Dragon Aster Trilogy

26: REFLECTIONS



Sybl woke in the middle of the night on the floor of her old apartment. She had come here looking for something, but found only emptiness.

She sat up quietly and looked at the balcony window as it was fogging over on the other side. Sybl nearly screamed when two sapphire blue eyes looked back at her from the glass. For a moment, she thought it was her own eyes, before their owner moved in the spot they were sitting in.

“You will cry for a brother from millennium ago, yet you will not so much as look at me.”

Now would be an opportune time to scream, as it could have only been Damek on the other side of the glass. But his eyes had changed to blue, and his voice had lost it assuredness. “Nafury?”

Her necklace went cold on her neck, and she caught it and pulled it off as its ice spread and threatened to freeze over her body. She dropped it to the wood parquet floor and looked back at Nafury whose glowing gaze was focused on it. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

He looked back at her with the expression of disbelief that she didn’t already know. “I already told you what I wanted. I want you to remember me, Sybl. Not the monster, but the one who saved you the day I left you that,” he finished, looking back at the necklace. “I want you to remember the person who will always be there for you, regardless of circumstances.”

“Who else did you kill?” Where does your slaughter end?”

“It ends when you come back to me.”

“If you are Nafury, you can’t keep this up—it will destroy Aster!”

“So what if it does?” he asked, as if the concept of the living population of an entire world meant nothing to him.

“Because there are people there who can forgive you. It’s your home.”

“Home is where those who love you are, and we are all beautiful to the ones who love us. But I am beautiful to no one and equally unwanted by everyone,” Nafury said.

“That isn’t true!”

“Then tell me what’s true, Asil.”

Sybl touched her necklace on the floor, but the moment she did it split in two, leaving the wings of the golden fairy on the chain, and the body broken away. She picked up the wings, and their iciness began to melt as her Sylvan energy came into focus with her emotions. “You haven’t given everyone a chance. You assumed the future with nothing but your sadness and Daath to predict it for you.”

One side of Nafury’s lip curled into a smile as he watched her. “You thought the same way once. You think the same way even now.”

“No, I don’t.”

Nafury looked at the Curse on her Mei. “You forget that I can feel everything that you do, and I know when you’re lying. I’m not your enemy. These worlds that hate and despise us, despite all our efforts now and in the past to help them, are the enemy. And I will break your false sense of morality as far as I need to in order to make you see this. I will break whatever it takes to return you to me.”

Sybl pressed her hand to the glass as his form suddenly shifted into a dark-brown dragon the size of a jungle cat, and he climbed up and leapt from the balcony’s banister and into the air. She looked at the glass that gave no reflection of herself back. She remembered when Kas had Dreamwalked in her room and how he could never be seen in the mirror. It was terrifying to have no immediate proof to being real. Sybl had no memory of Kas being scared, so neither would she be. Even if her soul was actually here on Earth Dreamwalking, and not stuck in a nightmare.

Kas. Her heart swelled to the point it might burst as she thought about him back on Aster. Was he alright? She looked at her Mei. Without it leading to him, there was no way to know from so far away. She had to find Cirrus and get out of here. But the closer she got to finding Cirrus, the further Damek would set her away from him.

Fear. Regret. Everything of her past was being made into her worst enemy. She left the apartment and took the stairs down, leaving at the side of the building. No doubt Damek would take all of the memories that Daath had accumulated from her mind and use them against her. It was an emotional circuit Damek was running her through. It was her darker emotions that fueled him through the Curse that she once again had on herself. She looked up as an electrical wire sparked over the street. Sentry. She focused back on finding Cirrus, holding the calm in her as she did so.

The spark followed her down the sidewalk, until it left the wire entirely and descended in front of her in slow motion. Sybl didn’t know what to do against the spark of energy, so she followed her instincts that screamed at her to run.