Introduction:
Many moons ago, when I first joined the Blockchain, I started writing an off-the-cuff story called 'Skyswept'. You can find the first very rough-draft chapter HERE if you'd like to compare it to what I'm about to share. HERE also, as the original Part One and Part Two are now combined. Its intent was a recap for myself to make sure there were no plotholes and that things made sense, but it ended up becoming its own thing -- a Book Two that created even more information for my Book Three!
After finishing Vengeance (Book One) and getting it into beta readers hands, I started doubling down on the efforts of my Book Two and wrote a giant babble about the upcoming characters and my intentions. Of course, I kind of lost all of my motivation when Book One wasn't embraced favourably due to it being written in confusing, extravagant British English. But I've recently remembered that this is my precioussssss and I need to get the story out for me if not for everyone else. And so, I re-read Book One, cried for a bit because I love my fictional characters so damned much, then dove back into Scrivener, whipped out my draft for Book Two and got to work.
Today is the start of my slow Blockchain Publishing per chapter, hoping to receive critique before I do my final edit and transform it into a proper book. Some bits might be familiar as I did post about 25 parts of the original 'Skyswept' but a lot will be new and most definitely improved. My posting schedule isn't set in stone, it might be a week before the next chapter; it might be a month. However, I do intend to finish this story and publish it at some point in the upcoming year (hopefully September). I would love your help and critique as I post each chapter so that it can be the best it can be when I turn it into an ebook!!
Although hopefully enjoyable, this Book Two won't make much sense unless you've read Book One; it's a direct continuation and some story aspects will be confusing without background information. Book One just so happens to be available for FREEEEEE at the moment, on Smashwords. 😉
Chapter One
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”
A thin branch whipped across Vaithe’s face, followed by a crimson vine that tangled itself through her hair and stopped her in her tracks. With a grunt, she pulled free from its grasp and flung the offensive plant to the forest floor.
“Not far now, Viffy.”
“Don’t call me that,” she grumbled and quickened her pace to catch up to Darien, the overly cheerful mage who served as guide. “I really don’t think you know where you’re going.”
He flashed a wide smile from over his shoulder then zig-zagged through the undergrowth, seemingly immune to all the branches, twigs and vines that accosted her.
Rolling her eyes, she grudgingly followed. If there was one thing she had learnt over her many lives, it was that charlatans and frauds were more likely to drag her into a dark alleyway and leave her broken, bloodied and bruised if not dead. One would not travel with her for an entire season as they crossed half of the mainland. Another thing she had learnt was that no one believed her when she claimed to remember her past lives and it was best to keep that particular information to herself lest she frightened her unassuming guide… even if he was a ridiculous mage with a bizarre sense of humour.
“We’re getting closer!” he sang.
“Fantastic.” Vaithe pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders. The forest canopy shrouded them with cool shadows and the setting sun that glimmered through the small gaps in the treetop only reinforced the chill of the forest. They would have to make camp soon. “How close, exactly? First moonrise is almost upon us and my toes are going to freeze and fall off!”
“Now, now. Don’t be so dramatic.” Darien grinned and pushed aside a large branch, opening their path to showcase a crumbling cobblestone road. “We are this close!”
Vaithe stared at the road. This wasn’t right. The road to Astana, though well-trodden, had been nothing more than dirt and pebbles. Although, she conceded, it was possible that improvements had been made before the city fell out of time and memory — she never did get to live a full life here. Tears stung her eyes and she hurriedly blinked them back before Darien could see.
Suddenly no longer affected by the forest’s chill, she stepped onto the both familiar and unfamiliar road and began the slow walk to the city that had once been her home, feeling as though she were trapped in a slow-moving dream as the burgundy treetops danced overhead alighted by the sky’s sunset glow.
Home. She was going home.
“Not even a ‘thank you, Darien,’” he tutted. “’I’m grateful for your guidance, Darien.’ ‘You’re so handsome, Darien.’ I’m offended.”
