Calla's Story

Chapter 16

Sixteen

My name is Nathaniel Aaron Chase. I was born in the human realm twenty-eight years ago to a faerie mother and a human father. Her name was Angelica, and she disappeared not too long after I was born. After my dad recovered from his broken heart, he met and married the woman who became my real mother.

I lived a sheltered life. I had no siblings, and my parents provided me with pretty much anything I wanted. I wouldn’t say I turned out to be a spoiled brat, but I certainly knew nothing about suffering. I was innocent, naive, and I’d never had to make a difficult choice in my life. Then one night a faerie girl showed up in my bedroom, and everything changed.

I was totally unprepared for the world I discovered. This world of magic where almost anything I’d thought impossible suddenly became possible. I thought it was amazing at first, the forest and the colors and the creatures and the spells. And the faerie girl—Violet—was even more incredible. I fell for her quickly. I even thought I loved her.

But things went wrong almost immediately. There was a prince, an Unseelie prince, and he wanted things he shouldn’t want. He wanted his mother’s throne, he wanted an army of Gifted fae—along with the guardian whose special ability allowed her to find them—and he wanted the power that once belonged to the infamous halfling, Tharros Mizreth. This power was locked in a chest, and only Angelica knew where the chest was. She also knew how to unlock it.

So how did I end up entangled in this Unseelie prince’s plot? Well, I had a connection to Angelica and to the Guild. I could help Prince Zell get everything he wanted. And once it turned out that I had magic of my own—and not only magic, but a Griffin Ability too—Zell used that as his bargaining chip. I had no hope of controlling this power that had suddenly awoken within me, but Zell introduced me to someone who could help. A girl who called herself Scarlett. A girl who was half siren and had no problem using her enticing powers on me or anyone else. I learned to protect myself from her influence eventually, but back then, lost as I was in this new and dangerous world of magic, I found her powers hard to resist.

I wound up stuck in the middle then, with the girl I loved on one side and the guy who threatened my family and promised to teach me about my magic on the other. It was a dangerous game to play, trying to keep both sides happy. Zell watched my every move, so I couldn’t tell Violet about him. And I didn’t tell Zell that Violet was the guardian he was looking for. Instead I hoped to find my own way out of this mess before he could get his hands on her. But it wasn’t long, of course, before Zell found out that I’d been lying to him and that she was the one who could find people. After punishing me, he told me I had to deliver her to him. He threatened my parents so that I’d have no choice but to comply. But I loved Vi, and I didn’t want to simply hand her over.

I came up with a plan. It was stupid, barely a plan at all, but I thought it would be enough to keep everyone safe. In the end, it did, but Vi hated me after that. I knew she’d never trust me again. Zell refused to let me go—he wanted to use me for my power over the weather—and even if he had allowed me to leave, where would I have gone? He was right when he said I’d never belong in the human world again. Not with all that power waiting to erupt from me at any moment. There was no one in my old life who could possibly understand what I had been through and what I was still going through. I watched my parents from a distance, hurt and confused and heartbroken with no idea as to why their son had simply disappeared one day. But at least they were safe.

I was forced to watch Zell’s plan coming together. I was even forced to help bring in some of the Gifted people he was hunting down. Not you, though I remember seeing you there. I remember looking into that dungeon and hating it. Hating myself for being part of it and doing nothing to stop it. When I could take it no longer, I ran. I had no plan at all. I simply left. I cast some protective spells around my parents’ house, and then I fled into Creepy Hollow, looking for Vi. She was my last hope. I knew she hated me, but I had nowhere else to turn, and I hoped she would hear me out and somehow forgive me.

She didn’t. She told me she never wanted to see me again, and it hurt more than I expected. The decision I made then changed the course of history: I went back to Zell. I shouldn’t have. I should have gone off on my own. I probably could have made it work. I could have found some community of kind people willing to help out a halfling still learning about his terrifyingly destructive power over the weather.

Or perhaps not. I’ll never know.

I didn’t believe I could do it on my own. I thought Zell and Scarlett were the only ones left who could help me. So I returned to the Unseelie Court, hoping Zell hadn’t noticed my brief disappearance. He had, though. He dragged me off to the human realm, to my parents’ house, where he easily broke through the protection I’d put around them. Then he murdered my parents while I was forced to watch.

Something inside me broke that day. I had nothing left to fight for. On the one hand, I had my unbearable grief, and on the other, my boiling hatred for Zell—and for Violet, who could have prevented this by forgiving me and taking me back into her life. It seemed to me I had a choice: death or revenge. Unfortunately for the entire fae realm, I chose revenge. I kept my mouth shut and did everything Zell told me to. In order to gain his trust once more, I finally told him where Angelica was hiding, in the center of a labyrinth she’d built to keep the chest of power hidden. Then I helped Zell find the last griffin disc. To him, I seemed like a loyal servant.

