Chapter 85 - A Broken Spirit
Week 2 Vote Goal #3: 210
Jason ran after Ella while desperately wishing for Cryophoenix's wings.
The entirety of the crowds that had gathered on temple grounds for the festival today had been corralled into the inner courtyards by the Pillar guards. The closer he got to the Core Chamber at the centre, the more tightly packed people became, all confused and terrified by the Pillars ushering them in closer, telling them not to worry even as the skyshrine bells continued to chime.
It was chaos.
Ella barely seemed to notice anyone around her. She charged through the crowd with a reckless abandon, never veering from her course straight to the centre. Jason kept up with her for the most part, following through the channel she carved through the crowd.
"Ella!" he called after her, but still, she didn't slow.
She barged past a Speaker attempting to calm a group of worried parents. The Speaker stumbled and fell into the same parents, who saw Ella's frenzy and let it feed their own.
Jason caught a few of their words as he passed.
"Is this normal? There's been so many Manifested but the other Speakers assured us that--"
"I can't believe I thought it was safe to bring my children! This whole city has gone mad without Harpy and Wyvern!"
He didn't stop. He didn't have time.
Twenty metres from the wall of the Core Chamber, Ella finally slowed down. Her chest was heaving as Jason caught up to her, blessing the fact that Cryo's fitness carried over to Jason. Her Pillar guards were nowhere in sight, but there was more than one person giving Ella cautious looks.
"Ella," said Jason quietly. "Why did you--"
"I had to," said Ella, her fists clenched over her sternum. "I had to get to the centre. I just knew that if I were here it'd be okay. That I'd feel okay."
"Okay?" asked Jason. "What do you mean 'feel okay'?"
"I don't know," said Ella, looking around, almost like she'd woken up from a dream. "But--but I can't let the Serpent near me. I can't. I have to stay away. I can't let him get me. Not again."
Jason was suddenly reminded of the Manifested that he and Banshee had saved. The artist, who had claimed the Serpent was hunting him down. Cryo had helped the man move onto golden starstone. Was he here among the crowd, thinking the Serpent was still after him?
"It's okay, Ella," said Jason, trying to catch her gaze. "I need you to breathe. I need you to just stop for a minute and breathe. The Serpent can't get onto golden starstone."
"But his minions can," breathed Ella. "I got onto it before, to get my fragment back. I attacked a High Speaker to get it back, and I had help. And Adande, and Aya and Alma--"
"I know," said Jason. "But you want to stay away from the Serpent. And the Serpent cannot get you here."
Ella took a shaky breath and nodded. "You're right. Golden starstone burns the Other. Manifested go crazy when they're on it because of the pain. That's why the Serpent doesn't just march straight in."
Jason filed that piece of information away for the future and focused on the task at hand. Ella seemed calm enough now, which meant he had a few seconds to himself.
"I'm going to speak with a Pillar for a moment to see if I can't get additional information on the situation, okay?" said Jason. Ella gave him a hesitant nod in reply. "You stay here, I'll be back in a moment. If you need me, I won't be far. Okay?"
Ella gave him a second, slightly more confident nod, but she was once more playing with the ends of her hair, her eyes darting around her nervously. "No problem Frostboy."
Jason exhaled and inclined his head. "I'll be back in a minute."
He stepped away from Ella, excusing himself through the crowd towards a place by the Core chamber that wasn't quite as crowded. He caught skittish whispers about people seeing DragonFae and Golem heading over towards Kaladrel's gates a few minutes before. No one had missed the fact that DragonFae was being carried by Golem, and their uneasy conclusions kept worming their way inside Jason's head.
"Without Harpy and Wyvern--it's all up to DragonFae and Golem. Why is he carrying her? Can she even fight?"
"What if she's still injured? I've heard that Golem and DragonFae haven't taken care of a single Manifested since she was."
"Does that mean it's all up to Banshee and Cryo? They haven't even made it to a year yet, and apparently Banshee doesn't bother to take it seriously half the time! How can we rely on them?"
Jason didn't stop to tell them that they were wrong about Banshee.
He just kept walking until he stood by the wall of the Core chamber, turning his body so that Sae's ice was closest. There, he pulled out his Liaiser and tapped the screen a few times before holding it up to his non-Sae ear. His free hand reached up to cover Sae's ice, as if blocking out the noise.
