Naomi

Bloodshed. Coldness. A nightful day. Ella, Rick, Aelen, Dominique, father, and I have to stall and hold Ivelisse for hours. Her possession has progressed much more explosively after Aelen went after her. It feels like we are no longer in London, but in a cave's mouth with dark branches. Rick lies unconscious from blood loss after his arm got ripped out. Ella is crucified to the walls by the dark spikes. She was Ivelisse's raggedy toy. Her body is covered in welches, bruises, and crimson. She kept trying to do the rituals to keep the entities restrained, but they only laughed at her. A branch stifled her mouth that will love to pierce her throat if she says another word.

Dominique and father stand as far away as possible, trying to not get involved just yet. I am not saying they were lazy arses or cowards. I say they were prudent to not provoke the possessed Ivelisse. It's only Aelen and I fighting against many forces inside a poor girl's body. We are all beaten and battered. We are still fighting nevertheless. I can tell they are enjoying our suffering every moment of it.

Aelen speeds towards Ivelisse with the swords and shields I've fostered. Ivelisse's pupils dilate like crazy. She chuckles a bit before stabbing several dark branches into his poor body. He grunts in torment before the branches pull out. One of them circles his body before chucking him to the ground, heavily with blood.

"Aelen!" I cry and run to him.

"Don't w-worry a-about m-me," he utters as he winces every time he inhales.

Every round of stabbing or beatdowns from Ivelisse has slowed down Aelen's regeneration.

"But you're wounded," I said out of extreme worry, "You're not hea- Gah!" A branch wraps around my body and lifts me up in the air. I give an angry shot to Ivelisse, who's amused.

"Now your friend is dying. It's your turn."

They kept up their word dearly. They did not hold back any tactics to make me want to die. Many branches stab into me, making insects enter my body, triggering pain. For the past several hours, I never felt pain. They ate me from the inside out. Everything went black for a second until I regained alertness. Terror drenches my entire body. Ivelisse smirks with pure evil. The bugs kept doing the same thing over and over. This is much worse than the time I fought Markus; I couldn't feel a damn thing. They take their sweet time to make sure I feel every single one of it. The insects were crawling all over inside me; their venom awakened my pain.

I get slammed onto the ground over and over again. The force of a rocket is lower than this. My whole body gets obliterated again and again. They were cruel enough to slow down my death. I am not talking about them putting me in slow motion before I slam against the ground. Milliseconds after getting bashed to the ground, they slow the process of my organs and body rupturing, so I can see and feel. I don't know it's them or me. The best friggen part was that I couldn't even let out a scream or plead for them to stop.

"Stop!" Dominique cries, begging for them to stop butchering my ass.

Her voice makes Ivelisse stop slamming me. She even drops me onto the ground. I lie on the ground enervated. I can't speak up and tell Dominique to stay back. She walks closer to me, closing in on Ivelisse's range of total destruction.

"I will hold them off for a bit, rest up," she whispers to me.

My hands scrape against the cave surface, trying to find the strength to push myself up. I fear feeling the same thing and dying so much. It has totally drained me.

"What are your intentions in this world?" Dominique asks the creatures inside of Ivelisse. They don't answer her. It looks like they don't know what to do. Well, one of them when it flashes her a warning and a malevolent look.

She grins. "Lord of the Teketa, why do you want the world?" She asks, "Are you lacking in someth-" She yelps after a branch strikes and she hits against the wall.

"You are annoying me," sneers Ivelisse.

Ivelisse winces at her hands and feet as it shrinks and expand before finally shrinking back to human. She looks scared...Then, enraged.

"Bracus, you traitor!" She infuriates. Her veins turn dark and pop out again while roaring, "I guess we will finish without you then!"

I stomp on the ground. The ground ripples to her. It pushes her to the ground. She gets back up. Frosty air emits thickly as she bellows a sound of an enraged dinosaur. An explosion of white light blasts behind her, making her face plummet to the dark rough ground. White orbs fly out and hit Rick, Ella, Dominique, my father, and myself. If they weren't unconscious, they are now.

Aelen slowly gets up. His wounds are almost completely healed. By the look on his face, he is fatigued and into the boiler. His eyes turn glowing grey with his pupils turning into thin slits with marks of the Sun. His telekinesis grows incredibly strong, being able to pick up Ivelisse without a single touch. She can't move, but she is contorting again.

"Unhand me, you low-life daemon!" They snarl all in multiple voices.

