Act 3, Chapter 89: Taking back control of a body

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), around noon—11 hours into the time trial

Alexandra May

I missed lectures and meeting normal people. I didn’t think it was possible, but here I was, wishing I could sit in a dusty hall and let older women and men influence me with their knowledge, methods, and aged takes on art. I longed for a meal in the dining hall just so I could listen to Elena ramble about yet another TV show, or see Peter and Zoe cuddled together, which I feared was not going to happen anytime soon. Maybe not ever, considering her current stance on their relationship. Not that I blamed her. Peter made an asshole’s choice, and he would pay the shitty price that crawled out of that hole.

I, on the other hand, sat in a rather comfortable armchair being carried around my Domain by about thirty spider minions. I had regained a partial ability to move and use my Authority, but I decided to take it easy and let Anansi steer everything so as not to disturb the process or spiral back into becoming a prisoner in my own body.

My left leg was free of the prosthesis and slowly regrowing. Meanwhile, I watched the paper creatures skitter over a surface of my black lake on those small paper legs and yet possessing enough combined strength to carry both me and the chair as if we weighed nothing at all.

“How are you feeling, human?” Liora hissed as he descended from his resting place atop the Weaver’s Tree. He looked radiant and had definitely grown both longer and thicker. Once he had been about the length of my arm. Now he was nearly half again as long. All the hunting and basking in my divine energy seemed to be working wonders.

“Better, dragon.” I tried hissing back at him. The reaction was immediate. He pulled his neck backward slightly and widened his eyes. “Physically and spiritually, that is. Mentally, I’m damaged as fuck.”

“Weren’t you always?”

“Look who’s funny?” I shot back, trying to suppress a laugh. “You’re probably right, though. Although this time I meant the boredom. And the feeling of being cast away to the edge of the bloody universe. While the rest of me is out there having at least some fun, I’m doing my best not to pay attention, not to hurt them.”

“You are a strange being now, human.” He spoke as we came to a stop a few feet away from the soul core.

I watched the shadowlight contained within illuminate the black surface of the still lake beneath us and dance across the backs of the spiders belonging to the core itself. There were so many of them moving in and out of the Hearth building.

Some carried fragments of wood. Others hauled rubble, stone, and granite from within the structure and transported it into the forest. A few in the distance were trying to chase away a lone Looneybunny, one of my Domain’s animal creations, the kind capable of producing black holes.

“Likewise. Are you going hunting?” I asked Liora, fascinated by the wandering creature.

It stood upright on its hind legs and chewed on a carrot like the living embodiment of cartoon logic. Yet despite its almost humanoid posture, it was unmistakably a hare.

The spiders raised their front legs and waved them side to side in an attempt to scare it away, but it simply looked in our direction with obvious curiosity.

“Yes. Anansi mentioned a place you visited some time ago. A park near the Brooklyn Bridge and the bridge itself. Alex is painting it into the Spellbook so he can send me there.”

“Why did you hiss his name with so much contempt?”

“We held a contest after he got that enormous blade of his. We wanted to see who was faster, and he almost caught me during the last attempt. I don’t like it.” My lóng hissed through his teeth while his mouth continued speaking. “That should not be. I need to be the fastest. Always.” He turned his attention toward the Looneybunny. “You want me to get rid of it?”

“No. Leave it be.” I watched the strange rabbit take another bite from its carrot. “I don’t think it means any harm.”

“Shame, I wished for some blood.”

“You and me both, but not here. I actually came outside to meditate, so if you could be a good boy and get the fuck out... kindly.” I addressed him while smiling ear to ear. It was great to have so much motor control in my face again.

“Your wish is my order, human.” Liora replied, turned almost translucent, and darted away looking like a dragon-shaped streak of light.

When he was gone, I closed all of the eyes closest to my position and tried focusing on that darkness I cast onto myself. Within this veil, it was significantly less difficult for my other, less powerful senses to crawl out from under the rock that sight usually was.

First came proprioception, allowing me to find myself within the universe. My consciousness knew exactly where this and most of the other meatbags were in relation to it. I moved an arm slowly upward, feeling the small hairs on my skin shift beneath a gentle breeze, bringing just a tiny bit of chill into an otherwise perfectly warm noon. The Sun overhead carefully pricked my skin as well, allowing me to bask in its glory and embrace.

And when the hand finally reached my face, I moved it slowly over my brows.

Each finger tracing lines on the hair and skin, moving lower over the eyelids and nose, then reaching my lips, where I let the hand stay for a second longer. I opened my mouth and ran my tongue across those parted lips and the fingertips, feeling the taste of my own skin.

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Doing so, I took a deep breath through my nose, catching the faint scent of distant flowers and petrichor, that ozone-laden reminder of rain that might come soon or had only recently passed. It was the smell left by Liora as well.

I felt the scent of paper too and water.

With my eyes still closed, sounds were the last sensations I allowed my soul to feel.

The distant thundering of the waterfall that I just smelled and the close skittering both came first—all those tiny legs. The spiders carrying me, constantly stepping from one leg to another. Those carrying out the will of my soul core as thy moved in orderly lines. Then the rustling of the small leaves on the branches they transported and the rocks as they tossed them aside. Then the distant laughter of Alex as he argued with my lóng.

And finally, that melody of strings reverberating from what once had been the Hearth. Whatever those minions of the Weaver’s Tree were building, it played when the wind blew through it and the notes were carried by this air of mine and spread throughout the place.