"Hello?" Jason said into the idle Liaiser. "It's me again. What was it you were saying before when we were interrupted?"
Jason felt Sae's wing brush the inside of his hand as his Ascended formed a shape with a beak. "I found Olivia, she's okay, but she's locked up in one of the dressing room closets."
Jason's stomach dropped. "That seems like a rather vital piece of information to have omitted before."
"Not like I got the chance to finish my sentence," said Sae. "She was unconscious, I iced her head a little to speed up the process. Looks like she took a fall. She was gagged and bound so I fixed that too. The Skypillar understudy was watching the door. Didn't see any Serpent minions nearby but I didn't stick around to look for long."
"I see," said Jason, doing his best to keep his worry out of his voice. Sam had no reason to target Olivia, but Sam was also one of Naomi's various guys that she liked to string along for her own purposes, and Naomi had every reason. "I'll need to fix it."
"Might not wanna go as yourself," said Sae quickly. "Cryo, sure, but uh, just in case she works out the ice thing just maybe it's a good idea to avoid Jason helping her out."
"Cryo will have to get involved soon anyway," muttered Jason. "I'll send over a Pillar, see if they can't--"
Something shifted within the crowd, pulling the loose chaos into a taut string in seconds.
Jason followed the direction of the crowd's gaze.
They were all looking directly at where he'd left Ella.
Jason tapped Sae back onto his ear, put his Liaiser back in his pocket and resisted the urge to run. He strained his ears, walking as fast as he could manage through the crowd closing in around him.
"Melissa!" Ella's voice rang out, silencing the crowd. "Melissa! Hey!"
Jason's blood froze.
No. There's no way the Serpent could have--
"Melissa!" Ella called again.
Jason desperately tried to push through the crowd, but Ella's Spiritpillars had finally caught up. They stood a metre on either side of Ella, their gazes on her, their hands on their Lightblasters. It was obvious who they were there to protect--or rather, to protect from--and the crowd responded by forming into a tight wall that Jason struggled to get through.
"Ella!" Jason called. She glanced at him for a brief moment before she went back to attempting to chase after Melissa, who was attempting to leave despite the difficulty of getting through a crowd in a wheelchair. Jason tried again. "Ella, come back!"
Ella ignored him as the crowd finally parted enough for Ella to get through to Melissa. When she was a few metres away, however, Melissa's own Pillarguard stepped in, blocking Ella's way.
Ella tried to dodge around him, but the Pillarguard grabbed her arm.
"I'm not going to do anything!" said Ella. Her voice was lonely on the silence, the desperation clear. "I just want to talk, I swear on the stars."
"I'm afraid that is not a possibility at this point in time," said the Pillarguard. "Miss Swiftheart does not wish to speak with you at this point."
"Melissa!" said Ella, leaning under the Pillarguard's arm to look at her. "I just want to talk to you for like, five minutes! I just wanted to say I'm so--"
Melissa slammed her hands down on the armrests of the wheelchair and snapped her head around to look at Ella.
"Don't you dare say that you're sorry!" said Melissa. "You don't get to be sorry! Not after what you've done, Hydra!"
The crowd picked up the last word, resounding through their mouths like an echo.
Hydra. That girl was Hydra?
"I--I know," said Ella, her hands clutching at her chest. "But I just--I know, I screwed up so, so badly. I hurt you, and I hurt a lot of other people when I was Manifested but I just--"
"Oh, you hurt me, did you?" said Melissa. "You put me in a coma, Hydra. If that's what you call hurting, then I'd love to know what you call what you did to your partner. Maybe we should ask him about that?"
Ella looked like she was about to shatter into a million pieces.
Around her, the crowd buzzed with low conversation. With whispers and rumours and misplaced facts.
Hydra's the one that Manifested a few weeks ago, wasn't she?
Didn't they have a funeral ceremony for Centaur?
Did she kill him?
"Oh, wait," said Melissa, her mouth twisted into a snarl. "We can't, because you got him killed."
Ella staggered back, her leg almost collapsing beneath her. "I didn't--"
"Oh, yes, you did," said Melissa. "That was entirely your fault. You got your partner killed. You were probably the reason he went Dark, too. Were you working with the Serpent back then, too? Are you still working with him now? Gonna attack the temple from the inside?"
