by Tay T
_______________________
After they both left the cavern to head back to Maya’s hideout in the human realm, Everette casually said, “I never did ask if you wanted to be buried or cremated.”
At the strange question, Maya’s brow raised.
“Buried. Though, I won’t be needing those services anytime soon,” Maya responded. A daunting smirk bloomed on her lips.
“That’s what they all say,” Everette stated surreptitiously. “I don’t know how long you will last messing with that ritual. It’s best to start preparations. You know…just in case.”
“By the time I finish the ritual, there won’t be much that can harm me,” Maya assured.
Xavier Thaeos was a lot more powerful than any of those in the Coven of Light. If she could attain even half of his powers, the chance of beating them would be significantly higher.
“Even if you finish the ritual, I doubt he will ‘share’ his powers with you for long,” Everette said, glancing sideways at Maya’s smirking face.
The truth in Everette’s words could not be repudiated, and Maya’s mood soured in response.
“Enough of that. Did you gather any information on my mother’s whereabouts?” Maya asked, swiftly changing the subject.
Putting all jokes aside, Everette replied, “I was told Lady Rylith was moved to Lake Avalon ten years ago.”
Maya’s brows furrowed instantly. “I thought we’d already searched there.”
Over the course of thirteen years, Maya had searched high and low for her mother’s location. Every place under the Coven of Light’s control had been thoroughly foraged. Not even a rock was left unturned.
“We weren’t searching in the right place.” Everette paused dramatically. “Because your mother is under the lake.”
Maya’s face darkened at the notion of what that could possibly mean for her mother. With a hard clench of her jaw, she spoke sarcastically through the cracks of her teeth, “How kind of them.”
Lake Avalon was known amongst all creatures for its malicious inhabitants. Although it was surrounded by a beautiful forest, it was one of the most notoriously known places of the dead. Long ago, it had once been a popular attraction surrounded by a village of human families, full of life and happiness. Until the Coven of Light found a use for it.
With the overwhelming amount of people they killed, they couldn’t contain the vengeful, haunted spirits with intricate spells or seals. And so, Lake Avalon was turned into a prison for all the malignant spirits and vehemently angry souls of those whose youth had been stolen. It was like a reflective mirror big enough to withhold all within its chilling depths, including demonic creatures born from rage and fury.
After the Coven of Light’s takeover, no one dared to live within a one-hundred-mile radius of it, in fear of being swallowed by the demonic spirits.
“Since Lord Aldrich deemed it a just punishment for her betrayal, she was sent there to be the lake’s keeper,” Everette informed. Her lips were stiffly pinched into a frown.
“Betrayal,” Maya repeated, mockingly. A scornful expression formed on her face. “If running from a man who raped her is considered a betrayal, then Aldrich White should have been left burning in the depths of hell.”
The dove-shifter grimaced.
From what Everette knew, Lady Rylith had been betrothed to Lord Aldrich at a fairly young age. While the old warlock was over one hundred years old, Lady Rylith was barely sixteen. He had been married over a handful of times, and Lady Rylith was to be his twenty-third wife. Due to his high status in the council, everyone deemed the pairing a perfect match, regardless of the massive age gap.
But Lady Rylith did not want to marry the warlock, not after having met Maya’s father, a necromancer shunned from the white witch community. The two had fallen in love shortly before Lady Rylith was forcefully engaged to Lord Aldrich.
When she’d wanted to break off the engagement, Lord Aldrich became angry and volatile. The argument led to Lady Rylith’s imprisonment within the Coven. Since Lady Rylith’s parents had been against her involvement with a necromancer, they had no qualms in helping Lord Aldrich imprison her.
Before Lady Rylith turned of age, Lord Aldrich had raped and impregnated her with Maya’s older half-sister, Avalyn. But after Lady Rylith gave birth, the Coven deemed her incapable of caring for her young and took Avalyn away. The newborn baby was soon placed under the care of Lord Aldrich.
Unable to get Avalyn back, Lady Rylith and Maya’s father managed to escape to the human realm.
Much later after their escape, Lady Rylith was pregnant again with Maya. The family of three lived in a small town called Qulhelm for over seven years. Although Maya’s parents wanted to get Avalyn back, they knew they weren’t strong enough to fight Lord Aldrich and didn’t want to risk having another baby taken from them.
So, while Maya was raised amongst the humans, Avalyn was raised within the Coven, under Aldrich’s strict tutelage. One was raised with love, while the other was raised with hatred.
But Maya’s happy family didn’t stay that way for very long. When Maya turned eight, the members of the Coven of Light came and accused her mother of breaking the Holy Law.
According to the law, white witches were holy creatures belonging to the light and necromancers were the darkness of evil. For Maya’s mother, a white witch, to conceive a child with a necromancer was blasphemy. And so, under Lord Aldrich’s leadership, Maya’s father was killed and her mother was given a severe sentence for breaking the laws governing her kind. Maya would have been killed too had it not been for Everette’s grandfather, Druid, who had saved her right in the nick of time.
Since then, Maya had been fighting with the Coven to get her mother back. But every attempt had ended in failure.
