“Thought. He doesn’t think you are anymore. He thinks it’s…”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you…”
“But…”
“Natalie, I can’t tell you anything. Not without proof, at least. Do you understand?” The pitying look on her face made me want to ask again, but I knew she’d just refuse to answer.
“I understand,” I lied. What did the Shadow Bringer know about me that I didn’t? Why did he say they couldn’t trust me?
“I’ll tell you more later. For now, let’s just have some fun,” A bittersweet smile curled onto her lips.
“Define fun.”
“Let’s go find that Shadow Bringer.”
“Where do you think they’ll be?” I asked frowning. Emilie had done a pretty good job at changing the subject, but I wasn’t going to let this conversation rest easy. Later, I definitely would bother her more about it.
“The magic was coming from the training grounds.”
I started to walk ahead, but Emilie grabbed my arm firmly.
“In the months to come, you have to trust me. You have to tell me the truth when I ask you these questions. I’m on your side. James needs your help too… He needs you to help him figure out who it is.”
I processed the words in my brain slowly, trying to figure out how they fit with the discussion. “He wants me to spy on my friends? Forget it.”
“Natalie.”
“The Shadow Bringer could be anyone, anyone at all!”
This moment was the second time she’d given me a pitying look in the past five minutes. It almost seemed to say that she knew something I didn’t know, and it was killing her not to tell me. But I knew she wouldn’t tell.
“The Chosen One has been announced. Don’t you think the Shadow Bringer will do its best to get close to the person they’re aiming to kill?” Emilie said, calmly. She knew that I would come around to her sense, and I hated her for it.
My hands curled into tight fists as I debated it. “All right, I’ll do it.” I’ll do it to help Dominic.
“I knew you’d understand.”
“Let’s just go.”
As we headed to the training grounds, I remembered the parade and the brightly colored outfits.
“Hey, Emilie? At the parade, there were so many Ones of Within members, more than I have ever seen. Do you know why that was?” The question just popped into my head. Emilie seemed to be a bit surprised how normal I sounded, after the magic attack.
“Did you honestly think that the Ones of Within members only lived in Sybra? It is our home base, but there are some Ones of Within members that live in other cities. They are placed in those capitols to keep a good relationship with them and to facilitate trade that comes to Sybra.”
“Do all of the Ones of Within members come to the Inner Celebration?”
“Most of them, but some of them stay in the cities. After all, when all the Ones of Within members are gone at the Inner Celebration, it is a perfect time for the Larta to strike.”
“Emilie, what happens to the children of the Ones of Within members?”
“They are sent into families in Sybra. They grow up until they are ready to join the Ones of Within. Some of the kids you see on the street are going to become members of the Ones of Within soon.”
I silently remembered my conversation with Hunter earlier.
Did the true parents of the children never get to see their kids? “The parents of the children visit them, but the Ones of Within believe it is better for the children to grow up in a normal environment, learning to common knowledge all people on Aughmortor need.”
“What are some things the children learn?”
“They learn things such as which plants on Aughmortor are poisonous and which animals are deadly. They take schooling about grammar, history, science, everything we studied on Earth.” I didn’t know which plants on Aughmortor were poisonous and which were not. How would I learn the information? Our conversation distracted me from my surroundings, but as it died down, I realized we were already on the training grounds. It was eerily quiet here without anyone around.
“Forest.” Emilie pointed out the darkly shadowed forest. It would have been easy to hide in the shadows of the trees. The cool fresh air blew in my face, causing me to shiver. I quickly zipped up my jacket and stuffed my hands in my pocket.
“One second.” I muttered, just realizing that I had forgotten to fetch my sword. I had my daggers, but if the spy really was in the forest, I didn’t doubt that she would have a sword. I fetched my sword with magic and caught it easily, while Emilie scanned the forest.
“I’m impressed,” She said, eyebrows raised. My magic had been progressing rapidly. One of the first things I worked on was teleportation since it had been one of my top things to learn.
