The Chosen Ones: Red Smoke

by Mitchelly Melo

  "As they walked together through the forest, they saw a gentleman walking with a basket that seemed to move. He looked bewildered and frightened. When they saw the bearded gentleman fall, they went to help him. He looked at them as if they were from another world. They just didn’t know they really were. "

  "After a few minutes of trying to talk to the man, he handed them the basket and went back into the forest. As soon as they opened it and saw it was a child, they shouted for him to come back. He just said: 'It is your responsibility now. Take good care of her. Her mother was a good person.'"

  "They ended up doing just that. They raised me as if I was theirs and never told me what happened. They never went back to look for the man, either. But I still didn’t understand what that letter meant and they couldn’t explain it to me. I decided to go back to Heaven Valley and investigate. "

  "The first thing I did was walk through the forest. Days later and I still hadn’t found anything. But one day, I found a cabin. I thought it strange that no one had spoken of another hut beyond the Death Cabin in that region. I knocked and no one came to answer. I decided to open the door and go in alone. Parchments and other relics filled the small tables of the cabin. I saw sheets that looked like the letter the same minute I heard someone trying to get out the door. "

  "An old man with a fallen figure and a long beard was trying to get out of there. It wasn’t difficult to redirect him to a chair and tie him there. That's when I started getting answers. The old man wasn’t hard to break. Some cuts and he started talking. "

  I listened to Emma's story and the bitter taste intensified in my mouth. Images of our childhood passed before my eyes. Had she always been like this and I didn’t realize? How didn’t I realize?

  "I got a summary of what had happened in Pacem. The old man confessed that he was the Council Sorcerer. He said that my mother saw that he was going through the portal and gave me to him. According to the old man, she was from the Guard. Some familiar names have appeared in the story. He said he knew your father, my friend. It was he who saved Ethan when he was imprisoned in Pacem. It was he who opened the portal. And days later, afraid of the Orcus passing to this land, he also closed it.”

  "After hearing all he had to tell me, I just wanted to figure out how to reopen this portal. I needed to get back to my land. Back home. I felt that every second here, my skin was breaking up. I had to go back to my real people. The Sorcerer soon informed me that this land had no magic; it was impossible. Some new cuts and he relented."

  "He didn’t want me to know that the Chosen Ones were the key. They were the only magic in this world and the Cadere Dagger, made to kill them, was perfect for the situation. Only the Sorcerer knew that the Dagger killed the Chosen Ones and in the process, sucked all the magic out of the body and could be used to reopen the portal from this side. Now I just needed to kill a few Chosen Ones."

  "Lucky me, the Sorcerer decided to clean the ‘pantry’ in Pacem and brought all kinds of relics here. Even not wanting to, he taught me how to use each of them, which made my job incredibly easier"

  "The first one was asking to be killed, sitting there at the bar alone and drunk," she was amused as she told the story.

  "And why did you kill Niko?" I asked as I imagined myself disappearing quickly and reappearing on her back, holding her in place with a headlock.

  I quickly felt frustrated, remembering that with any movement she could press that Dagger even more against Grandma's neck. Attacking was useless. My legs trembled with fear.

  "I was incredibly bored from watching from afar. And he was there, alone, pacing. You can’t blame me, can you?”

  "Actually, I can," I said sharply, remembering Niko's gentle smile.

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  "And they should thank me, because I might as well not limit myself to the Chosen Ones. Pacenians also have magic. It just wasn’t enough.”

  "I don’t think they'd be grateful, but you can give it a try," I said sarcastically.

  Emma pretended not to hear me.

  "Anyway, the day I decided to get back to you and tell you what was going on," she said, sounding disappointed. "I saw you with him. You were leaving your house and getting into his car with a smile on your faces. I thought you wouldn’t understand my side.”

  "Understand why you're killing innocent people? Never!”

  "Some lives are nothing compared to what we can get! Pacem needs us, Liz. We need to go back. This land doesn’t deserve magical beings like us. And you're my best friend. I don’t want to do this without you.”

