Our teams are already doing everything they can, Roy," Emily grumbled. "We've secured the area and our forward team has managed to secure the school. Until reinforcements from Boston and the National Guard arrive, it's the best we can do."
"Sorry, Emily," he sighed. "I guess we're all a bit on edge here too. I'll see if the BBPD and BBFD can send more resources your way. The gangs have been quiet so far but we don't know how long that will last."
"We reached out through some of our … special channels. The major gangs have agreed to a truce until the end of the operation." She hated this but they needed as many resources as they could.
"I see …" Roy trailed off. "I assume this is unusual?"
"This entire day has been," she shrugged, "what's one more thing?"
"Agreed. Good luck, Emily."
"Thanks, Roy."
She put the phone down and sat up from her desk. Emily walked up to the window and stared into the distance, at the rig in the middle of the bay and the ocean that stretched to the horizon. High above, the sun shone through the light cloud cover. If the anomaly had not happened, it would have been a mild winter day like all the others.
"Director," her deputy entered her office.
"Renick," she greeted him curtly. "What do you have for me?"
"Nothing new since last time," he said.
At least this anomaly was not too dangerous for those outside. None of the creatures the advance team had encountered had tried to leave, some wildlife had but they appeared to be mundane animals, not power constructs. The weather had also stayed contained. If the heavy winter storm had spilled out and started to cover the bay, it would have made their job ten times harder.
Her phone rang again.
Taylor sat next to the fire as she mentally examined the five new shards she had just acquired. Each time she had absorbed another shard, it had been less and less painful, until her body had gotten used to the process and the last had felt like nothing more than a small prick of her finger.
The effect of the yellow shard, the first she had absorbed, was the least interesting: it improved her strength and dexterity by a small amount. One of its advantages, however, was that it didn't need to be "active" to work. She could only have one third of her shards active at once and it took a few seconds to switch.
There had been four other shards in the display case, each of a different color. The red one contained an actual power, the ability to create and throw knives made of a blue crystal. The projectiles traveled in a perfectly straight line, which made aiming easier, and burst into fragments if they hit something hard like a wall. The purple shard allowed her to shoot guided bolts of purple energy from her hand. When those hit the stone wall, they left a small black scorch mark, and Taylor had the feeling they were magic in some way.
The blue shard, when enabled, created an almost invisible barrier around her that could take a few blows before needing to recharge for a few seconds. Taylor could also use up some of her mana to create a much stronger, directional force-field. Finally, the grey shard allowed Taylor to dash a short distance. This one had landed in its own cluster and didn't seem to behave the same way as the others. It simply sat there, she could turn the ability on or off, but she knew it couldn't be improved like the others.
Speaking of improvements, after some poking and prodding around in her mental landscape, her power had finally provided her with more information on how it worked. Taylor had already figured some things out through trial and error as well as the book on shardbinders but it was nice to have a more complete picture.
The last thing she had been missing, the last piece to complete the puzzle of her power, had been the function of the energy motes. She'd had some theories but her power had confirmed them. The motes could be used for an array of things, more than she had expected. Not only could they be used to improve shards in various ways, they could also be used to create them as the book speculated. Other functions included the ability to improve objects - like her sword and clothes - and bind shards to them, and even improve the power itself which would increase the number of shards she could wield at once.
It was overwhelming, all of the possibilities.
Another thing she had managed to confirm by finding the right tome was the other half of her power, the one that wasn't explained by being a shardbinder. She had been turned into a vampire, the classic "ruler of the night" kind not the "lame and sparkly" kind. Specifically, her ability to collect demonic souls marked her as a true vampire, more demon than human, and in the very dangerouscategory. At least that was what the book said.
So far, she hadn't felt all that mighty.
Taylor sighed.
As much as she wanted to stay in the library for a little longer, read more of the fascinating tomes, learn the secrets of magic, and fiddle with her abilities, she had to leave and find her way out, reunite with her father before he tried something ill-advised.
"If only I could take it … with … me …" Taylor trailed off.
But maybe she could.
After all, she could create new shards.
Taylor drummed her fingers on the table and looked inward. She hadn't tried to use motes so far but that was an interesting use case for them. Her first idea had been a power that allowed her to store objects in a pocket dimension, something that was very often present in fantasy, but another idea came to her as well. She could create a shard that would allow her to "seal" the library, making it inaccessible for anyone but her, and pull books straight from the shelves.