“We should hurry.” Emilie said, merely a thin outline in the darkness. I almost asked Emilie to summon some light for us, but I realized that if the spy truly were in the forest, they would have no trouble picking us off if we used a light.
We broke into a run but stopped as we entered the forest. We walked quietly through the trees, staying in the shadows the best we could. The overhanging of bare trees let a little light come through, but only the light the fog could produce. An ominous feeling crept around the forest, as though something terrible was happening, but I couldn’t grasp what it might be. I felt suddenly terribly depressed and fearful. Part of me wished we could turn back now, but I wasn’t going to be the one to say it. The normally pleasant environment of the forest had evaporated. I glanced at Emilie, confirming that I wasn’t going insane.
“What is this feeling?” She whispered. I shook my head, showing that I was as confused as she was. We were headed, almost unintentionally, to the archery training’s clearing. Each step I took made the terrible feeling stronger.
We entered the clearing when the feeling was overwhelming me; we were close to whatever was causing this dark energy. In front of us, back turned, was a shadowed figure with long silver hair, crouched over something. In its hand was a long object with a glowing tip that was no longer than a sword. I noticed that a bow lay on the ground beside the figure and a few arrows.
For a second, I didn’t know what to do. Announce that we were here or try to make a cheap shot while I could. My hand curled around a dagger in my pocket. I was having a hard time seeing in the darkness of the night, but the silver hair was unmistakable even with an orb of light hanging over the girl’s head. The figure turned around, hissing, somehow hearing the slightest noise I had made by pulling my dagger out of my pocket.
Emilie had made two balls of light so we could finally see, as the figure turned, quietly whispering Jakost. I could see the figure clearly now. It was a girl, I thought. She had amazingly pale skin, white. Her mouth turned into a savage grin. Easy prey. I wasn’t sure if she said the words or if I just thought them from the expression on her face towards us. All of her teeth were sharp and pointed triangles pointed triangles just waiting to bite into my skin. Her hair was pale silver, and it glowed like no hair I had ever seen. The girl’s eyes were a deep violet that stood out in the darkness like spheres of light. She was beautiful but inhumanly beautiful. Her features appeared human, but something had transformed her into the new being she was before us.
Purple veins crawled up her temples, dark against her near translucent skin. Her hands were clawed with long silver hooks, and each one was about half a finger in length. Her feet were bare, revealing feet that looked like paws that were also clawed. For a second, she stared at us two, judging us by our appearance. Then, she reacted inhumanly fast and grabbed the bow and arrows before I could react and notched an arrow. She pointed the bow straight at my chest.
“I smell your fear,” The girl hissed like a snake. “The first to step forward loses their life.”
As she pointed the bow at me, I stared at her, words far from my tongue. I almost always had something to say, but now I had nothing. An animal caught
in a snare. If she let go of that arrow, I was as good as roadkill; her control on the bow was perfect, not like my erratic twitches. The chance of this girl to miss her shot was very low. I felt a sense of pity fill my mind; this girl had been a human. Had Lucia changed her into a monster? I wondered if she even had a name. Emilie seemed to be cooking something up in her head, but I had nothing. I had hit a blank spot.
“If you think I will let you go, you are wrong. I have orders, you know.” Her voice still hissed. Was it her normal voice?
“Why am I so interesting? Why did you come tonight?” I asked in curiosity. I know that she would dismiss my question, but I hoped otherwise. Maybe, she could tell me how the Ones of Within and Larta were connected. The girl shook for a second. Was she shivering from the cold?
“Human, you do not know what you are?” A harsh laugh erupted from her pale lips, “You will learn soon enough.”
The simple words were almost too horrible to bear because they involved more waiting, which I had enough of. I decided that it would be best to distract her until help came if it ever did. If she let down her guard, my dagger was ready for action. She wasn’t wearing armor, so it wouldn’t just bounce off hard metal. The object she had held in her hand lay on the ground where the bow had been. It looked almost like a pencil, its glowing tip in the shape of a point. Behind her, I could just make out weird runes drawn on the ground in glowing lines. They looked like strange little drawings with strange dashes and dots.
