11.3
The next ruined object Jelani grabbed had some softness beneath its surface. He recognized the fabric immediately. It was the same material that Corvus's pants were made of.
His hands moved instantly, uncovering the rest of the man's body in a sudden flash of ferocious movement.
Corvus was bloodied, but his body was intact. Despite this, Jelani could sense that Corvus's life was nearing its end. Some irreparable internal damage had been done, enough to render that man's life force to a state of near non-existence.
But Corvus's purple eyelids slid open. Even on the brink of death, the gaze held within those black irises was unchanged.
"Corvus?"
The word Jelani had spoken came out before he could even formulate a thought, and his voice betrayed his shock to any who heard it.
"Can you hear me?" he asked, coming back to his senses.
Corvus's head tilted down slightly in a nod of pure fatigue.
"Nikki," his parched lips murmured.
Jelani kept his stare on Corvus for only a moment before making up his mind.
Corvus was alive, and all Jelani could do was hope that it remained that way. Nikki's condition, on the other hand, was an unknown.
"There."
From within his coffin of industrial junk, Corvus's long, white finger was raised… pointing.
Nikki's body hadn't been buried.
Camouflaged among the murky colors of the ground, she lay face down.
In a mere moment, Jelani was there, but Nikki was not.
He turned her limp vessel over, hating the thought of what her hidden face would show.
Her eyes were closed, and it was worse than he'd feared. He felt no pulse–no warmth emerging from between her lips.
Slowly, he withdrew his shaking hand.
He gave up, because it was over. There was nothing he could do to save someone who had already died.
But his instincts were suddenly defeated by something far more powerful.
"WE NEED HELP!" he screamed into the depths of the bowl in the earth.
But the person he'd looked to was impossible to reach. Echo had eyes for only one person, who had also failed to open her ice cold eyelids.
Jelani let out a huff of despair, but he didn't give up.
What can I do?
He cringed as he looked down at Nikki's ashen face.
I have healing. Can't I heal her?
He set a hand on her silent chest and tried to visualize a new world, one tailored to the authority of healing, but nothing came to him.
Perhaps it was the weight of the situation, or perhaps the authority just wasn't as natural to him as the others, but the reason didn't matter.
Through the veil of her frozen face, Jelani could still see a bright smile, one that wished for nothing but happiness to all those around her.
If heaven exists, he thought, then maybe she'd be better off going there.
Maybe Nikki belonged somewhere more beautiful than on this bloody, evil planet.
He accepted reality, no matter how cruel it might have been.
But his hand on her chest was replaced by another.
Fingers, delicate yet strong, slid under Nikki's tattered shirt and felt her skin, cold, but not yet fully devoid of warmth.
It was Yumi.
Jelani looked at her calm, closed eyes in wonder.
She seemed to have some purpose in mind, and Jelani returned his gaze to Nikki's face of stone, no longer sure of what to think.
Nikki's mouth ejected a spluttering cough.
Jelani leapt backwards in reaction–he was practically watching a corpse crawl out of its grave.
His head turned, as if pulled by a magnet, in Yumi's direction.
Yumi, who hadn't even shown an ability to heal her own injuries after consuming the element Jelani had procured for her, had brought Nikki back from death?
The image of her carrying Sasha on her back, like a soldier carrying his brother-in-arms, replayed in his mind. Perhaps that fire would have killed both of them if it hadn't been for her.
Jelani's mouth opened.
"How'd you do that?"
Yumi stood up, having saved her second life of the day.
"I learned how to use the powers you gave me."
Jelani watched her as she returned to Sasha, who was seated on a fractured boulder a little ways beneath them.
It still wasn't over.
He started downwards, but on second thought, he turned around and lifted Nikki's revived but still unconscious body over his shoulders, just as Yumi had carried Sasha.
In the perfect center of the crater, two figures were still wrapped together, one awake, the other asleep–at best.
Jelani didn't have to get close to see how tightly Echo's fingers gripped Eve's back. He thought he could even see her shaking, pouring every ounce of her being into the girl that she held inside her arms.
He realized that if Eve still wasn't awake even by Echo's unbreakable will, she must have been in far worse shape than even Nikki, who had literally been dead.
Eve's neck had been snapped well before Nikki had been crushed beneath Echo's fury, so life had been far longer from her silent heart.
But her body appeared to jolt a little.
Jelani squinted, unsure of whether the sudden movement only existed within his imagination.
It happened again, but Echo didn't rejoice as Jelani had thought she would.
Nikki groaned.
By Yumi's brilliance, the woman, once dead, opened her eyes.
"...Jelani?"
Her voice was weak, but Jelani heard it.
He looked at her, and his eyes softened to a smile.
"Hey, Nikki."
She opened her mouth, closed it, and swallowed.
Her eyes found Echo and Eve.
"You can put me down, Jelani," she murmured.
He set her on her feet, which she only wavered on a little as she stared at the unconscious girl and the stranger who clutched her so tightly.
To Nikki, although she had never seen Echo before, the relationship between the two was immediately obvious.
Echo was Eve's mother, and Eve was Echo's daughter.
Nikki's eyes, nearly shut with fatigue, finally opened fully. Silent tears welled up inside of them before breaking over the crest of her lower lid and tumbling down her dirty cheeks.
Her face was completely blank, but tears poured down it like they had never done before.
Jelani stared in the same direction. Unlike Nikki, his face was tense and tearless.
But their wills were bent on the same prayer.