the Z initial on the other side glowing in response to the man.

"Again?" I question it.

"Are." A voice ever so slightly different from his answers this time.

"What?" I feel myself becoming agitated.

"You." A third voice sounds out, determined for an answer, one that I'm reluctant to give.