It would also deny the library to whoever was here, if they were still alive and not a corpse in the lower level, and safeguard it against outside interference, like the PRT. They were bound to ask questions when she finally reappeared and if they found this place, the contents would probably end up in some government warehouse, never to see the light of day again. As a book lover and scholar she found that idea extremely offensive.
"I could make both," she tapped her chin, "the pocket space to carry things and the seal to take care of the library."
She had enough space and charges for both after all.
Taylor closed her eyes and delved deeper into her mental landscape. She took hold of a mote and envisioned what she wanted, a shard that would allow her to store things inside a pocket dimension. Slowly, she shaped the mote into something solid with the help of her power. It crystallized into a mostly yellow shard with blue and red veins running through it.
She grabbed a trinket from a shelf, no reason to risk her only weapon for a test, and pulsed the shard. The metal contraption disappeared from her hand with a strange ripple. Fenrir stood up and sniffed at her hand with curiosity. She scratched him behind the ears and she examined the shard in her mindscape. She mentally asked it for the contents of the pocket dimension and it replied with a list that had a single item, the clockwork thing. She pulsed the shard again, with the intent to retrieve the object she had just stored, and the trinket reappeared with another distortion.
That's one down, Taylor smiled.
Confident that she wouldn't lose whatever she put away, she stored her stack of books on sorcery and sword into the pocket space. It was time to leave. To test the other shard, she would need to be outside the library.
She clicked her tongue and Fenrir followed her without protests. Once outside, she made sure the hallways were safe before she delved into her shard-space again. Taylor took hold of another mote and shaped it like the previous one. Half-way through, she encountered some resistance. What she wanted to do was too much for a single mote. So she added another and the shard crystallized in place.
Taylor placed her hand on the library door and willed the shard to seal the room. She felt a rush of energy leave her as a massive spell glyph appeared on the door. Glowing chains grew to encompass the door and she felt the shard click into place. When she took a step out of the short hallway that led to the library, the limestone brick wall looked uninterrupted.
To test the other function, Taylor "checked out" the book on shardbinders. Again, it left her out of breath from the rush of energy, but the tome was in her hands. She sent it back, which put less strain on her, since she had already read it.
"Let's find the exit now," Taylor patted Fenrir, "I'm sick of masonry, I want to see the sky and hug my dad."
Fenrir let out an enthusiastic bark.
"What do you mean you don't know who is missing?" Hannah Washington blinked in confusion.
"Some students frequently skip class," the teacher, Christian Gladly, explained. "Some students have been helping Gladys figure out who went missing after the … incident but we don't have access to the roll calls for today or the student directory. They were with the principal but …"
Hannah rubbed her brow out of frustration.
"She is missing too?"
"Several of the admin staff," Gladly slumped down.
"I'll go ask … Gladys, was it?"
"Yes, Gladys Knott," Gladly nodded, "she's over there," he pointed at a blonde woman surrounded by several students.
"Thank you," Hannah smiled under her mask.
She approached the group and they all turned towards her.
"Your colleague said you were trying to figure out who's missing?"
"Yes," Knott nodded, "do you plan to send out search parties?"
"Soon," Hannah replied, "once the gymnasium is secured. I will head out with a squad of troopers while Aegis guards the fort."
"Do you know who we're looking for?" She continued.
"We have only a few confirmed cases," Knott said. "According to their respective friends, Taylor Hebert and Madison Clements were confirmed to have been at school shortly before the incident but are nowhere to be found."
She looked down at her clipboard. "We confirmed that thirty six out of the fifty-three missing students were playing hooky thanks to their friends", Knott continued, "but we still have fifteen students that were seen by their classmates during the last period before the incident whose whereabouts are unknown."
"The incident happened between periods which makes it harder than usual," Knott added. "Some might be trapped in bathrooms or somewhere else in the building. We found a group in the changing rooms in the basement but Lauren, the assistant principal, didn't want to send out search parties before help got here, too dangerous."
"It was a good decision," Hannah reassured her.
"I hope you can find them …" Knott clutched her clipboard close to her chest.
"We'll do everything in our power to bring them back."
The crystal knife hit the zombie right in the chest and made it stagger for a second. Taylor stepped around its brethren, who were trying to gut her, and lopped both of their heads clean off. She turned around and fired three daggers at the zombie Fenrir was currently in the process of dismembering. They slammed into its head and finished off the poor monster.
