Chapter 29 #2
"Stubborn one. Aren't you?" He was in front of me in a flash.
Holding me up from my throat. I still held onto the fire blade in my other hand.
My legs dangled as I struck with my fire blade.
He bared his decayed teeth at me and caught my wrist that was about to strike him.
The necromancer's hair seemed to grey and wrinkles began to purge his face.
It seems like he was using all his power to fight and not keep him as youthful as he tried to seem.
He looked victorious when I arched in pain, squeezing the arm that held the fire blade.
I wielded the fire to burn brighter, stronger, knowing the fire wouldn't hurt me.
The necromancer held onto me stubbornly as the fire burned his rotten skin and flesh, squeezing onto my throat with force.
Tears escaped my eyes, and I would have choked from the smell of his burning flesh if it weren't for my air supply being cut off.
Black dots painted my vision. And by Nocturna's grace, the necromancer let out an ear shattering wail and dropped me, holding onto his charred arm in pain.
I choked and gasped against the floor. The strain from holding out against his magic weighed on me. I dragged myself against the floor.
"Run. Outside. Run," the shadows whispered.
"Come to me." Something sang. Something familiar.
I turned my eye to the necromancer who dropped himself against the table of blood markings and vials of liquid.
He gripped onto a vial—it seemed to contain thick black liquid.
He gave me a victorious smirk and popped open the cork and chugged its contents.
I stared in horror. As I watched him heal himself, blue veins popping against his skin.
And now, I could taste the very magic he wielded. His strength multiplied by a fortune.
"Run," the little girl inside me now whispered and I listened.
Tripping once as I picked myself up, and then heaved myself up off the floor, my heels stepping into the material of my dress, the sound of it ripping and stretching echoed as I ran for the stairs.
A large chair crashed into splinters against the staircase.
I hid my face but not in time when a couple of splinters shredded through the skin of my cheek.
The onslaught of furniture continued, and I grunted as I made my way up the stairs.
My foot had just connected with the last step I had needed to take to escape until invisible wretched hands gripped onto my ankles and dragged me down.
I let out a shrill scream and grabbed onto the pillars of the staircase.
The silk glove made my grip slip. I glanced a look down and immediately regretted it.
It was no longer the necromancer that looked like a lord.
The vial he had drunk turned him into something more horrid, viler than what he was.
He motioned me closer with his clawed hands.
A monster... nothing that belonged to this world.
He snarled at me, his eyes black—skin erupting in blue veins and his body massing in height.
I growled out a cry and ripped the silk glove out of my hand with my mouth all while holding onto the pillar with my other hand.
I grunted in excruciating pain as the monster used his force to fling me to the top of the stairs.
"Outside," a calming voice inside me repeated.
I grit my teeth in pain. My eyes focused on the window ahead.
I crawled, achingly too slow. My heart pounding in fear that I wouldn't make it.
Faces of all the people that were depending on me flashed into my mind.
The floor quaked with the steps of the monster climbing up the stairs.
I pushed myself up and gripped the windowsill, trying to use my weight to push it up.
"There is no escaping me, girl," the monster growled.
The sound vibrating my entire body as he used his magic to drag me to him.
I screamed out hard and shoved the window open at last. The scent of fresh rain and grass enveloped my scenes.
And without a second thought, I fell to my death.
Wind pushing past my hair, my arms moving out in front of me to grab something.
Anything. My legs hit the ground first—excruciating pain shot right through my ankles.
I ignored the crunch sound my knee had made when I tried to shield my face with my palms from any thorns that could have struck me when landing in the bush.
I moaned in pain and scrunched my eyes shut.
"Oh goddess." I cried out again. I was alive—however, in blinding pain. A dreaded feeling entered me at the same time the doors to the manor burst open in shards of wood. The monster was already here.
"Come to me. Use me. Play me. Sing me." I pushed myself up to follow the voice.
