83. Ashley Brookhaven A.K.A. Brenda Emerson
EIGHTY-THREE
ASHLEY brOOKHAVEN A.K.A. brENDA EMERSON
She didn’t know who she was or what had happened to her. She felt cold, like a thousand ice picks were being driven beneath her skin from the inside out. She blinked desperately in an attempt to see through the darkness. The gloom was so deep, the existence of light was a foreign idea.
She tried to remember how she had come to be in this place, but every time she thought back, the memory escaped her like vapor she tried to grab.
When she moved her hands to her face, she discovered she was bound—both wrists and each of her ankles chained to some kind of table. Whether it was minutes or hours she’d lain on her back in the room, she would never know.
“Hello? Hello?” Calling out for someone seemed pointless, but she tried anyway. “Can anyone hear me?”
Her own voice rang alien in her ears. Her throat was hoarse, and even the few words she had spoken into the inky darkness scratched with pain.
Later rather than sooner, a door opened. Someone carrying a torch entered the room lighting large, steel braziers.
“Hello?” she tried again. “Where am I?”
“You are safe, and all of your questions will be answered in a moment, Ashley,” the woman’s calm voice replied just above a whisper.
Soon, light filled the room. The woman came to stand beside her and began releasing her from her bonds. “You are a very special woman, Ashley. You have been chosen to lead our Legion when the time comes. It is not just anyone who is brought back.”
Ashley, so that was her name? She struggled to understand what the woman was saying.
Some voice in the back of her head told her that wasn’t her name at all, that she should be worried, even scared.
It told her to flee, but above this voice was a sense of cold indifference, as though fear and panic were feelings dead to her now.
“My name is Leah Noble,” the woman said, offering Ashley her hand, “and we have much to do in preparation for the Legion.”
Ashley didn’t trust the woman. There was a coldness to her eyes, a hint in her voice that promised violence, but what choice did she have?
Over the next few years, Ashley’s education would be twofold. First, she was trained in the art of war. Every kind of weapon was given to her, until she was an expert in everything from swords to firearms. Second, she was instructed in the art of magic that had brought her back from the dead.
Her mentor, Leah Noble, explained only as much as Ashley needed to know, only when she needed to know it.
“You must live in this place below the palace until our time is ready,” Leah Noble would remind her.
She phrased it as a fact, but Ashley could tell it was a command.
“You will be the Legion’s greatest champion when it is our time to overtake this world.
Great things are meant for you, Ashley. Be patient and prepare. ”
Whenever Ashley would inquire of her past or how she came to be with Leah, the answer was always the same: “You were given a second chance by the powers of our side. You owe your life now to the magic that has called you to be its champion. Anything else is a waste of thought.”
And Ashley accepted this truth. She was treated well enough. A fully furnished room was given to her below the palace. Servants brought her anything she desired, and after a few years, when Leah deemed her resolve to the cause unwavering, she was even allowed to walk the palace and the city.
She was only permitted out at night, and even then, only with a chaperone.
But for Ashley, it was enough. She was introduced to Leah Noble’s sister, Queen Eleanor Eckert.
The Queen welcomed her with open arms, and much like Leah, spoke of the great days to come in which Ashley would play a significant role as their champion.
“You are a treasure, Ashley,” she remembered the Queen saying during one conversation.
“Grow strong and continue to prepare your body and mind. The day will soon be at hand where the Legion will rise. We will claim both city and world for the cause.”
And life went on. Day after day, Ashley trained, and night after night, she was allowed to roam the palace and the city. She grew to love the city of New Hope, and before long, she knew the city streets like the back of her hand. All was well, until one day, it wasn’t.
She was walking the streets in the early hours of the morning.
Although she was forbidden to interact with any of the city’s citizens, she would linger outside bars and saloons, the only things open at that time.
She would watch people laugh and stumble out with their friends.
It was the closest she was allowed to experiencing life outside the palace, but she was happy with that.
One night, Ashley found herself at her favorite spot. She sat on a rooftop of a two-story building overlooking a line of seedy bars. Her legs dangled over the edge. The two New Hope guards chaperoning her that night stood at attention ten yards behind her.
Doors to a bar called The Vixen Tavern slammed open. A man was thrown out into the street. He was large with long, wild dark hair and a beard to match. Three other rough-looking men followed him out into the night. Without exchanging words, they began beating him like a dog.
Before Ashley could remind herself that she could not be involved in any kind of altercation, let alone be seen, she rose to her feet. Even as she prepared to jump off the ledge and down to the street below, she realized there would be no need.
By the way the man with the dark hair struggled to regain his feet, it was clear to Ashley he was drunk.
Despite his intoxicated state, he was more than a match for his assailants.
The confrontation was over just as quickly as it had started.
The outnumbered stranger was a brutal fighter, using his very teeth to bite the ear off one of the men.
Something deep inside Ashley began stirring—a memory? Something warm spread through her cold body for the first time since she woke in the lab under the palace.
The bodies of the three unlucky men lay broken and bleeding in the gutter. The few onlookers who had stumbled out of the bar to see the outcome of the fight jeered and made their way back inside.
The dark-haired victor stumbled to a lamppost. For the first time, Ashley was able to see an unobstructed view of his face.
The light from the candles inside the lamppost flickered, but for the briefest moment, Ashley caught a glance of the man’s features.
He was handsome, with a sorrow in his bright blue eyes that somehow she understood.
Something inside of her struggling to remember told her that she, too, shared in his sadness.
Just as memories were beginning to surface, a pain unlike anything she had ever experienced tore through her skull.
The intensity was stunning, like a poker heated by a roaring fire. Ashley fell to her knees, nearly tumbling from the rooftop ledge. At once, her guards escorted her back to the palace underground.
But Ashley would never be the same again. Over the next few years, something other than obedience to the Queen and Leah Noble was beginning to grow. It was a sense that what she was involved in was wrong.
Every night, she went out to look for the stranger with the sad blue eyes. She never found him. What she did find were questions about the cause she was being trained to defend. Soon, questions turned into discontentment, and discontentment turned into rebellion.