But in the end, when we opened the chest, I killed him and took all of that power into myself. And the plan that I’d carefully and secretly been putting into place, the plan that only Angelica knew about, began to unfold. The Creepy Hollow Guild exploded because of a device Violet had unknowingly planted there for me. The Gifted army was now mine to control—with an enchanted mark I placed on everyone’s palm—and one of those Gifted fae started the enchanted fire. The powerful winds I set in motion helped to spread the fire quickly. We attacked the Unseelie Palace, the Seelie Palace, all the Guilds across the realm. By morning, our world had changed completely. Everyone knew of The Destruction and Lord Draven.

There was so much power contained within me. Everything was so easy. I could do anything. But there was something else that was different aside from the increase in power. I didn’t quite feel like the same person. As time passed, there seemed to be less of me and more of … him. Tharros. His ideals and his desires. In the beginning, my plan had been about destroying Zell’s world. Destroying Violet’s world. Pain and the desire for revenge had led me there. But once that ancient power was within me, influencing me, taking over, I wanted more. I wanted our entire realm to kneel at my feet. I wanted the human realm to kneel at my feet. And that didn’t come from me—it came from him.

Scarlett noticed the change first. Before I did, in fact. It worried her. After Zell killed my parents, we’d become friends of sorts. Well, I’m not sure ‘friend’ is the right word, but we looked out for each other. I admitted to her that I wasn’t as loyal to Zell as I let on, and she confessed that she’d made a mistake becoming involved with him and his horrible schemes. She confessed her guilt at helping Zell get hold of me. She didn’t quite appreciate the way I took Zell down, though. After The Destruction, she told me I was even worse than him. Angelica said I should have killed her for making a comment like that, but it was early on still; I hadn’t become quite that heartless yet. Scarlett left soon after that. I could have put more effort into tracking her down, but it didn’t seem worth it. I think a tiny part of me still cared enough to let her go.

And so my reign continued. Angelica stayed by my side through everything, as we rebuilt the Guilds and the Unseelie Palace for our purposes. As we hunted down unmarked fae and cast our brainwashing spells over them. As we threw the enemies we particularly wanted to punish into her labyrinth to be driven to insanity by the endless passages and the confusion spells. Amon was also there from the beginning, a trusted follower of mine since the moment I betrayed Zell. He did anything I asked. Looking back now, I don’t remember much of it. I think it got to the point where there was barely any of me left. There was only Tharros and his power and his desire to rule over every living thing.

My memories of the end are unclear as well. Violet confronted me, along with the weapon I’d read about. The only weapon that was supposed to be able to truly destroy me. Well, not me, but this being I’d slowly become after fusing my power with someone else’s. I’d read the prophecy. It said someone else was supposed to kill me, and I’d already marked that someone else, so I was convinced I was safe. Though I don’t remember much else, I remember that feeling. The certainty that I was invincible.

Vi and I spoke, though I don’t know what we said. We fought and that, too, is hazy. And then, right at the end, everything became clear—because she did what only she could do: She found me. The real me, beneath all that power I’d consumed. It was like waking up after a long sleep. Like breathing again after being trapped under water.

And that was the moment she killed me.

I don’t remember pain; I only remember light. I don’t know how long it blazed for, but when it subsided … I wasn’t dead. I was lying on the grass near a waterfall. The Infinity Falls, I discovered later on. I remembered the eternity necklace—the necklace I’d stolen from Vi—and found it still around my neck. The white teardrop pendant was cracked down the middle, and I was fairly certain it had performed the job it was created for: It saved me from death.

But I was me again, and I remembered all the atrocities I had committed, and the weight of my countless wrongdoings was almost too much to bear. How unfair was it that this second chance at life had been given to me, a selfish coward who’d turned the world into a terrible place, rather than someone else far more worthy? I wanted to end my life. I came close to doing it, but as torturous as I found my waking moments, I was too afraid of death to choose that route.

I dragged myself through life for those first few weeks, existing more than living. So many fae were putting the scraps of their lives back together then; I was just one more struggling, homeless, broken-hearted person, surviving on handouts from the very people I had forced into hiding during my reign. Slowly, as if it was a subconscious idea rather than an intentional plan, I made my way back to Angelica’s labyrinth. I didn’t know what had happened to her. She’d been living at the Unseelie Palace, and, from the bits of information I’d picked up, almost everyone there had been arrested. When I found her labyrinth deserted, I assumed she had met the same fate. I continued on until I reached her chamber in the center, where I found everything I could possibly need: stores of food, money, spare styluses and other magical supplies. I took what I needed and left.

I holed up in an abandoned room Underground. I drowned my misery in the bliss of confusion spells and alcohol from the nearby pubs. My life had no meaning other than surviving from one day to the next. I wasn’t brave enough to face what I’d done and move on, and I wasn’t brave enough to pull the plug and end everything. And in that miserable, self-destructive state is where Scarlett found me.

She wanted to help me fix up my life and move on. I essentially told her that I wasn’t worth her time and to get lost. She kept trying, but I made no effort whatsoever, so eventually she left, saying it was up to me to pull myself together.