She belches out a hardy laugh. "Come Teketa! Come! Your lord needs you!" A grotesque voice booms a command from within her. It's powerful enough to make the world tremble. What alerts me is the tremor long after their echo has passed. A legion of faceless slimy creatures, dark knights, chaotic witches, and veiled beings march towards us from out of nowhere. The snow begins to swirl around the cave with the sound of a tornado.

"Naomi!" Aelen calls out to me.

The fight launches unhinged. I have to drown out my disturbing memory of dying again and again because anything off in my focus will make the same thing happen repeatedly. Aelen helps battle with me. He is capable of fighting while holding Ivelisse. If a harsh blow strikes Aelen, it will be all over.

My muscles and nerves spasms while in the fight. They try to protest that it seems that they were getting ready for something. I ignore it and keep fighting. A dark knight with a large ax swings it up right into my gut, going right through me. I cry out in pain as I slam back to the ground with my organs unveiled and bleeding. I cough up blood. God damn it! I wish the bug's venom has worn off! It's still lingering in my system. Lethargy and darkness looming over me. Death desperately wants me.

Those nasty slimy monsters crawl up to me and begin consuming my blood, my insides, my flesh. My regeneration isn't available at the moment, but my body's endurance is annoying as shit. I really want this to end! I can hear Aelen's cry for me to get up, but I am stunned.

"Naomi, get up, please!" Aelen pleas out again. It sounds as if he's crying.

I close my eyes as the heaviness becomes too much. I feel hot and cold over and over. Then, I feel nothing.

.

.

.

My eyes snap awake with a deep inhale. I am completely healed up and look around. Aelen is on the ground- Mangled will be an understatement and I know he won't heal this time until the major threat is gone. Everyone, except me, is not awake. I pant as I look around, surrounded by the screwed-up Ivelisse and the army from the abyss.

"So you can't die?" The same ghoulish voice from the library taunts before chuckling to himself, "I am starting to have pity for you."

"Piss off, will ya?" I said coldly, knowing his sorrow is worth less than horse dung. I am very sick of his shit and the jackwads inside of Ivelisse.

I kick the hell out of his nasty mutts when it tries to snack on my leg. It screeches at me. The dark knights throw chains at me, locking me tightly.

"Break the chains," he dares me. The dark branches on Ivelisse's back expand and contract. It reminds me of a porcupine with sentimental needles on its back that can't disconnect from the animal itself.

"I won't," I reply abhorrently, refusing to look at him.

An idea pops up in my head. I can probably hop into the Omniscal and try to do an invisible spell and keep the fight going again. I feel slightly hesitant that this douchebag might sense me there.

"Once you're in eternal suffering while your friends are dead, I will remain on Earth to wreak more mayhem."

Screw it, I don't want to hear his monologue anymore. My essence hops into the Omniscal. I look around, above them. Terri had taught me what to do if someone is being an arsehole: Dump some water on them. I manifest water without them noticing. Due to the freezing temperatures, I decide to use hot water near that jerk's ugly head. I dump more than ten gallons all at once. Ivelisse tenses up, shutting that mouth. If Ivelisse was never human to begin with, I would've dumped boiling rock on her head. Bet that the edgy porcupine inside her head will love that.

I make my physical self laugh, calling him a porcupine. Ivelisse gets so mad that they order their army to declaw my body over and over again. He makes sure every single one of them screws my body up. Since I have revived from my last death, the venom is gone. As long as he is not smart enough to put another round in, then I won't be pulled back into the physical realm.

Enough standing around- I fly towards Aelen. His breathing is deep and shaky. My hands glow as I heal him. His distorted body smoothly returns back to its original place. His eyes flutter open and he looks at me. Daemons can see the Omniscal.

"Stun them and her while you recover, don't make it too obvious."

Then suddenly, the bugs enter my body again. My Omniscal self gets thrown back in the physical while I holler out, unable to move as these little monsters crawls around inside my body, doing damage. My forty-percent self-worth is down to negative seventy-five percent. I would rather get stung by bullet ants than these bugs. All around me turns into a void with just the deformed Ivelisse and I. The bugs are still inside me, eating away at me.

"Now we are alone," she smirks, "Where were we?"

Oh! Goodness me! Not again!

Realistic hallucinations emerge. This isn't World War shell shock level type. This is the Seven Circles of Hell times six. It's indescribable for imagination at this level. I can't scream. My mind and soul will twitch, glitch, and distort. I can no longer see Ivelisse. That specter must be having a very fine laugh.

.

.

.

Everything stops. Everything went back into the cave as a flash of blue light appears. The whole coven is awake. The blue energy of a supernova expands the portal inside Ivelisse. Ivelisse screams, unable to move. I grin as I notice Markus and Blathnaid are back, ready to kick butt.

