Page 34 of The Deathless One
The timeline straightened out, and that was when he saw a reflectionin the inky blackness at his feet. Not his reflection at all, but a dark-haired woman with haunted eyes, leaning against the side of a building.
Frowning, he stared down at his feet as Jessamine bolted forward and was gone.
“Wait,” he muttered, following her through the watery pools.
Puddles, he realized as his foot matched hers and stomped through the water so hard it splashed up in his realm as well. She was running, racing, flying through the streets, and he had no choice but to follow her.
Bitterly, he felt his body move without his permission. The darkness took on form around him, stretching into the vague shapes of buildings with darkened windows as he ran with her. Sprinting through the black streets, watching as she turned a corner and his realm mimicked hers, conjuring reality out of nothing.
For a while they ran, their feet matching in the puddles. But then he could see her to his right, just below his shoulder. She truly was a slip of a thing.
“Why are you running?” he asked, his voice a low murmur.
She startled, looking through a mirror at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Following you.”
“I don’t need you to follow me right now.”
“Tell me why you’re running.” He didn’t understand why she was acting like this. There were far too many reasons for her to run, and nearly all of them required that he get involved.
“You can’t see them?” Her cheeks were bright red with exertion, and her breathing was ragged. “You seem to know everything else, so I assumed you could see the damn infected trailing me.”
He looked behind them and watched as muddy creatures appeared in the darkness. They trailed ink drops, plopping down from their fingers in long tendrils of madness.
“Ah,” he muttered. “That is a problem.”
“You’re telling me. I’ve been trying to lose them for a while.” She leaned to the right, out of his sight, before returning into view. “Can you do something about them?”
“I am dead, nightmare. Did you forget?”
“Right.” She cursed, surprisingly raunchy for a princess. “Time to keep running, then.”
“I don’t believe they can climb.” He had no idea where that memory came from, but there was the faintest flash of another life. A life when he had tried to prevent these creatures from spreading. “Perhaps try to find a way higher.”
“Right. Worth a try.” Jessamine seemed to scan her surroundings before she caught a glimpse of something. “That might work.”
A ladder appeared beside him, dripping more of that liquid that coated everything in his home. But he found himself climbing it, rung by rung, all the way to the very top of a building. Once on top, he felt like he could see the end of forever.
His realm stretched so far beyond his reach. There was nothing there. Just a horizon with the vague sense of light to show him just how far away from everything he really was. So far. So beyond what he could ever dream or hope to find.
Between him and forever stood nothing at all.
“How far does it go?” he murmured.
“The city?” Jessamine seemed to still be with him, at least. “I don’t know. Seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.”
“It ends.” He wasn’t talking about her city. “Everything does. So there must be an end to this as well.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
The Deathless One looked down at the puddle he stood in, seeing her reflection instead. She wasn’t looking at her city anymore. She was looking at him and the darkness beyond. “What makes you say that?”
“Just a hunch.” She crouched, and his body was forced to mimic hers, as though he washershadow. Her hand was so close to the water, they were almost touching.
“What are you doing out here, Jessamine?”
“I can’t go anywhere looking like this. Clothes that don’t fit, trousers falling off, a bodice that’s clearly the top half of a wedding dress. It’snot like Sybil had anything to give me. She only has the clothes on her back.” She touched a hand to her snarled hair, then winced. “A hairbrush wouldn’t be halfway bad either. My fingers aren’t cutting it anymore.”
