Rixas de Sangue: Part 13

After she left, I needed isolation. It helped me focus. I sought out desolation. It helped me search my soul.
 
How had I lost who I was for so long? How had I let my hatred for him destroy who and what I was? What kind of warrior was I really? I gave up so easy.
 
I knew I couldn’t let self pity and regret control me. So, I went deep into the barren wilderness. Back to where I began. The Temple of Kauket was merely ruins; long since ransacked by thieves and studied by archeologists. But, luckily, to my gain they had not found everything. I gathered items I needed, which wasn’t much.

It had been a long time… a century, perhaps…since I had lifted a Sica. Generally, I preferred my roach blade,but, I needed to reclaim my combative nature. And this short sword was what I was trained with so many millennia ago.
 
It seemed no time at all before it didn’t even feel like I was holding a blade. This weapon was what I learned to make an extension of my arm. The more I used it the more I could feel my instincts fine tuning again- fully returning to me.
 
I exhausted myself each day, training for hours on end. I had no idea how much time had passed as the days turned into weeks. My muscles felt tight, I felt strangely closer to the goddess I once believed in. I felt the energy, the supremacy I derived from her.
 
I felt powerful again.
 
One cool evening, I lay on the warm sand searching the sky for something…I wasn’t sure what; some kind of sign I supposed. It was early still, the time of day that Kauket ruled, just after the sunset but the stars were blinking vividly in the magnificent sky, every constellation clear and sparkling. I pondered how odd that was and then… I saw it.
 
My answer…low in the sky- a pregnant, vermilion goddess, a Blood Moon - the Hunter’s Moon. She was telling me I had trained enough. It was time to go hunting. I considered how I might go about it. I knew I couldn’t just go barging in, guns blazing so-to-speak.
 
Or could? Would they be expecting me? Those damned seers. Perhaps if I went now before they could see?
 
That’s when I heard Bendis’s voice softly purring my name. “Ammmarrrraaaa…” I felt it glide gently across my skin, lighting up my blood. I took in a deep breath then, slowly, let it out in delighted content. It was so nice to hear her voice again.
 
The desert sky rumbled as it changed colors; filling with deep, dark, sinister clouds as a storm swiftly moved in. I felt the rain as it began to mist on my face. I closed my eyes. I was greedy I wanted to hear her voice again.
 
I lay quietly willing the universe to allow me to be close to her once more; to bring her to me once again.
 
The drip of water that landed on my face was freezing cold. In astonishment, I drew in a deep breath and quickly frowned. The desert abruptly smelled wrong; instead of earthen and warm -it was dank and moldy.
 
I tried to open my eyes, they felt leaden and my head hurt. I tried to move but my body was made of stone.
 
I thought I heard the whisper of her voice again, just out of my earshot. So, I tried to roll myself over to turn in the direction I heard her voice but my arms were sore and they felt pulled, as if I was restrained.
 
I thought I heard her sigh, exasperated with me, and I felt that desperate anxiety again. The one I hadn’t felt since that first day we parted. The one that made me want to do whatever it took to get her back; to make her mine.
 
I needed to see her. It had been too long. I knew my hallucination was real. That she was alive, still that didn’t lessen the worry. But, I needed tangible proof. And here I was unable to move.
 
What was going on? What was the matter with me? 
 
“Amara!” Her voice was severe now, urgent. I felt like grinning because she sounded angry with me. The cold rain dripped down harder now on my head; but I didn’t feel it fall anywhere else on my body.
 
Then, just like that, it made sense. I knew what was going on.
 
It wasn’t rain falling on me. I wasn’t lying on the desert ground during a desert storm.
 
I was at the stronghold of the council. I had allowed myself to be captured.
 
I was in the oubliette. My eyes snapped open.
 
It took a moment for them to adjust to the lack of light. Then, I noticed the thin stream of light from above- the opening in the ceiling; the one I’d been dropped from and where the water was dripping on me from.
 
I slowly tensed my whole body, getting a sense of what position I was in- if anything was, well, not functional. I felt the brass bonds that held my wrists together. I grumbled under my breath.
 
I sucked in a deep lungful of air.
 
“MALACHI!” I shouted, hearing the echo of my voice resonate off the walls. After a few minutes, I shouted again. “Malachi!”
 
“Malachi! You damned coward! Are you afraid I will best you? Is that why you lock me down here?” I taunted a little while later.
 
“Malachi! I am going to watch you burn you bastard!” I seethed.
 
Light spilled blindingly into the cell from a side entrance. I turned away from it momentarily. And when I turned back towards it I saw her first. My heart leapt from my chest. Then, from behind her, he laid a hand possesively on her shoulder.
 