  "Is that how you treat your friends? Attacking them?”

  "I didn’t..." she began, but stopped right after. "Ah, that's right. My bad.”

  "My bad?”

  “Come on! I just got a little irritated. "She laughed. "It wasn’t very nice to see you with another Pacenian. But I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  "But you did hurt me," I said. "And I'm not talking about the bruises."

  “I told you, I'm sorry! No need to make a scandal!”

  “Why?”

  I was talking, but I kept looking at Grandma. Her breath was racing and she was still crying.

  "Because..." Emma began to speak, but stopped, staring at the floor. "I didn’t want to lose you to them. I only have you, Liz. The Chosen Ones are very close. I didn’t want them to put you against me.”

  The mind of this sick person still thought that everything could be as it had been before. Not for a second did she believe that the fact that she killed people was enough for me to want distance. I didn’t understand how it was possible, but I was going to use it.

  "But, you're right," I lied, quickly alarming Grandma. "Just let Grandma go and we can reopen the portal together."

  I tried to smile, but my acting skills were not so good.

  “Don’t lie to me!” She burst out. "You're the only one who doesn’t lie to me. I know you would never leave your grandmother here.”

  "Of course, I would” my hands were shaking, and it wasn’t cold, so I lowered it so Emma wouldn’t see. "She lied to me all my life, too. Same as your parents. We don’t need them. That’s why I left her alone and went to live in the hotel.”

  She reasoned my words slowly, until at last she smiled.

  "I knew you'd understand what I'm doing is right," he finally said, smiling.

  "So, let's do this. I took small steps slowly toward her. Let go of Grandma and we can finish this right now.”

  "I trust you want to come back with me," she said, smiling. “But I'd rather have a guarantee. So let’s do it like this, you go to the tree, take the rope that’s inside the backpack and tie yourself up. When the portal is open, I’ll let Mary go.”

  I couldn’t do anything except accept the terms. For the first time, which struck me as surprising, I noticed the giant tree in the center of the glade. I had to tilt my head back so I could see all of it. The tree was also incredibly wide and had something different. From a few feet down, it seemed to be opening, like two pages of a book.

  I walked over to it and saw a backpack at its base. I quickly pulled a rope from inside and tried to analyze all its contents without Emma realizing. They could only be Pacem's relics. But they couldn’t help me now. I didn’t know what they could do. I got up and went back to Emma.

  "Now tie yourself to that tree," she said, pointing to the last tree behind me. "And I want to see that knot tight."

  I went to the tree, put my arms around it, and then tied my wrists together. I gave a simple knot, the only one I knew, and I tight it. I raised my hands and moved them to opposite sides, showing that the knot was really tight.

  She smiled and let go of Grandma, but left the Dagger around her neck. She gestured and they both walked to the tree, where Emma bent down to pick up the backpack. She took something out of it, which I quickly saw was a knife. With the Dagger she would carve something in the big tree and with the other hand she would hold the knife in Grandma's neck.

  So
me time passed and Emma looked frustrated. She left the tree and went back to where she was before. Relatively closer to me.

  “What is going on?” I asked, getting even more worried.

  "I don’t think the Dagger has enough magic," she replied. “Damn it! Now I'm going to have to go back to the city and find another Chosen One.”

  My heart raced and my breathing almost stopped. An image of John popped into my mind vividly. Emma didn’t want any Chosen Ones to convince me that what she was doing wasn’t right. The person she saw me with could be a quick target.

  "Take mine," I offered, not giving a crap. “Take my blood.”

  She laughed.

  "Of course, I won’t, silly. I’ve said it before, I don’t want to kill you.”

  "I know, Emma." I smiled more convincingly this time. "But you don’t need much, do you? From what I heard you killed five Chosen Ones, and Niko.”

  It hurt to say this as if it weren’t important, but I had to do something so no one else would die. Emma narrowed her eyes, seeming to consider the matter. Grandma shifted in her arms and I raised a hand and shook my head.

