Aria's Revenge

Aria raised her left arm, closing her fist around the moon as if she were trying to capture its lunar harmony—pale glow, battered but not broken… She wasn’t sure how much time had passed between her spacing out and now, but reality was still caught in slow motion—good. The sprites talked about tuning her magical sensitivity in order to fully grasp the concept of the power she’d been given. Of course, she’d wanted to ask Chronyu about his power, but she’d decided against it at the time, opting to accept his gift and figure out the rest later… That later, however, snuck up on her faster than the polar wind that almost knocked her sideways.

Stumbling through the sand, her feet caught on something beneath the surface, forcing her into a sandy faceplant yet, for some reason, she had a funny feeling she knew what it was that had tripped her up. She pulled her head out of the sand, gasping for air, surprised she’d managed to burrow as deep as she did. Thankfully, the “gold-sand”, she’d decided to name it, wasn’t as granular as regular sand—it fell from her hair like a shower of gold, clattering back into the same golden dune it had come from.

“At least that’ll make my later shower easy,” she said ponderously.

She looked around, trying to figure out what, exactly, had knocked her over and where it had come from. To her dismay, the answer stared her in the face… A series of black lightning strikes branched out across the desert horizon, creeping along like cracks in a windshield, but they made no sound, nor did they seem to generate any heat. While she understood that Chiipha was different than Earth, the two worlds weren’t all that different atmospherically—the climate was temperate, the air was clean, and gravity was only a fraction of a percent lighter than Earth’s which provided a subtle, but noticeable, amount of support: lighter movements, less weight, and less drag.

“So, why is the weather so different, then? Did I get knocked over by thunderstorm wind, or did something invisible push me?” She sat on her legs, thinking about the moments before the cold push. “I tripped over something too I’m pretty sure… Judging by my footprints, there’s one that goes deeper than all the others, and it hasn’t filled in nearly as fast. I had to have tripped.”

She scurried over, frantically plunging her hands and fingers into the gold-sand, digging and scooping out handful after handful. Another polar rush blasted her in the face, immediately drying her eyes out to which her tear ducts responded by blinding her with tears she couldn’t see through. Still, she kept digging, certain that whatever she’d tripped over would be the one thing she needed. She couldn’t explain what it was, but something in the back of her mind told her she’d know what it was when she grabbed it.

As she continued her frantic search, a song popped into her head, a melody that had never been composed, much less performed, yet she knew exactly what it sounded like from start to finish. The new tune only intensified her search but, after another minute, she was out of breath… and at the bottom of a three-foot-wide hole that refused to fill back in, no matter how much she dug.

“It was literally right here. I remember hitting something and then falling. I could see it in my footprint, the way it was half in and half out of the gold-sand. What am I missing?”

“You must tune your magical sensitivity, Aria.” It was voice of the sprites from earlier. “Allow your body to calm. Stimulate your vagus nerve by playing the song you’re currently composing.”

The memory of the orchestra concert suddenly flooded back, reminding her of the countless struggles she’d faced for weeks… until the fleeting few minutes before the concert began. The key to tuning her magical sensitivity was hidden somewhere within the thirty-minute span of time—between the moment she walked into the PAC lobby and her time in the practice room.

“Still… That was eight years ago, and I feel like there’s something more I’m missing from that night—something that never got resolved.” The answer hit her as a third blast of polar air forced her back. “It was that man, Elys’ father. I was so torn up inside that, when he told me how much she talked about me… I could tell by his face, the way he smiled, the tired eyes from long nights in the hospital with her… That’s when it changed. I made one final tuning adjustment when I got backstage, right after I found that flower—”

Wiping the excess tears from her eyes, she looked up. The lightning had grown larger, encompassing an area twice the size of the original branch. Before the first cold blast hit, the eerie, black bolt was nonexistent. Only after she’d been thrown off balance did the bolt appear. She surmised it grew after every rush of misplaced cold, a desert being the last place she expected to get hit with a knock-you-off-your-feet icy rudeness.

She rubbed her eyes, finally able to clear the last of the blurry tears… and regrettably found herself face-to-face with the king of the devils himself—Ahzef had managed to free himself from the time discrepancy. She ducked, barely avoiding a swipe that would have severed her head if she was even a single second later as she jumped to her feet.

“I don’t know how the hell you managed to get over to me so quick, but you’re messing with the wrong girl,” she threatened. “Unfortunately for both of us,” she said, sending a cloud of gold-dust into the air, “you get my full wrath, you abhorrent monster, which means I’m more than willing to use my own body as collateral here.”

