A/N: Sorry again for the short hiatus on the chapter-- I hit writer's block like a car hits a wall, shrapnel and fatalities and the like up the wazoo. I finally forced myself to grind this out, and I'm still not satisfied with it. Oh well. Enjoy.

VERSE 4:

PRESENCE

“…Merrily we rest.” The empty voice sent shivers down Dorran’s spine.

“Shit…” The cigarette fell from his lips and smoldered in the dirt as he stumbled forward, coming to his knees beside Sabeth and the task. His companion was crushing the girl’s arms in a tight grip, shaking her roughly by the shoulders.

“Gods be damned…” she cursed under her breath as Fey began to tremble violently, eyes wide and terribly cold. “The soul knows…”

Dorran held Fey steady as Sabeth searched her pockets for a holy ring or something else to exorcize the demonic presence, growling as their charge shivered intensely in his grasp. “Damn it, Sabeth, do something quick before the spirit revives completely!”

The girl couldn’t move, couldn’t think—there was something else desperately trying to push her out, shoving her to a dark place in her mind that she never knew existed. The darkness was alarming, but even more unsettling was the noise… her whole body was thrumming with the intensity of the screaming… Blood-curdling, terrorized shrieking that seemed to consume her entire brain. Painfully deafening, it felt as if her whole head would burst under the strain of the cry—whether it was the strength of multiple voices or simply the overpowering wail of one, it was difficult to decipher, but Fey was certain she’d heard the overwhelming noise before, shrieking in her dreams.

She could feel the emptiness tugging at her, pulling her in as the new presence in her mind pushed her towards it, and the feeling set a terror in the very depths of her soul. It was pushing, pulling, rending her mind from its usual control and dragging it towards the unknown spaces of her darkening mind. Fey fought hard against the foreign force, quickly growing hysterical in her attempts to regain control, to get out of the darkness, that horrible darkness...

Sabeth fumbled frantically with incantations to suppress the negative energy in the girl’s body, but within a few endless moments of panicking the Goddess’ soul lost its grip on Fey, too weak yet to sustain control for very long. The task’s eyes dulled back to their normal charcoal hue, and her rigid limbs began to relax as the darkness in her mind receded.

With a sudden, painful-sounding gasp, Fey lurched forward, coughing heavily as she pulled air desperately into her lungs like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface—Dorran caught her unsteadily, her shaking body feeling unsettlingly fragile in his strong grip. The Renata held Fey stiffly against his chest, listening to the wheezing breaths rattling through her lungs as she fought her way back to consciousness.

Fey knew her eyes were open—she blinked once to assure herself—and yet the world seemed impossibly dark. But the shadows didn’t stop there; it felt as though they had seeped through into her mind to create a gaping black screen where her thoughts once lay so visibly… She had never felt so lost, so helpless… she could do nothing but wait for the dark haze to clear.

“Fey… Fey…” The voice was muffled and watery in the girl’s mind, and she could not make it out over the ringing of her own ears. “Fey…”

Her whole body gave a violent spasm as Fey’s heart panicked, thinking for a split second that the presence was coming back to push her out again, singing rhymes and taunting her with its illusiveness. But this voice was soothing, and there was a calming presence all around her—though her mind’s eye was still enveloped in a frightening blackness she could clearly sense a gentle face hovering above her, and her body relaxed.

What’s happened to me? She asked herself silently, eyes darting unseeingly in the own thoughts seemed almost impossibly loud, distorted against the silent backdrop of her troubled mind. Am I dreaming again?

“Fey…” Slowly, so very slowly, the voice became less distorted, growing faintly familiar and strangely comforting. “Fey… can… hear me... Fey… hear me…”

The girl gave a groan as the world came swimming back into focus, her head throbbing as every minute detail began to batter her senses. Distantly, Fey could make out the clipped precision of a crisp Northern accent framing the stranger’s words with an intelligent quality. She wondered vaguely if she’d heard it before.

Dim, yellow light was streaming into the endless black of her vision, like a star brightening at the end a tunnel, her mind sending a sharp pang through her body with every shadow that moved above her blurred sight. Reflexively, Fey tried to wiggle her fingers, but her arms and legs prickled with an odd tingle—almost as if they’d fallen asleep—they felt bulky and awkward when she tried to move them.

