You push back against your self doubt, and your apprehensiveness. If you don't help in doing anything at all, you might all end up dead. Either trampled to death by the rampaging bugs, or erased by the incoming shadow creature.
Either scenario frightens you terribly.
As you rack your brain in search of a way through these insurmountable problems, the relieved soldiers rush to reload all of their spent magazines and strap them into their pouches. The few that are done faster than the rest of their team quickly tag in and get straight to the fight.
They slip into their roles rather easily, and enter their hyper focused combat states with little issue. They clearly know what they need to do, something you wish you had insight on.
It's the same with Kaja. She's certainly not a soldier, and doesn't have their particular brand of discipline. But she still takes to her task easily. Everyone around you seems to know what to do and how to do it, which leaves you desperately wanting.
You can only watch in awe as they all bring what they've got to bear to this massive fight. In fact, you can see each and every one of them get more and more worn out as time goes on, as they pour their whole selves into this harrowing defense.
Much like the insects attacking you, everyone is working in conjunction as best they can. And it dawns on you that even though people don't operate with a hive-mind like the insects, they seem to settle into a similar thought pattern.
It's like they all act as one - when Kaja swipes at a dozen or so insects, the soldiers do their best to catch stragglers. And it's the same when it goes the other way. If the soldiers concentrate their fire into a particularly nasty cluster of bugs, Kaja sweeps in to pick off any they don't catch. Even the officer is swept up in their orchestra, directing and conducting the carnage with a deft and practiced hand.
Their thoughts and emotions swirl all around, indirectly affecting each other, and guiding their actions as a whole. When one of them moves, the rest follow suit in their own way, and add to the symphony with their own destructive notes.
It occurs to you that you could, perhaps, influence it. After all, only you can see how everyone is swept up by everyone else around them. You could help the officer conduct it all, somehow, some way.
You wonder if you could do something like abate the fears they're all feeling - that lingering dread that seems to be eating away at their cores. It's like an acid that's constantly wearing away at their resolve and will to fight. The closer the bugs get, the more they're worn away.
But of course, you're not sure how to do anything of the sort. Remove their fear? Help them overcome it? How on Earth could you possibly do anything like that? You have no clue what courage is, what it means to face what's out there.
You're extremely afraid, just being this close to all the fighting.
All of them certainly know how to overcome fear, far more than you do. After all, they're right at the front lines of it all, facing it right this moment.
The bugs! They're a hive mind, right?!
Maybe if you can't affect the people around you, maybe you could affect the bugs! And you won't have to sweep across every single one of them - you just have to affect enough to cause those individual thoughts and emotions to ripple out and spread to the rest.
If you could do that…
You grit your teeth and close your eyes as you reach out Telepathically once again. And in doing so, you feel that familiar sharp pain stab you in the head. But you push it away as much as you can, and instead concentrate on the task at hand.
You do your best to take a page from Kaja, from the soldiers all around you, from the officer, and focus. You train your mind on a cluster of insects just beyond the front, far enough away that they won't get automatically slaughtered by your defenses. They need to be alive long enough for you to project through them.
If you can just counter the fear that the shadow creature is exuding, and make the insects fear all you more, it might just turn them in the other direction.
Just like that time when you pushed away the shadow creature, you dig into the depths of your soul, and brandish your despair and your fear and your insecurity. Then you inject it into that cluster with as much strength as you can muster.
It works, to some small degree. Many of the insects in the cluster begin to exude a fear about what's in front of them, equally as much as what's behind them. And it spreads to the insects around them, outwards, further and further.
They echo your emotions, and spread your desperation and helplessness to the point where handfuls of them simply stop in their tracks, unable to act.
But the recursion is slow, at least in comparison to how fast they're smashing themselves against your defenses. The few that stop are soon overrun by their own, and trampled by dozens of others as they scramble for safety.
Their chitin is cracked and shattered by their sharp insectoid legs.
And thankfully, they don't echo out whatever pain they feel, if they feel any pain at all. You have no doubts that if they did so, you would be instantly crippled by the feeling. They all would be.
Besides, you have your own crippling pain to deal with. You certainly don't need any more to weigh you down and break you.
You fall to your knees as the pounding in your head increases to unbearable heights. It's as though the pain wraps itself around your head, and squeezes with preternatural might. You can feel every part of your head strain: your eyes, your ears, your skull, your jaw, everything.
