Chương 63: Epilogue II

"I told you not to be mad," Grim said. Hazel looked ready to pull her hair out as her eyes bugged out of her face, she stuttered as she struggled to find a proper response to that, "What do you mean you died? Where are we?" Grim scratched the back of her head, "Well, when I was alive, the Witching trials, now? We're in a glorified waiting room as we wait for my time to run out." Her head bucked as she noticed the large terminal in the room, she practically hopped as she went to the front of the screen.

TIME REMAINING [00: 01: 32]"A minute? Saints, Grim. Can you use [CEDE]?"

"Already tried that, I'm locked off. Got my body running on autopilot from [DEAD MAN DON'T REST]. What about you?"" [CEDE]" Hazel shouted.

"It worked!" Before Grim could say anything, Hazel thrust her hand into the screen of the terminal, easily sliding past the murk of the screen into its innards. She winced, and a moment later she was blasted back from the terminal, her arm now sporting fresh burns. ACCESS DENIED.

"Are you okay?" Grim said as she kneeled beside Hazel, helping her get up.

"Yeah, just surprised me mostly, we've never been rejected like that before."

"We need to find a new plan if that's not gonna work, can you leave?"

"I'll tr—" — Hazel disappeared, leaving Grim alone in the black. The phantom of her heart rate shot up as the seconds ticked by, dark thoughts trickling in as time passed. Just as she was about to try something new, Hazel flickered in, clutching her side as molten shadow ran down her side, "I'm okay, I'm okay, don't worry about me."

"It worked? What's it like out there?" Hazel frowned, "I'm not sure, it was hard to tell. Bad. But yes, I can leave. What's the plan?" Grim glanced at the clock and shook her head, "You'll have to activate my Authority and grab onto me with [CEDE] if you have to. I thought about this after Orion died, but if you can keep my soul from leaving when my timer runs out. You should be able to stop my soul from leaving my body. At least that's what I'm hoping."

"Grim… I'm not sure," Hazel bit her lip.

"I don't think I can use your authority."

"What? What do you mean? You're my shadow, of course you can." Hazel took a deep breath in before she spoke, her body filled with tension, " I AM THE ONE WHO WON'T LE—" Grim's mind was assailed with concepts, the idea of their bond, Hazel's love, but ultimately failed as Grim saw the moment Hazel tried to force her to let her go. The final concept hit as Grim felt Hazel's guilt before she died back then.

Hazel sputtered as she coughed, her throat dry and ruined as she tried to speak words that weren't hers, "I'm sorry." She couldn't do it. How? That was what she was riding on, her entire plan had revolved around that. What was she going to do?

"Seir! We need to talk still!" Grim shouted into the void. Silence was the only reply as she felt the snake's gaze on her, cold and indifferent. She'd already filled her end of the bargain. Seir wouldn't answer her.

"What about the thing piloting my body? Could you make it?" Hazel shook her head, "It's your soul, Grim. Not your body. Even if it could, I don't think it would save you, nor could I use it."

"Well, then what? What do we do?"

"I'm not sure."

"HAZEL! What do we do?" Grim begged as she yelled at her. Hazel's face scrunched up, as she opened her arms, "Come here, while we still have time." TIME REMAINING [00: 10: 02] Grim wrapped her arms around Hazel, both of them, "This is it then?"

"No," Hazel said as she squeezed her tighter.

"Until next time."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Grim," Hazel looked her in the eyes, a violent, desperate look, "I am your sister." TIME REMAINING [00: 02: 34] There was a roar as the demon appeared, spearing Hazel through the chest and ripping her from Grim's grip in an instant. Her shadow grinned at her as blood poured down her lips, "Give them hell." You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. The room fell out from beneath her as the Terminal reached zero and shut off.

She was falling through blackness, through the servers and wires that made up the system. Every unit of storage she passed through erased some of her personality as she was copied and sent along her way. It was like the tunnel she'd almost entered when she was exploring her options, her mind split and her soul dissolved at the edges when it slowed ever so slightly from the Aura still attached to her soul. But she was out of Aura. No, she wasn't. The demon. Her sister.

Below her, the hungry maws of a million souls screamed out for her, desperate for one more to share the pain of nonexistence, but she refused. There were still things for her to do, but the only thing that let her grasp onto anything was that she still had a body to go back to. I AM THE ONE WHO WILL NOT LET GO Her frayed mind stitched itself back together in an instant, protected from the withering of this realm by a tether.

It was weak, but just the very existence of one caused the space she was in to shudder and shake. This was not a place where things were made, it was a disposal chute, recycled material to power another creation. There was no exit, but yet the existence of the tether showed her there was a way. The nails of her stolen arm dug into the stomach lining of this beast, slowing her descent to a standstill. The simple conscious powering this place roared its displeasure and confusion. How could something resist?

The stolen aura coated her body, protecting her from the desiccation that being in this stomach did to her. There was no true winning against the beast she fought, but she could survive against its acid for a time. She braced herself to climb but faltered, barely having the strength to hold on. A surge of energy filled her as she felt, in some far-off place, the rage of Hazel's defiance.

