Chapter 72

~~Beatrice~~

This was going to be interesting. And dangerous. And scary. And exciting.

Jacob guided them back down into the chamber beneath Three Kings Cemetery. Guess he didn’t care if Julias found out where this ritual chamber was. The dragons knew, so, it couldn’t have been his most secret, most important, most diabolical location. And considering the array of limbs and blood symbols he had on the back wall, where darkness hid the collection, she could only imagine the sort of fucked up shit he had in his primary ritual chamber. Or primaries? Or whatever other chambers he had.

But this one was more than enough to have Superman staring, wide eyed, at the grotesque imagery.

Once they reached sacrifice bowl, wide eyed became stunned. There was a fresh corpse hanging from the hook, drooling guts and blood into the rusted concave metal, so poor Julias got an eyeful for his first visit into the depravity of the circle.

“ ... I saw a police report on this man,” Julias said. “A pedophile from another city, on the run.”

Jen nodded as she came over to the bowl. The woman wasn’t entirely comfortable with crúac yet, but she was getting there. Triss though, for some reason the blood and slaughter came to her naturally, quickly, and she embraced it. She’d killed kine before she ever met Jacob, and butchering some sick, twisted, or otherwise needs-to-die fucks, in order to perform their experiments and rituals, was fine by her.

Maybe not so much for Julias, though.

“I drug them and keep them under,” Jacob said, smiling at Julias, while pushing the corpse so it started to swing on the hook. “There are some rituals, that require pain and torture and all that juicy goodness, but I don’t normally indulge. Especially not with the girls here.” There was still a chunk of intestine hanging over the pelvis, where Jacob had slit the bastard’s stomach open. It was connected to the ass, after all, so she imagined it was the large intestine dangling; Jacob had ripped out the stomach, she saw that. Kindred craved blood, not flesh. Seeing the man’s insides didn’t tickle her appetite, but it did tickle something else inside her, when she used his blood to paint symbols.

“Thanks for that, I guess.” Wincing, Julias came up to the bowl. Bold. He looked into it, and winced again as he no doubt noticed the mountain of blood, guts, and the way they’d been torn out, not cut out. “What sort of ritual were you performing?”

Triss and Jen looked at each other, and then to their boss. Of course, their boss laughed, and shrugged.

“Witchy witch kind of stuff.”

“ ... uh huh.” Rolling his eyes, Julias set his hands on the bowl. Blood on his palms and fingers now, but he kept them there. Very bold. “What do I need to do?”

“You need to cut off your hand.”

Beatrice and Jennifer both winced, sucking the air in between their teeth, as they looked between Jacob and Julias.

“I can’t just bleed for you?”

“No. We’re opening a door, and that takes a sacrifice.” Jacob reached into the bowl, moved aside some guts, and found one of his rusty knives. Fucking bastard just had to make this as hard as possible for Julias. “Cut off your hand, and fill the bowl with your ashes and vitae. I will perform the ritual, and open the door to your childe. Lucky for you you share the same blood, or I wouldn’t be able to open this door.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Of course not. How would I know where to go? I’ll be delving into a world of dreams and nightmares, piloting through an endless sea of fog and mayhem. Thoughts and fears and desires from the entire plane of existence. I’ll—”

“Ok, I get it. You’ll use my blood to home-in on him.”

“Exactly.”

“And if we didn’t have my blood?”

Jacob tapped his finger, big jackass smile on full display, doing the work of expressing what his bandage-covered eye sockets couldn’t. “Perhaps the sheriff’s blood, though it’s unlikely he’d willingly give me that. Without a strong guiding light, I won’t be able to find the realm, so if it’s not blood, it’s nothing. You are lucky Jack went on this mission.”

Triss pat her lover on the shoulder. She knew he didn’t trust Jacob, but Jacob was proving to be a very informative teacher. Sort of. If he said he needed this or that, he needed this or that. Sometimes he fucked with you, but it was always in good fun. Sort of. Lots of sort ofs, with Jacob.

“Have you done this before?” he said.

“I’ve been experimenting with the nightmare realm, yes. Azamel is a large threat, and so is her group of friends.”

“So you’ve found her nightmare lair before?”

“No. Like I said, I need a guide, something crúac can understand. Your blood. Your flesh. Your ashes. Without the guide, I’ll just be drifting around in the dreams and nightmares of the world. And fuck that, you know?”

