Sivs and Mikal: First Encounters (blood warning) [YA]

…

Winded, Sivs focused his breathing. Deep slow breath in… long exhale out… It helped steady his heartbeat, though only a little. This was it. This was the place. He would open the portal. He would go Home.

One more breath in. Another out.

He was ready.

He quickly set out the bottle of blood-ink, opening it, and dipped the brush inside. That similar salivating tingle rushed through him but he willed his mind to focus on the task at had. With precise practiced strokes, he slid the slick brush across his arms, marking each symbol with increasing anticipation, finding it harder and harder to swallow down his excitement. Half done, he stripped off his trousers and wrote the remaining symbols on his legs starting from the top of his thigh. Almost done. He took the second bottle and poured half the blood-ink out in a circle around him, then drew a large circle on the wall in front of him with the remainder using his brush.

At last. Home.

He was going Home.

Standing in the center of the circle, he clasped his hands together, letting the brush fall to his feet. Then he summoned every last drop of his energy and will into his wish. Something fierce pulsed through him, sharp yet comforting. Taking this as a sign, he opened his mouth and gave voice to his wish.

“Mikal. Let me come Home.”

Only a fraction of a second passed before the ground was rumbling beneath him. The wall inside the painted circle before him shimmered and began to ripple like water. Sivs stared into the center where a dark spot like a void formed and crackled with electricity, widening. The thought of the electric void swallowing him up brought a shiver to his spine – a lovely thought which he readily welcomed and repeated to himself until the gaping electric hole reached the rim of the circle.

Suddenly, a light exploded from within the void, momentarily blinding him, but he refused to look away and squinted hard until the light ebbed. As his sight readjusted, the first clear sensation he received was the scent of leaves. A crisp scent like after a light shower on a cool spring day, but carried to him on a warm wind charged by the electricity from the portal. A figure hovered in the center of that portal, gradually coming into focus as a young boy with pigmented skin, dressed lightly in greenery to cover his mid-section and leaves decorating his silver wind-whipped hair. A flock of nymnali darted around the levitating boy, though their wings all glowed with an unnaturally deep red.

Sivs could make out no ground beneath them – just an endless expanse of canopy and branches thick as roadways. Not that he was looking very hard for a floor – or very hard at any of the surrounding landscape at all for that matter. Rather, his eyes could only fixate on the boy. That beautiful boy who must smell like the trees and the earth, like summer and spring… That beautiful boy with the wild moonlight hair and piercing green eyes that stared back into his.

Sivs knew this feeling… so familiar.

He’d felt it when he caught sight of his brother at the bazaar. He’d felt it when he ripped open his first animal. He’d wallowed in it with his first human kill…

Lust.

An obsessive love. A poisonously sweet thick liquid of an emotion that shot goosebumps over his skin and a shock through his back and into his toes and fingertips. But never before had he felt it so intensely. This boy, who met his gaze and pierced into his soul, was everything and all that Sivs had ever wanted in his life. They shared a connection, a bond like intertwined snakes. As the glamour from the portal cleared to linger only around the circle’s rim, Sivs realized it clearly: this boy before him shared his exact intent. And with that revelation, all at once Sivs understood.

“Mikal…” he whispered, a blissful smile forming on his lips. “I came from you.”

Speaking these words released everything in him like a floodgate so that no restraints remained. He could feel his teeth sharpen even as he spoke. The nails on his fingers scraped against the base of his palms for the briefest of moments before whipping out in full three-inch length. Sivs let out a quick gleeful “HA!” then charged.

* * * * *

(one minute earlier)

Mikal stood on the tree branch, readying himself. He’d been feeling anxious all day, and now as the soft pulses of power coursed through his appendages, he knew why. In only a few moments, one of his children would tear the veil and invoke their connection. He’d let his physical form slip away into the wilder wolfish being he’d grown accustomed to, but he still wanted to greet his children properly, letting them see a kinder and gentler image before they die. After all, they had made a wish. They should receive something nice – even if it was only for a moment.

A familiar popping sound followed by the crackling of electricity suddenly shot out of the air directly before him, and hit an invisible wall, forming a large shimmering circle. Mikal closed his eyes, taking in this moment, the anticipation before the feast, and levitated. The levitation was really more for show than anything else, though it also made him feel powerful – a feeling which he loved and craved. As the void opened, he wondered what this new meal would look like… sound like… how their fear would taste. Would they scream? Would they go into shock and become silent? Would the nymnali even let them cry out or would they go for the throat first? However it played out, the scene would surely be exciting. Over the last century, he’d really come to live for these moments. That sensation of twisted enjoyment had become more prominent with repetition.