Part of you wants to plunge yourself into an icy-cold lake simply to alleviate what you're feeling, to stop what you're doing and collapse. But there's no such relief for you. All that exists is the promise of destruction, and you use that fact to prevent yourself from giving up.
Not only that, but you simply can't imagine Kaja, or your Dad, getting cut down by any of those bugs. Or by that shadow creature. You refuse to see a future where that happens.
So you do your best to push past the blinding pain and continue to pour those debilitating emotions into the insects. Though you have no idea how long you can hold out. The pain is so much stronger than before, and you feel your consciousness begin to slip.
You feel your body waver, and your consciousness starts to narrow as you push more of yourself into the insects. It's right at that moment that you pour everything you've got into the bugs and flood absolutely everything that you're feeling into the bugs. Like a kind of last-ditch effort.
And everything you've got bottled up inside sweeps through the small cluster of insects like a wildfire. In turn, they echo your raw emotions and spread them to the rest of their hive. They start a hypnotic chittering that rises through the din and the fighting and the screaming and the dying, which courses through every bug around them.
As a result, all that you are is echoed through the hive, up down the entirety of their ranks. Most of them practically stop in their tracks as they echo that same hypnotic chittering, which heightens to a vast, deafening crescendo.
Everyone around you is utterly stunned at the sight, but more so by the sound of it all.
The chittering easily drowns out all other sounds to the point where it invades all your ears and dazes you. Your minds are literally stunned to the point that many of you fall over stumbling - your inner ears are completely thrown out of whack as your sense of balance is thoroughly upturned.
You yourself stop your Telepathic attack, unable to keep going simply due to the pain you feel. It's soon replaced by that dizzying insectoid note that all but causes you to black out and fall over. Although your eyes are shut through all of this, you can feel the ground shudder and shake beneath you.
More than that, you can sense as the insects scramble in every direction away from you. And also away from the shadow creature.
They skitter up the buildings and down the streets by the thousands as panic and terror pincers them. Some even dig down through the asphalt and concrete in an attempt to burrow into the ground. Every single insect does everything they can to get away as fast as they can.
You can literally feel their hive mind splinter as the hive itself breaks apart, as each of the insects flee in whatever direction they see fit. As though you've imbued them with some small sense of individuality and shattered their sense of one-ness.
At least, temporarily. Even as they scatter, you feel the hive mind begin to recover. Though that doesn't stop the insects from continuing to run off.
The chittering and the rumbling abates moment after moment as they flee from the area. Certainly more than enough to allow all of you to recover from the dissonant chorus.
Kaja leans down and helps pick you up off your hands and knees, even as the soldiers around you watch with absolute awe at what's transpiring right in front of them. The insects literally evacuate from the street ahead with absolute abandon, leaving behind the cracked and broken bodies of their dead.
Thousands of fractured chitinous shells litter the intersection in front of all you, each one dripping with fresh blue-black ichor. It spills out onto the shattered asphalt and concrete surrounding all of you, and coats it all with a thick layer of bug innards.
Of course, that sulfuric smell begins to diffuse into the air, and threatens to suffocate each and every one of you. It causes some of you to cough and gag. One or two soldiers even retch violently from the smell, though surely the sight of all those insectoid corpses heightens their nausea significantly.
With Kaja's help, you steady yourself just as the last few remaining insects skitter away.
You want to look at what you've helped create with some sense of pride, but all you can feel is a deepening sickness enveloping you. And that isn't just due to all the bug guts and rancid smells. It's the pain in your head, still pounding away despite the fact that you've long since stopped using Telepathy.
Thankfully, it ebbs away as the moments pass by, albeit too slowly for your own preference.
"Did you do that?" Kaja asks you. Her face is a mixture of worry and pride and relief, which part of you is glad to see. It's nice to be looked up to, for once. If even for only a few seconds.
"Maybe a bit," you say, your voice strained.
"You shoudn't have pushed yourself that hard. I mean, thank you. But still. You're a mess right now."
"Didn't exactly have a choice, right? It's do that, or get… I dunno, skewered. Or worse."
Kaja hugs you tightly, and you feel her warmth on your body. The feeling puts you at ease almost instantly, and the headache that plagues you seems to abate even faster as a result. You embrace her in return, with as much strength as you can muster, but you feel completely drained, both physically and mentally.