It would take more than threats to get him to back off, but the words were meant to express her seriousness more than anything. They were the pedestals upon which she had risen to after years of torment by his hand. Regardless of how seriously he took her, though, she was more than happy to pay Lacia back for all the times she had hurt her. Shifting the blame for her own questionable actions, even if Ahzef was responsible for the fragmentation of her memories, was unacceptable. If righting her wrongs meant giving up her life, she was okay with that. Of course, she wanted to empty Brendan’s wallet again just once “but he’s stronger than I ever was. He’d be ok without me, I think,” she thought.

If she stood any chance of victory, however, she would first have to find whatever it was that was buried beneath the gold-sand. Plunging her hands into the sandy crater once more, she fished for her only chance—the one object she needed to conduct the start of her performance. She’d discovered a startling secret that allowed the laws of time to be manipulated, but it came at a cost… a heavy one. What was she more ok with losing? Her life… or all of her memories?

“Clearly, Ahzef is focused on me,” she mumbled, still digging, “but if I can just find this damn thing, I know I can win this battle by myself, hopefully without losing myself in the process.”

Not a moment later, her fingers struck something soft. Her heart leapt with excitement and rising anxiety, knowing Ahzef could easily strike her down where she stood, but she had what she needed: her weapon of choice and the answers to Chronyu’s gift. She pulled her hand from the sand, golden grains cascading to the ground as she curled her fingers around the object.

Before she walked onto the stage to take her seat the night of the concert, a flower had fallen from somewhere above her, gently settling at her feet. Without hesitation, she picked it up and examined it in the stage lights, acutely aware of the flower’s symbolic appearance: a red spider lily, and it was in full bloom. The stem was strangely stiff, as if it were artificial, but the flower itself was real, crimson filaments juxtaposed against the white petals. At the time, she hadn’t questioned its sudden appearance but now, eight years later, she finally understood.

“You should never have tried to manipulate me,” she said, rising to her feet once more. “This melody that’s been playing in my head will be the one that concludes your role, Ahzef. You won’t bother anyone ever again.”

She swiped her hand through the gold-dust cloud that had been kicked up by another blast of icy air abruptly clearing her view of her enemy. For the last two years, he’d just been one of the devils, another moniker by which she referred to him as, but now, she was officially designating him as her enemy. The shift marked a change in tempo of the song that danced through her mind as she raised her right arm, the spider lily she’d used as a hair accessory during the concert dangling from her fingertips. She stood at the boundary of life and death—a place where time crawled, its conductor free to alter its binary arrow at any point.

Eight years ago, the flower marked a turning point in her life but, at the time, she wasn’t aware of its importance. She thought the spider lily’s symbolism only extended towards death. As she got older, and the flower faded from memory, it became synonymous with different facets of her identity: the sudden fits of strangling depression that squeezed the air from her lungs; the sudden bursts of hope that shone brighter than the sun that tried to peek through her bedroom curtains— Now, it symbolized the very boundary at which she stood and now prepared to conduct, but something bothered her. She wanted Ahzef to feel every ounce of pain he’d inflicted upon her—the day he cratered her into the floor of her room on his ship, the tireless days he worked her to exhaustion, the poisoned words that dripped from his tongue and sickened her mind…

“I will not fight you here,” she said. Her voice was calm, but embers smoldered in her tone. “You left a permanent stain on my life and now, I’ve come to collect the eight years you stole from me— Every. Last. Second. Brendan wouldn’t be so kind if it was him you were up against, but that—”

Ahzef began to laugh, soft at first before erupting into hysterics. “You, the good-for-nothing assistant who couldn’t even figure out her own direction in life, the pitiful, love-struck girl who thought she’d found the love of her life until I stole everything she cared about from her—!” He lowered his voice, now barely a whisper. “What will you do, Aria? Kill me?”

She’d had enough. She wanted to enjoy her revenge, clawing back the years of her life he’d stolen and disrupted, the ones she’d never get back and would never be able to do over. Now… she was pissed, and she couldn’t hide it. Ahzef would feel every ounce of her anger, frustration, sorrow, failed hope, and unfiltered wrath. Adrenaline replaced the anxiety that poured into her veins, super-charging her blood with hatred that diseased her body like a virus. She shook so violently her teeth chattered from the foul anxiety-adrenaline mixture.

“Don’t,” her voice shook with rage as she hid her eyes behind her bangs, “you ever insult me… After the hell you put me through… Inches from my own heaven, my feet at the doorstep, my heart still shielded from the abhorrent world I was brought into…” She gave a shaky exhale. “Stop… Laughing—”

Ahzef broke from his hysterics, looked at her, then broke into a new, uncontrollable fit of laughter. Aria blacked out—consciously. Driven by a blind rage, she lost all sense of objectivity and reason. Her thoughts stopped processing, language became a foreign concept to which her tongue knew nothing about, and her muscles propelled her body into a senseless confrontation with the king of the devils himself. The opening move was hers, and she was going to make it count for every ounce of suffering she’d endured.

