Jade Benz

She was twelve years old, crying alone in her room. She had just gotten home from the hospital, and hadn’t even taken her shoes off before running to hide under her bed. Her mother had been in a car accident the day before, and had passed away less than an hour ago. She was in shock; how could this happen?

Her dad hadn’t made it up to the hospital, he was busy at his government job. She hadn’t been paying attention to the details, but she knew he was trying to get his fair share of taxes from the greedy farmers. Whatever it was had to be important though, because when she got home and told him what happened. He had said ‘That’s terrible dear, listen, don’t wait up tonight I will be working late. Was there anything else?’ before hanging up on her.

She was nineteen years old, sitting in a holding tank at the local police station. She had gotten drunk with a boy from school for the first time, and had ended up passed out at the park. She had tried to walk home, she didn’t drive, and had gotten lost. When she woke, up the police were helping her into the back of a squad car.

Her dad had been busy, so she sat there for several hours before he made it to her. She hadn’t seen him for a few days, and he looked like he needed a shave. He screamed at her for the next three hours straight. It was the longest conversation she’d had with her dad, since she graduated a year early. He had wanted to be sure she got into the right college program.

It was her twentieth birthday; she had stopped into her father’s office for a birthday hug. When he went straight from his meeting to lunch without seeing her, she grabbed a bottle of scotch from his desk drawer and drank it down before passing out in his chair. She didn’t end up getting a hug, but he did yell at her for an hour.

What the hell was going on here? Jade shook the memories away, no one had time for that shit. She looked around; she was back in her void space. The normally white expanse was covered in cracks. She could see passed the white walls, into the real void beyond them. Tok was with her, his giant arms wrapped protectively around her small trembling body.

The rock monster she had absorbed at Benjamin’s insistence, was flying around smashing its bulk into the walls. She had the impression he was trying to escape into the blackness beyond the walls of her mind. thick tendrils of her normal essence were wrapped around the rampaging demon’s limbs, trying to restrain the beast.

The demon impacted a fresh section of her mind with a thunderous boom. Then Jade found herself standing in a dark, dingy alley. Her nose was running and her cheeks were flushed, having just been thrown out of a dive bar. The guy who had brought her here walked out after her, looking down with a disgusted sneer on his face.

“I heard you were crazy Jade, but this isn’t my scene.” He said as he walked to his car and opened the door, “later bitch.” Before driving away, leaving her to find her own way home. It wouldn’t have been so bad; except she had left her phone in his car.

“No!” she shook her head violently; she didn’t want to remember the rest of that night. Tok gripped her tighter to his chest, baring his teeth in useless defiance at her pain.

The ogre had tried, many times, to restrain the rock demon. She had lost count at this point, but every time he tried the demon killed him. When Jade revived him using her essence, the strands that bound the demon would slacken and it would break free. So, the pair just huddled together around the remains of her meditation chair.

Jade really wanted to be angry with Benjamin for making her absorb this stone abomination. She could be honest enough with herself however, to admit she would likely already be dead if he hadn’t. When that red winged bitch had murdered Tik, the black essence had invaded her core. it went wild inside her after that, the giant fireball that held her power was scattered over the expanse that held it. She was being slowly drowned by the blackness.

When she heard Benjamin yelling at her to absorb the pattern, she just did as she was told. As the monster merged with her soul, it sucked all the black energy into itself, freeing her for a time. She had managed to actually summon the demon long enough to finish the battle, before it began to destroy her again.

She lost track of how long this had been going on, with each impact of the beast’s body a crack had formed. With each crack some of the darkest moments of Jade’s life were replayed before her eyes. Her mind was literally cracking up around her, stubbornness alone couldn’t have kept her sane. It was the strong arms of Tok wrapped tightly around her trembling body, that kept her together.

“Well damn,” a voice intruded into the void. Jade readied herself for another episode from her entirely too fucked up past to begin playing, “Jade, I’m sorry. If you let me in, I can help you fix this.”

She lifted her head, looking around. A screen had appeared in the void, like the screen the horny dude always used. Except it wasn’t the Erlking who looked in at her this time, it was Benjamin. What had he said? If you let me in…

“Yes, ok. Please, just make it stop.” She sobbed at his image. She blinked in surprise; she hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

At her words, Benjamin’s form materialized inside her void space. When he came into full being the demon roared and charged straight for him, Jade screamed, thinking her savior was about to be killed before he could help her.

Lifting his hand towards the rock monster, a black and light, candy cane spiral of power rushed out and impacted the beast. It wound its way around its form and bound it in place, doing in seconds what Jade had failed at for…weeks?

Having bound the demon, Benjamin reached out his other hand. Another braided line of light and darkness shot from his hand, winding through the cracks in her mind. the cable acting like thread, stitched closed the gaps in the white walls, before moving deeper. It passed beyond the ethereal barrier between her void space and her core and started gathering up the shattered remains of her fireball.