Perhaps emotionally, too. You put quite a lot of yourself and your innermost feelings into those bugs.
You gasp as you realize something, just as you sense its approach. It has been coming towards you since the beginning of this mess, and it hasn't stopped or slowed in the slightest. Not only that, but you can sense that whatever you've projected hardly has hardly affected it.
Its bleak all-encompassing ephemeral shadow seems to swallow up more and more of the street the closer it gets to you.
"The shadow creature thing!" you exclaim. "It's still headed this way!"
You watch as the shadow creature comes into view amidst the insectoid corpses. It moves preternaturally through the mounds of dead bugs, as though the corpses aren't even there at all. No matter what obstacle is in front of it, it's hardly affected or slowed. The corpses blacken and dissipate just as it finishes passing through them.
And it's clear that it's headed towards all of you. Or at the very least, through you.
Your mouth goes dry as you attempt to say something, but nothing except a long croaking sound comes out. The shadow creature terrifies you - its very presence seems to drain whatever courage you have within yourself.
And you're not the only one. Even the soldiers seem too stunned or cowed to act under the shadow creature's ever-growing presence.
It advances steadily towards the stadium entrance unhindered and unmolested. But it oddly stops right at the T-intersection, and dissolves the largest pile of dead insectoid bodies around it. Its vaguely humanoid form reaches out with a shadowy arm, as though it's attempting to reach out to you.
The hovering blade between you twitches as it attempts to take control of it, then yanks it away violently with powerful Telekinetic energy.
"Oh fuck that!" Kaja shouts.
She quickly reaches out in alarm, takes firm hold of the blade with her Telekinesis, and stops it from moving any further. You can see her strain visibly as she keeps the blade from falling under the shadow creature's full control. Both her hands are outstretched as she grimaces and groans, almost as though she's at her absolute maximum.
The officer quickly notices as well, and immediately orders his soldiers to open fire on the shadow creature. Though it takes a second for it to compute, the soldiers quickly bear their arms against the creature and squeeze their triggers. Countless bursts fire from their weapons and tear into the shadow creature.
To their shock, nothing happens.
Their rounds pass harmlessly through its black formless body and purple translucent armor. It dawns on you that you've seen something like this before - another group had fired at it with their guns. Though they had used pistols rather than rifles. And they too had been useless against it.
"Those won't work!" you yell out. "We've gotta get the fuck outta here!"
"We can't do that," the officer says, sternly. "This stadium's the best place for us to hole up."
"We don't exactly have a choice - we can't fight that thing!"
"And go where, exactly?! The hospital's in shambles, city hall's overrun, nearest actual base is days away. There's nowhere else to run!"
"We're not gonna defend against that thing - it's gonna kill us in ways that… that… you don't wanna know."
"The hell you mean by that?!" asked a frenzied solider.
"I don't remember the last people it killed," Kaja replies, her voice strained. "I just remember that it killed someone. Someone I talked to. Someone I stood right next to. Now I don't remember a thing about them."
"Well we can't run, no matter what!" said the officer. "We've got wounded, we've got families! We can't force them out to that heat! It'll kill them!"
"Don't worry, lemme take care of it," Kaja says.
"How?!" you exclaim. "We barely pushed it away last time!"
"Dunno, but I'll figure it out. Gotta concentrate."
You feel Kaja turn all of her thoughts towards the shadow creature. Or, more specifically at its jagged, semi-translucent blade. You peer ever so slightly at it with your Third Eye, and watch as both their Telekinetic energies flow out from each of them.
Their energies crash and break and flow and turn against the blade and against each other, as though wrestling for domination. As far as you can tell, they're just about even, at least in terms of strength. It's Kaja's stamina that you're worried about. The fight looks chaotic and devastating, even if no-one else can see or sense it.
Kaja then lets go of the blade, which unbalances the shadow creature's grip. And instead of pulling against it, she pushes it with everything she's got all in that moment.
Her trick works exceedingly well, and cuts through the shadow creature with its own blade. His shadowy form separates right at the waist - assuming that's its waist. Both halves of its wispy body flickers and writhes as though it's in pain.
Although the soldiers around you cheer at Kaja's victory, you get a sense that it's not feeling pain at all. Not in the slightest.
