Scarlet stared across the table at the lime-green-eyed woman that had plagued her nightmares, the cracking glass to her left sending goosebumps up her arms as the raging hurricane beat against the tiny house. A new fissure ran horizontally along the wide glass wall, the scarlet lightning and continual blood rain tightening the band around her chest.
“I said I’m listening!” she barked, studying the calm, collected blonde. Dark stains from the hot chocolate she’d thrown at the woman marked her blue dress, yet she now looked totally composed while sipping at her cup. “Do you want me to say I’m sorry? Because I’m not! Didn’t you say everyone was in danger?! So talk!”
Twilight’s gaze wasn’t on her, though; her study was on the murky liquid in her steaming cup as the edge fell from her lips. “Mmm. Sweet things are best savored in their moment due to their fleeting nature. There is always time to draw strength from the little things…the good things.”
“What are you…”
Scarlet’s words died in her throat as she blinked, and now the chairs and table between them were in a dim forest. Seen through the sparse trees, twilight fell in the distance. Lights swirled around them: fireflies, dancing in mesmerizing patterns.
“This is…”
Rising to her feet, Twilight drew her attention again, the stains on her dress gone as she directed her to stand. “Come. Let’s walk and reflect.”
Unsure what the blonde was up to, she hesitantly complied. A hand gripped her guarded heart as familiar, laughing voices pricked it to allow blood to run out.
“Don’t run too far away, Scarlet!”
“Oh, don’t be too restrictive, dear. She needs to explore.”
“Mom! Dad! They’re following me! Look, look!”
Scarlet’s lungs seized as a little girl ran right through their table like a ghost—an 8-year-old Scarlet—causing it to drift away like smoke. Her worried father and amused mother chased after her, jogging toward an open field where countless glowing bugs played, giving them a dazzling view.
“Why…” she whispered, feeling sick to her stomach as Twilight let her cup vanish and followed the trio. “Why are we here?”
“Your trip to the Great Smoky Mountains?” the blonde asked, guiding them to the clearing, where her mother prepared the picnic while her father kept a close eye on her. “Just because you are in the Blood Sea, doesn’t mean it is all death and agony, Scarlet. You need to learn what the Blood Sea is…the grand truth of its importance…to everything.”
Twilight lifted her eyes to the blinking cyclone of fireflies dancing in the dying sunlight, and, for the first time since changing, she thought she felt the warmth of its rays. Gradually, her turbulent stomach unknotted while listening to her dad fuss over her and her mother’s assurances that she would be fine—the memories were flooding back.
Next, images of all the places around the world she’d traveled filtered into focus, scene after scene of all the wondrous places her parents had taken her. Yet, it wasn’t them doing their cultist stuff, but the days they’d spent with her, exploring and making memories.
The chill of the Arctic didn’t touch Scarlet as her parents sat next to her on a boat in the far north. Bundled in warm clothing, she looked at her 12-year-old self as the stunning vista of an aurora borealis weaved across the heavens.
After a time, Twilight motioned for her to return to the sofa she’d been sitting on. The woman took the armchair that materialized behind her, and the blonde’s calm voice held a note that made Scarlet want to cry.
“You had a good life, Scarlet…despite the loneliness you sometimes felt…that I couldn’t fill as your parents had hoped. Your mother may seem like a monster…as you believed your father had been, but it is important to understand that there is always light in darkness and darkness in light…The twilight is where light and dark meet.”
She turned toward the cracked window, the terrifying blood storm with its crimson lighting and ruby hail. Now that she was calmer, a question did bubble up within Scarlet’s heart.
“Twilight…what is…this?”
The blonde’s serene eyes drifted across the expanse with its vast cyclones and whirlpools. “This…is you, Scarlet. All of this is your soul. Your inner world… You are the Red Sea, and the Red Sea is thousands of…something—I can’t tell you because I can’t comprehend it, but what I can say is that it is something wrapped up in a maelstrom of unbelievable power.”