Jason shoved his way through the next layer of people as his patience finally abandoned him. "Move! I need to get through!"
A few adults gave him a dirty looks. A few even recognised him, one going so far as to remark that the rumours were apparently true.
Jason didn't care. He just had to get through.
To Ella.
To Ella, who was frozen, whose confidence was fragile enough that a breeze could break her apart, who had been relying on him to--
"Ella!" he called over the shoulders of the last few people in his way. "Ella, remember what I said before! It's not your fault!"
"I don't care how many people you might have convinced of your innocence," said Melissa, directing a glare in Jason's direction. She jabbed an accusing finger towards Ella. "You don't deserve to be forgiven. Manifested don't choose to be corrupted, but you? You chose to accept the Other's touch. You don't deserve to be saved, you only deserve to be put down, and if you ever come near me again I swear that Skypillar will give me the strength to get out of this chair and do it myself!"
Melissa finished, but the crowd had only just begun.
All around Ella, people were taking up Melissa's words.
"Hydra is Other-touched!"
"Remove her from the temple before she turns on us all! She's working with the Serpent!"
"Get her before she gets us!"
A few people advancing on Ella was all it took for the rest to find their courage. They surged forward, fists raised, voices shouting in a chaotic mess of noise. Ella just stood there, her eyes on the ground and shaking as her Pillarguards attempted to ward off the crowd, but there was only so much the two of them could do.
Jason shoulder-charged his way through the crowd, finally managing to break through.
"Get back!" he roared, causing just enough hesitation in the crowd for him to reach Ella. Sae burned cold on his ear, no doubt sensing Jason's intentions, the words that were burning on his tongue, held in only by the slightest chance that he could still save her first. "Ella?"
Ella's eyes flicked up to Jason's.
No longer were they the blue, drowning waters from before.
They were dark and deep and far, far below the surface she'd been struggling on for so long.
The air crackled.
"No," said Jason, grabbing Ella by the shoulders, but she stepped away from him, her shoulder straightening. "No, Ella! Fight it!"
"He told me that this would happen." Ella's voice was flat and still. "I didn't believe him." She looked around at the crowd that had stopped dead around her. "I believed in all of you. I believed in second chances, and I guess I was wrong."
Jason could barely find his voice. "This is your second chance."
"I never got one to begin with," said Ella. "Ascend, Spirit of Skypillar!"
A glowing darkness bloomed from the concealed tattoo on her sternum as Ella lifted her hands towards the sky, twining her wrists around each other. The darkness raced across her, dissolving her clothes and settling over her body like a second skin, the dark blue bodysuit and cyan scales of Hydra's distinct outfit all shimmering with shadow.
There was no sign of her corrupted fragment, and Jason's tattoo did not turn cold.
The last of the glowing dark gathered between her shoulderblades, sprouting into twin spirit heads with a stretch of their yawning mouths, revealing the void that lay inside their shell of white-blue energy.
Every Pillarguard drew their Lightblasters on her.
With a wave of her hand, Ella's spirit heads struck. In a blinding flash, each one split off into multiple directions, plucking the Lightblasters straight from the Pillarguards hands and dropping them in a circle around Ella.
Jason reached up for Sae's ear piece.
Ella--Hydra--regarded them with a blank disdain.
"I swore that I would only talk," she said. "And that is the last promise I will ever keep."
She raised a hand, aiming it towards the Starlight Hall. The spirit heads on her back twined together, stretching upwards, ready to carry her over--
Jason stood himself in front of her, holding up his hands. "Ella, stop."
"Do not stand in my way, Jason Frostsong," said Ella. "This starstone burns my power, but the Serpent has given me a task. I will complete it, if only to prevent the Serpent from coming after Olivia."
Ella clenched her fingers into a fist. Her spirit heads arced up and over the heads of the crowd, landing some fifty metres away in a cloud of white-blue energy as the crowd beneath them erupted into complete and utter panic. With a second gesture, the spirit heads retracted, pulling Ella's body with them.
Where Ella had stood, the golden starstone was now a dirty white.
Jason swore, tapped his tattoo five times and began pushing his way through the crowd, hoping that Banshee was in a better position than him to transform.
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A/N - </3
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