I didn’t. I passed out in a tunnel one night after too much drinking, and when I woke up, I was in a home I didn’t recognize. A little Underground home filled with old fashioned furniture and the smell of paint. An elf woman with wisps of grey in her hair was the one who woke me up and fed me—and then told me that collapsing in a drunken state outside old ladies’ front doors was a waste of a perfectly good life. I told her my life wasn’t perfectly good. It was a black hole and I was happy to waste whatever was left of it. She told me to stop being an ungrateful child. That shocked me enough into telling her the truth, or part of it, at least. “I did terrible things after The Destruction. Terrible, horrendous things you can’t even begin to imagine.”

Not looking disturbed in the slightest, she leaned closer and said, “So did everyone else. Now get off your self-pitying backside and do something to make up for it. You can start by helping me carry this pot to Sivvyn Quarter’s homeless shelter.”

I didn’t know what she saw in me. I didn’t understand why she cared. But something about her tough-love approach made me get off that couch and help her. Her name was Luna and she cooked food and sewed clothes for the nearby homeless shelters when she wasn’t painting. It turned out she was more familiar with those shelters than she originally let on. She was an orphan who married later in life than most elves. Tragically, her husband died early on in their marriage, leaving her alone with the baby they had adopted. She numbed her sorrow with illegal-strength pain-killing spells to the point where she became addicted. Due to her neglect, her son wound up malnourished and ill, and by the time Luna sought help, it was too late. He was too young and weak, and the illness finished him off within days.

Luna lost herself in her addiction, burying her sorrow where she could no longer feel it. It was only due to the kindness and persistence of a woman at one of these Underground homeless shelters that she eventually managed to crawl out of the darkness and piece her life back together. She turned to her art and found that she could make a living that way. I don’t know if she ever forgave herself for letting her own child die, but she somehow found a way to move on. Years later, as a tough but kind old woman, she managed to help me do the same thing.

It was hard, so hard, facing every day with a smile when just beneath the surface was the burning guilt of all the ruin I had caused. And there were constant reminders of it at the homeless shelters we helped out at. Their purpose wasn’t simply to provide food or a safe place for people to spend the night; they also served to connect people. Family members or friends who’d lost touch with each other after The Destruction, after fleeing into hiding or being captured and marked and forced to work for me. I always kept quiet as Luna chatted to everyone, passing on messages to friends of friends, helping people find one another. She had some sort of Seeing ability, dampened by her years of addictive spell use, but still there. Sometimes she’d See things about people’s lives, things that would help them find their loved ones, or things that gave them hope for their futures.

And then, just as I came to care for this tough, gutsy old lady, I lost her. What she hadn’t told me was that the illegal spells she’d been addicted to years before were the kind that slowly poisoned the body long after she stopped taking them. She knew she was dying, but she had hoped old age would catch up to her first. In the end, though, it was the poison that took her. She left her house to me because she thought it was about time I moved out of ‘that dingy little hole,’ as she called it. And just before she died, she gave me her artistic ability. “So you can always paint your way out of the darkness,” she said.

And there was plenty of darkness after she died. I never allowed myself to be completely sucked under again, though. I felt I owed Luna that much. I waded through the darkness, pulled myself together, and contacted Scarlett. There was no way I could ever seek forgiveness from all the people I had wronged, but I could at least start with her. We had looked out for each other before The Destruction, but now we became genuine friends. I told her about my life before, and she told me about hers. Where she came from, why she’d run away, what her real name was. I told her the plans that had been slowly forming in the back of my mind. My plan to help people in the same way guardians did. To try and make up for all the wrong I’d done.

I wanted to fit in more easily than a halfling, so she helped me with my hair and eyes. And of course, neither of us ever mentioned the name Draven. Everyone called me Chase by then. It was the name I gave Luna when she asked. Calling myself ‘Nate’ felt like a lie. I wasn’t that guy anymore. I never would be.

I started paying more attention to what was going on around me. I’d listen to the whispers in the bars and the clubs Underground. If something wound up stolen, I’d find it. If someone planned to hurt someone else, I’d be there to stop it. If guardians showed up, I’d keep out of the way, but often they didn’t. It felt good to be helping people instead of hurting them. It felt good to make a difference. Initially, I worked alone, acting in secret wherever I could. But as time passed, I found people I could trust. People who had almost as much to make up for as I did. Somewhere along the line I became a tattoo artist as well. I loved drawing, and I needed an income—as well as the appearance of a regular, Underground day job—so it seemed like a good choice.

Years passed, and that brings us to the present, when a girl with gold hair accidentally stumbled into my life and became entangled in my dangerous endeavors. It began with a chance encounter but, in the end, I think we would have met anyway, one way or the other. In the beginning, you were just another person to protect, but you soon came to mean more to me than that. You were brave, honest, idealistic, strong. You were the bright palette of colors in a dark world. You told me your secrets, and I wanted to tell you mine. I wanted to tell you everything. But with a secret as great and terrible and ugly as the one I hid, would I ever have been brave enough to tell you? And if I had, would you have been understanding enough to hear me out without running away screaming?

We’ll never know …