Immortal Warfare: Sister Witches

by Melinda Hyde

  She eyed me sadly, wearing a pained expression. Her next words stirred the coals of my fury, but before they could blaze back up, she came down beside me, taking my hand in hers. Her fingers were soft and warm. I could feel the familiar connection between us flare to life, and I ached with a sense of longing for the bond we had once shared.

  She sensed it, too; I could see it in those pale, shimmering pools that were her eyes. “You’ll always be my sister, Leonia—always.”

  With that, she spun away from me and hurried back towards the cave. Another space of emptiness took up residence in my heart. It was as if a piece of who I was had just vanished into thin air, leaving behind a void that could never be touched or filled.

  In one night, I had lost my husband and my sister. Admittedly, I had lost Lenora long ago, when I chose to be with Orin. This was different, though. She had always been right there—right across the way. At times, I could even look out my door and see her going on about her life. As long as she had remained close, I had always felt satisfied with the possibility that one day, somehow, our differences could be swept aside.

  I knew now that I had been foolish to ever believe such a thing was possible. As I sat in the tall grass, watching her disappear into the cave, a shiver passed through me. It was deep and foreboding, like a promotion, of sorts. I suddenly had the oddest feeling that I would never see my sister again—at least, not in this life.

  It was almost enough to make me change my mind, but something held me in place. A tiny voice whispered at the back of my mind that my place was here. I didn’t know if it was me stubbornly clinging to the frail ends of hope that remained, or if some other, more powerful force was at work. Either way, I decided that it didn’t matter. My decision was made.

  I pushed up on shaky legs, and I made my way to the door of the cabin. I paused there briefly to steady myself. I knew that Orin’s men were on the other side of that barrier, and I wasn’t ready to face them. I exhaled my breath slowly, then made my way inside.

  The men stood around looking bored, but when they saw me walk in, they paused. They eyed me from head to toe with a great deal of speculation. I didn’t blame them. I knew they had to be wondering what had happened to me. I had been gone a great deal longer than I had said, and I didn’t need a mirror to know I was a horrid sight.

  The man I had left in charge of my son strode over to meet me. He approached with caution, cradling a small bundle in his beefy arms. Out of the top of the bundle, I could make out several uneven tufts of dark, fuzzy hair.

  He stopped in front of me, and I bit back a giggle that threatened to erupt from my lips. It could have been the exhaustion toying with my emotions, but the sight of such a small babe against such a large man was suddenly hilarious.

  The man narrowed his eyes, but it was just for show. “Are you okay,” he asked, in a firm, attentive tone. “Where’s Orin?”

  I nodded my head, though I wasn’t sure I was, as I took my sleeping son from his arms. “Orin went out to the woods. I don’t know when he’ll be back, but you’re free to go find him, if you’d like.”

  The man obviously wasn’t daft. He glanced between me and the door, and his eyebrows pinched together. It was clear that he knew something had taken place, even if he was uncertain of what it might have been. As for me, I couldn’t bear anymore scrutinization. I turned away, without another word, and I forced my trembling legs to carry me into the privacy of my chamber.

  From the main room, the sound of clumping feet shuffled out the door. I was overcome by a sense of relief at having the house to myself. I needed the time to mourn my losses, without being further weighed down by the presence of others.

  Lance started to stir in my arms, and I knew that he was in need of nourishment. I wasn’t prepared for the fresh wave of hurt that washed over me when his tiny, green eyes fluttered open. They were his father’s eyes. That acknowledgement sent me spiraling back into another bout of self-pity, but I forced my feelings aside. My child needed me. That was all that mattered, and no matter what, I would always be there to care for him.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  After Lance was fed, I placed him in the finely crafted crib, noticing for the first time that there was a thin crack running down its side. I trailed my finger over it, feeling the rough rift with my fingertips. I knew it was just another injury that had resulted from Orin’s rash behavior. It was another scar that he had left behind—a reminder.