Wake up, Fey…

“Give me a break…” A second voice sounded in the lightening void, deeper and sharper than the first. “Come on, dollface, quit the dramatics and snap out of it…”

The brusque tone caught her off guard, having become accustomed to the soft lilt of the first voice gently calling her name. Recognition of the sound snapped immediately in her mind—she’d never forget that condescending drawl or that smell of nicotine breath. How could she forget that dark rasping voice…? It haunted her every paranoia-wrought moment.

The girl’s brain rapidly jumped out of the haze it was in, so suddenly in fact that it sent the ground spinning wildly beneath her and left her stomach suspended in an almost immediate nausea. With her consciousness fully returned, light flooded her vision as suddenly as a camera flash, sending shockwaves through her tender scull.

Gingerly, she brought a tingling hand to her forehead in an attempt to stabilize her center of gravity, gritting her teeth against the pain behind her eyes.

“Fuck,” the girl managed to grit out in a thin, raspy voice. “What hit me…?”

There came a light chuckling from above her, and she could feel the reverberation rumble through Dorran’s chest. “Over a millennia of repressed aggression, that’s what… Probably felt like nothing short of being struck by a bolt of lightning, I’m sure.”

His voice was shockingly close—Fey looked up in surprise, her stomach giving a nasty twist when she realized just how near the man was. With her eyesight returned, she could easily make out the sharp angle of his pale jawbone, the beginnings of stubble around his chin, the dramatic slope of his nose, the frighteningly icy lines in his eyes; his arms around her felt like hot, heavy chains, and she began to feel the beginning nauseous stirrings of claustrophobia churning at the center of her belly.

The girl paused in bewilderment for just a moment, wide-eyed and horrified as those arms squeezed her slightly and she remembered where she was, before—

“GET YOUR GODDAMN DIRTY HANDS OFF ME!!”

With her roar echoing down the long alleyway, Fey wrenched herself free of Dorran’s hold, falling heavily to the ground without a body to support her. Before the man could even make a grab for her she was scrambling out of reach on all fours, propping herself against nearest wall and cowering directly beneath the flickering backdoor light of the apothecary’s shop with a stressful expression on her face.

“What the hell did you do to me?!”

Dorran recoiled immediately, super-sensitive ears ringing. “Godssake, woman!” he returned irritably, wiggling a finger in his ear, “What the hell is your problem?!”

“Please, Fey, calm down.” Sabeth climbed to her feet and ventured towards the girl, a hand outstretched, “Here, let me help you—”

“No!” the charge returned in a frenzy, obviously rattled, smacking away the offered hand. “Tell me what you did to me—I couldn’t see, couldn’t think… What did you do?!”

Unruffled, the woman merely looked concerned. “You need to calm down, Fey. If you don’t relax you’ll only make the aftereffects worse,” she said in a soft voice. Sabeth tried again to help Fey to her feet but the girl shied away and stood by herself, using the wall the to pull herself up, wobbling unsteadily and looking ready to collapse at any given moment. “Fey— ”

“TELL ME WHAT YOU DID TO ME!”

Fey felt sick. The blood had seemingly rushed out of her face to leave her deathly pale, her heavy eye makeup causing her grey eyes to stand out like twin moons against her colorless face and hair—she looked like a specter in the dark, shivering and insipid against the foreboding aura of the deep night.

“Fey, please…” Sabeth’s anxiousness was beginning to eat away at her professionalism and the Renata fought the urge to wring her hands nervously, “you need help—we want to fix everything… let us help you before things get worse …”

But the girl refused to be swayed. “You’re lying. You’re not trying to help me—the two of you caused this!”

“As much as we’d love to take credit for such an elaborate, insidious plot, we didn’t do a damn thing. The Prophesy said it was going to happen, and it did.” Dorran sneered crossly, folding his arms over his chest.

“What the hell do you mean by ‘the Prophesy said’?” Fey whirled on him, waving one arm theatrically while the other pinned her to the wall. “What does the Prophesy have to do with anything?”

“The Prophesy has everything to do with you,” Sabeth answered dully. “The Prophesy is your destiny.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Fey huffed impatiently. “There’s no such thing as destiny. It’s just a bunch of stupid superstition.”

