Chapter 9 #2
I stiffened. From her memories, I had seen many disturbing scenes. But based on her emotional state in many of them, they could have been vivid nightmares rather than reality, if only based on the fact that her mind lacked the clarity that an awakened state displayed.
“How do you know?” I asked, my voice dangerously low.
“They made me watch,” she replied in an obvious fashion, looking at me as if I should have known. “Didn’t you see that?”
“I thought they were nightmares?! Your mind was blurry!”
She shrugged. “Although I can’t prove it, I believe they frequently drugged me, especially when I was to witness some of the more horrible rituals to keep me docile or at least more compliant.”
I fisted my hands over the table, my claws extruding and pricking into my palms. If any of those wretches were before me right now, I would tear them to shreds.
It wouldn’t be fast and quick as I would revel in drawing it out.
Maybe I’d even use my mystifying powers to trick their bodies into lasting well beyond what nature intended.
“My earliest memories hovered around the time when I was three and a half years old. They would bind me to a cross while I watched.”
I never realized when I shot to my feet, rage burning in my gut. “They touched you?!”
She gave me a tired smile and shook her head before gesturing for me to resume my seat. My blood still boiling, I forced myself to rein in my fury and settled back down in my chair.
“No. I was to remain pure in order to become Satan’s bride once I turned fourteen.”
“But why make you watch?” I asked, confused.
Most of her early memories from that time were so drug-addled that it made comprehending some of them quite difficult. Her young mind also processed them in a way that was harder to interpret.
“Besides the magic circle under the altar, there was another one under the cross that I was bound to,” she explained, the old resentment resurfacing in her voice. “Part of the magic from their ritual was being transferred to me. They hoped to unlock the power that was dormant inside of me.”
“Did it succeed?”
She shook her head. “No. And it made the Elders angry. I got whipped often for keeping it locked away. But I didn’t know how to release it. In fact, I still don’t.”
I pursed my lips as I studied her features. Whatever they were trying to unlock, I had felt it inside her. I didn’t understand what it was.
“Do you want to, though?” I asked.
“Honestly, no,” Eleni replied with a shudder. “I can feel it deep inside me, and it is dark. I spent the past twenty-seven years eradicating the type of monsters who created me and who brought this type of pain to others. There’s no way I will allow their evil to take me over now.”
I nodded pensively before tilting my head to the side.
“How did you become an Inquisitor? Your memories were extremely confusing. I saw an attack, but it was once again blurred as if you were drugged, and a lot of it didn’t make sense.
I believed some were memories and others were hallucinations or nightmares. ”
“Probably a mix of all of the above,” my mate replied before tossing a piece of meat into her mouth.
She chewed slowly while reminiscing.
“A little after my fifth birthday, the cult was raided. So many people died, including Mother. The Elders tried to take me, but I fought them off. I dreamt of it so many times that when the opportunity arose, it flowed naturally. Actually, I think my dreams are what makes things confusing for you. It’s like seeing the same thing on repeat. ”
I nodded, concurring with her assessment.
“I burned them all,” she said with a depth of malice that should have been disturbing, but that I found instead quite the turn on.
“I knew I was a fire mage, but my flames had never surged that powerfully, and especially not with that kind of intensity. I turned a few of them into ashes and the others either merely suffered severe burns or were set ablaze.”
“That’s phenomenal for the child you were at the time,” I said pensively.
“It was,” she conceded. “But I had also been training from the moment I spoke my first words so that they could maximize my powers by the time I reached the age for the ritual.”
“I see. So what happened next?”
“The Templars overwhelmed the cultists, forcing them to flee. Very few escaped. I believe that they were going to kill me, too.”
“What?! But you were just a child!” I exclaimed.
“True, but I also was an abomination being grown to be unleashed on the unsuspecting population once I completed my training,” my mate replied matter-of-factly.
“They only spared me because I ran to them and begged them to free me and the other children. The Templars took twenty-six of us back to safety. But more than double that number was killed.”