Triss choked on a chuckle, keeping it down but only just. Her boss’s antics were growing on her, but she could see they were irritating to Julias. And it wasn’t a good time to chuckle. Jacob handed Triss the rusty, shitty knife, and gestured to the bowl.

“Ladies,” Jacob said, “a drop of your own blood, too. And a drop of mine.” The old man smiled at her, and waited.

Nodding, she put her hand over the bowl, and concentrated. There was more to this than just a drop of vampire blood. Crúac was about intent as much as anything else. The beast in her, that thing she had connected with somehow, it had crossed a barrier inside her, exposed her to something new and wonderful and thrilling and fucking dangerous, something in her blood. The vitae she concentrated and forced into her blood was the same mental effort you’d use to make a ghoul, or resurrect a fresh corpse as your childe. It was special, magical, and it deserved respect. It was what Jacob wanted, and as much as he joked and goofed around, she knew he had all the respect in the world for the power of their blood. And now, now that the beast inside her was whispering in her ear, she did too.

A single drop, before she handed Jen the knife. A single drop that was mentally draining, and left Triss a bit dizzy for a moment. That single drop did more than suck the energy out of her, it also quietened her mind, softened her thoughts, and let something with fangs and claws nuzzle a little higher up in her spine. It was almost like a purring sensation, coming from something that lived inside her, something that was now happy with her. Something that wanted to go hunting later.

Julias raised a brow at her, and she smiled at him, before she looked over at Jen. The same look on her face, one of joy, of embracing a dark, dirty little secret, and relishing in the strange tingles it sent up the body. She was succumbing to it too, just like Triss, and god damn it was good to have a friend with her on this journey. They were witches, manipulators of blood and the occult, practitioners of scary rituals that could backfire, that could summon things they didn’t mean to summon, that could spell doom for everyone involved.

Wow. She really was getting off on this. So naughty.

Jacob took the knife, and let out a large drop. It splashed against the guts of their kill, and burned away to ash. If it had entered someone’s body, dead or alive, the vitae would react and do its thing, as if it really was sentient, as if it wanted to spread its vampire disease. Christ, she still hadn’t talked to Damien to apologize to him, about giving him her blood. Ok, yeah, if the man returned from this alive, she’d visit him and talk to him.

Everyone looked at Julias, as the old man handed him the rusty knife. Julias looked at it for a moment, before he sighed, and took it.

Julias set the knife to his wrist, and began sawing.

Triss and Jennifer both winced, but Triss forced herself to keep watching, while her friend looked away. Yeah, it wasn’t easy to watch someone cut through their own wrist, especially when it was a guy you happened to love. Julias bore the pain well, and considering he had a century embraced under his belt, she imagined he’d had many encounters that involved a lot of pain. Hell, she rescued him from a burning building where his head had been smashed in by Rebecca. The man was used to pain.

Cutting off your own hand was different from pain. Maybe if she’d given him a nice, clean axe to do a proper chop, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but cutting off your own limb, with a knife, was a psychological nightmare. The mental barriers the brain had between you and such self destruction was immense; she’d run into them several times, in her crúac rituals. Pain was temporary to a vampire, but the mental struggle to not harm the self in a way the old living body would consider permanent, never went away.

Even the mighty Julias started to show signs of pain, extreme pain, as the knife pushed through bone. She put a hand on his shoulder, but the man was too focused on grinding his teeth together. And through it all, she watched. This was important. It was a sacrifice, it meant something, it was pain and limiting the self, even if only temporarily.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too drawn out. He was a vampire after all, and had the strength to drive through bone with a knife in only a few seconds. The extremity fell to the bowl, and wiggled with the impact, before evaporating into ash. Several heavy drops of his vitae fell into the bowl after, dark red, almost alive in and of itself. Onto the pile of guts it went, fading into ash seconds later, little red flames, almost like sparks, dancing on the blood’s surface as it went poof.

Groaning, Julias put his stump of a hand to his chest, inside his jacket. “There. Happy?”

Triss looked at Jacob. Jackass had a giant grin on, of course, and he drummed his palms on the bowl’s edge a few times; for effect, she was sure.

“Very. If only Invictus would maim themselves at my behest more often.” Chuckling, Jacob rubbed his hands together, and came over to join the others on their side of the bowl. “Beatrice, Jennifer, mood lighting.”