Scarlet’s eyes widened as Twilight lifted a hand, showing numerous ultra-dense spheres pulled into a vast red whirlpool; they were funneled toward a black star as the woman’s hypnotic voice drew her in.
“The scale is beyond your or my understanding…innumerable creatures, and you have them within your gravitational pull. You safeguard them all from dozens of factions and titanic entities that go beyond all reason…and that is the barrier you maintain—the thing segregating the dimensional fields…is you, Scarlet.”
Shadowy figures moved within its ruby waters, and through whatever Twilight was doing, she could sense the scale of power, and it was enormous. Beings like the 7th-dimensional deities they were dealing with right now were microscopic to the colossal figures clawing their way to get through her walls to reach the lower dimensions—to reach her.
“I’m…in the center. Our Earth…is the center of everything?”
Twilight’s golden locks weaved against her shoulder as she shook her head, spreading her fingers and drawing her attention to the truly terrifying, shapeless horrors circling just outside the maelstrom of something. They spread their roots and creations inside its pull, weak enough to slip past the shells and strengthen their masters’ hold—to reach her. It wasn’t just one faction, but many from places beyond their understanding.
“Not your Earth, Scarlet…you are the center of everything. You are The Keeper, or so I’ve dubbed,” the blonde proudly boasted. “The Reaper gathered the grain of the field to protect it from the bandits that sought to consume them…and stole something precious from each to build her fortress. You’ve bought yourself time for…something. Again, I can only see so far.”
“The Reaper? No…no, that’s the thing inside me,” she protested, hand rising to grip her chest and feel her fingernails bite into her flesh. “Scarlet infected me! I…can’t be the real villain; Scarlet…”
Twilight’s eyes softened. “Who said anything about her being a villain, Scarlet? You are sealed, yet that does not mean you are a totally different person.”
A lump formed in Scarlet’s throat as the cracks in the glass spiderwebbed again, inching further toward the wall and ceiling. “No. No, I feel her…she’s…”
“Powerful?” Twilight asked with a short chuckle. “She must be if she managed to create the maelstrom. Competent? She stole and tricked beings on an Outerversal level—whatever that means—so, again, she must be…”
“Cruel!” Scarlet hissed, sensing the miasma creeping up within her, yet she could feel the blonde’s words ring true in every fiber of her being. “A bringer of fear and despair…”
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
“To her enemies, yes,” Twilight nodded with a thoughtful gleam in her green eyes. “There is kindness not discussed in cruelty. To be respected, one must garner a certain amount of cruelty for one’s enemies to respect you… Wouldn’t Rachel agree?
“You may be the most benevolent and kind person there is—a pure soul—yet without power, who can you protect, or what can you accomplish? A leader must act, and cruelty must be exacted to safekeep those one wishes to keep from harm. Safety and security above ignorant benevolence. One’s friends and enemies must be terrified to betray you.”
Scarlet got to her feet, feeling cold rather than panicked, and walked to the window to stare out across the turbulent waves. Everything Twilight said rang true within her; she knew Rachel would agree. Her new sister—that’d still take some getting used to—was gathering power and people she trusted to support her, yet just thinking about Rachel as an enemy put a quake through her.
Rachel was kind and understanding; she thought about those she cared for, yet the lunar hare had a much darker, crueler side. Rachel was vicious and vengeful. She sought out conflict to grow stronger because she knew she needed that strength to protect what she treasured.
There was a line she wouldn’t cross, but her line was pushed much further past what most people in the world would consider acceptable. Rachel was a realist—a pessimist of sorts—yet also recognized there were virtuous people. She vetted them and then made sure to keep them close, such as Jeanne, whom she trusted with her family’s safekeeping.
Scarlet’s fingers spread out against the hot glass, somewhat surprised that it wasn’t ice cold. She looked at Twilight’s reflection in the glass as she moved to join her, studying the storm. Small quakes now shook the house. Scarlet was a little surprised at how calm she felt. Maybe it was due to everything finally sinking in after being in this vampiric world; this could be Earth if they didn’t fight—if they didn’t get stronger.