I recoiled. “Killed? Why?”
“Many of us were feral or possessed. The rest was thoroughly indoctrinated. I believe that was the main reason they kept us drugged so that we were more easily malleable. In my case, all of my siblings born before and after me were killed, whether by the cult or the Templars. I was just grateful to get out of there. But then, they took me to a recluse convent. Those first few days and weeks were a blur. Apparently, I was addicted to all the drugs I’ve been flooded with since birth. ”
“Which once more explains why it was so hard for me to make sense of that period of your life,” I mused aloud. “But why a recluse convent?”
“It was that or being executed. I wanted to join the other children who had been sent to the orphanage for a chance at adoption. But Father Paulus—who led the charge at the Cult’s Sanctuary—said that I could never be adopted or live with a normal family.
It was both for my safety and to protect other people. ”
“But why? You seemed controlled and rational enough, to the point of being able to request freedom from the Templars, and convince them that you deserved it,” I argued.
“Surprisingly, it wasn’t me he was worried about.
Although he acknowledged that there was something dark in me, he believed that my inner light dominated.
The problem was the Cult. They had invested a lot to create me.
My full purpose would come to fruition on my fourteenth birthday, but I still needed training and preparation until then. ”
“What kind of preparation?”
“I don’t know. But the Elders both abused and protected me.
They beat me often but never in a way that would inflict permanent scars or negatively affect either my brain or my powers,” Eleni said with a frown.
“Father Paulus was convinced that they would try to get me back, and he was apparently right. Although I never witnessed it, it appears that they attempted many raids to kidnap me.”
“And then you decided to become an Inquisitor,” I said in a factual manner.
She nodded, her eyes going out of focus as she reminisced.
“Father Paulus said that in order to gain some of the type of freedom I craved, I needed to prove myself trustworthy and with proper moral values. And then, I needed to learn how to stop people like the cultists who made me. So I did. Except, the closer I got to maturity, the Sisters started pressuring me into becoming a nun. Obviously, that was never going to happen,” she said with a horrified expression.
I chuckled. “Why not?” I asked teasingly.
“First off, I don’t have the right personality for it.
I’m far too rebellious. Second, I hate authority and any form of control.
I believe it is mostly fueled by a trauma response but also just because of my temperament.
Anyway, religious life was too rigid for me.
Being an Inquisitor suited me far better on top of allowing me to fight back the type of people who made my life hell. ”
“Why didn’t you just leave once you reached maturity?” I asked, intrigued. “None of your memories hinted at you even considering it.”
“Because I already knew that they never would have left me fully out of their sight,” Eleni said with resignation.
“The raids to capture me continued up until my twenty-second birthday. During that time, there were always Clerics, Templars, and other arcanists lurking around me. It was like being in a gilded cage. After that, I started gaining more and more freedom. I assumed that the cult had given up on me as I had likely become too old for their plans.”
“Do you think what is happening now is a set up from your former cult?” I asked, tension audible in my voice.
Eleni shook her head with an air of confusion.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. From what I remember, the cult got decimated.
But then who was performing those raids to get me back?
For the years that followed, the Templars and Inquisitors hunted them down.
Many more were killed or incarcerated. But what could they possibly want with me now?
I didn’t get the training or preparation they wanted to give me. ”
“You are highly trained and an extremely powerful mage,” I countered.
“Right. But I doubt that this was the type of training they had in mind for me. On top of that, I’m no longer a virgin, and at thirty-two, more than double the age they wanted to perform their ritual.
So I want to believe that it is merely a coincidence.
After all, I have performed hundreds of missions over the years.
I was bound to eventually run into something related to that old cult.
It wouldn’t be the first time scavengers make use of abandoned places of power,” Eleni replied in a reasonable tone.
“Nevertheless, it raises the question whether you still think this mission is safe for you to be involved in,” I said.
That seemed to take her aback. To my delight, she didn’t immediately jump into a defensive mode and took a moment to reflect on the question before answering.