  I thought about sealing the mark away with magic. That thought didn’t last long, though. I had already used up my reserves. I was worn thin by my use of magic and rampant emotions. Besides, there was no point in worrying with something so insignificant.

  I straightened up, and I staggered over to the bed. I peered down on it, thinking that its emptiness was a lonesome sight. I wondered if Orin would come back to me. Somehow, I doubted it. Wrapped in a blanket of grief, I crawled into the downy softness. It was cool and welcoming, and it instantly pulled me down. I didn’t resist. I collapsed into it and was sucked down into a deep sleep.

  I floated down, drifting weightlessly through time and space. The world around me was pitch-dark, but, as I fell, the darkness became thinner, saturated with particle of light that forced their way in. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant. It was more like what I imagined a feather would feel like, floating aimlessly on the breeze. Then, gravity latched onto me, and I was being sucked down into a vortex of spinning colors, before being spit out the other side.

  I recoiled as I crashed onto something soggy and wet. I frantically ran my hands over the unfamiliar surface, shuffling the loose, damp particles that surrounded me. The smell of dirt and earth wafted up to smack me in the face, and my vision began to clear. Leaves. I was sitting in a flattened pile of leaves. My eyebrows drew in, and I glanced around me. I was surrounded by towering trees that stood tall and proud, reaching their limbs into the darkness.

  Now I was truly baffled. I recognized my surroundings right away. I was somewhere in the woods that surrounded the clearing, but I had no idea or memory of how I had gotten there. The sound of leaves being crunched underfoot put me on guard, and I tensed, scuttling to hide behind one particularly large oak tree.

  Someone barked a cruel, nasty laugh, and I cringed as the sound accosted me. It was followed by the sound of a soft grunt, and, what seemed like, the voice of a woman making strangled snippets of mangled speech. My first thought was Lenora’s creatures. So, when the band of vagabonds stepped into my line of sight, I was truly confounded.

  The group was led by a man wearing a pair of worn, buckskin boots. He carried a blazing torch in one hand, and he had a shaggy, ragged beard curling from his chin. The men behind him followed along, carrying on a light, cheery chatter.

  Some of them toted blazing torches, while others just barrowed the cast from their friends’ light; some of them wore crude, leather footwear, while others moved painlessly over the debris with bare feet. The one thing they had in common, though, was that they all appeared to be ordinary, human men.

  I thought the band of heathens to be odd, but I wasn’t really disquieted by them, until my eyes fell on the frail form in the center of the group. It was a slender woman with long, tangled locks. Her hands were bound in front of her, and the men heartlessly yanked her along by the rope that extended from her wrists. She didn’t struggle against her captors’ cruelty. She moved along compliantly, seeming to be oblivious of the obvious pain she was enduring.

  The men poked at her, cackling their mirth. She didn’t make a sound, or protest, other than the occasional grunt. Then, one of the men sent a well-placed boot smashing into the back of her legs, and the woman lost her balance, tumbling faceward onto the forest floor.

  The woman struggled to rise, bringing her elbows under her shoulders, but the man holding the rope that connected to her binds gave it a hard yank. She collapsed back down, as the men threw their heads back laughing. She let out a strangled moan and turned her head to the side.

  Tha
t was when I felt the air being crushed from my lungs. The small slivers of moonlight that snuck their way between the looming branches bounced off her battered, broken features, and her eyelashes fluttered open. Her dark, earthy-brown eyes rolled around in their sockets, unable to focus on anything in particular. Even from where I hid, I could see that her pupils were several times larger than they should have been.

  My airway constricted, and I fell back in the leaves. My body trembled, shaking uncontrollably with nerves. A bout of nausea roiled in my clenched abdomen, and I leaned down, retching the contents of my stomach. I recognized the mindless woman who they were soullessly dragging along. How could I not, when those sightless, dull eyes were my own?