You peek with your Third Eye, and see that its shadowy aura has been halved. But it's still significantly overwhelming absolutely everything around it. You shut it off quickly, just as a sharp pang cuts through your temple.
"Keep going!" you shout out. "It's not dead yet!"
Kaja nods her head, then reaches out for the blade, only to find that the blade itself has been partially consumed. Just as it had sliced into the shadow creature, the creature chewed into it as well. The entire middle section of the blade has been completely gouged out, and only the two tips remain - roughly half a meter each.
But Kaja's undeterred. She takes hold of both of them, swirls them around quickly like a growing tornado, then flings one of them straight into the shadow creature's chest. It sinks in and vanishes completely on contact, but leaves a gaping wound in its wake.
The cut spreads open wider as the creature's shadowy body seems to recede into itself.
Kaja then takes the last bit of blade, then slices it right through the shadow creature's neck. Or what she perceives as its neck. Doing so consumes the blade in its entirety, but also completely severs the head from the body as well.
Though it doesn't make a sound, you feel a kind of mental energy sweep through you. Almost as though it's screaming, psychically. Perhaps it's more like screeching.
You once again peek with your Third Eye to confirm how much damage it has taken.
But are immediately taken aback by what you see. Shadows seem to be pouring out from the wounded neck, and coating everything above you. Perhaps flooding is a better term. The sight frightens you so completely that you almost miss what's actually happening.
It's rebuilding itself.
The dark shadowy core within that massive cloud is clearly pulling that cloud into itself.
When you shut your Third Eye, you can see the shadow creature actually filling back up physically. The wound on its chest closes as tendrils of dark smoke reach out and reconnect its lower body to its upper body. As well as its head back onto its neck.
You feel an overwhelming amount of fear sweep through your body, though most of it is from everyone else around you. It causes the hairs on your arms to raise up.
All manner of emotions wash out of of Kaja, powerfully. That of surprise and anger and fear and sadness. Then, a stark determination.
"Stand back," says Kaja. "I'm gonna beat it."
You feel her heart thumping madly, along with the absolute fear that's wrapped around her. She visibly steels herself, then walks out into the street.
"The fuck are you doing?!" you shout out. "Get back in here!"
"I gotta beat it," she says without turning around. "Can't let it get inside."
"How?!"
"I know what to do. And if I screw this up, well… You'd all better consider running."
Kaja then walks over towards the shadow creature, seemingly unafraid. But you can feel her heart tremble in her chest. She stops about a meter right in front of it, then grasps outward with both her hands on both sides.
You've no clue what she's doing, or what she's attempting. Some part of you knows that it's taking everything she's got to do it.
And at the same time, the shadow creature closes up its wounds faster and faster. Almost as though it's racing against Kaja, to reform before she completes her attack. You realize that you have to do something, otherwise the creature could swipe at her, and stop her.
You lash out with your Telepathy in an attempt to disturb its thoughts and emotions, and maybe do something to it. Anything. Unfortunately the moment you do so, the pain surrounding your head flares up to the point of blurring your vision.
It takes you a great deal of your own energy just to affect it.
You hang on for dear life as you push through the shadowy muck to get at its emotional center, if it even has one. The pain begins to ring in your ears as it pulses in time with your heartbeat. Of course, you persevere as best you can.
What you make of its emotions is simple yet complex. It seems completely devoid of most emotion, love or fear or sadness or anger. Instead, all it seems to have is a deep, unyielding desire. A desire for something intangible - maybe to simply keep doing what it is doing. To destroy and kill and… do whatever it had done to those people you had forgotten.
You tune that dial and attempt to read its thoughts as well. Unlike the insects, its mind is both unreadable and yet completely transparent to you. Simply, you can't make out any real, tangible thoughts coming from it. But you feel as though you're reading it accurately.
Instead, all you seem to perceive is a kind of note. There's a single tone emanating from it, as though it's humming ceaselessly. A bit like white noise cutting through Telepathic airwaves.
As you probe its mind, the pain around your head tightens further and further. It gets to a point that you topple down to your hands and knees, panting heavily and breathing hard. It's as though you're draining yourself simply to keep going.
Perhaps that's exactly what you're doing, you just don't know how you're doing it.