Dorran chuckled darkly, straightening the lapels on his jacket with a slick flick of his wrists.

“How do you explain the nightmares, the voices, the hallucinations, the screaming in your head?” the man asked tauntingly. “Face facts, angel-face—you can’t escape your fate, whether you believe in it or not.”

“Get real,” Fey spat back heatedly, taking a few shaky steps towards the alley. “You expect me to believe that load of bull?” Fey shook her head carefully. “The Prophesy is a stupid fairytale—in case you haven’t noticed, the Faith is dead. It’s been dead for years. You’ve got to be the biggest pair of—”

“You know, to tell the truth, I don’t give a damn if you believe us or not,” Dorran interrupted her tirade, his frigid eyes growing hard in the sallow light as his volatile temper reached its limits, “But whether or not you get the message doesn’t change the fact that your body is harboring the catalyst to the fucking apocalypse.”

Inwardly, Sabeth flinched at the dangerous strains growing in place of the previous facetiousness in her companion’s voice. In the brittle air, each word sounded like the growl of a wild animal echoing in the dark, enigmatic and obviously dangerous.

“In only a matter of time the Lorelei Prophesy will become a reality—the Soul Harvester’s essence will devour your own and you’ll become nothing more than a tool to her destruction,” said Sabeth quietly, delayed, as if the words were hard to say. “Nothing will be able to stop it. Not even the Gods.”

The girl shook her head vehemently, eyes screwed tightly shut as if putting forth a great effort to block out the Renata’s words. “I-I don’t believe you.”

Dorran began to advance upon the trembling task, adopting a killer’s cold stare, his eyes like needles boring holes into the girl’s hapless form. “There’s no escaping it, Fey—the Goddess of Misery’s agonized soul will slowly eat you away, painfully, from the inside out until you are only a mere shell of a human being. You will be nothing, hopeless, damned until eternity ends.”

Fey held her ground at his approach, the crunch of his footsteps in the dirt like cannon fire to her ears. His downcast face blanketed his eyes in shadow, but there was no escaping their heavy gaze— she could feel their scouring stare beating down on her weakening frame.

His voice was unforgiving in its darkness, surrounding her and filling her head with horrible images she tried to keep from forming but could not block from her mind’s eye: “You’ll know when it starts—your nightmares will worsen, until you can no longer sleep for fear of the haunted dreams that leave you too terrified to scream. You’ll wake up in odd places, dirty, alone, bloody, and not know how you’d gotten there or what you’ve done. You’ll hurt, writhe in a soulless agony as you slowly lose a part of yourself, lose your humanity, piece by piece…”

The girl refused to give the Renata the satisfaction of backing down as he came to a halt in front of her, so close that she could pick out the weave in the thick fabric of his trench coat. Yet despite her determined efforts to stay in control that voice, that monster’s growl, made her head go light and her heartbeat skitter nervously.

“And when that time comes,” he said with a frown, raising his head and eyes catching the light, “your so-called ‘dead’ Faith will be the only thing that can save you.”

Then it was as if a door had been thrown wide within the confines of Fey’s traumatized subconscious, and suddenly she could feel the presence of singsong voice that had been plaguing her thoughts like a ghost, hovering ominously in the background, tensely on the verge of an anticipated speech yet anxiously silent.

Wake up, Fey.

“Enough!” Fey’s head was spinning so wildly that she could no longer see straight, and her limbs felt so heavy-- there was no way she was spending another minute in the dark alley with the creepy people spewing prophetic garbage. “You’ve done far more than just say your goddamn piece and so now if you don’t mind…”

She began to head for the mouth of the alleyway, but her weak attempt was quickly intercepted by Dorran, whose nimble sidesteps quickly blocked her hasty exit. The girl paused a moment to glare up coldly at the man before trying again to maneuver around him to freedom.

The Renata couldn’t contain his smirk of triumph when the girl tried to pass him and wound up ensnared by his long arm. “We’re not finished yet, girly.”

Fey quickly shrugged out of his hold, shocked by how easily his mood shifted from deadly anger to an almost teasing humor. However, Fey was anything but gullible—underlying the good-humor in the man’s voice there was the same dangerous rage she’d seen only a few seconds ago—he was attempting to disguise a landmine, but luckily Fey was far from oblivious.