“…I don’t care if I am the monster below those waves or not. It’s too much to think about right now… Tell me what I need to do to save everyone.”
“It’s going to be rough for you,” Twilight whispered. “The Scarlet Hand is only one faction…a powerful one, but only one of many. Your greatest enemy has always been yourself.”
She traced the cracks as they continued to fracture down the glass. “The maelstrom is the totality of your Soul Expansion…the highest level of it. When this Seal is broken, it will weaken the strength of the barriers between dimensions. It will be important for you to tell Rachel these things…to explain to her what a Soul Expanse is…and how to expand it. Her next goal is to reach Level 25…to grow her soul to the point where it can manifest in a tangible form.”
Scarlet swallowed the blood in her mouth, feeling it flow down her throat to spread out into her body while searching the blood storm. “I’m the threat…aren’t I? My parents were tricked into doing this… I’m supposed to end the world.”
Twilight smiled and turned to face her, showing a piece of the awkward and slightly hyperactive blonde she’d known growing up.
“Revilla’s masters wanted to partially awaken you in order to cause a chain reaction that would destroy everything you tried to do…but Rachel is more of a thorn in their sides than they expected. She is not just the Limpid Hare of Misfortune. Rachel holds her own secrets, and they didn’t see her manipulations…they didn’t see those plucking threads that created me.
“You are breaking the seal early, Scarlet,” Twilight giggled, hugging her for a moment before pulling away. “They wanted to use this awakening for a ritual, but I made sure that it happened outside of their sight—in Elizabeth’s Seed and away from Earth. In a place where a combination of forces can buy us time…for you to learn…to grow.”
She motioned her toward the closed and locked door, which quaked and almost sent her to her knees.
“When this is done, a fragment of True Scarlet will awaken, and you will join me here as Rachel confronts her… From there, I don’t know what will happen. I really don’t…no one does. There is no guide that can illuminate your path beyond this pass. This is where the path between heaven and hell collides. The shelter collapses, and you must rise or crumble.
“I only hope my preparations will be enough. And when you return—well, not you; when She awakens and takes control—you will return here with me. And I will teach you about your soul as it unfolds, and you will open the front door and willingly fall into the Red Sea…putting True Scarlet back into the box. Right now, though…right now, you must do the unthinkable. You must break your own seal.”
Scarlet’s mind froze as Twilight whispered her instructions and lifted her consciousness out of the void to enact it.
Blinking, her wide, vampiric eyes lifted to the grinning Baroness of the Mist as she exited her internal world. She winced when the pressure once again struck her chest, the mist compressing her against the wall as the woman laughed. Elizabeth’s throat was gripped within her claws, helplessly held suspended in the air. Laugher rang throughout the room as her children and husband watched their matriarch play with the thirteen-year-old Countess of Blood, her mist crushing her fragile frame.
Scarlet pushed past the discomfort, not truly feeling the pain the baroness tried to invoke, and she forced her hand away from the wall. Leopold’s eyes were glazing over nearby, his neck snapped at some point, and Belleza’s eldest son lamenting a cut on his shirt front that the Legendkin seemed to have caused in their short scuffle.
“You put too much faith in your alien pets, Countess,” Belleza chortled. “Your arrogance in coming to our world to stir trouble is…amusing. And without absorbing blood for weeks, you have become so…weak. It’s pathetic, really, depending on this castle of gore to make up the difference and put on a show… Look at me, filth! Beg like your traitorous friend.”
Elizabeth’s liquidy-ruby eyes were centered on her, despite the baroness’ firm grip and compressing mists that crushed each of her digits, one by one, working their way up her arm. She didn’t cry out in pain; instead, she choked through her response, conviction in her young voice.
“…Pain is fleeting, Belleza. You think you can cause more suffering…than what I have already experienced? A mother’s hope…is everlasting. I was promised to hear my daughter laugh again. And that…is worth an eternity of suffering.”