It was barely hearable if one did not pay attention. And yet those vibrations had the rhythm and changes of a song, a composition. Something created with a thought and a purpose and to me, it was pleasing.

“What are you trying to do in there?” I asked as the minions brought me closer to the crystalline bark. I touched it with my hand, exchanging essence with the core. It flowed out of me and out of her, and two waves passed through each other flawlessly, filling us with a warm, tingling sensation. Yet I wasn’t doing that to initiate the process exactly—I just wanted to feel her.

“You know that Sophie—your Sophie—just met with mine?” I asked and nodded to myself. “Yes, they talked.” I sighed, removing my hand from the surface. “I wish we could do that too, but if we can’t, I’m at least going to see what those arachnids of yours that you loved so much have done to the place since my last visit. I feel like it’s time, right?” I asked her, and my own minions turned the armchair around and began their small march toward the Heart.

I felt like my power over Identity could be given to an artistic representation of her and be forced to become her—Ali, as Shadow Sophie called her. But at the same time, deep down, I felt that opening that particular can would just spill out worms I didn’t know how to deal with yet. If it was even possible.

In her case, lending that Authority felt untrue, like I would be talking to what I thought she was instead of what she actually was, and so I decided not to even try. Instead, I raised my hand and waved slowly as I was carried away. A simple gesture of goodbye for now, meant as exactly that and not a farewell. I still hoped we might see eye to eye one day.

But now, lured by the melody coming from within the structure that looked like an ancient yet fantastically preserved Greek temple, overcast and cocooned in glistening webs, I had a curious case to attend to.

I wanted to see inside.

[Alexa!] Anansi’s voice rang through my head. My soul interpreted it as her shouting. [The card Sophie’s been holding—]

What is it? I interrupted her, suddenly anxious. My body tensed in response as my arms spasmed and locked once again, gripped by that awful freezing debilitation.

[You heard a shot through it. A bullet and shouting.]

She explained what my other brains had registered and my mind had somehow cast aside.

[She’s been shot.]

Alexandra May in Alex’s body

Alex’s body spasmed as well. A freeze just like mine but much less powerful ran along his left side, making his muscles tense as I oriented my full attention and exerted perfect control over his Persona. I felt sorry for doing that to that part of me—spreading my illness into his otherwise healthy spiritual entity—but this time, whatever it was that had happened, I could not just be a passive listener or observer, or the one that lent him his being. I needed to be there.

So despite that awful cold grip restricting my movement, I pushed through it and set aside the pencil and graphite I’d been using to draw the image of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

“Lio, I’m sorry, but Sophie’s been really hurt. I need to go.” Lóng’s body straightened like a drawn string, while his maw opened to expose the sharp teeth. His brows furrowed in contained fury as his body shimmered in and out of corporality, stricken with lightning-like shadowlight running through it.

I did not stay to watch as his anger took physical form. Instead, I touched the spellbook firmly and within its pages found one that showed the office of the Hoppers.

The world bent to my will like the bitch it is.

A second later I was in the space she’d prepared as the base of our company, and the only person inside was Nickolas, sitting on one of the couches right next to the green plant wall. He stared at the ceiling as if waiting for something.

“Nick?”

“Alex?” he replied with a question after his head snapped toward the source of the new sound around him—me. “What’s going on?” His brows knitted together when he noticed my face.

“I’ll explain on the way,” I answered, running toward the window.

We were on the sixth floor, high enough for gravity to break even mage bones, but I didn’t have time for elevators or stairs, and certainly no fucks to spare for the pain in my side.

“What is it?” he asked, joining me. I opened the window wide enough for both of us to jump out.

“I’ll slow our descent. Let’s go,” I said, dragging him with me. He did not protest even once. Instead, he grabbed my hand and forced me to jump after him.

“No need!” he shouted over the rush of air around us as we fell like two stones toward the ground.

Seconds before we hit the pavement below, his arms changed and covered themselves with a black, bark-like yet oozing substance. A few protrusions jutted out, each ending in leaves made of pure shadow that turned into streaks of smoke as we plummeted toward our doom.

But before we hit, his fingers elongated and turned into Willowshade whips. One arm wrapped around my waist and shoulders, while the other launched a similar protrusion toward the ground. It spread like a blooming flower when it plastered itself against gravity’s best attempt at killing us.

Despite the force the Earth exerted on us—and the impact that shook his bones—I remained relatively unharmed, kept aloft by his other arm, which now looked like a tree growing straight out of his shoulder.

His grip loosened as that same limb shifted into something more human. Yet beneath the skin, another bark-like surface remained visible. Its regenerative properties stitched his broken muscles and bones back together in at most three seconds, and what had been, just a moment ago, a mass of magical shadow-tree and pulpy human flesh was Nick once more.

People nearby who witnessed what had just happened either shouted or simply passed out.

I reached into the image stored within my spellbook, summoning my motorcycle onto the pavement beside us, and jumped onto it before my colorful magic, in the form of ribbon-like shadowlight, had even fully dissipated.

Nick hopped on behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. His body pressed against my back, yet perhaps because I was in a man’s body as well—or because he wasn’t as massive as in his prime—the pressure was less than I expected.

“You waited for Sophie?” I asked as I merged into traffic with the roar of the engine.

“Yes.”

“She’s not coming. She’s been shot not far from here. Max was with her, and he’s speeding toward a hospital.”