XXXIX | DARK MEMORIES
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What was that?
She wasn't sure if she'd almost died. She wasn't really sure if she was hurt. Had any of that happened? Had that woman been a sick, terrible dream?
All of her senses were muted, yet they were the most heightened they'd ever been. With every blink of her eye, she was stuck flipping between every blood-soaked memory she possessed. The strongest was her first kill.
She didn't have much time to ponder the bizarre dream—or vision, she was unsure which—before she was being thrust into another battle for her life. Before she could move, a foot kicked at the side of her face, and the tang of blood flooded her senses once again.
She tried to move out of the way, to get into a more advantageous position, but her body didn't want to move. Her heart pounded. She had no runespowder. All she had was the single dagger she'd grabbed from Painted Sky, now coated in blood.
The woman above her looked down at her with disdain, her skin a mess of roots and branches. Instead of hair on top of her head, she had a mane of leaves a similar shade to her skin. From the mass of leaves emerged two wooden antlers—Celvene's eyes widened in alarm.
A dryad?
Dryads were confined to the woods, sworn saviors of the trees. They were never to stray from the woods, at least from what Celvene had learned during her education. Why had one left, and why was she fighting for Noriya?
And then Celvene noticed her face—her eyes were glowing a bright red, while her veins, embedded deep within the bark of her arms, were stained white.
Mind controlled and high on runespowder.
She'd seen both at work; the mind control had been demonstrated at school, and it wasn't an uncommon sight to see people curled into balls on the streets of the Slums, veins the same shade of white and twitching uncontrollably with a light foam spewing from their lips.
So Zelphar was stealing powerful creatures from their homes and forcing them to fight for him.
She didn't know how he'd found the power to do that, and how far that power could extend; if he could control dryads, some of the most able forces in nature, what else could he control?
It made sense, she supposed. He was a god.
And that made her fight against him all the more difficult.
Celvene tried to roll out of the way, but roots sprouted from the earth before she had the chance. They wrapped themselves around Celvene's wrists, tethering her to place. She struggled against them, but her energy was sapped from the previous fight; she couldn't do much.
"Yurgirasa," the dryad said, baring her wooden teeth.
Abomination. The ability to speak Noriya's language was gifted to her through mind control, and of course, she had to choose some of the nastiest words to use.
Some of her leaves were stained red. Celvene was not her first victim of the day.
Celvene tried to move, slow and steady, to a position where she could use her dagger to cut through the dirt-caked binds.
She made every move methodical, afraid the dryad would catch onto the movements.
But when the dryad's glowing gaze tracked every flick of Celvene's wrist, Celvene knew she had to change her approach.
She flailed her body, and as embarrassed as she was, she refused to let it stop her from playing the damsel in distress. "Help! Someone help!"
The dryad's face grew curious, eyebrows pinched in apparent thought.
Though her soul was not quite present in her eyes, they glimmered with novelty—like she wasn't made for fighting.
For war. And she wasn't. She was made to protect the grass, and the trees, and the animals that roamed the forests.
She wasn't supposed to be fighting a war between petty mortals.
In Celvene's reverie, she'd slowed her feigned panic, and the dryad's gaze shifted to a glare. The pressure around Celvene's body increased.
Panic bubbled in her gut. A red haze of fear rippled throughout her brain, choking the life out of her.
She tried to yell for help, but nothing left her trembling lips.
A burning feeling gnawed at her gut. One word echoed throughout her mind, screaming and whispering and crying and shouting all at once:
Kill.
Celvene's body was not her own anymore. It was like she was a spirit, helpless as she watched her body rip free from the roots and lunge forward. With her bare hands, she tore through the dryad's throat, forcing her fingers into the tough skin.
The bark hissed under her grip, bubbling and blackening as the dryad screamed out in pain. It was like mere butter slipping through her hands.
She couldn't control herself.
She couldn't stop.
Her hands continued to destroy, to desecrate a sacred protector of nature.
The smell of wet dirt and flowers wafted into the air, and the dryad's hands went limp, falling.
Celvene's neck ached; as her vision cleared and she lifted her aching hands to her neck, the skin felt tender. The woman had tried to choke Celvene.
The dryad fully collapsed to the ground, twitching. Silver blood gurgled in her mutilated throat, the sound somehow louder than the rain of fire and artillery shots. Noriya had brought no dragons, but they'd brought their best weapons.
If Celvene had to guess, this was either an attempt at intimidation, or they were looking for something—someone, in Celvene. She'd escaped Noriya with some of Zelphar's darkest secrets, and he hadn't intended for her to leave the city alive.
She stared at the dryad's stilling body, on her knees, unable to move.
It was as if some phantom force had taken hold of her body, manipulating and twisting it to do dark desires that were not her own.
A disjointed breath rose in her throat, shuddering, and the uncomfortable feeling of hot tears burned at her eyes.
Her body shivered. She knew she needed to leave the battle—being lost in reverie once had already gotten her in enough trouble.
But she was immobile. Her thoughts were racing, her blood-soaked hands trembling.
What had happened to her? Why had she acted so rashly?
Brutally? That wasn't like her at all.
How was she able to tear a throat—made of wood, no less—apart with nothing but her own two hands?
There was a cloud fogging her mind now, and the more she tried to figure out why she'd acted that way, the more muddled her thoughts became.
She pinched her brows together, but it didn't help her think any more clearly.
If anything, it just made her head hurt more.
On instinct, her hands moved to grab a strong branch in preparations for a burial. In her home kingdom, the dead were honored, even if she did not hail from the Kingdom of Death.