As usual, Taylor walked around the room and absorbed the souls and shard fragments from the bodies. This time, however, something new happened. One, she gained the blueprint for the zombie's shard, which would improve her stamina and resistance to toxins, and two she finally filled up the next mote completely.
"Oh, that's interesting," she smiled.
She knew that, in theory, a completed shard could form when she killed something, but she hadn't known that she was slowly building up to the blueprint as well. It had taken around thirty zombies to get there and the shard didn't look half bad. Since she had just gained a shard, Taylor used it to crystallize the blueprint. She felt a rush of energy, as if she had just downed a triple espresso shot, without the awful taste.
"Not bad," she nodded. "I could get used to this."
The junction she was in only had a single door that led to "WORKSHOP 19." Taylor cautiously opened the door, on the lookout for any suspicious piles of rocks, but this one was clear. She had found two more rooms with guardian golems so far, she had left those alone. The room had two workbenches along the far wall, separated by a shelf filled with spare parts, and surrounded by machines on their own tables.
At first glance, there didn't seem to be anything interesting, but then she saw the weapon on the left bench. It was some kind of whip, the handle had a similar style as her sword, and the flexible was a verdant green with small thorns like the ones from a rose along the side. At the end was a solid three-pointed spike.
Taylor wasn't sure how useful it would be as a weapon, At her current skill level, she was more liable to hurt herself than an enemy, but it might come in handy if she needed to swing over a chasm like Indiana Jones. She gave it a few tentative flicks and it didn't seem as hard as she thought. Maybe she could practice on some zombies until she got the hang of it? She stowed the whip away into her storage space and left the workshop.
After many twists and turns, and more zombies, Taylor found another staircase. Unlike the previous one, this staircase stopped at multiple levels. The room was square, maybe twenty feet on each side, with the stone stairs alternating between left and right at each landing.
It was also where she met her nemesis, fucking bats! Three of them flew from their inverted perch under a flight of stairs and dive-bombed her. They were quick and their sharp talons dug into her flesh before she turned on her defensive shard. They were also huge, closer to the size of a house cat than a mouse. Fenrir jumped and managed to snag one from the air while Taylor flailed around, disoriented and confused by the sudden attack.
This close, her offensive shards were useless. She had the presence of mind to dash away, which gave her a momentary reprieve, but the bats were already on her tail. One fell to a well-aimed crystal knife, they weren't that tough, and Taylor grabbed the other when it came into range. The bat clawed at her and she finished it off with another point-blank range crystal knife.
It felt really good to absorb their souls and shard fragments.
"Stupid bats …" Taylor let out a huff of frustration.
She looked up and, of course, there were more on the upper levels, barely visible in the shadows. So far, this was the only way up Taylor had found, and it also seemed to be the only way out she'd found after hours, so she wasn't exactly drowning in options.
Fenrir took the lead and Taylor carefully climbed the stairs behind him. Now that she knew what to look for, she spotted the next group of bats before they noticed her, and easily dispatched them with some magic bolts before they reached her.
The second floor landing was more or less the same as the first, a banded wooden door set in an arched frame, iron sconces on the walls, and not much more. Taylor slowly pushed the door open, her objective was to leave but it was still a good idea to at least check what was behind the door on every floor, just in case there was something different.
After a quick check of the first intersection, Taylor confirmed it was only more workshops, so she continued to climb the stairs. The third floor was also more of the same. There was one part of her that screamed that every monster she killed made her stronger, that every floor was an opportunity to grow, but she quashed it, she wanted to leave this place and see her father.
On the next landing, which was between the third and fourth floor, on the opposite side of the stairwell, Taylor found something unexpected. Behind the door was not, as she had expected, more hallways and rooms, but a small chapel.
It was around thirty feet on each side, lit by the orange glow of the candles dotted around the room. At the back was a white marble statue of an angel wearing a short toga, her hand spread in a welcoming gesture. A small water basin stood in front of the pedestal and stone benches were placed in little alcoves along the sides. The smooth stone floor was decorated with detailed circular motifs that reminded Taylor of the library.
