Doing as she was told, Kari tried to make herself less noticeable. It was not until after she’d been noticed that she thought to use her powers of illusion. Cries of nonconformist echoed through the tunnel as more and more people pressed in, clogging their path with bodies.
“Run,” Keir growled, grabbing Kari’s hand and doing just that.
Dragging her forward, Keir’s efforts were soon thwarted as more people gathered to hold them in place. Using her bowstave to keep people at arm’s reach, Kari tried not to hurt anyone. More people pressed in, making escape almost hopeless. Only violence could open a path through, and she was not about to unleash her wrath upon the innocent.
“Get on my back,” Michael said, bending low.
“What,” Keir cried, “why?”
“If we can’t go through them we’ll go over them,” Michael said. “Hurry!”
Keir awkwardly climbed onto Michael’s back piggyback, looking completely
ridiculous. Scanning the area beyond the pressing crowd, Michael dashed forward with a flying leap. Sailing over the heads of the thickest crowding, they landed running further up the tunnel. Duplicating the impressive feat, Kari was only slightly aware of the fact that anyone looking up would be getting a pretty good peep show.
Hitting the ground, she turned back, gesturing to Jonathan, but the crowd was
pressing in on him harder now, and more were beginning to gather around Kari.
Jonathan didn’t have room to gather speed for a jump, and the crowd was pressing him toward the wall.
Jonathan locked eyes with her for a few seconds and mouthed, “go, I’ll be all
right.”
“No,” Kari cried, taking a step toward her brother.
At that moment nearly a hundred men carrying large weapons and wearing blue
uniforms stormed down into the tunnel, surrounding the group crushing Jonathan to the wall. One of them shouldered his way through, knocking many people to the ground, and leveled his weapon at her brother, saying something Kari couldn’t make out before firing.
Lightning jumped between them, sending bright flashes into the dim tunnel. Jonathan convulsed with the electrocution and went limp, dropping to the ground.
“Jonathan,” Kari screamed.
Someone grabbed onto her wrist and started pulling her back.
“Come on,” Michael shouted at her.
“No,” Kari screamed. “We have to save him!”
“We will,” Michael growled, “but not right now. There’s too many of them.
Right now we have to run.”
Knocking people aside with sheer brutality, the uniformed men started toward
Kari.
“Come on,” Keir cried. “I promise you I can get him out later, but we’ll be
rescuing no one from prison cells of our own. We have to go!”
Growling bestially, Kari gritted her teeth. Jonathan was her responsibility! How could she just run away and leave him to his fate?
“Come on,” Michael cried. “We can’t get to him without hurting and probably
killing a lot of people that don’t deserve it!”
“I’ll come for you,” she yelled to the still twitching form of Jonathan as
uniformed men began fastening restraints to him.
With that she turned and followed Keir, shouldering a big man that was coming
for her with open arms out of the way so hard his feet left the ground.
It had always been her responsibility, almost from the day she was born, to keep the twins out of trouble. It was practically Kari’s reason for living. She’d made an oath to herself when they left home that she would never let anything happen to her brothers.
As much as they could annoy her, she still loved them dearly and wanted nothing to harm them. It was her responsibility to keep them safe, and she’d failed at it. Jonathan was a prisoner.
Not only would the twins never let her live it down, but Kari didn’t think she was ever going to be able to forgive herself if they hurt Jonathan. She was the responsible one! How could she have let this happen?
Placing a hand on her shoulder, Michael smiled. “It’s not your fault. We’ll get him back. You’ll see.”
It did little to raise her spirits. At that moment there was little that could have pierced through the cloud of anger and self-hatred she was choking on. She’d always prided herself on her ability to take care of her older siblings, but her abilities had just been easily thwarted. Without her self-imposed duty to her brothers, she had nothing else. If she failed in that, what was she? She was nothing. She was practically defined by that one trait, and always had been.
“I’m going to rip the Apostle’s spine out through his belly,” Kari snarled as she dashed after Keir and Michael. She was angry with the Apostle, of course, but far angrier with herself.
Chapter 16: Identity Crisis
Sitting in the corner of a secret room beneath Keir’s shop, Kari could not
remember being any more miserable in her entire life. Keir, a silversmith now, seemed to be the leader of some sort of underground resistance, but Kari found it really hard to really about any of that. It was good that he’d found a new life after his world was destroyed, but she’d lost her brother. She’d completely failed. All of her strength and all of her power had been completely useless.
Ignoring the world around her, she sat in the corner, head leaning against a wall.
Though her face was blank, and her eyes stared off into space, her anger was slowly boiling and churning around inside of her, and her thoughts were deep, and rapid.
At a very young age, Kari had begun looking after her brothers because they
didn’t have a single ounce of common sense between them. Covering for them, she’d kept them from doing most of the more stupid ideas that they had. It was her job. It was what she did. It was her purpose in life. No one had ever asked her to, and certainly no one had ever thanked her for it, but she did it nonetheless, because it was her responsibility. Without it, her life was hollow and meaningless.
How could she have let them take Jonathan? There were a thousand different
things she could have done to go back for him, but they’d not come to mind until it was too late. She should have gone back and saved her brother. Now she’d lost him to whatever dark mercies the Apostle of Cain had in store for him.
Without her need to keep her brothers from trouble, Kari didn’t know who or
what she was. She was defined by what she did for them on a daily basis. It was not a mere question of having failed in her self-imposed duties. They’d get Jonathan back safely, she was certain of it. The real reason she was having such a hard time dealing with her failure was more a crisis of identity. Having based her entire life around protecting her brothers from themselves, there wasn’t anything else to her. If she couldn’t even succeed in fulfilling that one duty, what was the point of her existence?
What else was there for her? Without her responsibility to her brothers she was nothing, and being forced to see this in herself startled and frightened her.
Who was she? She had a name, but she was more than simply a name. When
those she’d based her entire life upon were taken, there was nothing left that was her.
Mentally wandering in confusion, she tried to find something— anything—else in her life that meant anything, but there was nothing.
Simmering in her anger, Kari did the deepest soul searching of her life. She
wanted to know who she was, beyond the woman that kept her brothers in check. She needed a real purpose and direction in her life. Someday she and her brothers were going to part ways. They wouldn’t be together forever. What would she do then? She needed to find the real Kari somewhere inside of herself.