Chương 48: I will not let go

The two of them stopped moving, held utterly firm in the current position they were in. Grim felt an awareness of everything in her aura, which extended out to around ten feet. The details it gave her were sparse, but within her domain, anything in it would not be leaving. It was electric, the feeling that was coursing through her, like her vision was expanded and she was seeing more than she ever had before. It felt like she'd been sleeping before and now she was fully awake.

This was her power fully unleashed, not the half-formed version she'd unlocked when her soul had been in tatters. She looked down and saw intricate, unbreakable patterns on her arms and up to the rest of her body. The patterns pulsed with unwavering intensity to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Beneath her, the ground rippled where she stood, anchors tying her down into the earth. There was no doubt or hesitation in Grim's mind, there was no room for it. The only thing she could think of was how she was going to do it.

The clock tower's bell tolled. She pulled Natalie to her feet in one motion. She felt the Eye's pull on her, raging as its grasp was denied. The pressure on her aura intensified, but her authority denied it. To move Grim was to move someone she held, and that was not possible. Within her aura were four people, Natalie, Maya, Soryn and a stranger she did not know. He was locked in place, held frozen by her authority, but she lessened it to remove his hands.

"You will carry Soryn," she said to the stranger as she removed her iron-tight hold on all of those in her aura.

"We are going into that building."

"The building next to it has maintenance tunnels underneath," Maya said, much more subdued than she had been before. It was a residential building, utilitarian with a primarily grey color scheme. The writing on the signs was unintelligible.

"Then we will go there," Grim said. Natalie clung to her hand as they walked, the battlefield was silent as nothing moved besides to watch them. The eye raged and pulled, but against Grim's authority, no matter how strong it was, there was nothing to grip onto. They stepped over the bodies on the street to reach the sidewalk in front of the building when the clock tower's bell tolled again and the sky turned red.

Grim's authority was disrupted for a split second before it slammed back into reality, but in the second the eye had gotten a grip onto Natale and yanked, nearly ripping Grim's shoulder out of the socket. Her authority fought back with chain and steel, it's teeth digging deep into reality. The pressure on her shoulder relented as her footing and grip became immutable. Somehow, in the aftermath, Natalie was still being tugged from her grasp. Her feet started to slide when Grim slammed more aura into her authority.

Golden strings extended from her back and forearm, wrapped themselves around her body and up her arm until it's covered Natalies as well. Other strings emerged from her back and fell to the ground, holding onto the ground and releasing as she walked. The strings snapped and stretched as she held on, golden light flaring as Grim fought to hold on. The entity had forced a hole into her aura and hadn't been forced out yet. It was another tug of war that Grim knew she would lose.

Not because it would ever force Natalie from her grasp while her authority was active, but because her aura would run out long before the entity would stop. More threads snapped, and Grim stopped holding back her aura. She felt the rest of the people in it freeze from the grasp she had on all of them. She no longer had the luxury of adjusting her strength. It was all or nothing, and she had plenty more to give.

The golden threads coming out of her body multiplied and twisted themselves into spiral links before solidifying with more mass into chains. They sprouted from her back and dragged along the concrete, the metal screeching into the air. The pull on Natalie didn't lessen, but she would not be taken from her. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

When Grim felt like she'd reached a balance with her authority, she forced everyone to march towards the building. Before they'd been able to walk under their own power, but now her aura was too heavy a weight for them to bear. Each step was meticulous and weighted as if each footfall was written in stone, those with her were forced to trudge along. Her aura's edge grazed the tip of the door when she heard one of her chains snap.

The ticking of a clock that had been present but not heard until now rang in Grim's ears. Another chain snapped, and Natalie tried to scream, but Grim's hold on her was so tight Grim doubted she could breathe. MINE. A massive pulse slammed into her authority and shattered every golden chain she had left but the one wrapping their hands together.

"No," Grim said, with the last big push from her aura she'd be able to manage." [CEDE]." She'd spent months training her aura control, and what was authority but aura made manifest? Controlling her aura wasn't too difficult for her; she just didn't have the stamina to keep all of it contained. Her authority was solid and separate from her, but it was still hers, which was all [CEDE] needed.

Boons were just pre-packaged abilities that were fueled by aura, and so if she managed her thinking right, everything was just one big Boon.

She grabbed hold of her authority and held it together with [CEDE] just long enough for another footstep. Maya and the stranger slammed through the doorway just as the tattered pieces of her authority began to slip away. Cracks formed in the hold she had from her Boon until another burst of energy shattered what little control she had left. It was enough. The two of them slammed into the floor of the building, safely inside its walls and out of the vision of the Clocktower eye.

A rage filled the air, practically shrieking in belligerence at its prey having escaped. Grim felt it even inside the building, out of its view. Even though it could project its aura far enough inside, it didn't seem capable of affecting things outside of its vision. The bells tolled, and that rage disappeared with the echoes of the massive bell on top of the clock tower, its power receding. Grim felt it but didn't move from her spot on the floor.

There was a layer of dust that coated the floor, and she was trying her best not to breathe it in, but she could barely spare the effort to do that. She could hear the others in the room breathing, but they didn't say anything, Natalie was loudest of all, her breath shaky as if she was trying not to cry and doing a poor job of it. A gun racked a couple of feet away from her, and she shot up, momentarily ignoring the agony she was in.

She almost fell over but instead transitioned into a one-legged kneel, ready to move if she had to.

"I've got a. 45 calibre pistol aimed at your head right now with a C-rank round in it right now. No sudden moves," a man said. He was tall and built incredibly lean with black medium-length hair that fell down onto his face. There was a thin sheen of sweat covering him, but otherwise he seemed perfectly calm. He was wearing an armoured vest with no shirt underneath, except for bandages covering the entirety of his hands.

Behind him were two women and two men, who all seemed equal measures of exhausted, bloody and wounded. Grim sheathed her knife, having unconsciously grabbed it.

"Is this really necessary?"

"Come on, they can't be those... those things! They've got no flowers on the tops of their heads," one woman on his side said. She was blonde and dressed lightly in denim shorts and a tank top. Was the woman dressed as if she were going for a Sunday stroll really the voice of reason for this group?

"We don't know that. We don't know how any of this works. What we do know is that we saw them come into contact with the clock tower."

"You're not really going to shoot us, right?" Natalie asked, her hands wide in the air.

"Depends."

"Hey Grim! Do you think me or a bullet is faster?" Maya asked. Grim glared at her.

"I'm not answering that."

"No, actually, please do," the man said. One of the other men spoke up from behind him. He looked frail and malnourished, as if he'd been picked up off the side of the road.

"Don't get him started, please. He's been like this all day."

"Listen, we're not sick or turning into one of those things, so put your fucking gun down, please. I've had a long day." His gun leaned from side to side, the man allegedly debating her points, "That's fine, but we still can't trust you. We all felt the clock tower speak, and if it wanted you or your friend, that means you might bring trouble onto us."

"So what? You want us to leave?" He shrugged, "That would be the healthiest option." Grim seethed in exhaustion, "I'm not about to head back out there with two wounded and the chance of that thing coming back. We barely made it out of there in the first place." The second woman stood up, she was unharmed with long black hair that hung down past her shoulders. She was paler than the other kid and was only wearing a black dress.

She didn't speak on account of the stitches that held her mouth sewn shut, but she placed her long, slender fingers on the barrel of the pistol and lowered it slightly.

"Are you sure?" The man asked. The woman paused for a second, her eyes flashing with the haze of a boon. She nodded.