He shut his eyes briefly, having anticipated the brilliant flash from the portal with perfect timing. He knew this dance. When he opened his eyes again, the brilliance had gone revealing the little stone temple walls and a kid. Mikal scanned the wear and tear of the structure. Minimal. Stone was good for that. He approved. Then a surge of intent all but screamed at him and Mikal’s eyes locked on the child’s. It was a boy, who looked to be about six so he guessed the child would actually be around nine or ten. He had very light skin with only a hint of copper, but features like that of the people of Timehn – almond eyes and pointed-down nose, thick brows and dark hair. Perhaps the child didn’t get enough sunlight then, or maybe the tint of Timehni skin had lightened over the years? Mikal barely cared either way, instead letting his ears soak up the intensified hum of nymnali wings as they darted around him with excitement.

He wondered mildly if they’d skin the child. That’d be interesting.

Once the glamour of the portal cleared away to its edges, it was time. The link between worlds was set. But just as he gathered his essence to command the nymnali to drag the small boy into their realm, the child spoke.

“Mikal…” The kid sounded as though he were savoring every letter of the name. Mikal was used to this – the total rapture and pure bliss in a child’s face when they finally met him, the one they’d been longing so many years to return to. But something felt different here. Wrong, somehow. “I came from you...”said the boy, and all at once, Mikal realized:

He was the prey.

The child no longer seemed small to Mikal’s vision, as the kid shot out his arms to either side revealing nails like claws. His smile too, now exceedingly wide, revealed unnaturally sharp teeth. Before Mikal could recover from the shock, the child darted forward and leapt into the air, passing quickly through the portal. Instinctively, Mikal shot away toward the tree’s truck while the child landed, bare feet and hands, onto the branch.

It was in this moment that Mikal finally registered the method by which the child had opened his gateway. Blood and ink had been mixed together and spread in symbols all down his arms and legs. Bare legs. The child shot his eyes forward with a blissful smile, and raised himself to his feet entirely undaunted by their height nor by the nymnali circling him. He stood there in his underwear and sleeveless shirt, gazing at Mikal as though he were the most decadent dessert imaginable, even curling his lips in to lick them.

Mikal froze.

This had gone beyond his calculations.

But Sivs laughed warmly. “Ahaha… Mm. You are so beautiful.” He took a step forward. “Majestic, even.”

A panic formed in Mikal as he shouted, “NYMNALI!”

Immediately, the tiny circling creatures launched at the boy, while Mikal made himself ready for a fight, allowing his form to morph fluidly into his more fiendish counterpart.

Lovely...

So lovely...

Even as Mikal’s form morphed like a plasma, growing wolfish fangs and horns like sharp antlers, Sivs knew perfection when he saw it. And Mikal was perfection. The most glorious being he’d ever laid eyes on. The nymnali charged him, sinking teeth into his flesh, but he barely took note of any pain. One flew toward his face and he grabbed it, turning her from one direction then the other, before promptly pinching her wings and ripping them from her body. The nymn shrieked, stopping the others in their tracks, but Sivs found her delightful and took hold of her tiny arms, pinching her hands into each of his. The nymn barely had a second to struggle before he gripped more firmly and yanked her arms off. The tiny body fell with a little “paff” upon the wood, shocked into silence before being promptly squashed under Sivs’ foot.

“So it’s black too, huh,” he said with a hint of sorrow as he watched the dark blood drip from the nymn’s detached arms. But he quickly collected himself, letting the arms drop to the sides of the thick branch and fall off into the groundless green oblivion below as he took another step toward Mikal.

“What color do you bleed?”

The question threw Mikal. It held no malice, just a pure inquisitive curiosity. Mikal stared in horror at the foot currently grinding nymn-paste into the bark. He’d failed to protect her. Another nymn, fueled by bitterness, made a line for Siv’s jugular, but the boy snatched her from the air and promptly crunched her into his mouth, chewing methodically as he kept his pace, locked on Mikal. His strides gained assurance and he spat the now-mangled nymn out to the side. These tiny creatures weren’t what he wanted. They couldn’t satisfy him.

But Mikal screamed a feral, pained howl, his jaw now fully formed into one like a canine’s. His knees bent backward and a bright silver layer of fur covered most of his body. Sharp antler-like horns crowned his wolfish head. All the other nymnali backed away, no longer eager to feed or intervene. They all agreed: this child was more trouble than was worth their wings.

Mikal understood.

He would send the child back, or kill it.

...