Rolling her eyes, Triss pulled out her phone, pulled up a light program, and pointed it down at the bowl. The program had various settings, and used the phone’s screen to display a rather trippy color effect; lots of bleeding reds mixing with white. Jennifer used the same program, and pointed the phone up at the cave ceiling.

“ ... you have got to be shitting me,” Julias said.

Jacob shrugged. “You don’t like mood lighting?”

“There’s a fucking corpse, right in front of you. There’s guts in a bowl. I can smell the shit and blood and piss and drugs. Have you no respect for the dead?”

“I have the utmost respect for the dead.”

Triss and Jen froze. Jacob didn’t say that with a joking inflection. Jacob said that in a serious, monotone voice. He never used that voice. The two ladies looked at each other, before looking at Julias to see what he’d say.

He said nothing. Sighing, Julias took a step back, and with his good hand, motioned for the man to continue.

That was a strange snap from Jacob. Respect for the dead? Wh—oh, Minerva. Ok, yeah, sensitive topic, and Julias had grazed it. But her man, all knowing and stupidly wise, backed off before he made things worse.

Jacob reached out both of his hands over the ashes of their sacrifice, and over the entrails of their kill. The corpse continued to dangle there, dripping blood, and Triss didn’t know if it was required for the ritual or not. The specifics seemed to be something only Jacob knew, and Triss was half convinced they didn’t matter. Intent, desire, and respect for the ritual mattered. Sacrifice and pain mattered. Blood and will mattered.

Jacob reached down into the mess of their kill, and touched his fingertips against the drying blood. Not dry yet though, and once the blood coated his fingers, he walked over to one of the nearby walls. Not the wall in the back, where the unusual shadow hid the gore display, the symbols and body parts, the chests of metal and limbs. All the walls of the cave had symbols drawn into them, etched or chiseled, many painted in blood, symbols she was growing to both recognize, and enjoy the sight of. They were beautiful in their own way, and represented the dark arts in a strange, media-friendly format.

Maybe she should make a Twitter account, and share? Ha.

She froze, as Jacob turned toward the back wall. Wait. “Jacob?”

“Powerful as I am, Beatrice, and as much as I know, navigating this realm is not something I can do alone. Not if I want to go with my own hands.” He offered a small wave over his shoulder, and disappeared into the black fog near the wall. “And you know, if Jack really is in trouble, I’d like to help.”

She blinked a few times at the man’s silhouette, before it was gone. Jen came close to Julias, and nudged her elbow into his side before looking at his fucked up wrist. Yeah, hand gone, god damn.

“You’re going to summon him?” Jen said to Jacob’s disappearing silhouette.

“I am.”

Triss shook her head. “Will he want a favor for this?”

“Of course. But I’ll handle that,” the Nosferatu said from the dark. “Julias, on the other hand, will owe me based on the outcome. If the kid doesn’t need help, a small favor will suffice. If I need to rescue him? Well, a big favor.”

Julias stared into the black, and Triss could almost see the man calculating a thousand outcomes based on this conversation alone. “Naturally,” he said, tone sarcastic, borderline mimicking Jacob.

That earned a laugh from Jacob, and the clang of one of his chests being opened with a snap.

“Though, I have to thank you, Mister Mire, for the opportunity to do this. This is a step I’ve been meaning to take, but I’ve had no beacon to guide me.”

“Does that qualify as the favor?”

“Ha. No.” Another clang resounded through the cavern, and then, the distant howling of corpses.

Julias raised his head, looked up, and around, as the quiet screams started to fill the air. Whether they were the echoes of the past, or their kills, Triss didn’t know, but whatever Jacob was doing on that back wall, whatever rituals he was painting or dancing or whatnot, it had tainted the cave with screams.

Black Blood’s body came for them. She wasn’t sure if it was his body. ‘His’ because his voice sounded masculine, but she was pretty sure spirits didn’t have genders. And this spirit’s body was an ocean of ooze, black and flowing and thick but not. It should have felt like tar, but it felt like nothing, and as it began to ooze down the cracks of the walls, Jen and Triss waited patiently.

Julias, not so patiently. As he cradled his stub of a wrist inside his jacket, he stared at the walls, before looking between the two witches. “Uh...”