“Why does Lucia want Natalie, who is she?” Emilie asked, curiosity burning like fire in her words. This girl carried information about my background or maybe even the connection between the Ones of Within and the Larta?
“Classified information. I wouldn’t have told you either way,” The girl adjusted her footing, keeping her bow poised. Her face didn’t show the slightest expression. Was she incapable of showing feeling?
“I’m not supposed to kill you,” The girl said to me slowly, “But who said I obeyed the rules? We never do.”
“What happened to you?” I blurted out, hand closing into a fist around my jeweled dagger. A small stab of pain hit the palm of my hand as the blade dug into it. “I’m Lucia’s prize. Finally, her experiment has worked.” The girl looked around intently, as though she looked for something in particular.
“What experiment?” Emilie asked.
“I was human.” The girl tightened her grip on the bow. “But Lucia had bigger plans for me. Now I’m not weak and foolish like I was. And everything is sharper. I see everything in new eyes.”
“How did this happen?” I could hear the shock in Emilie’s voice. She felt as bad for the girl as I did.
“Don’t you dare feel pity! I feel it encircling both of you, the weak mundane feelings of humans! I suppose I can tell you, though.” The girl glared at us, her deep violet eyes turning cold in only a matter of seconds. “Triza have a poisonous bite as I’m sure you know. But a certain amount of fluid must enter the body of a human to kill it. Lucia injected a specific amount of poison that she got from Triza into my arm. She has perfected it after the death of a few of her earlier victims. I was stronger than them all now. I guess that’s why I get to be this special. I would never take back my former life.”
Could Triza’s blood honestly make this girl turn into a monster? How sick was Lucia? Did she prey upon the pain of others?
Suddenly, James and Shay joined us from the clearing, transporting out of nowhere. He wore stunning armor from head to toe. It was as bright as the blade of my daggers, iridescent and brilliant. Encased in a sheath at his belt was his midnight blue sword with a silver flame design, and his hands were clasped around its hilt. James withdrew it, holding it to the sky with pride, and then swung it around as though he was testing the blade to see its quality. Shay barely seemed dressed for the occasion, wearing a cream sweater and leather pants and appearing weaponless.
The girl’s face was blank, swiped of any emotion, at the sight of the new people. Was she scared? Could she even feel scared? The girl’s inhuman actions happened again. She took the arrow from the bow and held it pointed directly at her heart, stopping James in his tracks. Finally, I felt as though I could truly breathe, though my heart was still heavy. It pounded like a war hammer, pulsing at an unreal speed.
“Laurel? Is that really you, my sister?” James said, shock in his voice. There was pain there too, mixed in with relief. I remembered what I had learned earlier in the graveyard about his family.
The girl laughed coldly at the sound of her name. “I might have been Laurel once, but no longer.” She took a few steps forward towards James and Shay. James seemed stuck in place, an expression I would never forget. It was the expression of someone who was broken and had just found the piece that could keep it all together, but it no longer fit where it belonged. Laurel was a puzzle piece that had been destroyed and returned to him by Lucia.
“I thought you were dead,” He protested, stepping closer. I could tell he wanted her to greet him like a sister, but at the same time, he didn’t recognize who she had become.
Laurel turned the arrow back towards her brother. They were barely six feet away from each other, and she stared daggers at him, daring him to come closer. “No, not dead. I am stronger, quicker, and better than I have ever been. You can no longer defeat me,” She said, a twisted smile on her face. Laurel turned towards Shay, and her hair flipped behind her in the wind.
“Lucia is waiting for your update. Tick tock,” Laurel hissed, pretending to tap an imaginary watch on her wrist. Shay’s eyes opened wide, and her mouth became a stern line.