“You gave your word,” her gaze danced franticly between the two Renata. “You gave your word you’d never bother me again if I heard you out.”

Sabeth’s frown deepened considerably. “Please,” she tried one last time, approaching with soft steps and pausing next to her companion, “you have to understand—we can’t just let you leave with a bomb ticking away inside of you, waiting to destroy everything. You need our help.”

“I don’t fucking need anything, now let me pass.”

“Oh come now, Fey,” Dorran rolled his eyes, refusing to budge. “Are you really going to let your selfish pride or whatever the hell it is making you so goddamn stubborn keep you from preventing the next Armageddon?”

“Stop it.”

But he continued to grill her, “You’re really just going to let yourself and everyone else in the world become casualties. You know if you don’t stop this now there’ll be no stopping your fate—the Prophesy is already in motion. You’re running out of time.”

“I don’t care!”

Dorran laughed aloud. “You know it’s true. You can feel it. You’ve seen your future, haven’t you? Dreamed it up one night? I bet you woke up in a cold sweat…”

Sabeth shifted her weight from foot to foot, growing increasingly uncomfortable as her companion’s relentless bullying pushed the charge further and further away from any possibility of compliance and becoming a future ally.

“No, no more,” the girl fought the urge to lash out in frustration—in her condition she had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a scrap with the two strangers, especially if she were stupid enough to initiate it… More than ever she wished she had her gun—she longed to have the ease of having her obstacles disappear with a pull of a trigger. BANG and she was free to go.

“Just leave me alone.”

Once again Fey tried to pass Dorran and make a run for the alley, and once again her attempts were easily foiled by his quick reflexes and determination. She growled in annoyance, trying hard not to lose her precious balance as she shook her head in antipathy. “Get out of my way or so help me…”

“Or you’ll what?” Dorran taunted, toying with the idea of whipping out his gun, just to spook her. It was surprisingly sudden but all at once the game was fun again—the girl had stopped trying his patience and he felt in control, comfortable…

“That’s enough, Dorran.”

… which was why it came as an even bigger shock when he felt Sabeth’s slender hand on his shoulder gently pulling him aside to clear the way for their charge.

“Stop antagonizing her,” his companion spoke in a tired voice, the look on her face and the weight in her eyes for once showing every year they’d endured. “Let her go.”

Fey was as shocked as Dorran was, if not more. Despite the way she’d so adamantly ordered her release, she’d never thought that her demands would actually be met—that would be too easy. It was an instinct for someone chasing a thief to yell “stop!”, yet it was unheard of for the thief to actually comply.

Dorran frowned to cover his surprise, an argument growing heavy on the tip of his tongue. “Sabeth…”

“No,” the willowy woman shook her head, shoulder-length chestnut hair falling forward to obscure her pale features, “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

“Yes, there is—she hasn’t even begun to understand—”

“We gave our word, Dorran,” Sabeth interrupted curtly.

“Our word? You think our word is enough to forsake the whole damn mission?”

Sabeth frowned, “I think our word is a representation of our integrity. Without that we’ve no business partaking in ‘the whole damn mission’.” Her expression darkened, and she suddenly resembled a stern teacher laying down boundaries for an unruly student. “Do you understand?”

Fey watched the exchange with anxiety eating at the lining of her stomach and the ground threatening to buckle beneath her—her head felt like there was a hammer slamming itself into her brain, and try as she might to stave off the oncoming pain she couldn’t help but give a wince when a fresh wave washed over her already weakened body. With the pain went all hope of escaping—there was no way Fey could sneak away in her current condition. Even somewhat distracted both antagonists were more than formidable. There was no doubt in the girl’s mind that she’d be intercepted far before she made it to the mouth of the alleyway.

“Are you saying we should just give up then?” Dorran hissed through gritted teeth, trying hard to reign his temper and keep his voice down. “How can you even suggest such a thing?”

“I’m not suggesting—”

“You want to forget about the Prophesy and everything we’ve been through and wash our hands clean of the whole damn thing just so that she—” he jabbed a finger angrily in Fey’s direction, “—can go on her oblivious merry fucking way to destroying everything? To nullify existence?! Damn it, Sabeth, we need her!”