  The man at the forefront of the group turned to stomp back to the woman. He drove his big, grubby fingers into her thick hair, and he twisted its length around his wrist. He gave her head a violent jerk, snapping it back so that he could peer into her pale face. I could almost feel the hairs popping loose from her scalp—my scalp. A wide, nasty grin spread across the man’s thin, cracked lips, and he hawked a wad of spit in her face, before allowing her to sag back to the ground.

  I had, had enough. I couldn’t stand to watch them torture her for a minute longer. I dug my heels into the yielding earth, as I sprang to my feet. My teeth clenched together, and I roared my fury, as I hurled myself at the grungy man. He never even glanced in my direction. As my fist passed through him, my world went dark, and I felt myself being pulled up through the dimensions of my troubled mind. The colors faded slowly, until only particles of light remained, then only darkness.

  I came up gasping for air. My eyes sprang wide, and my chest bulged greedily, as I sucked in great, heaving gulps of air. I was soaking wet with perspiration that had transferred onto the bedding around me. The air kissed my skin leaving trails of coolness, as it licked the dampness away.

  I shot a glance around the room, desperately attempting to ground myself. Four sturdy walls surrounded me, locking out the dangers that prowled beyond. Against the far wall, my eyes stopped to rest on Lance’s crib. I was home, in the cabin—not somewhere deep in the woods.

  A silent sob shook my shoulders. I wasn’t sure if it was from the relief I felt, or if it was from the fear that still clawed at me. I knew what I had just experienced wasn’t a dream; it had been a vision—a warning. The warning was useless if I had no idea how to prevent it from coming to pass, though.

  There was another thing that was bothering me, as well. It nagged at me, but I couldn’t pin it in place for evaluation. The only thing I could derive from it was the faint traces of sadness that it gave off. It was as if my subconscious already knew something that I had yet to discover. I flung my head into my hands. If it wasn’t enough that I had been betrayed by my sister and husband, my own mind was now leaving me in the dark.

  From his place in the crib, Lance began to wail. I groaned, as I swung my feet over the side of the bed. It was time to feed him again. I padded over to the crib, and I scooped the small babe into my arms.

  15.Immortal Realm

  Lenora

  Once my head shattered the placid surface of the pool, I went down, being sucked under by a spiraling rush of blue, glowing bubbles. I didn’t close my eyes—I didn’t need to. The blood that leaked from my wrists saturated the water with bright, blue currents, lighting the path before me. I didn’t need an intricate spell for what I was trying to do. I needed only my mind.

  I envisioned a trail leading into the darkness, lit with the bright luminescence of my magic. It shot out from me, making a way further into the dredges of the unknown. I followed it, until I could go no further. There was a solid wall of rock shooting up in front of me. I stretched out my hand, and I traced my long, slender finger across its porous surface. There was no way through, not in the traditional sense, anyway, but I wasn’t going to be deterred.

  The blue cloud of bubbles pushed against the stone, and where my finger traced, patterns of swirling, light blue lines carved themselves deep into the structure. Then, came the hard part. I opened up my mind, allowing the vast amounts of magic to move to the fore front. I envisioned the wall opening up, and a path of pure, blue light trailing through it, into the dark unknown. The magic bowed to my demands, and the stone rumbled, parting down the center.

  I stepped into the cavern that led into the heart of the rock. The blue light stretched on and on, so I followed it, working hard to limit the out pour of my energy. If I made the slightest mistake now, it would mean the end for me. Though it was a rock I had walked into, I was inside the earth no more. Where I walked, only my blue light accompanied me.

  I stopped halfway up the path that I had created, and the tiny hairs along my arms prickled, standing on end. I glanced around me, then further down the trail. I didn’t want to err, but something about the place where I was standing just felt right. It called to me in a hypnotic voice that only I could hear.

  I stretched my arms out in front of me, calling my magic back. It obeyed, rushing into me, until only the trail connecting me to the watery cavern remained.

  I closed my eyes again, imagining the wall of blue opening up, allowing me to pass though. It did. The blue light spiked and swirled, opening up to reveal pure, unadulterated darkness on the other side. I looked back down the trail, suddenly feeling uncertain of my design.