She was hesitant to step inside. If she really was a vampire then she probably wasn't welcome in the house of god. Fenrir had no such thoughts and slipped past her and into the chapel. He didn't immediately burst into flames, which gave her some confidence. Her wolf companion sat in front of the basin and lowered his head as if he was praying.
Taylor put her sword away, it wasn't polite to bring weapons into a place of worship, and took a few steps into the room. As soon as she crossed the threshold, it felt like she was back in her mother's embrace, a feeling of warmth and safety, the assurance that everything would be fine, that this place was safe.
She knelt in front of the statue and clasped her hands together. She had never been religious but, at that moment, it felt right to thank the guardian of this place with a prayer. When she was done, she sat on one of the benches. It was time for a break, she had been exploring the laboratory and fighting zombies for several hours. Even if her body seemed to have inexhaustible stamina, her mind needed some time to rest.
"Clear," Jenkins said as he swept the room with his rifle.
The rest of the squad, Eagle, Hound, Venus, Robin, and Miss Militia, who sometimes also went by the call sign Patriot, filed in behind him. They were in the basement of the school, past the changing rooms. No student should have ventured here but Jenkins knew kids, they loved to be in places they shouldn't be.
The hallway looked straight out of a horror movie, plain concrete walls, exposed wires, barely functional lighting. So far, they had found diddly squat, no lost students hiding behind a shelf full of cleaning supplies, and no creepy crawlies waiting to ambush them.
"Up next to the left is the old boiler room," Miss M said, "it's supposed to be locked at all times."
She added the second part because the door was not, in fact, closed, much less locked. It looked like they had finally found something fishy. When they approached, very carefully, they found out the door had actually been torn off its hinges.
"Stay sharp," Jenkins ordered.
The tight beam of his flashlight roamed the pitch black room.
"Here!" Venus shouted.
Her light was pointed directly as a massive fucking hole in the concrete floor. It looked like it had collapsed into a sinkhole. Jenkins had seen it happen a few times in his youth but with stretches of road built in the wrong place. He could hear the faint sound of running water coming up through the hole.
"Robin, Eagle, cover the hallway," he ordered, "Hound, Venus, Patriot, with me. We back off at the first sign of instability."
His squadmates moved into position and they carefully approached the gaping hole in the floor. On closer examination, one side had collapsed into a ramp that led down. He aimed his flashlight at the bottom and frowned when he saw what looked like stone bricks. This wasn't a sinkhole, the floor had collapsed into some kind of underground sewer or water system.
"That's … a sewer?" Miss M asked.
"Looks like it," Venus said.
"Or an aqueduct," Hound added, "doesn't smell like sewer."
"Think some students got dragged through here?" Robin asked from his position at the door.
"Hopefully not," Jenkins grimaced. "We can't go in there right now," he sighed, "too dangerous." They weren't equipped for this kind of mission. "We seal the entrance with foam to prevent anything else from coming up and wait for reinforcements," he continued.
Taylor closed the Art of Sorcery and stored it back in her pocket space, break time was over. Magic was a fascinating field of study and the deeper she delved, the more interested she became. For the time being, the grimoire was more heavy on theory than practice, but she didn't mind, a good foundation was important when bending the laws of reality into a pretzel.
She left the small chapel with Fenrir on her heels and continued up the next flight of stairs. There were more bats hidden in the shadows and she dispatched them with one of the new spells she had learned: fire bolt. It was roughly the same strength as her magic bolt shard, with less damage up front and no guidance in exchange for an explosion that set things on fire.
Charred bat was on the menu and it smelled … like victory.
They reached the fourth floor, which took twice as many stairs as the previous levels, with no trouble and Taylor pushed the heavy wooden door open. The room beyond had a different style than the other floors, the bricks that lined the wall were more precisely cut and made of a different material, the sconces on the wall were more elaborate, and the ceiling had gothic-style pointed arches rather than the simpler round arches of the laboratory complex.
The atmosphere was also different, colder, more sterile.
Taylor gathered her courage and stepped into the hexagonal room. She didn't spot any zombies shuffling about nor any bats hidden in the rafters. It was as empty as it felt. Neither of them let their guards down, however.
The room had two exits, one immediately to the right of the door she had entered through, which led to another staircase that spiraled upward, and another on the opposite side of the room, which appeared to lead to some kind of underground sewer or canal. She took a quick look into the waterway, which was only very sparsely lit, but there were no obvious signs of an exit. As a last resort, she would follow the water to the source, but the stairs were much more promising.