Their connection was still there, and through it she could tell Hazel was fighting with every ounce of her being against the erasure of the demon. She could feel Hazel losing, fighting for keeps against it. This wasn't like before, where she was risking being sealed, she was trading herself for every bit of time she could keep the fight going. She was powering her own doom with the byproduct of letting Grim leach energy from the process.

"No," Grim's voice echoed through the system's maw, only heard by a billion different voices responding mechanically to a new stimulus. They begged her to save them, broadcasting their hurt and agony, but Grim held onto her tether to the outside.

"I'll come back for the rest of you." The voices stilled, pausing their assault. She could tell they accepted her promise, these were no crabs in a bucket. Another soul to spread the agony was worth little, but an ounce of hope? That it mind end? They would accept that. Her fingers dug into the membrane and she climbed, one earth-shattering effort after another. The Systems will bore down on her as she ascended but was rebuffed, for its authority could not break the binds that tied her to the world.

Chains slithered from her back and wrapped around her arms and legs, coiling her body in an iron hug. More materialized with hooks and stabbed into the realm, pulling and securing her to the tether. She was leaving, slowly but surely, as her mind locked in a trance, her only focus on the speck in the sky. Her exit from this place. Grim felt Hazel fighting viciously through their link, trading scraps of herself as the Demon tried and failed to punish her for the knowledge she was forbidden from saying.

She was close now, her chains stretched and latched onto the exit. A shining white doorway burnt into a muted world of numbers. Her grip latched onto the frame and crushed it as she hurled herself thro— —Grim screamed as she was thrust back into her body, the coldness of it was the first thing that struck her. Causing her to gasp as she inhaled air into her lungs.

The oxygen found its way into her body until her heart thumped once at first, a barest whisper of a beat only for it to repeat and gain in strength each time. The heat that burned in her body warmed up the chill of her corpse but lit her on fire as her nerve endings came alive. She flailed on the ground uncontrollably as her body contracted in on itself, instinctively trying to snuff the flame that engulfed her. In the midst of her throes, she felt a tug on her soul she hadn't felt in a long time.

The small, comforting presence of her shadow calling out to her. Only, it felt like a goodbye.

"No. Not. Again," Grim said. She could not control her body, but her authority still raged on. The chains had been left behind when she'd crossed through the threshold, but it didn't take long for new ones to spawn in response to her will. They wrapped around her arm as it spasmed, the pain causing her muscles to flare up against her will. The chains dug tighter, following her will as she forced her fingers to splay out." [CEDE]" she said as she dug into her own chest.

Her heart stopped as she looked around, she was in a vehicle as chaos happened all around her. The only barrier a half shattered window. She was upside down, held in only by a seat belt as the middle was crushed in. Heat danced around the edges of her body as the engine burned, spreading the fire to the rest of the vehicle. She felt a hand squeeze hers, the fake hand, causing her to turn her head. She was holding…

"Hazel!" she said. The hand squeezed tighter, "You… you made it out." Grim pounded at the metal separating them, but it was too strong and too mangled for it to be moved, "I did, I did. You saved me again. Now it's my turn to get you out of here." There was a soft chuckle from the other side, "This isn't real. You know that. It's that Demon messing with your head one last time. This whole illusion is just so you understand how it's killing me. This is just a cruel joke."

"What? You can't say something like that. There has to be a way."

"Emily," Hazel said. It took a moment for Grim to register the name, "What?"

"Just hold me, okay?" Hazel begged.

"Like you did last time." Memories flashed through her mind, the fire crawling up her arm until the only thing she could feel was Hazel's small hand in hers, until that too, burnt into ash. Chains slithered into being almost without her knowing, they permeated through every inch of the car, and seeing nothing to grab onto, they expanded their search outside. There they wrapped around a light pole and turned back onto itself, close enough for Grim to reach with her other arm.

"No," Grim said.

"This won't be like last time." She pulled on the chain with all her strength, but the car did not budge. There was still an influx of aura permeating her body, but the strength it provided wasn't enough. She needed more. There was only one last place she could get it from. Chains wrapped around her arms while the other side travelled towards her chest. They punctured the flesh, just deep enough to reach her soul. There, she pulled once more, not just with her strength but with her soul.

"Stop! You don't have to do this," Hazel yelled. Her Authority thrummed with power as she burnt her soul to fuel it, the power hungrily sucking as much as it could.

"Yes, I do." Grim pulled, the car lifting upwards inch by inch. Every bit of distance she paid for until with a final blaze of her soul, the car reached its side and fell forward, crashing back onto its wheels. The chains broke around her, and inside, parts of her soul crumbled. The impact smashed a chunk of metal out of position, leaving just a bit more room between them. A gap just big enough for someone to fit through. Grim pulled one last time as Hazel squeezed through the small gap she'd made.

Her sister almost entirely made of shadow. She kicked the car door open, and they both fell through, leaving the fire and the car behind. The two of them fell back into the real world, both of them beside each other, only this time, Grim knew she wasn't just her shadow. Hazel was her sister.