  We needed a new, safer place to call home, but even I had no idea what lurked in the darkness up ahead. I turned back to the opening, swallowing past my insecurities. I had to do this. I couldn’t return with nothing to show for my efforts. It was all or nothing.

  I clenched and released my hands several times, then stepped into the unknown. The path closed up behind me, but I was relieved that I could still feel the gentle tug of a connection pulling at the edges of my magic. My eyes strained into the darkness that surrounded me. There was no use in trying to see; the darkness was too pure—too vast. It appeared to be little more than an immense sea of nothingness.

  The greatness of the blacked ocean made me feel very small, for the first time in my life. I timidly stretched my hands out in front of me. I had to find out what surrounded me, if anything, but fear hinged at my mind. I took a great gulp of the thin, frigid air around me, then allowed the light to shine from my hands.

  I gasped as I peered around. My first assessment held steady. There was nothing to be seen—nothing to be heard in this strange place. Only darkness met where my eyes roamed. I chuckled softly beneath my breath, but I couldn’t deny the hints of perspiration that I felt beading on my skin. I knew most of it came from my growing fatigue, but it was also because of the anxiousness that accompanied me.

  An idea occurred to me. Moving on an instinctual impulse, I sent my magic out, envisioning the lonesome pool in the back of my dreary cave, with a single, rocky wall jutting out behind it. I couldn’t see my vision brought to life, but out of the darkness came the sound of water clapping off of rock.

  The excitement that flooded me was immeasurable. I could have clapped my hands in triumph, if I hadn’t been so fearful of losing control of the situation. I called down deep inside, singing to the deepest depths of the witch blood inside me. The magic responded, exploding out around me in a show of brilliance.

  I smashed my eyes shut against the blinding light, and I began to paint a picture in my head. It started off small, thinking only of the area that surrounded me, then moving out to cover an incomprehensible amount of space. The further the magic spread out, the faster it drove itself on.

  The smell of pines and flowers perfumed the air around me, delighting my senses. It was the perfect mixture of sweet and sturdy, but I still couldn’t see the masterpiece that I had created. I could smell the scents of my strange, new world—hear the tickling of the water, but I couldn’t behold it.

  I glanced overhead. I needed light to illuminate the land. Too much light would cripple my creatures, though, and ultimately, I had made this place for them. This was a place where they could be safe—
where they could have a life free from the confining shadows. Then, an idea presented itself.

  I turned my palms up to the dark nothingness above, and slowly an assortment of pinkish purple clouds rolled across the sky. Their colors were sharp and vibrant, and, as I watched, they parted to reveal a huge, reddish moon. To my surprise, the effect was a million times lovelier that what I had seen in my mind.

  Now that there was light, I shifted my eyes back to the landscape and lost my breath. It was absolutely dazzling. The foliage was so thick and green that it looked more like a painting than an actual place.

  My eyes landed on the pool, and I was dazzled again. It was the brightest blue water I had ever seen. It was as if a light shined out from the bottom, glancing off the surface above. The rock face behind it stood proudly, wearing the intricate, glowing designs I had previously carved.

  I couldn’t feel the indents of the design. The surface was as smooth as polished marble, and it felt delightfully cool beneath my fingertips. The thing that struck me, though, was the vast amount of pent up energy buzzing inside the stone—my energy.

  My eyes widened as a light of understanding blazed to life. Somehow, a portion of my magic had lingered behind, inside the structure, and it was now powering the beautiful world around me. It was constant but unstable. Yet, it was also the reason I hadn’t collapsed under the strain to the enormous task I had undertaken.

  I took a step back, planted my palms flat on the stone, and I closed my eyes. I felt the flow travel down the length of my arms, and I willed it out. It flowed over the stone until it had completely encompassed the entire thing. I opened my eyes, finding it increasingly difficult to hold up my trembling arms. With one final snatch at my dwindling supply of energy, I forced the veil to close in on the pores of the rock, locking the magic inside.