“I need your help Jade,” Benjamin said as he worked. “I can tell that this has been hell on you, but I need you to pull it together.” He looked at her then, his eyes were flat. She knew the look, remembered seeing it in the mirror for months after her mother had died.

“What do you…need…” she got out at last, fighting back tears and talking through her sobs.

“I am going to gather your creation essence; I need you to spin and compress it.” He said, having to explain what he wanted several times before Jade understood.

Once she had the fire ball spinning, his analogy of swirling bath water had helped, she began to push on it. The fire ball began to compress, condensing into a liquid as it shrank.

“Good, now…I’m going to pull the chaos essence out of the gargoyle’s pattern. Looks like I messed up when I set it to attract the chaos, the pull was too strong for you to get it back…ok here we go.” He said pulling a stream of darkness from the ‘gargoyles’ eyes, ears, nose and mouth. It was creepy…and what the fuck did he mean ‘he messed up?’ was this mess his fault after all?

“It won’t mix with the creation essence, so you are going to have to twist them around each other.” Again, he had to walk her through it.

She couldn’t bare the thought of having that…stuff…mixing with her core however. She did as he said up to a point; but instead of forming two halves of a circle, she wrapped the glowing ball with a black band. When she was finished, it looked like a black and white version of the planet Saturn. She now had control of the ‘chaos’ essence and still maintained her pure creation core.

“Not what I had in mind but it should do the trick,” Benjamin said. “Cultivation is supposed to be personal anyway, I’m told, so doing it your own way is probably for the b…” his words were cut off when Jade’s mental form collided with his.

She squeezed him as tight as she could, hands working over his back trying to feel him. She hadn’t touched another person in so long, and the nightmares had been more then she could handle. She held him and cried into his chest, sobbing in pain and relief. He didn’t respond to her for over a minute, just standing there.

Eventually, he put his own arms around her in turn and held her to him. It wasn’t obvious to her at first, because she was sobbing and shaking, but eventually she became aware that he was crying too. Silently and without the shoulder shaking sobs, but there were tears in his eyes regardless. She didn’t ask, it didn’t matter, in that moment they just held each other and cried.

When they had collected themselves again, and stepped apart, Jade looked around the repaired room. There were still black and white stitches in the walls, making her void space look like a patchwork quilt. The blackness beyond was sealed out however, and that was enough for her.

“I hate to be greedy, but is there anything you can do for my meditation chair?” she asked looking at the wreck that still littered the floor.

Tok was still sitting on the ground, not having moved at all when she rose. She could feel his primitive thoughts, to an extent anyway, and she knew he…didn’t know what to do. So, instead of upsetting her more, he just stayed put. The chair was in a twisted pile at his feet, and at her words he picked it up and held it out to her, a tentative smile on his round face.

The big dummy, Jade couldn’t help but smile though. He was trying so hard to cheer her up, and he had lost someone too. Tik had been his twin, or duplicate, she wasn’t sure. The pair had been identical when she bound them, and only time had separated them to her eyes.

“I think so,” Benjamin said. His words startled her; she had almost forgotten he was there. “It is very complex, but…” he reached out both hands, and Jade watched as more candy cane bands of light and dark wrapped themselves around the chair.

Time passed, and she watched him pour more and more energy into the meditation chair. Finally, it straightened out and resembled a chair again.

“Not certain it is completely back to normal, the Arbiter made that after all. and he is worlds stronger than anyone else in this universe.” He shrugged, looking tired but pleased with his efforts.

“Thank you, Benjamin.” Jade said, looking him in those flat eyes. She wanted to say so much to him in that moment. Thoughts swirled around her mind, colliding bouncing away and being discarded. Eventually she settled on the most important thing that she just needed to know right now. “Did I hear you right? My void space looks like Frankenstein’s ass now, because you fucked up?”

He stared at her for a beat, before bursting into hysterical laughter. She didn’t think it was funny, not a bit, but she soon joined him, and the pair laughed for several minutes.

“Can you control the gargoyle now?” he asked at last, not answering the question. She let it go, for now, and turned to the ten-foot tall, black stone monster.

Tentatively, she reached out to it, like she would do with her ogres. Ogre, there was only one now, she would have to get used to that. She was able to connect just fine and establish a link with the brute. It was costly however; the pull was fully three times what Tik had cost to maintain in essence draw.

“Yea, I got him under control now, but he is expensive as shit. Gunna burn through my essence pretty quick using this beast.” she said, nodding to him at last.

“That is likely because you aren’t using chaos essence, if you blended the two the cost would be greatly reduced.” He told her.

She thought about that for a beat, remembering the nightmares that chaotic power caused her.

“Thanks, but no thanks Vice, I think I’ll just pay the bill.” She said, without another second of hesitation.

“Your call,” he said with a shrug. “You ready to get out of here?” he added. Looking around the repaired but still wounded void.

She smiled at that, was she ever.