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The priests began to chant in a foreign tongue that my chip could not translate. Ragna’s lava markings seemed to dull in my chest along with that palpable rage.
Elisse, stop them! Ragna’s voice was faint in the back of my mind.
“Noooo!” I screamed at the priests, momentarily interrupting their chanting.
A soldier pulled my feet out from underneath me, and my body dropped, thudding to the table. “You don’t know what you are doing!!” I screamed in frustration as they began to chant again.
I swiped the neck of the soldier closest to me. I had to get off this table; my head was feeling murky with the sounds of the chanting. I was starting to feel dizzy. My vision making me see double as I went for another soldier and missed completely; the tingling at my fingertips was now gone as I tried to feel Luthigo’s power.
I couldn’t feel him.
The sound of Padma chanting some incoherent nonsense echoed in my ears as I seemed to sway off balance.
The soldiers grabbed my arms and ankles as they pinned me down to the table on my back.
“Get off me!” I screamed.
I managed to get my ankle free to boot a soldier to the face. The knife was pried from my fingers as I tried to hang on with all my might. My body was twisting and turning, trying to break their grip on me.
That wicked jagged knife was pried out of my grasp at last and plunged into my chest once again. The scream from my throat echoed around those stone walls. My vision blurring as I stared at the soldiers who appeared in doubles. The voices of the priest and Padma drifted like a soft song as my body began to shake from shock.
I felt Ragna’s presence weaken, like a piece of me was slowly fading. My body was trembling as a cough sprouted blood from my lips. I looked at the iron candelabra that hung from the roof, its purple moss sprawling along its long arms, and the pain in me seemed to dull.
Padma’s vibrant blue eyes came into my vision, shutting out the candelabra above, a wicked smile filling his full lips.
“You’re a fucking monster.” I coughed again as blood sprouted over my lips.
Padma struck me with something sharp in my abdomen, causing me to scream, that fleeting moment of pain was absolute agony before it dulled, and my body continued with the tiny trembles of shock.
“Nearly there...” Padma chuffed to his man, the staff in his hands seeming to taunt me as it flared brighter. “She’s giving us some juice.”
My vision was focusing in and out with the chanting of the priests. The agony in my body started to drift into numbing clouds of drowsiness... as I looked up to that iron candelabra swinging from the roof.
Padma’s voice softly began chanting nonsense once again, like an old song welcoming me home.
It was so cold...
I opened my eyes. I was in the woods that surrounded the back of our housing commission estate with my little brother, Jay. He was swinging his wooden stick towards me with a wide smile beaming across his face. I blocked it with my stick and giggled, pretending to swing it at him, and stopped. I let him move to block. His young face was angelic in the soft sunlight. I looked as the shrubs behind him shook violently in a gust of wind.
“I’ll give you an army!” Luthigo’s voice echoed in the wind from some unknown place. I dropped the stick, looking around at the trees as they shook violently in the heavy breeze. Orange leaves came tumbling down from the branches cascading to the forest floor.
I was seated at Jay’s funeral; he was too young to be in that casket... tears trailed down my cheeks as I took in his silent beauty, it was almost like he was sleeping, but I knew better. I knew those wrists had been carved up in the bathtub, allowing him to sleep peacefully, perhaps for the first time in his life...
“HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!” My mother’s lanky frame cradled over the casket, yelling. My hands clenched, scrunching up my black dress as I tried to contain my rage; even at his funeral, she’d make herself the victim.
“I am the Zinnerian dark lord. My army rivals that of Lucifer’s ... don’t be a fool, you want power, I will trade you for it.” Luthigo’s voice sounded in the back of my head as I furrowed my brows at my mother’s too thin frame.
I was in the woods once more. I looked up as the sunshine flickered through the treetops casting shadows against the floor... “Jay,” I called. Where was he? He was right here... my boots crunched against the dry leaves on the forest floor as I paced to the grassy fields behind, the sun shimmering against the long yellow reeds that swayed in the wind... “Jay!” I called.
A woman appeared out of nowhere, her golden aura clinging to her skin like silk. I furrowed my brows, confused. Where had she come from? Where was my brother? I looked her up and down; why did she seem so familiar? I had seen her somewhere... yes...
I cocked my head, trying to recall where I had seen her face... the deep set of those eyes, and straightness of that nose, the fullness of her lips...
The golden statue from Sibyl was covered in vines and flowers that crawled up her calves ... Casteel had called her Theia... yes, Casteel!
I looked around the empty field with sprawling sun-flecked reeds; where was he... where was Luthigo? As golden tears glimmered in her bright silver eyes, the woman came to her knees before me.
“My baby...” her hands trembled as she went to reach for me. I stepped back out of reach, looking at her. What was this woman doing here? What was I doing here?
“My baby, I am so sorry...” she stretched out her arms towards me once more, clasping my hands; she felt so warm, so real.
My throat clogged up as tears threatened to spill... “Mum?” the word felt so funny to say, so foreign, this couldn’t be, fate couldn’t be so cruel.
“My sweet girl...” a golden tear slid down her cheek. “Come to me....”
I hesitated, refusing to move closer; she felt so warm, so gentle... but I was mad. I furrowed my brows, trying to remember why... my thoughts seemed to seep in and out like grasping at straws that flew past in the wind, but then I remembered.
“You bore me out of hate...” tears spilled down my cheeks now, my lips quivering with disbelief.
She was everything I had ever wanted, but she had bred with Kronos. By having me, I could do her dirty work... wipe his soul from existence.
My heart clenched.
She had never intended me to be loved as her child. She had thrown me willingly to the wolves of this universe and never looked back, never cared for the torment I would endure.
Never cared for those missed first steps.
Never cared for my first day of school.
Never cared for the scars left upon my skin.
Never cared for the tears that graced my pillow every night.
“I have suffered!!!” I screamed throughout the field as the agony tore through me, remembering my abuse as a child. The hands that had touched me; the bite of cigarette burns and belts to my skin; the mental abuse I had endured.
“You left me alone to suffer....” I said coldly, swallowing the lump in my throat. I wanted nothing to do with her. I tried to pull my hands free from her grasp, but she refused to let go.
“Even gods make mistakes...” she lowered her silver eyes as golden tears trailed down her cheeks, then cocked her head to the side as if hearing something in the wind that rustled the reeds.
“I do not have much time.” She hushed as she released my hands, gripping my elbows, and ran her thumb over the insides of my arms, leaving golden sigils that shimmered in the sunlight. She felt so warm, like sunshine that had been captured in a silken case.
“My baby, I have always been with you.” A sad look dressed her features as she cupped my cheeks. “Ragna blocks my presence... but I promise you, I am never far.” A warm smile tugged her lips.
“Every child that was drowned by the Titan Kronos killed a part of me.” Anguish seeped from her, pulsating into me, twisting my own heart into agony.
“But I promise you. I love you just as much as I have loved the others.”
Her hand went to her chest as she pulled light from herself. “Remember, I am never far from you, my beautiful girl.” She pushed the light into my chest.