Crumbling white walls rose up and dwarfed the forest, and her heart skipped a beat. Ignoring the irksome mage, Vaithe hurried faster along the road and soon stood where giant city gates once loomed overhead, protected by Lord Andru’s city guards. First moonrise was approaching. At this hour there would be people crowding every inch of the streets, closing their market stalls and rushing to their homes, to the taverns, or even to the palace. A lump began to form in her throat and she quickly swallowed it down. There was nothing now. It was all gone. Tears flooded her eyes and threatened to flow down her cheeks. What else had she been expecting? Of course there was nothing!
The wind whistled through gaping holes in the nearby shop-fronts, rattled broken shutters, and emphasised the unnatural silence. Colourful sphere-shaped lanterns swung back and forth, their mage-lit fires having survived the centuries with ease, but the buildings they were strung from lay shattered. They were mere remnants of the great city that was but never would be again. Grabbing her cloak ever tighter, she huddled within it and shivered. All that remained were the ghosts of her memories.
“Welcome to Astana,” murmured Darien, reverently. “Want me to conjure up a nice, warm fire or shall we explore?”
Her tears blinded her but she couldn’t blink them away. They rolled down her cheeks and she quickly looked away before the mage could see them.
“What’s the point?” She snapped. “There’s nothing here. No Lords, no Ladies, not even the decaying bones of a simple soldier!”
“Uh, Viffy… what were you expecting to find?”
“I was just asking myself the same thing.” Burying her face into her hands, she took several deep, shuddering breaths in a futile effort to slow her tears but only succeeded in summoning a giant sob that heaved its way through her chest. “I-I needed to see this for myself. No one else even knows of Astana. It’s a hidden rumour, buried deep in the rare history book, and no one on the mainland bloody reads. I’m surprised you even knew of it.”
“Some of us have an interest in such things. Some of us have an interest in more intriguing things. For example, how exactly does an uneducated sand-addled peasant from Reeves of all places, a blacksmith’s daughter no less, have any knowledge of the ancient Arrisean city of the Gods?”
“I have more knowledge than you do,” she retorted, then bit her tongue.
Flipping her hair over her shoulder, Vaithe stalked into the city of forgotten memories and walked streets that were familiar but no longer felt of home. Debris and rubble lay strewn across the ground, tangled weeds and forest vines wrapped around pillars and long-faded signage, and all that remained were those damned mage-lit spheres she had once thought were beautiful as they danced beneath the moons and dressed the glimmering white city in a faint rainbow; all they dressed now were ruins.
She stopped in front of a crumbling hovel and clenched her fists. This was her family’s old cottage. It no longer had a door. Neither did many of the buildings but to see her old family home in such a state felt disrespectful, as though Yohné himself was mocking their traipse through this forgotten city.
“It’s not quite as pretty as it once was, is it?”
“What would you know?” She muttered, staring sadly at where a dining table once sat; where she and her mother would trade whatever palace gossip they had heard on any given day.
“You’re not the only one who remembers a time that no longer exists.”
“Wha—?”
Vaithe spun around, near knocking the mage over as he stood a bare inch from her shoulder. Darien merely smiled at her from beneath his mane of curls, his knowing umber eyes hinting that after all this time of feigning ignorance, he did, in fact, know of her secrets.
That was impossible. He was toying with her.
Straightening her shoulders, she lifted her chin into the air and calmly asked, “What in the lower planes are you talking about? No one can remember the past.”
Darien did not answer. Instead he looked around the streets, a soft smile fixed firm upon his face, then tapped a finger against his chin as he regarded her once more.
“Viffy, you seem unaware of some events so I will assume that your memories are before mine. In fact, I know that they were before mine. Were you aware that the last Lorded Arrisean was a mage? Borne of Lord Cael and Lady Lyria? That he is the very reason the Sundered Isles have claimed us for their own and why this once magnificent city now lays forgotten in this mass of ruins?”