“No, you need her,” Sabeth returned sternly, easily spurning Dorran’s temper. The man quickly fell silent, his solid argument disintegrating like an autumn leaf in the rain.

“Let the girl go, Dorran. There’ll be other chances.” The woman’s voice was soft, almost apologetic. “It’s fate.”

Silence thickened into a language that Fey couldn’t begin to decipher—there seemed to be more than simple anger in the air, something not quite nameless, and it was so tangible that she could practically see it rocketing back and forth in the increasingly smaller alcove.

Even with an intense headache, it was no difficult task for the sharp-eyed Fey to spot the tightness that traveled from Dorran’s jaw through his entire body, wound like the nervous muscles of a hunting animal. She wasn’t sure if he was preparing to force out a word of compliance or take a swing at the slim woman—his mouth had thinned to a hard line, the cold chips of ice in his eyes had intensified in a glare, yet the glare seemed directed more inwardly rather than at his companion. His unpredictability reminded her of an alley cat she’d cornered one day while emptying her trash; so rough and hardened with impenetrable defenses, it was impossible to tell whether it was flight or fight he was preparing for.

The woman’s face, which Fey had thought was long and rather plain, now looked many years older; a tiredness had crept into those artic eyes and left them with a weary film. However, despite the worn expression in her eyes the Renata’s jaw was set, and her entire body stood firm with a strong woman’s determination.

It was an even match, and Fey had no idea who the victor would be.

“Dorran…” Sabeth’s long face was made even longer by the somber tone of her voice. “Let her go.”

There was another intense pause that seemed to last forever, before finally the man’s lips curved up at the corners in a defeated little smirk, visibly deflating as the angry tension left his body and he stepped aside to let Fey pass.

“For all our sakes, Sabeth,” he said in a low, tight voice, “I hope you know what you’re doing…”

Light, dark, light, dark…

The light in the alcove began to flicker more fervently, casting long, ghostly black shadows that seemed to dance ominously in the moving light. Sabeth turned a graceful head towards the dying bulb, the calm expression on her face distorted by the play of darkness on her pale features. Fey watched in a morbid sort of fascination as the dim light turned the woman’s artic eyes an almost colorless hue, the images of sightless corpses floating across her thoughts.

Dorran merely ashed his cigarette in a bored fashion and brought it to his lips, the smoldering tip glowing a burnt orange as he inhaled. His sharp eyes sought her own with a quick snapping motion, tearing her gaze away from his companion to meet his own icy stare. She half expected him to glower at her and tell her she’d regret not listening to them—in fact it would have made perfect sense—but he simply gave her a slow, smug grin that seemed jarringly Cheshire-like in the deceptive light.

The smile sent a cold wave to creep up her spine.

Light, dark, light, dark, light dark…

“Later, dollface,” he said, grey smoke pouring from his lips like dragon’s breath, “Pleasant dreams in the meantime.”

Light, dark, light, dark…

The two Renata seemed to distort as the light flickered violently for an intense second, immersing the world into a suffocating blackness—however in the split second the light returned before dying out, Fey could see clearly…

… and both Sabeth and Dorran were gone.

Then without warning the alcove was thrown into darkness as the drugstore’s dying porch light flickered out with an audible fizzling noise. Fey gasped as she felt her heartbeat stutter slightly, cutting off her breath and leaving her feeling dangerously exposed in the pitch of the night.

Besides the thunderous rushing of her own blood in her ears and the hitched sound of her panicked breathing, the alleyway was eerily silent—the emptiness seemed to magnify the space around her. The girl stood stock still, straining her ears to catch a noise, any noise… the soft breaths of her two antagonists, the faint echoing of music through Dogma’s walls, even the sing-song voice that had invaded her mind seemed a welcome relief from the noiseless night…

But there was nothing. Even her mind was unnaturally silent.

“H-hello?” her voice was deafening in the soundless environment and Fey began to feel increasingly vulnerable, alone in the dark. She called out again, words feeling foreign and heavy on her tongue. “Sabeth? Dorran?”

But there was no answer, only the ripe scent of fading nicotine and the distant echoes of her own hoarse voice.

TBC

Review please :)