“Just wait,” Triss said. “Black Blood can’t do his thing until he ... sets up.”

“Sets up?” Blinking over and over, Julias looked around at the rising tide of black, and lifted a leg as it started to come up over his boots.

Triss touched his arm, and nodded. Slowly but surely, the black ocean, bleeding up the walls, bleeding down the walls, and falling from the eye sockets of the skeletons that held up the ritual bowl, began to fill the room. She’d been through this a few times now, Jen too, and the two of them had gotten comfortable with it; as comfortable as you could. But her Superman looked disturbed, even a little scared, and she smiled at him as she waited.

Only when the strange, black liquid covered them, and filled the underground cavern to the ceiling, did Jacob return to the bowl. Triss and Jen knew what he did over there, painting his symbols, using the blood of corpses and metal of torture devices as his paint and brush. Probably not something Jacob would want others to see; hence, the black fog that covered that side of the cave. But then, she doubted he cared too much, if he was willing to bring Julias down into the cave. Maybe it was to keep people calm, if he was bringing them into the cave for the first time?

Unlikely, because no one was going to stay calm when the darkness started talking to them.

“Well well, if it isn’t the mighty Julias Mire.” The spirit’s voice rose from the shadow, and everyone turned to the bowl where the strange, deep, bassy voice came from.

“ ... you must Black Blood.”

“That I am.”

“I didn’t think Black Blood would be from the South.”

Jacob, returning from the black upon blackness in the back of his cave, laughed, and set his hands on the bowl again. “He’s borrowing the voice from someone we killed.” Of course, Jacob called him ‘he’ as well, and the habit was rubbing off on Triss.

“Naturally.” Rolling his eyes, Julias looked down into the bowl. They were all standing inside black water, but there was enough light for them to see, and the blackness didn’t impede them like water would. It meant they could move around easily, and Julias took a step back as a face looked up at him from the contents of the bowl.

From the guts, intestines, organs and flesh, a face of oozing black smiled up at him. It was made of the remains of Jacob’s sacrifice, and Black Blood’s infestation had turned it black. Triss wasn’t sure if it was more or less disturbing than the first time she had met the strange entity, when it had possessed a corpse, walked around, and helped Jacob with teaching her a ritual. Most fucked up night of her life.

And this was probably Julias’s. He’d cut off his own hand, and was now staring down into a bowl of entrails, that were looking up at him and talking to him, all while being submerged into a black water. Yeap, that ranked pretty high on fucked up shit.

“Am I to understand, that we’re going to save the infamous Jack Terry?” Black Blood said. Wait, infamous?

“What has Jacob told you of my childe?” Julias didn’t like that very much. He put his good hand against the bowl, and stared down at the face. Ballsy. It was cute, seeing Superman get all fatherly.

“Only good things!” Jacob said, hands up, like he was afraid of Julias’s judgment. Course, he wasn’t, and he laughed a moment later as he climbed into the bowl. “We’re just going to check and see if things are going his way, Black Blood. If he needs rescuing, we rescue him.”

“And if he does not?” the spirit said.

“Then poor Julias owes me a favor for nothing.”

“And the boy is in the clutches of these hunters and their Begotten friend? I reckon he does.”

Julias’s frown only grew as Black Blood made it obvious that Jacob was sharing details with the spirit. More than that, that Black Blood knew details that Jacob had only just learned. At this point, Triss expected him to, with how much her boss relied on him for their rituals and whatnot. It must have been a shocker though, for Superman to hear his childe was a topic of conversation between a psycho and an alien god. The kid had a habit of causing waves, though, so it wasn’t like it wasn’t deserved.

“I can sense the blood of our beacon. Good to go. See ya later.” Jacob nodded, offered Julias a finger wave, and stepped into the bowl. Stepped into, and sank into, with a plop. Like as if he’d dropped into a deep pool.

And the black water around them vanished. As if someone had popped a balloon, it all went away in an almost explosive shattering of black winds and black splashes. It had no impact, but it sounded like it should have, and looked like it should have. It drained down into the floor like the floor had opened up to swallow it, and it was gone the next second.

And then there were the two witches, and a bowl of guts. No black bloody ooze stuff, no talking faces made of entrails, no nothing.

Sighing, Julias walked around, cradling his wrist, and Triss followed after him. Half to keep him company, half to keep him from touching anything he shouldn’t be.