Vaithe crossed her arms over her face as the open wound of her lost life burst open and she didn’t even care that he had called ‘Viffy’ yet again. By the Gods, she hated that name.
The young Prince Cael… she had not lived long enough to see him ascend. After all, his ascension had been caused by her own hand. She had been a serving girl — Lord Andru’s personal maid — young, carefree, full of life and joy, until the southern trader handed her a gift to deliver to the prince, a gift that wrenched her soul apart and held her as a hostage in her own body.
When she took a hold of the gift — a beautiful black blade with a hilt wrought with silver and jewels — a darkness took over her thoughts and actions and she was but an observer, forced to watch as she murdered the man she lived to serve. Then the same force compelled her to hide in the prince’s room to perform the same despicable act, but thankfully the mage that Cael was courting had found and rescued her, killing her body and the force’s connection in one swift thrust. There had been joyous freedom for one small moment… she had entered the eternal skies, she was with her Gods, everything was going to be okay. Until she had been reborn with all memories intact, an anomaly amongst all others.
She wished it would end.
“Oh, Viffy. Stop dwelling. The past has passed.”
Her despair momentarily heightened until a swift realisation slammed into her as mightily as a shieldsman’s charge. Vaithe grabbed Darien by both shoulders and forced him to face her, and was not surprised to see his smug grin as their eye met, as though he had been waiting for her to call him out on his little history lesson.
“Hold on one moment. You said that you remember things too?”
Darien shrugged, an action that maddened her further though he evidently did not care.
“So, with her noble quest at an end, does the illustrious Viffy still require a fire to warm her bones?”
“What things do you remember?” she demanded.
“A fire it is! Shall we rest in the glorious courtyard by the palace and lament the past or… oh, I know. The beach! I do love the seaside, even if one tends to get sand in their drawers.”
Though she tried to stop it, a slow smile replaced her scowl.
“I wonder if Lady Elira still sings,” she said. “After all these years I could use a few moments by her statue. Maybe her ghost will coerce you into finally answering my questions—”
Darien’s eyes hardened and a black aura emanated from him. Vaithe’s voice trailed off and she took a hurried step back. This was wholly unlike the ridiculously cheerful man she had travelled with for so long and she shrank further and further away as his grin transformed into a grotesque caricature of the mirthful smile he so often beheld.
“I’m not quite sure you could handle the answer to those questions, Natalia.”
The blood drained from her face. He knew her name. Not the terrible name she had been granted in this life, that was indeed ‘Vaithe,’ but her actual name. ‘Natalia’ had been her first name — her true name. She had not worn it for centuries, not since the day the entity had taken over her body and forced her to murder her Lord.
Frozen to Darien’s hard stare she was incapable of words, incapable of spinning around and running away, incapable of doing anything as his eyes glowed with the hint of gold known of mage-kind and held her captive.
“Or perhaps you can handle it. Your mind seems fairly strong.” He released an exaggerated sigh. “I was unprepared for this moment to arrive so soon. This is my fault, I admit. I got carried away with your nostalgia and spoke far too quickly and I am sorry. Why don’t you come with me and sit down for a few minutes while I formally acquaint you with the missing pieces of your puzzle.”
It wasn’t as though she had a choice. Once again, just like centuries past, control was out of reach and her body was no longer hers as Darien’s magic held her tight. Chained to his whim, she followed at his heel like a loyal pup as he headed for the palace courtyard.
The gardens were wild, overgrown. The Lord’s statues of his revered plainscats lay in pieces, shattered. The cracked fountains were tangled in thick viridian vines, their vibrant green out of place in their autumnal world, and the stagnant pond-waters were but breeding grounds for various insects. All that remained from her memories was the faint ethereal music that sang out from a broken fount — Lady Elira’s statue was gone. Oh, how she wished she could enjoy this melody. It was once a beautiful hymn that instilled a tranquillity into all who listened; now it was an eerie hum that drifted about the ruins, a ghostly remnant of another time in another world, a sad tune that would have brought her to tears were she able to summon them.