CHAPTER 5
The afternoon sun beat down from above, casting an orange hue upon flushed cheeks and vermilion lips.
Maya let out a disgruntled sound from the back of her throat and continued to hack through the thick bushes. Her sharp sickle cut off another thorny branch before her eyes caught sight of yellow and purple.
The delicate plant was hidden within the depths of its spiky enclosure, similar to Sleeping Beauty trapped within the confines of her castle. It was barely the length of her pinky and smelled sickly sweet, like ripe guava. Just as she reached out to pull it up from the ground, it shrunk back and disappeared under the surface of dirt, like a mole would its hill.
Drats.
She had been so close!
Maya had scoured the enchanted meadow for almost two hours in search of the poisonous herb, toiling long and hard through all the barbed vines and bushes. When she thought it was within her grasp, it had managed to escape.
Maya breathed out a deep sigh, wiping the dirt and soot off her fingers. She stood and glared down the patch of land for almost five minutes before spotting the little plant, peeking up several feet away. The smart thing was trying to test her patience by playing a game of hide and seek.
Green eyes narrowed at the unspoken challenge.
Before she could take another step, three females blocked the sight of her next conquest, and a condescending tone of voice drifted in the wind. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the half-breed.”
Their eyes were settled on Maya’s still form, looking at her with demeaning gazes, as if she were an abomination of some sort, not worthy of being alive.
White witches.
Maya’s jaw clenched, fingers tightening into a fist from their blatant disrespect of her person. Her good mood immediately plummeted to the very crevices of hell, and her patience boiled down to—literally—nothing.
She didn’t respond to them and chose to solemnly ignore their obstinate presences. When she attempted to sidestep the three, they continued to cut off her path.
With a warning lilt of her voice, Maya said, “Get out of my way or reap the consequences.”
She gave the white witches a chance to take the initiative and go. She always d
id. But not once had they heeded her warning.
Fools, the lot of them.
“I like how young and delusional you are. It’ll make your death just that much sweeter when I take your head back to the Coven,” the brown-haired white witch commented.
Although the lack of interest was clear on Maya’s face, they chose not to relent by stepping closer to her indifferent form.
Maya frowned.
She could tell these witches were here to eradicate her for the coveted prize offered by the Coven.
This tidbit of information became known to her after she’d been attacked by a group of six witches and wizards a year ago. When she’d defeated them and forced them to talk, she found out her head was only worth a youth elixir meant to aid in retaining an old witch’s beauty. It was a fairly insulting knowledge.
How foolish were they to think someone like her would easily kneel at their feet and let them take what they wanted? She wasn’t the same eleven-year-old who let them beat her down to a bloody pulp, waiting to be rescued when she was nearing death’s door.
Maya was far too clever for that now.
“Enough small talk. If you’re going to attack, then hurry up. My time is rather precious you know,” Maya taunted, tossing her sickle aside with a flick of her tapered wrist.
The faster she got rid of these nuisances, the faster she could collect her plant and get back to the Cardinal Alpha still confined in her cavern.
Her mouth watered as the image of his blood reflected in her mind’s eye, yet she failed to realize the implications.
“I hope you’re ready to die, little girl,” the brown-haired witch spat, reaching for the potions inside of her pouch.
“And I hope your old bones can handle this, grandma,” Maya jeered in response.
All three of them bristled at Maya’s words; the anger almost palpable on their tightening faces.
Maya’s confident smirk widened.
What better way to agitate an old witch than by talking about her age?
“I can see why you all need the elixir so bad. Your wrinkles are deeper than the Pacific Ocean,” she continued to taunt, “I doubt Botox can fix that.”
Unlike them, Maya had better control of herself. She’d learned, long ago, not to fight with her emotions on her sleeves. The result was always terribly painful and cost her dearly each time she failed to conquer her anger and fear.
Over the years, Maya had honed her skills to near perfection to keep herself alive. Otherwise, she would not be standing here today.
“You’re going to regret being born after we’re done, half-breed,” the brown-haired witch bellowed.
The first round of spells and potions headed Maya’s way. Yet before any of them could touch her, Maya smiled mockingly at them and disappeared in a veil of black.
“You should’ve brought your bifocals, at least then you wouldn’t have missed.” Her voice rang out through the little meadow, echoing eerily with each intonation.
After hundreds of encounters with white witches, Maya had deducted three important things.
One, white witches didn’t like to fight physically.
Two, most of them resorted to spells and potions to do their dirty work.
And three, the more she angered them, the sloppier they became. This made her victory even easier.
The three witches warily glanced around the empty clearing and formed a circle with their backs to each other, waiting. Their bodies were tense as they gripped onto different colored potions on each hand.
After what felt like an eternity, the dark sorceress reappeared in front of the brown-haired witch.
With an ominous grin imprinted on her red lips, Maya’s fist slammed straight into the witch’s haughty face. The female’s head was forced to the side as her dark brown eyes closed, signifying the knockout upon contact of Maya’s powered fist. And the resounding crack that followed was terribly satisfying to Maya’s ears.