I was bleeding. The hot liquid stained my already ruined dress that I could not care less about.
I limped and screamed in agony. I grabbed a thin broken branch and bit onto it roughly as I limped across the pathway that led to the stables where all the horses were kept.
The monster chuckled and I could hear its nails dragging along the wall.
The sound made me bite onto the branch harder as I limped away a bit faster into the stables. Tears of pain were streaking down my eyes.
"You are a defeated little girl who disguises herself as a warrior.
Now, the end of the bargain was that I get to do whatever I please with you.
" The inhumane voice vibrated against the building, coming much closer.
The horses in the stables had become uneasy, already neighing loudly, panicking and jumping against their stable doors. I found my grey stallion.
"Let the ice harden. Let the fire vanquish. Play me. Sing me. Harmonise me," the voices called from the small brown wooden box strapped on my grey stallion. I stared at it.
"No," I shouted. Loud thudded steps came from behind me.
"No. No. No. No," I screamed again and again. Tears flowed freely from my eyes for an entirely different reason now.
"Killing you will be easy. But that prince of yours?
Oh, how I will have my fun stripping him of his power and ripping him into shreds so that I can feassst on his bonesss," the monster hissed.
I panted and turned around to face it. The horror of the thing stalked into the stable.
The horses were in a frenzy, needing an escape.
"You are weak. You are little. You are nothing even with those blades. You are nothing," he chanted. Anger so dark and cold washed over me.
"You are of my blood." The shadows inside me roared, and it was so powerful that I grabbed the wooden box and took out that gods damned instrument. I stepped out of the darkness of the stable, with the violin in hand- the bow in the other.
"Accept your fate weakling." The monster crooned.
I held the violin gently, touched its wooden black curves, familiarity caressed my fingertips.
"What do you have there, insect?" It cocked its head to the side.
The monster's saliva dripped thickly onto the ground.
My fingers struck a few of the chords… the room darkened.
"Sing me. Play me. Kill for me." The voice sang and it purred when the bow I held kissed its string.
"What are you—what? No... it's not possible." The monster took a step back, unsure of what he was seeing.
"I am not weak," I grit out and pushed the bow of the violin rough but fluidly against the strings.
Shadows grew, fluttering into thick smoky tendrils.
More and more emerged from each chord I had struck.
The shadows eventually formed into the shapes of elegant dancers and warriors that moved with the harsh melody I created.
"Your kind...you're all dead. She is supposed to be dead. She is not here to banish my kind," the monster snapped and walked backwards, further away from the shadows.
"She is not here. I am," I spoke with a type of darkness that was cruel and cunning.
The shadows inside me moaned in relief, expanding and joining more with their kin that danced with the music I orchestrated.
The final chord I struck was harsh and loud and filled with the darkest thoughts I had.
The shadows swiftly moved with each other until it was time to strike the monster.
Ripping, suffocating, and purging onto his very being.
Travelling into his nose, his ears—into his mouth.
Consuming him and ripping him from the inside out.
The monster screeched and begged. He had murdered so many, raped those girls and fooled their families.
I strung the violin sharper—more pointed.
"You are weak. You are little. You are nothing even with those lives you have taken.
You are nothing." I threw his words back at him harshly.
The shadows screeched in delight and then the air was red mist. The shadows had feasted upon it.
I panted and laughed in delight. Stringing the chords more fluidly—memories of nightingale wings flashed—blue leaves and waterfalls stretching into obsidian sculptures.
The shadows danced with each other, one shadow resembling a girl, the other a man.
They danced together as if in love. The other shadows embraced me, held me, kissed me and whispered, "Sing me, string me. More blood. More carnage."
I dropped the violin in sudden shock. The shadows dissipated, sinking back into my skin. And I stood there. "What have I done," I whispered before my surroundings began to shift. A step forward was all I took before I collapsed into the hay embedded ground.
And then all I saw was darkness.
It was comforting.