“Please, sit.”
A heavy thud echoed through the courtyard as her body did what it was told and collapsed into the long grass. Darien walked the overgrown gardens with a familiar step and ignored her as she lay bound by his blighted magic. The minutes seemed as hours as she inwardly screamed and raged at him from behind dulled eyes. If only her thoughts could set him ablaze! She glowered at him through every pore of her incapable body and for the first time in all of her lives she wished that she, too, were a mage.
“Oh, will you calm yourself? I’ll give you back in a moment. Even if you were a mage, I doubt you could untangle yourself. I happen to be… significantly stronger than the average mage.”
The bastard was reading her thoughts. His ego dripped through his voice and she could scarcely wait for freedom. There was nothing more she wanted than to punch his smirking face! An invisible tendril of his magic tightened about her as she seethed, and with a lengthy sigh he held her further from her body.
“See? This is exactly why I thought it best to bound you. I knew you would react in this pathetic manner. Over this past season I have become very well acquainted with you and listening is most certainly not your strongest gift.”
He snapped his fingers, a sharp click that echoed against the dull stone, and long, illusory red hair sprang up about her body and twisted itself around her. As she screamed without a voice, the ringlets tightened their grip and forced her body onto its back, then the image of a woman loomed overhead. She held a regal demeanour that amplified her elegance, her delicate face was too beautiful to wear the evil red hair, and Vaithe’s horror vanished as she fell deep into the woman’s turquoise eyes. She drowned for an eternity within the endless depths of those enchanting eyes, the woman smiled as serene as the moonlit sky, then as swift as a bolt of lightning she stabbed her with a silver blade. Vibrations coursed through her body as she felt Darien’s agony. The woman attacked her — attacked him — over and over, flashes of silver as the knife stabbed and sliced, as her magic wove within his blood and pulled his essence from him, as a gnarled hand fell over his eyes and gouged them from his skull.
Suddenly, she knew. It was her; it was him. That woman had been the dark entity and Darien had been both the medium used as well as the source of power that had controlled her all of those years ago. At the realisation, the long strands of red hair vanished… alongside Darien’s magical binding.
Freedom.
Breathless, she scurried against the base of a broken statue and curled into a ball. The faint touch of the knife’s edge still pressed against her arm and tears streamed down her face as she trembled at the imaginary onslaught.
Darien’s overly gentle voice interrupted her horror.
“Well, I couldn’t just say, ‘Lo, it was me!’ I assumed control in hopes I could settle your emotions, not increase them.”
His hand fell onto her back and she cringed, near expecting the delicate yet diseased touch of the beautiful red-haired woman. It was surely a fantasy! The long-held belief of both educated and uneducated alike was that the red hair was cursed, but as far as she had known and seen within her many lives was that the fabled red hair had never existed at all. Blonde, brunette, black, silver, and even midnight blue… but never red. As though they sought to change her mind, a fresh illusion of the twisted hair tightened about her body. The thick strands shackled, squeezed and strengthened their ongoing infliction and she cried out in pain. No — No! The tale was true. The red hair was real. The curse was real, and she had been an unwitting victim of the witch.
“I’m sorry… perhaps I could have found a gentler way to tell you. Would you have believed me, though? This is why I accompanied you here, and why I will continue to accompany you. Our lives are intertwined in a way you cannot possibly imagine.”
Would she have believed him? She didn’t know. As someone who had experienced a great deal of disbelief aimed at her own truth, maybe she would have. She bit at her lip. He didn’t have to magic her.
Curled as a babe within the overgrown grasses of the courtyard, she could no longer speak. Her lost voice was as strangled as the memories Darien had forced upon her, as strangled as her own memories that screamed through her mind as vivid as though they were still happening. The two moons rose overhead and Vaithe wept into the ruins of her broken home as Lady Elira’s mournful tune wrapped itself about her mind and increased her despair instead of removing it.
What had that witch done to her?
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