Eli clenched his injured hand while gritting his teeth as his flesh seemed to boil. It melted into liquid that popped and frothed like a bloody soda. Several cracking sounds started to come from his teeth. Somehow, through the pain, he remembered the fox fire he had hidden in the pockets of his jacket.
Shaking all the while, he used his free hand to open the cover, then drew out some of the liquid with the syringe. He immediately stabbed it into his injured hand, just below where it was melting away. A warm, almost fiery feeling crashed against the edge of the wound as the burning lessened slightly.
Grabbing the bottle, he drank most of what remained before immediately reaching for another and downing it. After drinking from four of them, he finally had some relief. His back slammed into the bookshelf as he huffed and puffed. The wound on his hand had stopped hurting, but it was nowhere close to healing.
Looking at what he had left in the first fox fire potion bottle, he took the rest and poured it down the librarian's throat.
After some time had passed, Eli made it to the parking lot, stumbling all the way, his body weak. It was such an unusual feeling. He sat on a bench, waiting for his mother, who had contacted him not too long ago. His eyes were not glowing. He was much too tired to keep perceiving anything.
A few seconds later, his mother came driving up. Seeing him, she ran out of the car, placing a hand on his forehead. The moment she did, her hand jolted away. He was so hot. With a little effort, she got him into the car, then sped off to her house.
Now inside the house, she rushed Eli to the bathtub. After letting him rest inside, she immediately turned on the water to its absolute coldest.
Why was he so hot? Should she take him to the hospital?
The moment she had that thought, a strange fog came over her mind. As it did, her necklace shone for a moment, and that strange fog disappeared. But it was too late. The thought had already disappeared.
There was something else she could do. The extract from that strange plant…
Leaving Eli in the bathtub, she ran down the stairs to the basement, then towards a locked fridge. Opening it, she took out a small test tube containing an almost glowing orange liquid.
Running back upstairs, she used a syringe to inject the liquid into Eli's uninjured hand, then held her hands at his neck. A few moments later, she sighed as she sat beside the bath, looking at Eli. Her face was odd and stiff, her earlier panic somehow replaced by a dead stare. It was as if a robot had met a gap in its code.
All the while, Eli's injured hand had not left his pocket.
That dead stare seemed to remain on her face forever, but then Eli moved. Her face immediately returned to normal. Feeling his neck again, she relaxed, realising his fever was much lower. Almost carefree. None of her earlier panic remained.
She left the bathroom after turning off the tap, allowing the sleeping Eli to rest in the bath.
As he slept, Eli appeared back in that black space. Seeing the familiar space, a feeling of dread took over his chest. Jolting up, he felt the black ground sticking to his back like black gum as it slowly fell off.
Why was he here again?
Just as he was panicking, he noticed something. Unlike before, he could somehow feel his body. It was just odd. It was like when his mother held his hand to help him write something, or his father lifted him up so he could reach his ball stuck in a tree. Like he was being "helped" in controlling his body.
Turning his head towards his body, something strange happened. The world around him warped as he instantly appeared in front of his mind shard, which was now a mind sphere, and his marble.
Something was off, though. A red light engulfed his mind sphere as what looked to be a lizard crawled over it.
Inside the bathtub, Eli's eyes slowly opened. They had turned yellow orange, with a black slit running through them. Clawed, scaled hands reached from inside the tub as the creature slowly got up and out of the bathtub.
What the hell was this? Why was there a red light consuming his mind sphere?
Reaching his hand out towards it, the world seemed to warp again as he instantly appeared in front of it. As he touched it, his head swung back as he saw the scene outside. From behind him, blue mist fell from the mind marble.
It was him, or it should have been him. Eli watched as that thing scraped away the flesh from his hand, ripping it away as if it were wastepaper. The moment his flesh was ripped from his body, it completely boiled dry, then turned into dust.
After almost completely removing all the flesh from his hand—my hand—the creature stood there as if lost. New flesh slowly knitted over what was left of his arm. Once his arm had returned, the thing looked at it before turning towards the door and starting to walk towards it.
What the hell was it trying to do?
Just as its hand reached for the door, a blue light covered it, resisting its forward motion. Behind the creature, a blue mist in the outline of Eli pointed its hands towards it as he gritted his teeth, fighting against its forward motion.
"My mother is out there. You're not going anywhere."
Eli gritted his teeth as the creature increased the force coming from its body. No matter how hard he tried, nothing was working. It was as if he were trying to hold a mountain in place.
Just then, the thing reached the doorknob, then strangely stopped.
Eli released the force he was using to hold the creature. From his ghost-like position, he huffed as he looked down at it.
It was also looking down.
From beneath the door, blue dust reached in, spreading across the floor. The creature in his body took a step back, away from the dust. As it advanced, the creature backed away again, retreating until it climbed back into the tub. The dust spread around the bathtub, closing into a circle.
After a few seconds of trying and failing to move its hands towards the barrier, the creature stopped. The scales covering Eli's body slowly disappeared, and he fell back into unconsciousness.
Outside the bathroom, his mother sat motionless, the bottle around her neck half empty. A strange fog seemed to engulf her mind one second, only to be replaced by a completely blue fog the next.
In a city just outside Beacon Hills, a woman in golden heels sipped red wine inside a high-rise building. Her golden hair swam down her back, covering her shoulders and part of her black suit. Her eyes gazed down at the brightly lit city, her face calm and contemplative.
Suddenly, her head turned.
She walked away from the window, the view of the city fading behind her. Entering a library of sorts, she reached for a certain book and pushed it. Part of the shelf slid aside.
Walking into the hidden room, she came face-to-face with a boy who could not have been older than sixteen. His eyes were completely white, and aside from his breathing, he looked almost dead.
Taking a stopwatch from her pocket, she allowed it to tick in the room for a moment.
Click… Click.
She pressed the buttons on its side. The boy's head began moving back and forth before his entire body turned like a puppet. Facing the black wall, he spoke in a strangely low whisper.
"Open."
As the word left his mouth, a strange light shimmered from his lips towards the wall. It spread across the black surface, and another secret door opened. This time, there was no hidden room—only a shelf holding several golden coins.
Following the strange feeling, the woman lowered her gaze to the bottom shelf.
There, she found a cracked coin.
"What do we have here?"
Beneath the coin were a person's name and a location:
Lorraine O'Neil.
Beacon Hills.