The Portal
Zahra & Ilham
It was pride that turned angels into devils
It was the sudden chill through her core which pulled the fallen girl from tense slumber. Even the potent strength of her exhaustion could barely stand firm against the leering, looming presence of cold, white, burning, eyes. Their sinister, constant glare was stark and eerie against the slippery, slithering shadow of this neon-coloured underworld; though unlike their hungry, blackened host, they never seemed to come closer. Subconsciously unnerved, Zahra’s skin quivered, flinched and prickled as the presence of the rift curled in nearer. Its desire for magic was insatiable, tempted once again, perhaps, by the thrum of the winged’s enchanted veins.
Golden blood surged below that taut, yellow-dusted canvas like broiling, bubbling stew, venting otherworldly fragrance through waterlogged pores in the form of randomly spawned insects.
An ant, a beetle, a fly…
Like tendrils of thick, smothering smoke, the shadows licked wickedly at her slumped ebon hooves - tasting, testing - yet as she lifted her aching, skull into the air, they recoiled and split clean around her, repelled. It was neither the first, nor second time that Zahra had witnessed their hunt, and though her legs slipped quickly beneath the quickened pound in her chest, there was only very small concern strung through the expression. With a forward focused heave and trembling limbs she ascended from the soggy earth, and - though she had been sheltering beneath a bridge of vine - water poured down the contours of her lean frame. She was cold, bitterly so, after days spent soaked through to the bone.
‘Ilham?’
Their bond had grown deathly silent.
The huge weight of loss only served to fuel the fire of depression as it snaked through her resolve, to conquer and command. So alone and forlorn did Zahra feel, that there wasn’t a single waking second within which the prospect of death didn’t appeal. She drew a long breath, wings sinking to the soggy surface of the strange earth and willed the wicked wrath of those ravenous shadows in to claim her.
Not even the cold, devouring breath would gift her death.
Hunched like a waterless sapling, hopeless and tired, she’d failed to notice the arrival of another nearby; it was he who the darkness watched this time, he who those intangible fangs worked now quickly to engulf. Sombre eyes rise to the bait of those flicking, darting movements, and at last the winged man falls beneath the fraying skirt of her awareness. The demise of this one’s power was hardly as spectacular as the glow-lights which had assumed place upon the ugly head of the giant prior; she watched quietly across the way until the shadows began to receed, and then turned to leave, before he’d have a chance to notice.
