companionwolf

Not that he’s scared. Not that he’s got a hand in his pocket and is furiously petting both his friend’s heads in a anxious alternation. 

With Tulip’s help he gets the camera going, and he tails the trio as they walk the house, Alex clutching the EMP reader and a tape recorder as they ask for any spirits to make themselves known. 

They weave their way around the downstairs, through a living room covered in sheets and a dining room sparse of table. They poke their nose into the dark bathrooms, Davey spooking himself with a flashlight. 

Then they head back upstairs, giving each room a look over. Pillow Central isn’t sure if the humans can feel it, but when they look into the room of porcelain doll, among the dusty pink walls and canopy veil of the bed there are eyes, and they know. He swallows, hurried out of the room to follow Davey into the one they’re sleeping in. 

This room is much sparser, and the sleeping bags have been laid out, a ouija board taken and set up. Alex lights candles while Tulip waves some herbs and salt around and murmurs in rhyme; Pillow Central isn’t sure what good that’ll do, but the owner has done similar things, and he’s seen their witchcraft work. He supposes it’s just another human eccentricity. 

The trio begin to work with the spirit board, and Pillow Central finds himself excusing from the practice, instead getting up to gently leave the room with the door shutting behind him with a click. The faint murmur of the students drifts through the dark, and Pillow Central swallows again.

“Are you scared?” whispers Espeon. “Boo!”

“Shut up,” he hisses, and finds himself drawn back to that child bedroom, hesitantly pushing open the door to find the doll has moved from on the bed to the floor.

He approaches slowly. The doll’s head moves ever slightly to look up at him. Espeon pops her head out of the pocket. “Ooooh, real spooky,” she says.

“Be nice,” Alice says.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Espeon asks.

“Sure I do,” she says as Pillow Central bends down to gently take the doll into his arms. The porcelain is cold to the touch, and the painted on eyes gaze into his—

“So fragile.”

There is a flash of purple; Pillow Central staggers, dropping the doll as he falls- there is a cracking sound as porcelain meets wood and then amid the footsteps of the approaching humans he hears a gentle hum of disappointment. 

He looks up, and freezes. 

The shape is ghostly, phasing shades of violet; it looks down at the doll with disdain, two hands clasping, the other two motioning at Pillow Central. “What do you gain?” the Elder asks. “You, not even of the flesh you seek to so naively...’protect’.”

Espeon struggles out of his pocket and standing snarling, ignoring the gasps and exclamations of the humans at the doorway. Alice, dislodged in the fall, rights herself and stares up at the Elder with equal distaste.

“Why do you chose my kind to hide in,” she asks, “if you think us so lesser?”

“We had no choice,” says the Elder. “Find a way to survive, or be destroyed by your humans’ governments before we could even begin our most glorious projects.”

“Your projects are bullshit!” Espeon says. “I played XCOM 2, everyone knows what Avatar means!”

“And yet the need remains.” The Elder looks over at the trio of humans, who stare back with phones out and hands shaking. “Unfortunate.”

A blast of purple, and then Pillow Central lunges at the attack, because he can’t let them get hurt, this isn’t their fault—

Green light explodes from his outstretched hands, battles for a moment only as it knocks the Psionic blast off course into the wall; it goes through of course, but there are only splinters and not blood, and that is what he aimed for.

A sudden pain shoots through him, at his core; it feels like fire, like fire, and all at once he is squirming against the floor, desperately remembering ‘stop drop and roll’, desperately trying to ease the sensation that sparks across his body and along his astral limbs. 

The Elder hums, dark, deep. “You know not what you possess,” it says.

“Boy’s got the gift,” yells Espeon. “I want the Gift! I’m a fucking psychic type!” She lashes her tail at the Elder. “Give! Me! Psionics!”

“Your kind cannot handle it,” the Elder says. “See, he burns.”

Alice, as she hops steps over to pIllow Central, glowers up at the Elder. “Then take it from him!”

The Elder pauses. “No, it is more interesting this way.”

“Interesting my ass!” barks Espeon, and jumps at the Elder; she misses by a manner of feet, and the apparition does not spare her a look as it shoots another burst of Psionic energy, this time at her.

“Espeon—!” Pillow Central yells, but he can’t do anything, only lie here in agony on the floor—

The Elder hums again. “A first casualty,” it says. “If you intend for war, then learn to—“

It stops as Alex yells, “Look at her!”

Instead of burning up like she should have, instead of exploding into felt and fiber filling, a glow has concentrated around Espeon’s red gem. She wrenches her head from a position of downward facing pain to look at the Elder again.

“Get! Fucked!” she says, and a smaller Psionic burst comes from her gem; the Elder flickers, and the beam passes harmlessly though the air where it was. 

It does not reappear.

Pillow Central manages to crawl his way to Espeon, where she stands shaking. “Are you ok?”

“I think this is what a caffeine high is,” she says, before her legs go out and she  snap reverts to her manufactured form, the glint of Awakening dulled in her embroidered eyes.

“Oh god—“

“Relax,” says Alice as she comes over and touches Espeon. “She is simply in a state similar to human exhaustion. No loss of being or awareness. This happens sometimes.”

He breathes a sigh of relief; as that panic passes, the burn of the psionics returns, and he cries out. Alice looks over from where she stands next to Espeon. “I think the Awakening is unsure of what to do,” she says. “I do not think magic and ... whatever psionics are usually coexist.” 

“It hurts,” he says with a gasp, “like the astral limbs did.”

“Hey, uh, what the fuck,” says Alex. 

Pillow Central looks blearily at the three humans, at their phones and camera that glint with the light of recording. “You better delete that footage,” he says, but there’s not force behind the command, only pain. He dimly notices that one of the humans is putting their phone up, is cupping their hands to their face, that blood is oozing between their fingers. 

“Are you ok?” asks Davey as he comes over and helps Pillow Central to his feet. The latter is shaking slightly, trembling hands gathering up Alice and Espeon into his arms as he rises. He reaches for his backpack, checks on the Sectoid corpse, struggles to heft it onto his shoulders.  

“I think we should leave,” he says around the red fire aching that threatens to consume him. “We can come back, but—“

“Denny’s?” offers Tulip as she puts away her phone.

“Anywhere,” says Pillow Central. “Just need to get out of here for a while.” He can’t sense the Elder, isn’t sure if it’s still around, but the remnants of Psionic energy hang heavy in the air and burn. 

“Denny’s it is, hopefully it’s quiet- I’ve got the beginnings of a headache; last one in the car is a nerd,” Tulip says, and she and Alex go thundering down the creaky wooden stairs. Davey walks with Pillow Central, steadying him.

“What did it mean, when it said you weren’t ‘of the flesh’?” he asks.

“I’ll explain in the car,” Pillow Central says wearily. “I’ll explain everything.”