As you struggle against your pain, you watch as Kaja goes through her own struggle as well. Both her outstretched hands grasp something. She draws them in, as though she's pulling that something inward. And she's doing so with such intensity that you can see her arms shake violently as a result.
That's when you see it - parts of the asphalt crumble and crack under her, even as the very corners of the buildings opposite your street start to do the same. Bits of dead insects rise up slowly, along with strands of their bloody innards. Even the razor wire coils furthest from your position scratches the concrete as they're slowly pulled towards the center of the intersection.
A spherical space around Kaja seems to warp and bend, as though she's pulling it all towards her. But it flickers and flutters and wavers randomly. It occurs to you that the shadow creature is pushing outward with its own Telekinesis. All of its shadowy appendages are extended outward, pushing against whatever Kaja's doing. Slowly but steadily undoing her assault.
You try to assault the shadow creature again with your Telepathy, but it results in pain and an audible groan.
Stop! Kaja's surface thoughts tell you. You're hurting yourself! Let me take care of this!
I can handle it, you project straight towards her in response.
Of course, she isn't Telepathic, and doesn't receive what you try to project to her. All you can do is sense her utter worry for you, over and over, even as she fights against the shadow creature. Her split concentration is clearly taking a toll on her.
The same with you, of course. The more you read her, the more your own concentration is split. And the more your head hurts. You feel your consciousness waver, as though your mental and physical energies are nearing their limit.
You need to act before the both of you break.
And so you do the only thing you know how to do - inject the shadow creature with your own emotion. Seeing as it's devoid of them, you instinctively pour everything you've ever felt into it. Every bit of sadness and longing and loneliness and also togetherness and fulfillment and happiness.
Like Kaja's memories of you, many of yours are about her.
It's her existence that makes you feel… well, everything. Overbearing or supportive. Smothering or loving. Demanding or protective. She's all those things and more, to you. All those emotions based on old memories fall down around you, like rain.
You feel your heart shatter when you realize that you've been pushing her away all this time, when you should have been pulling her closer. You should have been braver with your emotions, and not given in to your fears and insecurities.
There's nothing you can do about that now. Well, except give them to the shadow creature, wholesale. You take all of those contradictory truths about you, about Kaja, about your feelings, and throw it into the depths.
It stops frozen for a moment as your assault completely shatters its sense of being, as it's filled with all manner of raw, chaotic emotions. You sense it attempting to process exactly what you've given it, to make sense of it, to parse it, but it can't.
It's helpless against you.
A sense of victory sweeps over you, even as the pain in your head almost completely engulfs you. Your vision darkens as you draw your Telepathy back. At the same time, your physical body slumps forward on the ground, face first.
If you're eating dirt, you can barely taste it. The soldiers around you shout and scream, but it's all muffled to you, distant. One of them picks you up - an act you can barely feel.
Your mind and body are completely numb - that's how much you've wiped yourself out. That's how much you poured yourself into that bottomless darkness. All that's left of you is a seeming sliver.
Then you feel yourself getting dragged away, which you desperately fight against. But all you can do is weakly and limply wave your hand forward in protest. There might be a whimper, too. Not that you hear it.
All of the soldiers frantically retreat backward into the stadium with you in tow. Because back at the T-intersection, Kaja is furiously pulling everything all around her. Large chunks of asphalt are torn out of the ground beneath her and the shadow creature, and sucked towards a fine point right in between the two.
Same with the building corners at the end of the T-intersection, along with every car and vehicle and light post and trash can and insect corpse. Even the large Hesco barriers are drawn in, as though they're filled with foam rather than sand. Everything is sucked in towards that point, where it seems to be crushed into oblivion.
You reach out one last time with your Telepathy, to try to tell Kaja to stop, to run away instead. But it doesn't matter what you say - she can't read you. Instead, another sharp pain pierces you as her own emotions about you engulf your mind.
Then, just as your body gives up the fight, and as your mind flattens from complete exhaustion, you watch as Kaja pulls herself inward one final time. Absolutely everything around her in a perfect sphere completely collapses into that same fine point, herself and that shadow creature included.
There's a flash of light as matter condenses into itself, into that tiny point, as though a star is forming in front of you. The light is so blinding that you can't see anything else, if only for a moment.
When you can't take any more, darkness takes you.
~~~
Hope you're enjoying the story! Please check out my other work - linktr.ee/ceritusorbis
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