#d.119

May squirmed in her seat, tugging at the ropes binding her to the chair, more in protest and desperation than any expectation of escape. Against her back she could feel movement—Red was likely doing the same thing.

“I might not know much about family or siblings or anything,” she hissed at the lanky figure standing to the side, “but I kind of feel like this is crossing a line.”

The figure stirred, boots thunking against the cobblestones. She twisted to try and see him better, daring him to attack, to do something—but all he did was lean in close to the two of them.

May considered head-butting him.

“Thae.” The word came out soft, almost impossibly quiet. “Do you trust me?”

The movement behind her stilled. She held her breath, wishing she could silence the thudding in her chest, straining to hear Red’s answer.

The man straightened. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him smile; then he turned and walked back to the edge of the room.

“Wait. Red.” She wriggled around as much as she could. “I feel like that was important to know. Do we trust him?”

Red didn't look at her.

Why does this keep happening?

"Red?"

A brilliant shower of gold sparks erupted in the air above him, a section of the roof instantly giving way. He crumpled, too caught by surprise to roll out of the way.

May stood, rooted to the ground in the center of the Mithae rewrite, unable to move.

Picking up the slab of concrete—many times his size and weight—he tossed it to one side and rose to his feet. “That was a good surprise attack, assassin, but it will take much more than that for you to so much as fray my coat.”

“I am well aware.” The voice echoed coldly through the unadorned halls, frozen with the fury of an Arctic hurricane.

He went still.

Another rewrite glittered in the air a second before a roar of thunder, a smell of ozone, a fizzling crash—still he stood, uninjured, wisps of smoke from the lightning strike curling around him, jagged patterns branching beneath his feet. But he was not unaffected.

He stared down the axis of the hallway, into a distance May could not see from her position, stunned into silence.

May strained, struggling to push forward, every nerve on end. Part of her shrieked for the owner of the voice to walk into view, give her some insight into what was going on; another part of her prayed against it. She was not in a position to defend herself.

“You…you’re….” he didn’t move, still staring.

May stood in the middle of the suddenly too-big room, swallowing the threat of tears as best she could.

These past few days had been… a lot. She didn’t know if life was always like this, but she hoped maybe her past self had been less in pain.

Damron loomed opposite her, silver-ringed eyes raking her up and down.

“Are you doing alright?” he said finally.

Considering his heightened sensory abilities, he could almost certainly see the way she was trembling, and it didn’t take shyde super-vision to see the badly-wrapped injury on her arm. But maybe he was trying to reach out. That didn’t seem likely.

I’m not weak, she told herself fiercely. I’m not going to give him more of a reason to look down on humans.

“Y-yeah,” she said, grinning and giving him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “I am one hundred percent certifiably great.”

Okay maybe I’m overselling it.

He narrowed his eyes. She kept her grin stretched in place.

With a sigh, he turned his eyes around the room beseechingly, as if hoping a genie would appear and whisk her out of his sight.

“Look, I’m not the one to talk to you about this kind of thing. Not really my area. But pretending you’re alright doesn’t actually make you alright; all it does is make things worse. It clouds useful information that could get you the help you need.”

May stared at him, smile fading. This was not what she had been expecting.

He closed his eyes for a second, and she could almost swear she heard a resigned groan. “Do… do you need a hug?”

Maybe it was an amnesia thing, but she hadn’t remembered the existence of hugs until this moment. The second he asked, the answer was yes. A craving like a physical hunger gnawed at her.

Having lost control of her vocal cords, she nodded. Damron stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder, hesitating before pulling her closer and wrapping his arms around her.

The whole thing was unbelievably awkward. Despite having his arms around her, he was still holding himself away and his arms at odd angles, as if he had even less idea of what a hug was than she did.

May did not care.

Simply the attempt at taking care of her shattered any barriers she had been using to prop herself up. Squeezing herself against him, she found herself sobbing into his chest as the full weight of the last twenty-four hours slammed through her, all her anger and fear and pain spilling out in liquid tracks staining Damron’s pristine shirt front. Damron stayed, stiff as a statue. He reached up, froze again, and patted her head. May sobbed harder.

Naeth pinched the bridge of his nose. “Damron. Did… did you just name her May… because that’s the month that’s on the calendar?”

Damron shrugged. “Look, I don’t know human naming conventions and I think I’ve heard that as a name before.”

“Besides,” Riv added, yawning, “she didn’t seem to mind.”

“He’s right. Come to think of it, I could have just given her a shyde name.”

“You can’t just… you can’t just take advantage of the fact that she doesn’t know what’s going on. We're talking about her name.”

“Are differences in naming conventions really that big?” Rook asked.

“Apparently it depends on who you ask." Damron crossed his arms.

“Names are important,” Naeth said. “We should have waited, gotten to know her a bit better, found one that fits.”

May had seen portals before. Red had used some, Rook had made one once, and since then she’d looked up many of them in the CENCA library.

None of them looked like this.

May shielded her face with her arm as it glowed a vivid purple, pulsating and contorting like broken branches strung up and twisting in the wind. The inner lines of off-white reminded her of old bones. On the other side was nothing but shimmering shadows.

“Red!” She yelled. “Get away from there!” Her voice vanished to vapor in the low, gut-churning hum of the portal.

Red did not move.

She ran for him—right as a hand reached through the inky murk and snatched the shoulder of his shirt. Her hand found his wrist the same instant he was yanked forward.

Grabbing his arm in both hands, she heaved back, straining, digging her heels in the rocky ground.

“No!”

May almost lost her footing, stumbling as she stared up at him. “What do you mean, no?”

He was jerked towards the portal again from the other side; his eyes met hers. They were wide, pupils dilated, unshed tears pooling in them.

“You have to let me go!” He screamed, twisting his wrist in her grip.

“No!” Another tug nearly took him all the way in. May collapsed to her knees on a hundred points of rough gravel. “I’m not letting you get sucked in by an evil vortex!”

There was nothing left of him but his face, turned towards her pleadingly—and his arm that she clutched like the world’s most desperate tug-of-war contestant.

“May! Please! Just let go and run!”

“No!”

“If you don’t let go, you’l—”

Riv stood back and crossed his arms. “Why should we help you?”

Endric coughed, whites of his eyes almost glowing in his soot-smudged face. “You shouldn’t,” he said, voice ragged from the smoke. Wincing, his hand drifted towards the vivid red of his shoulder as if he could psychically transmit healing from his hovering fingertips.

“Not a very compelling argument.”

May clenched her fists, digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands to distract herself from how horribly painful the burns looked. Part of her agreed with the logical option, with Riv—and Endric himself. The other part of her wanted to grab Riv’s sleeve, implore him towards mercy.

Endric coughed again. “Still, there is something you should consider: you need me if any of you ever hope to live through this.”

Riv tapped a finger slowly against his forearm, expressionless. Finally, he sighed. “I’ll stabilize you for now,” he said, pulling off his backpack. “Just remember, anything suspicious happens and I will not hesitate to take away all of your pain. Permanently.” He dropped the backpack to the ground, and, without breaking eye contact, pulled his jacket open to reveal both Sheathed pistols.

A shyde born in the Shattered Dimension with a veritable gold mine of Tragic Backstory(TM), he has two strongly-held convictions:

1) Someone needs to fight for those who have no ability to protect themselves.

2) Humans are the worst kind of annoying (PR told him he had to change his official statement).

So when Director Sathubril tells him he needs to work on that as a protector of all peoples, and then hands him a human teenager to take care of (purely for case reasons, obviously), he is... less than pleased.