"She wasn't supposed to remember that," Neighraellium responded as he came to his feet and retook his medallion from Lonewolf's hands.
"We messed up," Lonewolf said as he too stood.
"Oh? Maybe." Neighraellium started to put his medallion back into his pocket but stopped to look at it. "Perhaps it doesn't work." Despite his doubts, Neighraellium continued where Lonewolf stopped. He focused, using the medallion for many minutes to make Luminear forget.
"You said the medallion's light fades when it becomes overburdened before it fails. The light shined the entire time." Lonewolf told him. Neighraellium stopped trying to command Luminear's mind to address Lonewolf.
"It wasn't failing. Obviously, it worked, just not like it works on others. She has a power like I said all along!" He returned his attention to Luminear and tried once again to erase her memories of this day.
+However, Luminear watched them differently now. The hold over her was even weaker, for whatever force had taken her over made her more resilient. Now it affected her, but more like wine might. Her emotions were muted, but she still understood what was going on. She asked them, "What are you doing now? How could I ever forget what just happened? I need to go home with Bella. Return to Laella and my family." The medallion both calmed her nerves and confused her, but neither Neighraellium nor Lonewolf's words had much effect. "Wolf, just let me out of here. I'll forgive you. I don't belong here." Lonewolf ignored her pleas trying even more frantically to make the medallion work on her.
After about ten minutes of Neighraellium seeking to rid her memory of what he'd done, he put the relic back into his dark robes. Lonewolf and Neighraellium watched Luminear as she was free of the medallion's power again. She sought Lonewolf and went from calm to unrestrained as tears formed in her eyes.
"Lumi?" Luminear looked at him while tears rolled down her face.
“Please. Let me go, Wolf. Don't do this anymore. This isn't you,” she got out before breaking down crying even more. Lonewolf ran to her and kneeled to comfort her.
"Do it right this time, Icaz!" he ordered, before taking Luminear's hand.
"I did," responded Neighraellium. "She's immune. Her powers are boundless." Luminear pulled Lonewolf close to her as she begged him, again and again, to let her go.
"I won't do it again. Whatever I did. Let me go home. Take me back to Laella and Bella. I want to go home. I'm so sorry. Just take me home. I want to go home!" Lonewolf feared Luminear's tears might rip his heart from his chest. Knowing he could not give her what she wanted destroyed him.
"It's not your fault. It's. You'll be okay," Lonewolf stuttered. Seeing her like this made him feel useless. For the first time, he couldn't find the words to make it better. "You can't understand." He took her hands and brought them to his face, kissing the back of one hand. "You are essential to what we must do." Luminear sobbed and shook her head.
"No. I'm not, and you don't have to do this. Please."
"There is something powerful within you. You are meant for something great. I saw it with my own eyes. I didn't believe it myself until just now. You must understand. I'm only doing this to help. You have a purpose." Lonewolf struggled to convince her, but Luminear had seen herself in those visions, and it made her sick.
"Whatever that was, it isn't me. I was possessed or something. There was something dark beyond that mountain. It was powerful. Whatever you think you're doing should not be done. Wolf." Luminear begged him to see reason, but Lonewolf had a different interpretation of what he'd seen.
"Spare me the sob reunion," mocked Neighraellium. "It's the gate you were made to open. Your purpose in life. The one great thing you must do. You sensed it, and I know it. Beyond that gate are the answers to everything. Unimaginable. I can taste it, and you must realize it too, child. She spoke through you. Mother." Lonewolf looked back at Neighraellium. He too had experienced it. What he'd seen might have been unexplained, but he’d witnessed something ancient and powerful through Luminear.
"He's right. We saw a glimpse of the future. Your future. We must see this through to the end. You understand?" While Lonewolf experienced sympathy for her, his overwhelming motivation was to persuade Luminear to see it his way. He smiled at her, trying to comfort her, but Luminear was having none of it. Now when she beheld Lonewolf, she no longer recognized him. He was in league with Icaz pushing her to do something against her will. The man she thought she knew would never do such a thing. Trembling, she looked back and forth between them and realized there was no one to save her now. Still, she tried once more.
"No, Wolf. Take me to Bella and let us go. It doesn't have to be this way. Nothing good will come of this. Please, look into your heart and do the right thing. You're a good man." With all her powers of persuasion she tried to sway Lonewolf, but he seemed lost and unreachable.
"Nobody is going anywhere. Bell is fine. Were you to spend time with her, you would stir up her emotions and confuse her. She's happy with her life. Unfortunately, you're just too special to forget what happened here." Neighraellium explained with his crackling eyes and menacing giggle. "Even Lonewolf understands someone as unique as you must sacrifice."
"No! What will you do with me? Keep me from Bella? Keep me here? Wolf, this is madness! Don't let him control you. This is wrong! You may never have been perfect, but you have never been a bad man. You can’t stand for this because you promised you would let no one hurt me. Remember? This is hurting me, Wolf." Luminear continued to plead with him. She hoped she was getting somewhere when Lonewolf shut his eyes and lowered his head.
