11: Fear
Phantasia reached out with her free hand and grasped Joel’s arm, an idea forming in her mind.
“Both of you listen to me. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about, okay? It’s just your own fear. How can it understand love? It wants you to suffer, to give it power. You’ve just got to ignore it!”
She stepped back so they could see each other and willed their true feelings to reach through the dark miasma, using her as a conduit. If she could just encourage those feelings, those warm emotions she’d experienced from them in the past, maybe she could repel the leansídhe’s spell.
Please…
Joel stepped forward and reached out for Kaori’s hand. She dropped the knife and took it, before Joel pulled her into an embrace.
“Can we go away from here now?” she said “Please?”
“Yeah,” said Joel, looking like he had woken from a bad dream, “Dude, this is too much,”
“Joel?” Kaori was looking at him. Small dark sparks danced around her, but were unable to break past an invisible barrier that now kept them at bay.
“Yeah?”
“You do…you know? Right?”
He nodded, “Ah, ‘course I do.”
But even as the couple shuffled away to the edge of the pit where the others were waiting, the leansídhe diverted its attention. A dozen crackling tendrils shot out from its web to ensnare Shelley, who sat locked in a nightmare atop a meagre stack of palettes and charred wood.
“Burn, bitch, burn!” said the voice of Astrid.
“Shelley, stop!” cried Phantasia, but the full weight of the leansídhe corruption was slowing her down again. There was no way she’d be able to reach her friend in time. Already Shelley had produced a lighter and her finger twitched at the flint as the leansídhe pushed her to the edge. Her suicide would strengthen the demon beyond anything Phantasia could handle, giving it the power to destroy her…and all her friends. The darkness forced her to her knees.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?”
The pressure relaxed enough for Phantasia to look up. Theseus had thrown the lighter from Shelley’s grasp and now carried her limp body in his arms. She rained feeble punches down on his chest, but he brushed them aside just as he had Joel’s.
“Theseus, don’t listen to it,” said Phantasia, her voice strained, “If you hear a voice, it’s an illusion, it’s not really who you think it is! It’s a demon!”
“What bloody voice?” he said, his face showing a mixture of disgust and confusion, “You people make me freaking sick sometimes. Shelley’s having a mental breakdown-” he brushed her off as she tried to claw his face with dirty hands “-and all you care about are the shadows?”
He didn’t believe in it. It had no power over him. His body was radiating a confidence and determination that repelled each and every attempt the leansídhe made to claim his fear, and with each failed attempt its shadowy mass deteriorated and its radius of influence shrunk.
“Come on, demon-spawn, don’t let these losers drag you back into that horrible world again!” said fake-Astrid as the demon returned its attention to the easy target, “If you die, you can rot in Hell with your dear mother, and maybe you’ll find your real father down there!”
“Shelley,” said Phantasia, “Don’t listen to it.”
