Solomon blinked once, twice, again, and watched with numb fascination as red droplets splattered the pavement. His eyes hurt. Blinking made it worse, and there was an odd kind of blurriness in the ground, a blurriness and a light at the same time. A depth that he usually shouldn't be able to see.
He blinked another time and then looked at his cane. It was bleached white, and the odd thing about it was that it was sharp and defined in a way the rest of the world wasn't. As he watched, power began to seep slowly back into it, blurring the edges, except this was different to the ice-cold safety of magic. This was discordant, a scream of pain and desperation made visible; if it had colour it would have been red and purple, like a bruise, an open wound.
It sat there, stark against the quiet wash of the lifestream.
Hands touched his shoulders and Solomon flinched without meaning to, submitting to Valkyrie's insistent pull to his feet just because he couldn't do anything else. Her hands, he noted dazedly, felt cold. A bad cold. A prickling cold which made his stomach turn over and bile rise in his throat. When he looked down at them, the first thing he saw was the ring, with its own visible scream of anguish. Before he could stop to think--thinking was something beyond him now--he slapped Valkyrie's hands away and took an unsteady step back.
"Nothing more than what he could see naturally," he heard Gabe say quietly through the ring in his ears. But he was too busy staring at Valkyrie. Had his mouth been dry? All of a sudden it was a veritable ocean, and he swallowed hard to avoid the rising nausea. Valkyrie's edges were blurry too. Blurry and with a corona around her, seeped with that shadowy scream like an infection from her ring up her arm and draped over her.
"Necromancers, when they use their power, can see into the after. Even more than the usual soul to be guided, it means they can see what we are, what we do, the souls and where they can go. But doing so puts them at risk; full Necromancers can't look upon us without consequence. I did nothing. He opened himself to me."
Solomon was definitely going to be sick if he looked at his student for much longer. Particularly as the thought abruptly occurred that, if this was what a girl before the Surge looked like, what must he? He tore his gaze away and found himself looking at Skulduggery and the angel instead. The latter was still looking at him, but he was dimmer now, his wings nothing but a shadow thrown on the wall behind him. He smiled sadly at Solomon, and Solomon stared with fascination at the way parts of him seemed to be snatched off, or reverberated, to direct the wash of movement in the lifestream.
It was like an after-image of everything he'd seen while his magic opened him up. Already, it was fading.
Solomon followed one of those resonances and watched it dash upon another corona, and he knew even before he looked properly that it belonged to Skulduggery.
A soul, he thought numbly. Skulduggery Pleasant's soul.
Pleasant's soul was different to Valkyrie's. The same Necromantic power was there; there was no way Solomon could mistake it for anything else. But in Skulduggery, it was condensed, hardened at the core of him, its tendrils reached out among the fractures of the soul around it. As if the Necromancy was holding him together, and of course it was. He was a living skeleton.
But the odder thing about it was that the magic was compacted, and while it comprised his core the rest of him, fractures aside, was clear and crystalline right to the edge. It was as if the Necromancy was a backlight for the clarity of the rest, and whenever the angel's light washed against him, the outer edge glowed and hardened and grew even clearer.
It took a moment, but Solomon realised he was trembling. He no longer cried, but the blood felt thick on his cheeks. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and said hoarsely, "I believe I need to sit down, if you please."
no subject
He blinked another time and then looked at his cane. It was bleached white, and the odd thing about it was that it was sharp and defined in a way the rest of the world wasn't. As he watched, power began to seep slowly back into it, blurring the edges, except this was different to the ice-cold safety of magic. This was discordant, a scream of pain and desperation made visible; if it had colour it would have been red and purple, like a bruise, an open wound.
It sat there, stark against the quiet wash of the lifestream.
Hands touched his shoulders and Solomon flinched without meaning to, submitting to Valkyrie's insistent pull to his feet just because he couldn't do anything else. Her hands, he noted dazedly, felt cold. A bad cold. A prickling cold which made his stomach turn over and bile rise in his throat. When he looked down at them, the first thing he saw was the ring, with its own visible scream of anguish. Before he could stop to think--thinking was something beyond him now--he slapped Valkyrie's hands away and took an unsteady step back.
"Nothing more than what he could see naturally," he heard Gabe say quietly through the ring in his ears. But he was too busy staring at Valkyrie. Had his mouth been dry? All of a sudden it was a veritable ocean, and he swallowed hard to avoid the rising nausea. Valkyrie's edges were blurry too. Blurry and with a corona around her, seeped with that shadowy scream like an infection from her ring up her arm and draped over her.
"Necromancers, when they use their power, can see into the after. Even more than the usual soul to be guided, it means they can see what we are, what we do, the souls and where they can go. But doing so puts them at risk; full Necromancers can't look upon us without consequence. I did nothing. He opened himself to me."
Solomon was definitely going to be sick if he looked at his student for much longer. Particularly as the thought abruptly occurred that, if this was what a girl before the Surge looked like, what must he? He tore his gaze away and found himself looking at Skulduggery and the angel instead. The latter was still looking at him, but he was dimmer now, his wings nothing but a shadow thrown on the wall behind him. He smiled sadly at Solomon, and Solomon stared with fascination at the way parts of him seemed to be snatched off, or reverberated, to direct the wash of movement in the lifestream.
It was like an after-image of everything he'd seen while his magic opened him up. Already, it was fading.
Solomon followed one of those resonances and watched it dash upon another corona, and he knew even before he looked properly that it belonged to Skulduggery.
A soul, he thought numbly. Skulduggery Pleasant's soul.
Pleasant's soul was different to Valkyrie's. The same Necromantic power was there; there was no way Solomon could mistake it for anything else. But in Skulduggery, it was condensed, hardened at the core of him, its tendrils reached out among the fractures of the soul around it. As if the Necromancy was holding him together, and of course it was. He was a living skeleton.
But the odder thing about it was that the magic was compacted, and while it comprised his core the rest of him, fractures aside, was clear and crystalline right to the edge. It was as if the Necromancy was a backlight for the clarity of the rest, and whenever the angel's light washed against him, the outer edge glowed and hardened and grew even clearer.
It took a moment, but Solomon realised he was trembling. He no longer cried, but the blood felt thick on his cheeks. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and said hoarsely, "I believe I need to sit down, if you please."