After a few awkward, silent minutes, Myles brought up the incident that had occurred before he came to check on her.
"So it wasn't my imagination," Terrene murmured.
"What? What are you talking about?" Myles asked, confused.
"It makes sense that you wouldn't notice—you have to turn on the sight first. Any time Lia, or literally any girl, came close to you, there'd be a little disturbance, almost as if the air was vibrating from your resonance." She bit her bottom lip before continuing. "I always figured it was my Criole wavering... you know, due to my strong emotions towards you."
Myles wasn't sure how to react. He found himself tilting his head and smiling. "That's actually so cute."
Terrene blushed. "Shut up. We need to figure out what's happening." Her flat tone stood in stark contrast to her reddened face.
Myles's expression darkened. "I think I know. I'm not sure why, but old, powerful beings have taken an interest in me and Lia. It seems the lady wants whoever is inside of me." His lip curled in disgust. "She's using Lia's own emotions to control her." He stopped abruptly, realising something, and a small smile found its way onto his face.
"What is it?" Terrene asked, a hint of concern in her flat voice.
"It's nothing. We have to do something, or..." Heat rose to Myles's face at the thought of what could happen.
As far as he could remember—well before he was flung into space and pushed through time—he'd had no relationships beyond the platonic. He'd actually preferred things that way. His friends—well, the two he'd had—had been burned by girls far too often for the idea of a relationship to seem alluring. The memory put another small smile on his face. He had just remembered another missing piece of his past.
Terrene, visibly concerned, took gentle hold of his arm—her transformation may have receded, but a great deal of its strength still lingered in her grip. Her mind drifted back to the moment she thought she had lost Tema; she was certain her nails had dug into skin she'd always been told was indestructible.
Her eyes landed on Tema. He had curled himself into a tight spiral, his side rising and falling peacefully as he slept.
"Let's go." Myles's voice pulled her back to him.
"Do you have a plan?" she asked, closing the distance between them and caressing his arm.
"I think so, yes. Also—the disturbance. You can resist it?" he asked, his voice full of concern, not even noticing their proximity.
"I haven't had trouble before." There was something almost playful in her voice.
Soon, the pair stood over the sleeping bodies of Kushi and Lia. Myles stepped forward, gesturing for Terrene to stay back.
"I would like to have a word. With both of you."
"It was only a matter of time." A female voice drifted from the corner of the room.
From the opposite end came a sigh.
The woman was made entirely of purple light, with long, beautiful hair. Her other features were impossible to discern through the monochromatic glow, yet even so, anyone with sight could tell she was a beauty. At the other end of the room stood a pillar of flame—formless, yet calm and controlled, its edges barely wavering. It was black.
Myles's gaze did not leave the black flames. "Who are you? Both of you." He spared the lady a glance.
She scoffed at how thoroughly he disregarded her presence. "Me? I am—"
"I will take the lead in this conversation," the voice from the black flames interrupted. "You cannot know who we are."
The lady seemed a tad annoyed at being cut off. She glared at the pillar of flame. "Oh? Mind telling the class why not?"
"They are not ready, Shika." The flames flared for a brief second. "They are infants, all of them. We have had our time. Let them have theirs."
Shika laughed. "Then why didn't you stop me earlier?"
The moment the question left her lips, Myles's face went grim. "It's been you all this time?"
His flames erupted from his body in an instant, black fire washing over his skin and healing the bruises that remained. Whatever had been chaining his abilities was gone.
"Oooh, scary. Yes, I was going to take you using your girlfriend's body." She laughed. "I would do anything if it means getting my man back."
"Shika!" The flames surged.
"Shut up," Myles said to the flame. Interestingly, it complied.
"How dare you—" Shika began.
"I'm asking the questions here. What does 'your man' have to do with me?"
"Are you a fool, boy? That body does not belong to you. It's my man's."
Myles turned to the flame. "Devinr." He laughed. "Devinr. I knew I'd heard it somewhere."
His expression hardened soon after. Terrene, by this point, was scared for him.
"How long?"
"Light years," the flame responded.