A feast would be prepared in their name, songs would ring out across the city for days, and prayers would be uttered for their safe travels to the afterlife.
Their clothing would be washed with the finest water before it was buried in the dirt with them, along with a new blouse and pants they could wear on their journey to the afterlife.
Drawings depicting the dead's life would be drawn into the dirt around their grave, imbued with magic and runespowder.
Sometimes, if the deceased passed in an honorable way, their death would be reenacted.
A shaky, rushed prayer slipped past Celvene's lips, though she knew she didn't believe in any of the words she spoke.
The battlefield was stilling. The pounding of gunfire had ceased, the shouts of soldiers no more. It was eerily quiet, almost silent save for the panicked chirping of birds, but Celvene knew peace could not have come so quickly. A war drenched in blood would not be resolved with one battle.
"Celvene?"
Celvene startled at her name. The voice was soft, and though she immediately knew who said it, she almost hoped it wasn't her. Because if she was here...
"Quinn?" She turned, wincing at the pain that rippled through her side.
The woman was standing behind her, clutching her arm and staring right through Celvene. But right now, she wasn't a woman—she was a girl, young and afraid. Celvene recognized the fear that surged in Quinn's eyes, ripe and unyielding. She knew what it was like to be fearful.
Because at the end of the day, they were both still girls. They'd been through so much in the few years they'd known each other, maturing and becoming something their mothers would smile at. They wanted to believe they'd become grown.
But the youthful fear buried within their hearts persisted—it was different, yet the same.
The anxiety of speaking to strangers, something her parents warned her of, turned into the dread of walking home at night.
The fright of the dark had turned into the terror of death, where darkness reigned infinitely.
"Celvene," Quinn croaked, and Celvene could see injuries littering her once-smooth skin. A gash lining her upper arm, a deep slice running across her cheek, and a nick out of her ear. "I don't know if anyone else made it out."
"What happened?" Despite the chaos raging around them, Celvene rushed forward, ushering Quinn to a more concealed spot behind a low-hanging tree.
She almost fell to her knees, her vision clouding with black, but she sucked air in through her teeth and refused to collapse. Flames licked at the grass, providing the soldiers milling about the field with ample light to see the two girls if they looked hard enough; Celvene had to make this quick.
"A bunch of soldiers stormed the tent mid-performance.
At first, we thought they were just... I don't know, late?
They looked like they were in a rush. But then they pulled their weapons, and.
.." She stopped, gulping, and tears crested her large eyes.
Celvene squeezed her non-injured arm, straightening her lips into a thin line.
"Did they make it into the city?" she asked.
"I-I don't know," Quinn replied, her voice shaking. Even in the face of the dangers they faced in the circus, Quinn's confidence and resolve never wavered. To see her now, small and shaking...
Celvene swallowed. She glanced back at the city, and could see a plume of smoke rising into the air from the circus's general vicinity. But beyond it, from what Celvene could see, the stone walls surrounding the city remained upright, undamaged.
The soldiers were gradually making their way outside to the grassy hills slick with red, leaving the walls untouched.
Whatever their goal was, it was not to make Aizasea fall.
That much was obvious by the way they seemed to be retreating; either they couldn't—or wouldn't—make the borders fall, or Zelphar's interests lay elsewhere, like in toying with Aizasea.
Khamisi... and Painted Sky. I hope they're all okay.
So Aizasea hadn't prevailed—they were spared.
She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, given how lackluster their weapons were.
But what made the loss hard to digest was the fact that they'd been beaten so easily when Noriya wasn't trying.
They'd brought powerful weapons, sure, but they hadn't even summoned their dragons. Was it truly a show of dominance?
She didn't know what to do. They could make a mad dash for the castle gates and pray they were let in—or they found a way to sneak in, whichever was easier.
They could hide outside of the city walls, but the soldiers didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave.
The longer they stayed outside, the higher the chance they'd be caught.
"We're going to run for the city, Quinn," she said, trying to make her voice sound assured in her plan, but what came out was an odd mixture of a squeak and quivering whisper. "I have a friend who can help us. He'll... he'll help us."
If Khamisi was safe, they could seek refuge in his house.
He wasn't in a danger zone—he wasn't nestled in the Slums, and he wasn't housed in the upper districts of Aizasea.
If she and Quinn would be safe anywhere, it would be his house.
But if they wanted to get there, they needed to act—and fast. She outstretched a hand to Quinn, who, after a moment, took it, frowning.
Stomach churning, she ran back into the city, clutching Quinn's hand as tightly as she could.
Perhaps she was running straight to her demise, with the bodies of thousands of soldiers fallen behind her.
Maybe they were all soldiers fighting for Aizasea, and Noriya would march into the heart of Aizasea.
But she couldn't dwell on it; if she stayed outside the city, she was certain to be caught—again—and brought back to Noriya.
Even if Aizasea was the winner of the fight, she didn't doubt there were stragglers who would escape back to their homelands, and bringing Celvene with them would win the favor of Zelphar.
She ran, pumping her legs as fast as she could, and tried to distract her mind from what she had just done.
How monstrous she'd been. But her stomach continued to ache, her head pounded, and with every shut of her eyes, she was transported back to the moment where she'd ripped apart a being of solid wood with nothing more than her bare hands.
The dryad's blood-soaked body would not leave her mind's eye, and the first soldier's limp body flashed in bursts as well. Celvene knew the visions would haunt her, and the longer she focused on the images, the stronger an uncomfortable realization became.
She liked killing her.
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