"I'm so sorry." Lonewolf dropped her hands, rose to his feet, turned, and walked away. "This is me. It always has been," he said as he opened the stone door and glanced back to her one more time before leaving. Luminear broke down again.
"No, Wolf, don't do this. Please!" she said between sobs as her world crashed all around her. "You can't do this!" Neighraellium watched him depart and then looked back to her and shrugged.
"So sad." Tears rolled down Neighraellium's face, as he continued grinning. "Wolf goes bye-bye. Enough about him." Neighraellium came before her and squatted down to her eye level. "Don't cry. We will have fun together. Alone! Welcome back, love!" Luminear screamed in despair and horror.
Coming Soon…
Defiled
The Lady of the Water Series
Volume Three
Excerpt follows:
N eighraellium tossed an apple in her lap and put a flask of water up to her lips for her to drink before he gazed upwards at a starry sky with only a sliver of the moon casting light. With Neighraellium feeding her, Luminear wolfed down the food and water. Beyond weak, her naturally slender frame was gaunt. Two days passed since she last ate, and a full day since a beverage crossed her lips.
“Don’t overdo it!” Neighraellium ordered worried she would choke herself to death. Too hungry to reply Luminear continued chomping down on her apple messily. “Remind me when you need to eat. I will not remember.” Neighraellium lectured, but she only nodded in understanding. She had reminded him several times they needed to take a break, but he ignored her every single time. Neighraellium had been caught up, obsessing over his plans. She didn’t understand the nature of his fixation although she had asked him before. His explanations never made sense to her, but under the medallion’s spell, she spoke freely, behaving like her usual self even though regulated.
Nothing this man might do would scare her in her current state of mind. He was just another man, a very deranged one, in Luminear’s opinion.
“What are you doing?” Luminear blurted out after finishing her apple. Neighraellium sunk his head in close to her to peer into her eyes. The two sat against the wall, their knees bent, in tall grass that surrounded them for miles.
“Feeding you?” The answer was so obvious Neighraellium wondered if this was a trick question. Luminear shook her head and looked into his creepy crackling-veined eyes.
“All of this, I mean. This gate. This destiny you speak of.
What is it for?” In her uninhibited state, Luminear could not stop herself from asking. “So you take me to this gate, and I open it. Why do you believe what is there is for you? This mother person told you to do this, and you follow her orders without question.” Neighraellium watched her like a carnivore stalking potential prey, hanging on her every word.
“Our mother!” he snapped. “This is what must be done.” Luminear smiled at him as if he were a foolish child.
“If she created me by magic, then I’m not her child. I’m her idea in mortal form. No birth.”
“You’re her child! Don’t pester me!” Neighraellium barked back.
“Wait. Will you just hear me out?” Luminear didn’t wait for his response, “You told me you found her, this woman in the water. Why do you think she’s your mother? You say you were magical in your world, but what if you were a target like me? What if she chose you because of your ability to do what she needed? And also you are confused. Easy to influence because you lack the stability of having a mother. Like me. I used to yearn for my parents.” Now confused and irritated, Neighraellium scowled as he shook his head.
“You make no sense! My mother wouldn’t use me. She needed me to fulfill what must be done. You. The gate. That’s it.”
“I think she used you. What do you get out of this? Why do you want it?” She sensed trickery at the very root of this whole plan.
“Mother? Maybe power?” He stated in the form of a question.
“How much power do you want? You own a nation. A country. You have great power.”
“Bah! I have to do this! There is one purpose for you. And me. We do it, and we are rewarded. It is what mother wants,” he reminded her yet again. Luminear shook her head and laughed once more.
“It is a lot of work for one man to take care of two children. I suspect she would be surprised you made it this far. Lonewolf offered the help you needed to complete your task, but I still think you have been used. What does she get out of this? Have you ever wondered why she put you up to this? Why send Bella and me here? And you too. It’s very peculiar.” Luminear barraged him with questions to make her point. Neighraellium rarely tolerated her in this state. Tonight he had half a mind to use his medallion to force her to sleep. Yet, a part of him wanted to engage with her.
“She had to leave. Had to go. I had to be quick before it was too late. She wanted it opened and had my interest in mind. This has to be done. That’s all I know. What more do you need?” He became more agitated and screamed out his words.
“Why was she in a pool?”
“Shining pool. Marvelous water.” That memory calmed him a bit, and Luminear shared her theory.
“That. What if the Lady of the Water wanted out? If I were in that situation, then I would want out. If I could create and use people, then I would try to use them to get free. I would do anything in my power to escape.” Luminear spoke to convince him, never considering how her words reflected her own situation. “Your thoughts are broken.” Neighraellium pondered what she said a moment before going back on the attack.
“I don’t like it when you jabber on like this. You’re either too quiet or too talkie. And what do you mean? Broken thoughts! What about you? You can’t decide if you’re scared or cheerful.”