Her foot connected with his jaw, sending the devil hurtling through the sand tunes that now towered miles into the sky. She felt the sickening crunch of the bones in her foot fracturing under the immense force she’d applied to his disgusting face, the face she’d grown to hate more than her manipulated past. The fight had entered forte. There was no decrescendo written into the music of her performance, and the cheers from the audience in her mind resembled the roaring river of blood that rushed in her ears. Pain signals erupted up and down her leg as she landed back on her feet, but she was too consumed by rage to heed her own body’s warnings.

She was ready to give chase, in close pursuit of Ahzef, unwilling to relent… even if it cost her everything: her friends, her memories, the apologies and explanations she’d yet to give to Lacia and Brendan—ever her life. Her brain was hyper-fixated on revenge, and she was tired of other people looking down on her for his mistakes—messing with her life… her family, her friends, her academics… her future—

“That was your first, and most fatal, mistake.”

Rage continued to blossom like a fire inside her mind, the embers billowing into her veins as her blood boiled. Her hands tightened into fists as her fingernails drew fresh blood from her palms, trickling down her arms and eventually into the sand at her feet. She could hear it, the snarky replies and rumor-filled whispers from the other students when she returned to class after the car accident. It was all just bait she never took, or even desired to bite, for that matter—she knew better than to engage them in their drama-filled games and inaudible taunts. She didn’t know what had changed, why everyone had turned their back on her, nor did she care, but now… she had an answer.

Ahzef continued his unstoppable plow through the sand dunes, clouds of gold-sand obscuring Aria’s pleasureful view. She knew one kick wouldn’t be enough to decide the direction of their battle, but it was enough to get the message across: she was going to push him to his limits, and she was prepared to throw everything away to get her revenge. She no longer cared about what she had to lose, as long as it meant victory.

Suddenly, the sand beneath her feet began to shift, funneling down into some unseen hole. She jumped out, seeking more stable ground, but a boney hand grabbed her ankle, promptly throwing her into the sinking sands. She extended her arms, fingers digging into the loose, golden particulates, vying for something to grab onto, but solid ground eluded her.

“You really think that’s going to work?” she yelled. “Even Lucifero and Kuria were more original than this!”

“But is it what you think it is?” Ahzef whispered in her ear, startling her. “Look again, Aria! Watch as you are devoured and your friends’ lives put on the line for nothing!”

Aria blinked, unamused. “The whole, come-out-of-nowhere-and-whisper-in-my-ear thing isn’t helping your case.”

She had to admit, though… What she’d originally presumed to be a sinkhole in the sand was anything but: she’d been caught by something she had no words for. Dark, shadow-like tentacles wrapped themselves around her arms, suspending her in midair. Below her, instead of a hole, was a large, black blob. Was he planning on dropping her into the blob itself, or did he have something else in mind? A moment later, she answered her own question.

The blob began to separate as a large opening appeared across the surface, but it wasn’t the sudden appearance of the shadows, Azhef in her ear, or even the disappearance of the sand—it was the face that emerged from within the shadows themselves, mouth widening as if it were preparing for a meal. Its fangs glistened in the shimmering moonlight, dagger-like teeth whiter than the snowy chill that lingered in her mind from years of relentless ice-cold torment. A low rumble emanated from somewhere deep within its shadow-clad body.

“So, that’s what you meant… Scary, but you’re going to have to do so much worse,” Aria scoffed. She knew he could kill her at any moment, but she needed the moment before death before she could harness the actual power she had locked away. “Throw me in,” she taunted, “and see what happens next!”

She tried to put on a brave face, but the idea of being devoured by some hideous, shadowy-blob creature sent her thoughts into a mindless spiral as the tentacles that held her limbs slowly began to loosen their grip. It was just a taunt—she didn’t actually want Ahzef to drop her, but she knew she’d become more than a thorn in his side, more than just someone who was singing off key. She accepted the fact that she was annoying sometimes, the girls at school had made that apparent when they turned their backs on her, refusing to listen to her plights. Still, wouldn’t the king of the Reverse Royalty have at least some sense of reason? Did turning her into a snack, for whatever the thing beneath her was, not seem a little off-putting, even for a devil?

The tentacles released their hold, shadows slipping off her arms and back into Ahzef’s body. For a single, ironic moment, time felt like it had stopped, like it had slipped right through her hands milliseconds after trying to regain control of the dwindling moments that fled from her in a hurry. Her heart screamed at her, ramming itself against her ribcage, while her mind tried to tell her how stupid she was for taunting an already-in-a-bad-mood Ahzef.