  "I'll be fine, Grandma," I said, smiling. "We both will."

  “Yeah, I think it might work. But since your blood is not as strong, I may need to draw more.”

  “It's all right. Do it.”

  "I don’t know why all this work," Emma said. "I could get someone from the hotel and you wouldn’t have to do that."

  “Then we would have to wait a long time. They would probably notice that I'm not there.”

  I seemed to be convincing her more and more every second. She nodded, agreeing with me. She bent down, not taking the other knife from Grandma's throat for a second, and inserted the dagger into my arm.

  For the first time I got to see it up close. The Dagger was completely black, matte, but the blade somehow had thin vein-like strokes. The traces were blood-colored. The moment she touched the Dagger to my skin and pressed it, engulfing her in my arm, the red features seemed to move.

  And they were really moving, I realized. My blood was being drained to the Dagger and the veins were shining. I looked away from the cut and looked back at Grandma. I smiled at her.

  "So why did you send that cop to the hotel?" I asked Emma,trying to distract myself.

  At the very least I deserved answers.

  "Since the Chosen Ones were no longer going out on their own, I had to fix that. I believed that if they thought they had captured whoever was killing the Chosen Ones, everything would go back to normal. And you would go home. But when I saw the policeman back at the bar, I saw that it hadn’t worked. And here we are.”

  After a few minutes I was beginning to feel dizzy. I looked down and the Dagger still glowed. Emma didn’t know I was a Chosen One, let alone an Aster, so she had no idea my blood was full of magic. I wasn’t going to tell her now and make her mistrust my loyalty.

  "How did you do all that?" I said.

  She knew exactly what I was talking about.

  “It's amazing what a girl can do. No one suspects the pretty girl having coffee. But I don’t think it's my fault if everyone underestimates us, is it? And also, the Crown Jewels were very useful. I had dozens of people watching every move you made.”

  She smiled and caressed my face gently.

  "I lived for a while in Death Cabin, but I found it more practical to stay where all the relics were. And what I did most was watch. I discovered that you were like me when I saw a Chosen One leave your house that day. The next day you were at the hotel and I had no doubt.”

  Suddenly an intense slumber hit me. I struggled to keep my eyes open, but quickly realized that it was out of my control. I felt weak. Suddenly everything went dark.

  I opened my eyes slowly. My eyelids seemed to weigh tons. The first thing I saw when my vision returned to normal was Emma staring at me from afar. She smiled at me casually.

  Between the long blinks, I lowered my eyes and saw Emma take the Dagger that was now in Grandma's heart. I heard a scream in the back of my throat, but it seemed to come from someone else. I was still weak and dizzy. I tried to pull the rope from my wrists, but I couldn’t. Emma removed the Dagger and did it again.

  "One day you'll thank me for this," she said, but my ears heard it in echoes.

  This time the scream came out loud and clear. As Emma pulled the Dagger stuck from Grandmother's chest and ran to the giant tree I kept trying to get rid of the bonds. I saw Grandmother's still body fall to the floor without making a sound. When I couldn’t let go, I disappeared. I appeared by her feet, which was now lying in the tall grass. I reached down and placed my hand on her chest, trying to staunch the wound.

  She raised her hand and removed the cloth that covered her mouth and opened a smile for me. Seeing her smiling, I collapsed. Tears fell desperately. I cried so hard that my chest ached. The air seemed to refuse to enter my lungs.

  "I'm sorry, Grandma. I'm so sorry...” I said through sobs.

  I squeezed the wound, but the blood continued to gush out. Instinctively I looked around for help, but we were the only ones in the glade.

  "Liz," she said, stopping and catching her breath. “Promise that you won’t feel guilty. You can’t blame yourself for this. I can’t die until I know.”

  "No! You're not going to die, Grandma. Please, I need you. I love you.”