“That’s because of this thing around my neck.” She craned her neck to underline her explanation.
“I know that!” he snapped back and snarled before letting out a sigh of frustration. “What is it with you questioning everything? Why can’t you let it go?”
“I have little in the way of entertainment, and I’m stuck with you. Lots of time to ponder and I wonder about things. I wonder who you used to be as a child. What made you this way?” This question boggled her mind, and she never got a satisfactory answer. “Were you this way as a boy?” Neighraellium sifted through his remembrances as far back as he dared, which for him was no pleasant feat. He grimaced as he shuffled through memories of Neighraellium, Casen, and the old man whose body he had first claimed. It took a while to find his own memories, or at least the ones he claimed were his. The boy in his mind seemed so foreign to him; he almost didn’t recognize himself at first.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I wonder if you even remember. Are you a person or are you nothing but a dead people collection? Who were you? Do you even remember?” Neighraellium said nothing as he recalled himself as a child. His memories upset him. The mother in his early memories was cruel and half-mad. She had believed him to be a crux omen and would bring only trouble to the world.
“My people disowned me because they deemed my magic unnatural. They tossed me out. Pushed me aside to live in the wild.” There was a faraway look on his face as Neighraellium recalled that time. His foggy mind might play tricks on him, but these memories belonged to him.
“Isn’t magic common where you come from?”
“It was. I lived with wizards, warlocks, witches, and many beings of sorcery. Mages! Magirsum was their race. Yes! I’m a magirsum. I live as long. But I have powers. My powers are weak here because my body remains there. My medallion carries within it a piece of my power.” Neighraellium explained, but he had shared this information before. She wanted more.
“Why was your power so terrible you were cast out on your own?”
“Mother hated me when I was young. Most of our powers dealt with the elements. Some could cast fire or change the weather. Others flew. Some brought life to beasts or plants and some healed. Me. I could go unseen if I chose. Sneaky. Invisible.” Neighraellium remembered angering people when he became invisible, but he didn’t mean harm in his youth.
“That doesn’t seem so bad,” Luminear remarked. “What power is in your red orb around my neck? Power to distort thoughts?”
“Over there, my eyes hold the same power. I can make people do what I want. If I tampered in the minds of others long enough, I’d learn things. What I learned never left me. Ever. I carried part of them within me. I could sense their emotions. Feel their needs. Desire their desires. My power they called dark and dangerous. Once I was banished, I stayed in the wild traveling for years. Living off others. Never strayed far from my homeland, and I’d sneak back undetected. I snuck everywhere. The more I used others, the more confused I became. Strange.”
“No doubt.” Luminear imagined what it might be like to live such a life. “You robbed people of parts of their minds and collected thoughts and emotions and memories that didn’t belong to you. You became depraved,” Luminear guessed without caring if her words bothered him or not. Neighraellium was not upset for her interruption or accusation though. He agreed with her. “Then you found this woman in the shining pool?”
Neighraellium recalled journeying into mountains and finding hidden passages within caves. “Yes. I found a lost valley. A long valley hid in cliffs. Sparkling water I found. I was old. Seven hundred, I think. Possibly eight. Don’t know! But I found her there. She was my real mother and brought me in. The woman from my youth, a fraud. My mother was the woman in the water. She too was an outcast. She got trapped in the water right before I came here. To her I was special.”
As Luminear listened to him, she noticed how extraordinary this memory was to him. It made him proud and gave him purpose. It had been the one that led him all the way to this moment. Luminear knew the rest of the story. She sensed he had been lied to from the start by the female in the water. Neighraellium’s powers and his lost soul made him easy to manipulate. Under her spell, he had gone adrift long ago, his mind now an unfathomable maze. Luminear refused to ponder in his direction too long for fear of getting sucked into the same sick vortex. Yet, she pitied him. Even though it seemed madness to feel anything for him but hatred, Luminear’s heart was too big for her own good.
“All right. Thank you,” Luminear finally said.
Neighraellium’s eyes swam in tears as he recalled every detail, and as he remembered his past, he became so lost in his own mind, he forgot how angry he had been with
Luminear and her questions. Her words startled him from his trance.
“What? That’s it? Don’t ask if you don’t want to hear it!” he roared. “That’s it. You’re sleeping.” He reached for her shackled hands, making sure they were secured and tight. The bonds he placed on her once she dismounted from her horse covered her entire palms and wrists. He took that precaution to be certain Luminear didn’t use his own medallion against him. It was never clear if Lonewolf’s attempts to use his ornament had any effect, but he wasn’t about to risk Luminear turning his weapon against him if it was a possibility.
“I said thank you,” she reminded, as she reconsidered everything he had said. Although the identity of the woman he called mother was unknown, Luminear distrusted the woman and realized the story she was told did not add up. Something strange motivated the woman in the water to create Bella and herself and to send Neighraellium on this quest. While she could not foresee what might happen if she fulfilled this duty, she understood with certainty nothing good would come to anyone, Neighraellium included.
Medley of Treason Page 33