The second the brown-haired woman’s body plummeted backward, Maya’s fist had already slammed into another white witch’s pretty face. The taller white witch didn’t go under like the first. She rolled around and tossed a potion at the sorceress’s face.
Wonderful. This one is a fighter, Maya thought gleefully, a maniacal grin coloring her vibrant lips.
She deflected the potion with a wave of her hands and sent the liquid straight on the unconscious woman’s leg. The poisonous substance managed to jolt the brown-haired witch awake, who, upon impact, expelled an unbearable screech of pain.
Just when the liquid spilled on the witch’s dress, the fabric disintegrated into nothing and her leg was consumed by the poison until only bones remained where flesh once laid.
Maya reveled in the scent of her misery.
“You bitch!” the taller white witch shouted, clutching her battered face as blood rained rivulets down her chin.
Maya smiled darkly and attacked consistently in the same area, listening to the sickening crunch of the tall witch’s nose as it came shattering under.
It was a highly euphoric moment that caused a bloodthirsty, downright sinister look to appear on the dark sorceress’s face.
Maya swept the tall witch’s legs out from under her, but the fallen female was quick to get back on her shaky feet. She wiped the blood off her mouth before squaring her shoulders and fisting her hands, eyeing the dark sorceress for an opening.
Maya dodged a punch but missed the sharp nails that raked across her face. The burning pain spread across her left cheek down to her neck and was quickly dismissed when Maya’s elbow slammed into the side of the tall witch’s face.
The white witch failed to recover after that, stumbling to the ground before falling forward and stilling in a heap of blood and broken bones.
Once finished with the two, Maya turned her attention to the third white witch who had been throwing spells and muttering incantations the whole time.
Although Maya had temporarily ignored her, she wasn’t one to be so discourteous as to fail to return the favor.
That would be far too rude of her.
“To think you would take the hint that these spells and potions are useless against me,” Maya derided, sending a dark spell back at the witch as she blocked another pathetic attempt. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks after all.”
The last white witch trembled like a wire in the wind, lips pale white from fear and nervousness, as she shakily conjured a barrier just in the nick of time. But as soon as the darkness met her weak barrier, it shattered in an array of pretty, shimmering sparkles. And it didn’t take much effort on Maya’s part.
“Pretty. But useless,” Maya commented, a hint of distaste filling her voice. She circled the blonde-haired female, grinning wickedly in response to the witch’s anxiety and fear.
This one had anticipated Maya’s attack but floundered uselessly from the close range with which Maya fought. She blocked Maya’s steadily approaching fist, yet completely missed the deft kick to the stomach that sent her flying back several feet into a tree. The witch didn’t get up after that, choosing to cower and fake unconsciousness instead of facing Maya head-on.
Maya leered at her prone figure on the grass and collected her silver sickle from the ground. By the time she’d left the scene with the herb in hand, the three white witches laid incapacitated on the forest floor in a pool of their own blood, knocked out cold.
Perhaps, next time, they won’t underestimate their opponent or count their chickens before they hatch.
_______________________
After the impromptu exercise session, Maya decided to head back to her apartment in the human realm. The dust and sweat clinging to her skin were fairly unbearable, and she wanted to take a quick shower before heading back to the cavern.
Briskly walking down the hallway of the apartment complex, none of the people traversing the halls paid her any attention. Most of them sported wounds far worse than hers. They minded their own business and kept their gazes to themselves.
/>
That was one of the reasons Maya chose this rundown apartment in the sleaziest parts of town.
No one was nosy about anyone’s business, and that was just the way she liked it.
Maya swiftly unlocked the door to her apartment, removed the spells keeping intruders out, and stepped into her spacious living area. After closing the door and locking it, she kicked off her dirty shoes and headed into the bathroom.
Just as she turned on the faucet to wash her dirty hands, full of white witch and blood, she couldn’t help but notice the dried crimson streaks staining her left cheek and neck.
Maya duly remembered the sting of pain when one of the witch’s nails had scratched her face during the short altercation. But it wasn’t significant enough for her to focus on.
As she inspected the extensive amount of dried blood on her face and neck, she idly noted the wound didn’t hurt at all.
Strange, she thought.
Once Maya finished washing all the dirt and blood off her hands, she stared down at her unmarred fingers and raised knuckles.
Her delicate brows furrowed.
With the way she was punching and beating those women, her hands shouldn’t be this pristine and unaffected. She expected to see some torn skin, a little bit of blood, or even bruised knuckles, but there was nothing.
At the dawning realization, Maya quickly splashed water on her face and washed off the blood on her cheek and neck. Turning off the faucet, she scrutinized her features in the mirror, staring avidly at the reflected image of her face.
It was just like she expected.
The scratch marks that were supposed to be there…were not.
CHAPTER 6
Maya was starting to gain his incredibly fast healing. Her smooth, unblemished skin did not show any signs of wear and tear from the fight. If it had not been for the blood staining her face, she never would have noticed.
Now that she thought about it, even the fight with the white witches was much easier than normal. Maya had never been able to knock anyone out with just a punch before. Perhaps, she was starting to gain his beastly strength too.