Suddenly, the scene before me sprung into action. The dagger hiding in Shay’s hands slid into view, and she struck James deep in the chest before he could react, piercing through the metal armor protecting his vitals. At the same time, a terrifying scream pierced through the air as Laurel plunged the arrow in her hands deep into her chest. I found myself reacting without a second thought. I threw my dagger at lightning speed at Shay, and it buried into her stomach, blood welling from the wound. Shay’s cold eyes stared me down, barely flinching at the hit from the dagger. She started chanting Jakost in a rapid, frightening speed and within seconds, she disappeared before my eyes just as I threw the second dagger at her unprotected body.
Laurel looked at us, as though she was blaming us for her death. I saw her take one last breath as she fell, her purple eyes already turning blank, her legs unable to carry her weight. She was dead- I knew it, and the knowledge was sickening. The feelings of dread caused by her presence left the clearing as the last breath left her body, but I felt as horrible as I had before, if not worse. That girl could have been me. I could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and could have become her, Lucia’s monster. Maybe, if the Shadow Bringer had gotten to me before Emilie and Shay, this would be me in the clearing.
Emilie ran towards James, who was still standing, but clearly injured. Blood poured from the wound under his chest plate, and I could tell he was hurting.
“I’m okay,” He rasped. “She missed my heart. It’s just a shoulder wound. Call for Lyte.”
Tears poured down Emilie’s face, but she nodded rapidly and started calling to Ones of Within members for help. Lyte joined us in seconds and took James’s hands in a heartbeat. Within seconds, the blood around his wound was cleaned and stitched itself up like it had never existed. Once her job was done, she noticed Laurel’s dead body, and a piercing scream left her lips. I had never heard emotion like that before in my entire life. The scream was terrifying to hear and worse coming from Lyte, who always shown with strength and power.
“Dead,” James said, the word hollowly leaving his lips. “She killed herself with her own weapon.”
“How can she be dead?” Lyte whispered, her hands curling into fists. “I just saw her. What did Lucia do to her?”
Emilie was sobbing so loudly that I pulled her to me, her body wracking with her pain. Shay had been like another mother to her, and I knew t
hat. Somehow, a part of me had always suspected Shay as the traitor. That was the only explanation for her actions. She had clearly tried to kill James right in front of us.
“She was injected with a non-lethal dose of Triza blood it sounds like,” I explained, my heartbreaking at the sight of everyone’s pain. James barely seemed to be keeping it together as our leader; his sister was dead before him, and his closest ally was a traitor. How had Shay gotten through all of the Ones of Within protection for so long? How had we never known?
“It’s a shame. Her information could have been helpful to us,” James said, staring at his sister. Despite the fact he looked like he was about to join the others in sobbing, he held himself together and even seemed cold when talking about his sister’s dead body.
I felt a rush of anger. “Is that all you care about? Information? Lucia turned her into a lab animal!” I stared at them all defiantly.
“Natalie, she would have continued to be Lucia’s puppet if she hadn’t done this,” James explained, only causing Lyte’s to turn away from him. She bent over Laurel’s dead body and held her hand, purposefully blocking the dead body from our view. It seemed she wanted to grieve in silence. “My sister made her choice long ago. She left us. She chose Lucia.”
“We could have helped her,” I protested. Anger threatened to boil over and cause me to scream at him, but I refused to. Everyone said that James was such a noble, wonderful leader, but Emilie had told me of two specific events he lied to the whole Ones of Within about. Somehow, his second in command ended up being the Shadow Bringer trying to kill us all. I didn’t know if I believed in his leadership anymore.
“You have no idea what you’re speaking of. One day, you shall learn.” James met my gaze evenly, a perturbed expression on his face that somehow made me feel like he understood. He looked away after a second, the worry lines on his face appearing again, causing him to look much older again.
“Of course, I’ll learn some day. I’m sick of people treating me like I could never understand them! That I don’t know anything!”
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