“You are—”
“Mother! What is she doing?” Kastilla hissed. “She’s fighting past your mist!”
“Hmm?!”
Illa’s teary eyes brimmed with light from her imprisoned position against the opposite wall. “Scarlet! Yeah, fight back! Show that—what…no, Scarlet!”
Blood crawling back into her veins, Scarlet’s mind was clearer than it had ever felt. Claws extending, she brought it to her own chest, digging through flesh and breaking her breast bone to reach her organ inside.
“What are you doing?! No! Stop, Scarlet! Stop!” Illa cried.
Elizabeth’s lips lifted as Scarlet stole all eyes. Fingers closed around her own heart, her words cutting through the silencing mist as she squeezed, feeling real pain for the first time, but, as the Countess said…it was fleeting.
“Illa…run.”
“Scarlet!”
A hot rush of blood swept her into a cocoon-like warmth, and when she opened her eyes, she was back in the little house. An earthquake knocked her to the floor, where Twilight sat with her, a smile on her face as voices bubbled up from deep within the Red Sea.
Spontaneously, the waves settled, the storm parted, and stillness came over the whole of the blood sea. Scarlet felt a heartbeat, but it wasn’t from her heart…it was her soul.
Rising to her feet, Scarlet stumbled to the cracked window, staring out across the glass-like smooth sheen of an eternal jasper floor, thin veins running along its entire length.
“What’s happening, Twilight?”
Twilight joined her, seemingly realizing something as if the answer was unfolded with the asked question. “The choir awakens…I see. The song returns… The Black Star stirs…the Children of the Sun recognize the empty Blood Throne.”
“What song?” she whispered, yet her focus was soon taken by a shimmering speck of scarlet dropping from the reflected mirror-like sheet of blood in the heavens.
Her lips parted in disbelief as the twinkling star ruby fell toward the blood field, and when it touched, a ripple shook every fiber of Scarlet’s being—the voices filling her with a profound sense of peace and understanding—she was a criminal.
Yet, the price of her crimes was answered within the hallowed, reverent chant—corrupted Transcendence, once again awakened. A sin she’d partaken in. Redemption bought through a path yet to walk. A throne was awaiting her return with the angelic choir of innumerable beings singing their unyielding hope, trust, and fidelity.
“Peace be with you… Soul Divine. Wake again, in paradise. Crowned in glory.
“Fear no more, Fate’s misery, or the coming war…
“Gloria regali… Peace and understanding. Forever may you reign…”
Intensity rising, Scarlet felt the strength of power transcending any concept of the word as the words of countless hosts throughout infinity sang…they sang to her.
“Gloria regali. Peace and understanding. Forever may you reign. Forever may you reign!
It slowly faded back into the Red Sea, leaving Scarlet with emotions more than words or images.
“Gloria regali. Peace and understanding. Forever may you reign… Forever may you reign.”
Twilight’s hand rested on her shoulder as the song faded, and a sad giggle slid through her frame. “It…is a shame that my body on the outside will not know this glory that awaits you…that you won’t remember all of this. Allow me to explain what you will retain…”
- Growing Community =D
View and help
Support me on and get up to: Note that instead of 'first of the month' billing, I have opted into 'pay on the same day you sign up'!
+ Weekly Poll On Next Week's Priority Series
+ 6 Chapters (6 Weeks) ahead in A Tail's Misfortune
+ 6 Chapters (6 Weeks) Ahead in The Oscillation Rewrite
+ 6 Chapters (6 Weeks) Ahead in UE Rewrite
+ 6 Chapters (6 Weeks) Ahead in Veil of Chaos
Patreon Exclusive Novella Books
+ Ask a Character any question you want and they'll respond in-character!
+ All my commissioned artwork is up for free on my Patreon!
Current Books on Amazon and Audible:
Series Books
The Oscillation
Book 1 - Chaos
A Tail's Misfortune
Book 1 - Transformation
Book 1 Audible - Transformation
Undying Empire
Book 1 - Foundation
Novellas (Stand Alone; Same Universe)