“But, at what cost my luscious rival?” He smirked.
 
I felt feral.  

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©2010 N.M Faria

Rixas de Sangue: Part 12

I was dreaming of a vast circular room, an ancient coliseum – open with the sun shining brightly and the deepest blue sky overhead. Where the walls should be there was a thick miasma with countless, colorless strings that extending from the nothing. They crisscrossed at different points in the expanse of the room, like a giant spider web.
 
I wondered where I was.
 
I heard a noise and saw an ancient woman moving about. She was swathed in a blinding white tunic held together with tied together bits of the same cording that stretched across the room. She had wiry black hair that was tangled at the back of her head, held with yet another length of the string.
 
I looked at her more closely and saw that she had too many arms, six perhaps? Maybe, eight? It was hard to tell because they moved so swiftly as she walked around.
 
I watched in awe as she snaked a string in the fingers of one hand, pulling on it so that it lengthened. One of her other hands plaited the threads as she overlapped one length with others as she traveled; and in yet another hand she had shears that she was using to cut strings as she went. She moved so that it was hard to tell if she making deliberate choices or if she was acting on instinct.
 
She came closer to me. Her skin looked transparent, paper thin. I looked closer still and I felt nauseated when I saw that she had no eyes, just gaping crusted holes where they should have been.
 
It was instinct, then.
 
I gasped as it dawned on me who this decrepit crone was supposed to be. An ancient being I hadn’t thought about since I was a child. She was who frightened humans and immortals alike.
 
She was Moirae – Fate.
 
Her head turned my way as if she was looking at me and she smiled a crooked toothless grin at me, a black fluid dribbled around the edges of her mouth.
 
“Amara…” The crone’s voice crackled in a way that reminded me of TV static under water. “I have been waiting for you.” An icy whisper of death seized my lungs.
 
She signaled for me to follow her as she floated back across the room. I did as she beckoned.
 
At the farthest end of the room we approached a series of cords that were much longer than the others. They began back in the skein of the others, but they changed to a darker color and different texture as they extended beyond. I noticed that they looped back around again into the web.
 
She absent mindedly snipped at one in a place where it crossed over several others.
 
Then, she came upon a brightly lit length that ran closely with a dark grey one that looked like it was made of granite. She tugged on the radiant thread, moving it towards a cord that looked made of a precious metal, platinum maybe?
 
She lifted it up so that I could see it better.
 
“This is her.” Her effervescent voice said.
 
 I knew she was showing me Bendis. My heart tightened in fear. I knew I could stop Moirae from doing whatever she pleased, but I didn’t want Bendis anywhere in her sights.
 
I could only stare at her in horror.
 
Then, in yet another one of her other hands she weaved her fingers around the cord that looked like metal. I felt an irritating tickle like someone was yanking softly at my chest- I looked down and saw that it was extending from me. Wide eyed, I followed the distance of the strand from where it attached to me to where her fingers coiled around it. I was terrified.
 
She grinned at me as she brought the two cords closer together. She paused to blow on them and a glistening mist fell from her lips encompassing the two lengths like a glaze. The cords thickened considerably.
 
The room filled with a deep rumbling, a chanting hum that seemed to make the room pulsate all around me.
 
I watched as she intersected the two lines. That is when I realized the cords were not thickening but vibrating and where they touched it looked as if they sparked. The humming became so strong it felt like an earthquake in my chest. It felt as if my spine would shatter from the power of it.
 
She moved again and I noticed as she pulled the granite one to cross over both mine and Bendis’ ropes. It dawned on me who that one belonged to…it was Malachi.
 
In her fingers she clasped all three cords. I wanted to stop her somehow but the dream moved in slow motion and I watched horrified as the hand that held the shears moved towards all three. She stepped in my way – I could not see what she was doing… which cords she was cutting. I felt the thread in my chest pull taut and then slacken.
 
I lost my footing and I toppled backwards. I felt like I was falling down into a deep chasm. The light was fading. The oxygen was leaving; the air was getting thinner and thinner as I felt the end coming… the ground rushing up to meet me.
 
This was going to hurt.
 
My eyes snapped open. I was gasping for air. My galloping heart was pounding like a drum and I was trembling so badly my teeth were chattering.
 
Then, I felt the electricity of her hand flutter across my side protectively and suddenly I was calm.
 
“Bad dream?” Her voice was velvet.
 
“I suppose.” I maneuvered myself so that I lay facing her. She smiled at me sleepily.
 
“Hmmm, well…come here…” She pulled me closer to her. “I’ll make it all better.” She teased before kissing me. I let myself get lost in her for a little while, letting my dream with all my new found fears fade into the mists.

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©2010 N.M Faria