42 Origin #2
“I saved her—a human, I soon learned. It was simple to reach and pluck her out of the air, draw her close. But she was broken like me; she wanted more than she had to offer; she was unable to tether properly; it’s why she fell.
Yet I still tried. Her will was weaker than mine.
Eventually, I pushed her soul right out of her body.
I didn’t mean to, exactly. But I wasn’t sorry.
” Adele’s voice is clinical, detached. She speaks of this murder, this death of a soul, as if it were inconsequential.
Not a person with a life, hopes, and dreams, but an object, a vessel, a tool.
If she said it with disdain, it would be better, but this cold indifference feels inhuman.
Zara makes a horrified sort of noise, and Adele abruptly stops her pacing to glare at her.
“You stole a human body. You stole a body and came here,” Zara breathes, understanding.
“Is it stealing if she was already too lost to return here herself?” Adele says, remorseless.
“Yes!” Zara says.
Adele shrugs off her judgment and resumes her pacing monologue.
“I learned what it was to wear a human skin. I was already so close to the surface by then. It was little matter to climb the rest of the way out of that dark place once I had a body and the doorway that the girl fell in. The void gave my soul, her body, a second chance. I found myself on a strange planet full of life.”
“Changeling,” Zara says. “You disappeared, and your mother said you came back wrong.”
“Mother,” Adele scoffs. “She was this body’s mother. But she was nothing to me.”
“She was right, though. You killed her daughter, took over her life.”
“It mattered little. No one believed her.”
“Get to the good part,” I say deadpan. Adele glares at me, but I frankly don’t give a shit. She tells the tale as if only her hurts mattered. As if she hadn’t destroyed so much in the name of revenge. “You know, the part where you’ve ruined all our lives because you were wronged.”
“I was wronged?” Adele hisses. “My suffering pales in comparison to what was done to my race, my family, my species. We were all sacrificed on a dying planet. We were wronged. You were wronged. You. You are a part of me. We were left for dead. If you weren’t broken, too, you’d understand. They were your family.”
“You’re wrong. I can’t bring them back; I can’t replace them. They may be my history, but this is my family, and I can protect them,” I say, stepping in front of her and whipping the sword up as she stalks toward me.
“You have never known family,” she says viciously.
“And whose fault is that?” I say, matching her ferocity, leaning toward her as she draws near.
She swiftly changes direction to pace restlessly rather than advancing toward me. “But I can bring them back. I created you while trying to do just that. All three of you.”
She turns to Meredith and Zara. “You two were failed experiments. This human body ages so fast, I was running out of time far quicker than I had anticipated, and I was desperate. I thought maybe I could pull them out, place their souls in fresh bodies, maybe I could bring them back that way temporarily, long enough to figure out a better solution. But it didn’t work.
You were never anything but ordinary humans; you were never my family like I hoped you would be. ”
Zara covers her mouth with her hands. Meredith is frozen in horror, green eyes wide. Our mother hates them for no reason aside from their misfortune of being different souls than she hoped for.
“You lied to me,” Adele accuses me. “Gave me hope when you chose them, when you claimed to sense their souls.”
“Me? I lied? No, you lied,” I say. “I had no idea what you were doing. I was a child; I only wanted to do whatever would make you happy, say whatever you wanted to hear. I just wanted you to love me.”
“The necromancy experiments,” Luca says sharply when Adele doesn’t acknowledge my words.
“Yes, those too,” I confirm, meeting his haunted gaze.
“First, she tried to drag souls out of the void and place them in fresh bodies, but she created Zara and Meredith instead. So she thought maybe dead and empty bodies would make better vessels for old souls. But those necromancy experiments failed to bring them back too.”
“What was wrong about that?” Adele snaps. “Those bodies were discarded, uncared for, thrown out like trash. Why shouldn’t I have tried to give them a second chance? New hosts who might appreciate them.”
“I don’t think you have any idea of all the immoral ground you’ve trampled over,” Calvin says.
“I don’t think she cares,” I say.
“Of course I care! I care more than any of you could understand!” Adele screams, clenching her fists so hard the nails on her bare hand puncture her palm. Blood drips from her hand to the floor.
“Don’t tell me you care. You gave me life just so you could kill me.” I say this last, final thing she’s refusing to acknowledge.
“What?” Zara says over Meredith’s sharp intake of breath.
Calvin takes a step forward, unable to help himself as sharp claws reveal themselves, fangs and fur growing as he fights for control. Luca flinches, and I feel his gaze boring into me.
“It isn’t that simple, Regina. I made you to be the sacrifice to bring them back because it couldn’t be me.
An undamaged copy of my whole soul, in a replica of the only body I had left at my disposal.
I have nothing left to give back. I left every piece of me that isn’t irreparably broken behind in the void.
But you, you have everything to give. Anything left of my soul lives in you.
Everything that could bring them all back.
One soul in exchange for many. One soul to make a conduit, to let them flow back.
I would have done it alone if I could. Would have spared you if that was an option.
But this is bigger than you.” Her voice changes as she speaks.
From ancient and jaded to pleading. A lost child begging for home. For love. For safety and comfort.
Lost, lost, lost.
The mournful peal of countless lost souls inside my mind.
I finally understand the voices I’ve always heard.
Me yet separate. Other. My ancestors. Remnant threads of tethers from beings lost in the void I once visited.
Clinging to me, the only familiar being left.
Just as I couldn’t let her go all these years, they hold fast to me.
“You could have told me before now. It was the least you could do.”
“I was afraid to. I thought it might damage your soul too much, knowing what was to come. I was afraid you might not be enough to sacrifice.”
“Liar,” I snarl. “It was never for my own good—it was always for yours. You forced me to walk myself to the gallows so you wouldn’t have to feel an executioner’s guilt.”
“Guilt is all I feel,” Adele says. “Why else do you think I’ve worked so hard to bring them back?”