“I’m sure Jack is fine,” she said. “And if he’s not, Jacob will do something. He likes the kid.”

“Why is that?”

“Dunno. Kid is good at making friends.”

“He ... he wasn’t, when I was grooming him for the embrace. That kid was antisocial as all hell, and thought of everyone else as mindless sheep, slaves to capitalism and peer pressure.” Sighing, Julias looked at her, the bowl, Jen, and the dark end of the room where Jacob had done his ritual out of sight. “Suddenly he’s friends with every vamp in the city, including Jacob.”

She laughed, shrugged, and tapped on his arm. Mistake. The gentle impact nudged against his wrist, and he groaned.

“Ah, shit, sorry. Um, well, Jacob’s not so bad once you get to know him. He likes to keep Invictus at arm’s length though, cause, you know.”

“Indeed.”

“Don’t be like that,” Jen said, walking over to him and nudging up against his other side. “Really, you can trust the man more than you think you can.”

Triss raised a hand. “But not completely.”

“No no, not completely. That’d be a mistake, and Jacob wouldn’t want that. But you can trust him with Jack’s life, sure.”

“But ... maybe not the Uratha’s. Jack took some on this trip, right? I don’t know about them. Boss might leave them to die.” Jacob did absolutely hate them, for their meddling, their entitlement, and their involvement in Minerva’s death. It was hard to say if Jacob was able to make smart choices when they were involved.

Hopefully their involvement wouldn’t affect Jacob’s rescue mission.

“Come on, Jen,” she said as she walked back to the bowl. “We’re supposed to be a tether.”

“He never did explain how that works.”

Shrugging, Triss held her hands over the bowl, and concentrated her effort and will into the area. Jacob said if they concentrated their vitae into their fingers, and kept it over the bowl, it’d work. Why’d he need a tether, if he had Julias’s blood to guide him? She didn’t understand, didn’t know how, but knew how to do what he wanted. Yeah, it made no sense, but these days, nothing did.

~~Natasha~~

Jack spun in place. His gun flew out of his hand, and his phone did too. Its light twirled as the phone spun repeatedly, streaks of light cutting across the chamber of madness, as werewolves struggled to handle the hunters surrounding them. Everyone froze when Jack went down, and the two vampires gasped at the sight of the boy’s head exploding.

No, not exploding, thank god. But for a moment, the side of his skull was gone, and Tash felt every muscle in her body clench as she brought her hands to her lips. The bullet had hit his eye, against side of the socket along his temple, and cut through the bone along his ear. Through the fires flickering in front of her, all she could do was watch as the boy collapsed backward, turning to land on his stomach. He touched the wound, body shaking, and bits of blood dripping from the wound before fading into ash.

Since Athalia’s strange shadow fog had dissipated, the fire that Angela had renewed was taking its sweet time burning away, leaving her and Damien stranded. She could jump over it, if her leg was working. Damien could jump over it, if he didn’t look like he’d been shot a dozen times, considering the bandages on his body. But she had to get over there, had to save Jack, had to save Art and Matt and even Noah and Athalia. Had to save Fiona. Had to save Eric, and Clara, and Jessy! Had to do something.

“Sorry about that, Angela. Sándor and I had a bit of trouble with these three, and I’m guessing you had trouble, too?” An older man stepped out of the darkness, pistol in hand, other arm dangling weakly at his side. Blood. As he came in closer, the old man looked at the prostrated skeleton creature, then Jack, and chuckled as he held out a hand to Angela.

“ ... yeah. Athalia kamikazed.” She took the man’s hand, and dragged herself over to get her pistol.

The man had to be Jeremiah. But—oh god. Tash stepped back, as something stepped out of the blackness, something tall, something that earned the thud thud of a giant’s footsteps. Its horns came first, topped upon an almost human, but not quite human head of colossal size; no, its whole body was colossal. And it had four arms. Four wings! Some sort of gargoyle monster, something that walked on raptor talons, and leaned forward, counter balanced by a tail.

Three bodies dangled in its hands. His hands. Jessy, Eric, and Clara. Clara and Eric looked like hell, and they were in their human bodies, dripping small drops of blood as the beast moved in closer to the others. From the way they dangled, they looked unconscious.