Dodge! Her sixth sense warned her. Taylor dashed back and three crescents of energy flew through where she'd been half a second previously. Another!She felt another attack coming and rolled to the side. Three more blades of energy sliced through the air a few inches from her.
She found her opponents near the ceiling, two small demon-like creatures with red skin, flapping their tiny bat-like wings to keep aloft. They let out a high pitched cackle and blades of white energy began to spin around them.
Taylor didn't hesitate and fired a volley of magic bolts at them. At the same time, she also raised her magic shield to intercept the attacks. Fenrir, who couldn't jump high enough to snatch the tiny devils out of the air, growled at them. The first devil took a faceful of projectiles and was sent tumbling through the air but the second managed to finish charging his attack and dodge the missiles headed his way.
The spinning blades of energy splashed against her shield, the first was stopped but the second shattered the barrier which allowed the third to slip through and open a large gash on her right arm. Taylor hissed in pain but didn't let up on her assault and fired more magic bolts at the flying devils while on the move. She had learned to keep her focus when injured while fighting the zombies. As long as she survived, she could recover from the wound.
The first imp fell to her barrage but not before it clipped her leg with another energy blade. Taylor tumbled to the ground and she was forced to use her barrier to stop the two blades headed for her head at the cost of another opening a gash on her stomach. With only one imp left, however, it could not stagger its attacks which gave Taylor the opening she needed to finish it.
"Ah, fuck, it hurts," she groaned as she clutched her stomach.
Taylor dragged herself towards the two devil corpses and absorbed their souls and shards into herself. The pain stopped and her wounds slowly closed as the energy flowed through her body. Fenrir paced at her side, his ears flat against his head, and he let out a few plaintive whines as she ruffled his fur.
"That was too close …" she said.
One good thing was that the quality of the souls and shards she received was better than the zombies and bats, she had gained a quarter of a shard from the two imps and the souls felt much weightier inside her.
It took about a minute for Taylor to recover from the fight. Once she was back on her feet, she took a peek in the staircase and made sure there wouldn't be more of the little red devils hidden somewhere. She still wasn't sure how she hadn't spotted them unless … they had been hiding in the stairs. Taylor would need to be more careful in the future.
Madison Clements woke up shivering. She was somewhere with barely any light, even with her eyes wide open, she couldn't see much of anything. She could feel a cold stone floor under her.
Where am I?
She tried to move but her arms felt heavy. There was the sound of metal, a chain. Madison felt something cold on her wrists.
What happened?
She remembered the prank this morning. Then … then she had asked where Taylor was, Madison hadn't seen her during first period. Sophia had laughed. Told that her and Emma had dragged Taylor out of the shower, still naked, and locked her in the old boiler room. Emma had shown her the pictures.
Madison had protested that it was too far. Filling her locker with trash and shoving Taylor's head in there had been Emma's idea. Everyone had laughed and that should have been it. Then they could have made fun of Taylor for smelling bad for a while. Locking her in the basement had not been part of the plan. What if she got hurt?
She had wanted to tell a teacher but Sophia had grabbed her by the collar of her blouse and threatened Madison. If she tattled, she was dead meat. Emma had handed her the key they had stolen from the janitor and told Madison to free Taylor herself.
It was exactly what she'd set out to do.
She had known the way there from the time Julia had dared her to walk to the end of the corridor with the lights out. It had been creepy as hell even with the lights on. Once she'd reached the door, however, the ground had shook violently and …
Madison had probably hit her head on something and passed out.
Her heart hammered in her chest. She wasn't in the school basement anymore. Someone or … something had dragged her out of there and … and … The thing on her wrists were handcuffs, the big bulky kind they used in fantasy movies. And they were attached to a chain that led to the wall.
She dragged herself to the corner of her cell and curled into a ball.
Another long flight of stairs later, Taylor landed in another empty hallway around sixty feet long. One side was a dead end and the other had yet another reinforced wooden door. When she opened it, Taylor found herself in yet another hallway but this one had rougher stone brick walls and was lined with prison cells on both sides.
It was also patrolled by a new type of monster: skeletons. They were dressed, if it could be called that, in tattered brown armor that was probably some kind of leather and held a variety of weapons. Three had curved swords, four had maces, and two had bows.