"Father McKelsey and Children of the Full Moon, it's time!" Blathnaid declares.

Exorcism happens as Aelen, Blathnaid, and Markus unite together to push the entities out of Ivelisse. We can see Ivelisse returning to normal on, off, and on. The entities are getting sucked into the same portal that brought them here, but it was altered by Blathnaid it seems. It created a black hole. Army full of edginess disappears, along with the chains. Thank God, the bugs inside me are gone too. Sadly, I still feel depleted and stuck in the hallucinations in a feedback loop. My whole body is shivering not from the blizzard cold, but from what I've experienced inside the void. The entity that created all those nasty things is the last one to drop into the portal. I close my eyes, not wanting to see its existence.

"No!" I cringe at his voice.

I hear shouting from the coven and my dad. My neck lifts as I see what's the commotion about. The portal inside the ground has expanded, consuming everything. Ella rushes to me and helps me get myself back up. My legs are protesting with heavy trembling, so is my mind.

"Run!" Ella says with me. She sprints while I lazily jog. Rick and my father run away from the collapsing cave.

"I am not giving up without a fight!" The beast barks behind me. I can hear thick branches growing and Blathnaid screaming, "Markus!"

I spin around and witness Markus himself being grabbed by the dark branches. He gets pulled into the portal below. My heart drops. The untamed energy rises within me. I shoot daggers at the living thing that is responsible for doing that. The branches grab Blathnaid's and Dominique's legs. Blathnaid is still while Dominique yells for help as she gets dragged.

Aelen rips the branches off of Blathnaid while I furiously cut the branch off of Dominique. A dark branch wraps around my foot next. I give that punk the you stick your head in a pile of shit, ostrich look before cutting that branch off.

He goes on a rampage. His branches come out in full swing, extending to any human it can find. He grabs onto my father, Aelen, Ivelisse, Ella, Blathnaid, Dominique, Rick, and I. He is even grabbing our acquaintances even when they aren't in the cave. The ground shakes again and more matter gets sucked into the vortex. The ground beneath Dominique collapses and she starts falling into the portal. I grab her by her hand, pulling away while the branch tries to move me, but I continue to resist. Aelen uses his abilities to keep everyone in place. His concentration is great, but can it withstand holding a couple of people at once?

Heavy chunks of the dark stone start building again into a dark dome from the entity's power, trapping everyone inside. It's only a matter of time until everything gets sucked in. A dark branch stabs Aelen from behind. He coughs up blood as more branches penetrate his body. He still wants to fight, but he is already weakened.

The pull from the branches between Dominique and me gets stronger. Dominique inches closer to the portal. If I slip, down both we go. She winces in pain from the pull between two forces. She looks back up at me, not hiding the pain on her face, begging me to save her. Her face and Aelen grunting noises of agony hurt me mentally. I jump when branches go through me, drawing high amounts of blood. This time, I don't feel any pain. Dominique gets scared, thinking I will let go.

"No!" Blathnaid cries out again. I look up. So many branches inside of Aelen's poor body. His body finally has enough, he collapses into the portal. The dolt laughs cruelly as Ivelisse, Ella, Rick, and my dad gets dragged into the portal. I look at Blathnaid in fear. This wasn't the plan. This wasn't supposed to happen! Our imaginations and calculations are not on the same page as reality.

Well, sometimes we are not going to get what we want or planned, I grimly thought.

My eyes widen in hopelessness as a branch stabs into my arms, cutting them off. Dominique screams as she gets dragged into the portal, holding her hand out to me. She hopes I will be able to grab her again, but it's too late. My regeneration doesn't reach her in time.

Blathnaid looks at me in defeat. "We have to go in after them. I will close the portal shut," she whispers to me. I can hear her voice a little bit, but it's incomprehensible. I can only read her mouth.

I scowl at the total slag who did this all. I shriek, energy and sound waves radiate through me. Blathnaid plugs her ears and cowers in pain, but doesn't fall in. I guess her ability can make her ignore the branch tug completely. The energy blast perishes the dark branches into nothing and the cave breaks, starting falling in. I blast red chaotic energy at him at light speed. Whether it's the blast itself or the debris, the entity finally plummets into the portal. I don't want to see the bastard on the other end.

"Jump. I will follow, I will close the portal too," Blathnaid tells me.

"See you on the other side, great friend," I said my temporary goodbye to her before jumping into the portal. Blue then white conquers my vision.

Whether it's taking me, our journey begins there.