Four hunters walked around the monster’s legs, and they looked beat to hell, too. Soon-to-be bruises covered their bodies, and gashes, patched up but otherwise a serious problem for kine. They limped and dragged, but remained at arms, guns held and ready to shoot. It was more than enough to bring the wounded and exhausted three werewolves near Jack and Athalia to a stand still.

“We lose anyone?” Jeremiah said.

“A few, yeah. Athalia killed a couple, and these fuckers hurt Jackson enough to kill him.” She nodded her way to a man by the pillar, slouched, and not responding. Blood was pooling around him.

“And the paranormals?”

“None dead. Two vamps right there.” Angela pointed to her and Damien. Oh no. “Three more dogs here. And Mom’s little friend is down in one of the rooms, bleeding out. We should go check and kill her.”

“That we should.” Jeremiah walked over to the flamethrower, and sighed as he picked it up. Damaged. He set it back down, and looked across the flames to the two vampires. “I’m not in Dolareido for you blood suckers. I’m here for Azamel, and the rest of her kind, true monsters. Bring the spider woman here, and you get to live.”

“W-What?” Tash said. “ ... n-no, we—”

Damien leaped. Tash jerked, and snapped her head to the side as the man jumped over the flames. No way his body could handle that, but he did it anyway, sword up and ready to slash.

His impulse earned him another bullet to the chest. Jeremiah raised and drew his pistol with the speed of a professional duelist, a subtle and quick movement that wasted no motion, hip firing. The pistol he had was something high caliber, and it slammed into Damien’s chest the moment the man had left the ground, putting a stop to his forward motion so he fell back to the ground beside Natasha.

“Is the spider woman a hot spot for you, boy?” Jeremiah said.

Tash shook her head. “She ... y-you can’t, she...” There were no words she could say to this psychopath. The look in his eyes was one of zero empathy, as if someone had ripped that part of him out with bloody claws. It was the sort of look she expected Jacob to have, if the man had eyes of his own.

“Fuck ... you,” Damien said.

“Hot spot it is. Isn’t that cute.” Shrugging, Jeremiah walked toward the werewolves. Each of them had four hunters around them now, guns pointed at their huge bodies. The beasts struggled to stay standing, and both Art and Matt had blood leaking from their chops; their own blood, mixed with the blood of hunters they managed to bite earlier. Many of said hunters were the ones holding guns to the werewolves, and they did not look pleased. How they were standing, Tash couldn’t fathom, but these hunters had the resilience of ghouls, without a ghoul’s extreme healing or strength.

“Now, this little punk here lied to me.” Glaring at the Uratha, Jeremiah stopped beside Jack, who was still on his hands and knees, trembling. Jeremiah slowly, almost gently, put his boot on the boy’s back, and pushed down, until Jack gave in and collapsed to the floor. “He mentioned someone named Avery, and when I asked him about it, he lied about who it was. I only found out later from Elen about the werewolves. Took some digging to find out about Avery.”

The bastard pulled his foot back, and kicked Jack in the side, hard. Poor boy was knocked onto his side, trembling, cradling his face and trying to stop Jeremiah from kicking him again. No luck. Jeremiah kicked him again, and again, as if getting revenge for what Jack just did to Angela. Angela was beat up, and had had a gun pointed at her; he must have assumed, and assumed correctly.

“All of you, you’re all going to surrender, immediately. I can make use of each of you, and if you play nice, some of you will get to live.”

Matthew snarled. “Some? You—”

Jeremiah hip fired once again, and the bullet slammed into Matt’s leg, sending him down onto his knees with a howl. Oh no.

“P-Please, don’t,” she said.

“Please don’t?” The man looked her way and laughed, and with only a quick glance, fired at the two remaining, standing werewolves. The bullets slammed into their legs as well, and each went down, growling and grunting as their palms caught the stone floor. “You’re our prisoners, monsters. You have no rights, and you don’t get to beg. Do what we say, and if I’m feeling charitable, I’ll let some of you live. But be under no illusions, you’re nothing but pests, and we’re exterminators. Only reason some of you might get to live is we’re after—”

The world split apart.

Everyone turned, and looked at the cut through the universe. A seam, like someone had taken a sword and sliced through the fabric of space. Tash knew her brain was having trouble interpreting it, like an illusion, one made to defy the eyes and make them see something incorrectly, messing with depth perception and colors. But something had cut its way through the air, and was reaching out through it.