She was the one who had been bestowed control over time, yet she was still missing a fundamental piece of the temporal puzzle Cronyu had given her. What was the link between the red spider lily and why did she instinctively know where to search for it? Why did it follow her into the future? How? Yet, somehow, she knew how to use the flower-turned-baton. The problem was making the connection between the past and present, a frustrating tangle of wires that didn’t want to be untangled, refusing to connect like a string of Christmas lights.

“No, wait. But that’s it! That’s what I’m missing!” she shouted. “I have both ends of the cords right here, in my hand!”

She wove the flower through the air, tracing the shape of an invisible eighth note, flowing from her mind and into her wrist and from her wrist into the flower as she continued to weave invisible note after invisible note. While she wasn’t a fan of the hot breath that escaped from the gaping jaws of the shadow-blob below her, she was strangely thankful for it—Ahzef had unknowingly revealed the answers to her questions.

With a final swoop, the notes she had been weaving appeared beneath her feet as she landed gracefully upon their sleek surface. Their finish reminded her of obsidian, the glass-like surface more reflective than water, yet stronger than ice. As the rubber soles of her sandals flattened against the note, she wove one final note—a sixteenth note that symbolized not just the alacrity of the song inside her mind but also the dramatic turn-around her life had undergone just in the last two years alone. Now, her personified troubles standing before her, she was ready to say goodbye to a dark and lonely chapter of her life. Ahzef wouldn’t be an easy opponent, but she could hear the faltering song that defined his own existence: choppy notes, discordant pitches, incomplete rests…

“Your strategy isn’t as sound as you make it out to be, King of the Reverse Royalty,” Aria said, clutching her baton. “Music comes in many forms, but it’s what defines its quality that matters. Every life, every heart, beats to its own drum, they say. Yours, though… isn’t defined by anything. The song composed from your existence doesn’t have a set rhythm, know where to rest, nor does it know how to correct its off-key screech.”

“You’re walking into a minefield, little girl,” Ahzef hissed. “This is your only warning, but I’ll make you an offer! Bring me both of the princesses, and I’ll let you live. In fact,” he paused, “I’ll even let you become my top assistant again! How does that—”

“I’d rather drink sand.”

“Ha! Have it your way, then!”

A glowing bar appeared above the devil’s head, slowly expanding until it stretched nearly a mile out into the desert. His straight but rigid stance seemed to mark the center of the strange manifestation. Suddenly, dates began to populate the bar, specific details aligned neatly with precise centering. When he cocked his head, the bar would scrub either left or right, but the dates to the right of the bar seemed… incomplete. For something so expansive, there were so few dates. Less than a handful of them seemed to correspond to anything more than a few hours from the current moment.

“Do you know what this is? What these dates represent and why there are so few of them to my left?” Ahzef sneered.

Aria had been watching carefully, still positioned atop her eighth note but, as the bar grew, so too did her anxiety… and the cracks that had begun to crawl across the note’s surface. The dates to the left of the bar were specific moments of her life, memories she could recall vividly. To her right were dates she didn’t recognize and had no memories of; these dates, she knew, were pieces of her future that had already been established, that she would experience and remember. The problem was that the future dates were hardly more than a few hours from the current moment, and that could only mean one, terrifying thing: her life was set to end. Despite the overabundance of sand around her, there would be no adding more to her hourglass.

The cracks raced towards her position on the center of the note, their sound erupting into a cacophony of ear-splitting fractures. Taking a deep breath, she managed to calm the raging anxiety that threatened to plunge her into the same blisteringly-cold despair she’d escaped once already—she wasn’t entirely confident she could do it again, though, not if Ahzef had managed to worm his way into her timeline. She would have to bank on her own temporal abilities and renewed strength, that and the uncertainty of his ability to disrupt her own life’s melody. If she took the bait now, she’d jeopardize not just her future but everyone else’s future as well—it would be humiliating if she succumbed to something as simple as a lie. She had a choice to make: defeat Ahzef before her time ran out and take back control for good, or tempt fate, not knowing if she really did have only hours left to live.

“Fine! Force my hand, then,” she gritted. “I’ll take the anxiety you’ve given me and run it through you like a sword. You will feel every ounce of the suffering you caused me. This is my only warning. I’m going to make your head spin, you bastard!”

“That’s the spirit, Aria!” Ahzef howled. “Make me pay! Make me suffer! Can the scaredy little girl enact her revenge? Or will she falter and succumb to the past she says she moved on from?” He smiled. “Let the curtain rise on this grand spectacle!”