Myles's legs gave out for a second and he stumbled backwards, barely catching himself with Terrene's help. "So you feel guilty. Is that it?"
The flame did not answer.
"Am I the only one who can still use these black flames?"
"Not anymore." The flame dispersed.
"Hey! Dev! We're not done talking!" Shika yelled after him.
Myles turned to her. "How long have you been with him?"
She paused. "I am his first love. Stubborn creature, that one. It took my physical death for him to realise just how much he loves me. Ever since, he's been a brooding mess—my 'emo boy'." Shika huffed. "You have six months to satisfy me, or I will make the move for you. And I wouldn't rely on him to save you next time."
She vanished in a spark of light.
Terrene tugged on his shirt. "I don't care that you're with my sister. It seems you're cursed to attract attention from girls. Just so we're clear, I come first—before Kushi."
Usually, her monotone would have made the statement hilarious, but after everything they had just heard—and given her deadpan expression—he knew she was serious.
"Let's talk about this later. We have more pressing matters."
"Nonsense," Terrene retorted.
------------
Months had passed since their little spar on Phase 2. Verdure and Aethon had been training together to the point where she described him as half-decent. Realistically speaking, Aethon could never beat her in a death battle—but that was never his goal. His goal was to make her back touch the ground, and she had found herself constantly needing to protect her feet around him. Not that it would have mattered either way. The thing was, if he was anything like Myles, you never really knew.
She sat on the ledge of a rather high cliff. As it turned out, the planet Allyser had grafted was only habitable near her estate; beyond it—outside her continent, more specifically—it was basically a death sentence. Not that many people lived on Phase 2 anyway. It was mostly just Allyser, her most loyal servants, and their youngest descendants. The planet itself was her palace; it went without saying that she needed no guards, so security existed mostly for her own offspring and those of her servants. The planet did most of the work itself—those who dared make landfall met death very swiftly. Verdure watched Aethon navigate one of the reasons why.
Large floating crystals—heavier than most motherships despite their relatively small size, dense enough that they carried their own gravitational pull—drifted through the air at terrible speeds, smashing into each other with enough force to send out shockwaves. To top it all off, their surfaces were rugged and sharp; even a graze from one would leave ghastly wounds.
Watching Aethon expertly dodge the floating menaces, Verdure reminisced about her teenage years—more specifically, the days when she had decided to learn control. Even back then, simply grazing one would have caused it to shatter, so she had avoided them to prevent exactly that. The situation and the danger were completely different, yet it made her nostalgic all the same. Besides—if he wasn't capable of doing something a teenage girl could do, he wasn't worth her time.
"Okay, we are done here," she said, standing and calling him over with a flash of her green Criole light—the signal they had decided on.
He appeared beside her almost instantaneously, a single bead of sweat trailing down his temple, though his breathing remained calm—far from laboured. He had come very far. On their first day here, the crystals had turned him into minced meat; it was then that she realised Aethon had a healing factor similar to Myles's, and when she first noticed his resemblance to the boy.
She had chastised herself at first, thinking herself racist. On this side of the galaxy, it was commonplace for people with traces of human DNA to exist. You could easily tell: humans passed some form of their melanin pigmentation on to all their offspring. One might have argued that Allyser had human parents, but it was known that she had chosen that form because of her infatuation with a human—and all her offspring, Verdure included, bore a different version of that pigment.
"Am I ready for the next location?" Aethon asked, sliding an arm around her waist.
Verdure, pulled from her thoughts, snatched his wrist and crushed it. "Hmm."
"Ouch. Looks like... I... I'm breaking walls," he said, gritting his teeth through the pain as his broken skin and bones swiftly mended themselves.
Verdure gave him a questioning look. "What?"
"You usually won't let my arm anywhere near your personal space." He laughed as his arm finally finished healing. "I want you, you want me. So I will have you, and you will have me. That is a promise."
"Empty words mean nothing to me." Verdure smiled with childlike innocence, and it sent a chill down Aethon's spine.
"You must know something." He smiled back. "You terrify me. I think I like that."
Verdure made a disgusted face and turned around. "Follow me."
She disappeared in a blur.