  All memories with Grandma were now in my mind. My cheeks were wet with tears, and my hands now had a thick layer of blood. But I kept pushing, even though I knew it probably wouldn’t do anything.

  "You're strong, honey, you don’t need me. Be happy. I love you too.” The words came out of the deep sighs she gave.

  Grandma was pale and tears wet her thin white hair as they crossed her temple. I felt life drain from her fragile body and it hurt more than any punch or blow I had ever received.

  "Go home and fight for your people, my love. Be amazing.”

  The sound of her last breath was like the sound of someone breaking all my bones. Grandma had closed her eyes and her lifeless head collapsed to the side. My tears fell on her face as I hugged her. My white nightdress was soaked with her blood.

  "This is not happening, it's not happening," repeated over and over in my head. I couldn’t believe that the most gentle and loving person I knew was dead. And because of me.

  I looked at her face and recognized it as the one who I had come to on my first day of school. The same one who scolded me, smiling, for cursing a girl who was bothering another young child. It was exactly the same face, except that now there was no life in it. The cheeks that were always pink were now colorless. The body was just an empty container. She was gone.

  A loud noise took me out of my bubble, making me wake up to what was going on around me. The tears had stopped and the anger that flooded me by the second meant that my eyes didn’t produce new ones. I got up slowly, arranging her hands and placing them close to her body. I kissed her forehead while her body was still warm.

  “Damn it!” Emma screamed, punching the tree.

  I accelerated the pace, moving toward her. I ripped the rope from my wrists easily. Every time I blinked, the image of Grandma dead reappeared before my eyes. Every inch of my body tingled. My fists were closed, predicting what would come next. Now I was no longer dizzy or weak. When Emma saw me coming and looked at my face, her expression was of pure fear. At that moment she knew I wasn’t on her side, and so she lifted the Dagger with her right hand and directed it toward me.

  I stopped a few inches from the end of the blade and when I heard a low noise, I looked at the floor. My hand was dripping with blood. Grandma's blood, and from the pain I felt from fingernails carved into my palms, mine, too.

  "You would never come to Pacem if she was still alive here," she said, her hand and voice now trembling. "She lied to you all your life. She didn’t deserve…”

  With my left hand I took the Dagger by the blade, not caring about the inevitable cut, and pulled it out of her hand. I threw it
on the floor and with my right fist I punched her face. She slammed her back into the tree with the impact. I picked her up and punched her again in a matter of seconds. I just wanted to feel my fists on her face.

  "Humans don’t deserve us," she said, trying to get up. "The only thing they do is lie, we're superior, one day you'll understand that. She got what she deserved.”

  My hand went hard on her stomach, making her gasp.

  "Don’t talk about her," I said, lifting her and squeezing her neck. "You have no right.”

  With what seemed to be her last piece of strength, she took the other knife from her back pocket and stabbed my arm. I released her by instinct and she ran. I took the knife that was deep in my arm without feeling anything and appeared quickly in front of her.

  “How did you…”

  "I'm an Aster, bitch," I said, and hit her again.

  She fell over and I dropped to my knees on top of her, holding her to the floor with one hand wrapped around her neck just the way she did with me a little while ago.

  "Liz," he said, starting to gasp. ‘Please, I...”

  I knew she wasn’t sorry. Her sick brain couldn’t feel that emotion. And that only made my anger increase.

  "I could never forgive you for killing all those Chosen Ones," I said, squeezing harder. "But for having killed my grandmother, you don’t deserve the air that this world, or any other, provides."

  In my eyes I would go over everything. The fear and pain I felt when I was attacked in my house. The terror of seeing Niko dead. The constant fear I had felt every day ever since. And finally, Grandma bleeding to death in front of me. I couldn’t see another result. My hands acted alone. I pressed even more until I heard the crack of her neck break.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I didn’t know how long I'd been sitting on the grass just looking at the giant tree. The scent of blood bothered my nostrils. I stared at the sketch on the wood. It was a circle with what appeared to be a sword in the middle. The portal didn’t seem to be open.