It was a lot of enemies but, if she took care of the ones with bows first, she could use her dash to make some distance when necessary, and Fenrir would be able to fight too which evened the odds even more. She also had the element of surprise, the door was set inside of a small alcove which allowed Taylor to observe without being seen.
"You go for the closest one while I take down the archers," she whispered to the wolf.
Taylor took a step out of the alcove and fired several magic bolts from one hand, aimed at the closest archer, while she focused on casting the frost blast spell from her other hand and also fed mana to her magic shield shard. It was taxing on her mind but Fenrir played his part and tackled the closest skeleton to the ground.
Her first volley of purple bolts, eight of them, hit their intended target and the skeleton archer crumbled to the floor into a pile of bones. With her focus fully on the frost blast, she hit the second archer and the chilling effect slowed it down as it brought its bow up to shoot. The four magic bolts she followed up with took it down as well.
Taylor dashed to the side as one of the sword-wielding skeletons brought down its weapon. She pulled her own sword from her storage space and swung down at the monster. Sparks flew as the skeleton parried her strike with its own sword. Taylor was surprised for a brief instant. In retrospect, it made sense that the skeletons would know how to use their weapons.
She took a few steps back to avoid the follow up swipe from the skeleton, where it was her turn to hastily parry the blade, and followed it up with a frost blast from point blank range. Her opponent staggered and, slowed down by the magic, failed to react to her next attack. Taylor stabbed her sword straight through the skeleton's skull and used the momentum to snap its neck.
During that time, Fenrir had crushed two skeletons with his powerful jaws, which left five more undead, two more with swords, and two with maces. Taylor dashed back to dodge a mace headed for her skull and used the combo of frost and magic bolts to harass and slow down the skeletons until Fenrir jumped them. And just like that, the battle was over and she stood over a pile of bones, souls, and shards.
"Want a souvenir?" She picked up a bone from the ground and waggled it at her wolf friend.
Taylor wandered the prison and dispatched several more groups of its undead wardens for what felt like hours, but was realistically only forty minutes at best, until she managed to find the way out. It made sense to build a prison like a maze to make it harder for the prisoners to escape but that didn't mean she wasn't ready to strangle whoever built the place for making her go through this.
The final chamber of the prison complex was an octagonal room around thirty feet across with a set of stairs on the other side. Between her and the exit stood three demons. Two looked similar to the devils she had fought earlier, one was a blue-skinned imp that held a tiny trident, and other was a green-skinned imp with a lantern that contained a glowing white sphere.
The last one was several inches taller than Taylor with pale purple skin and the head of a goat, curly horns and creepy eyes with square pupils. It didn't have any weapons, which meant it either used magic, or hit really hard with its sharp claws.
Knowing her luck so far, it was both.
It was also the first monster that hadn't attacked on sight. The two imps had cackled but the large demon had raised a hand and stopped them. Fenrir growled at the trio and Taylor stayed on her guard. She walked a few paces to the side, around the large demon, and it did the same in the other direction. They circled around each-other with slow deliberate steps, waiting to see who would blink first.
She knew in her gut it wouldn't just let her walk up the stairs.
It wanted to take her measure before the fight.
At the same time, as if an invisible bell had rung, both Taylor and the demon fired their opening salvo. She launched eight magic bolts at the imps and raised her shield at full strength while the demon conjured four fireballs and sent them straight at her.
The air was filled with fire and Fenrir yelped in pain. The bright light blinded her and it was all the demon needed. When she opened her eyes, it was right in front of her and its claw smashed right through her barrier like it was wet tissue paper. Taylor was sent tumbling to the ground and her sword was sent flying away.
She barely managed to roll to her knees and raise another barrier before the demon sent more fireballs her way. The two imps rushed at Fenrir and harried him with their respective weapons as he tried to snatch them out of the air. Her second barrier held up as well as the first and the demon opened a large gash in her right arm as she rolled out of the way.
The demon followed its attack with a kick that sent Taylor flying across the room. She slammed against the wall and felt several bones break. The pain was worse than anything she'd felt so far but her opponent wasn't done with her. When she looked up, she saw the fireball, then she knew how it felt to be burned alive.
She screamed.
The fire disappeared in time for Taylor to see Fenrir vanish into a cloud of black smoke, the two imps floating in the air above him. She reached a hand out for him, it turned into black smoke.
She blacked out.