JERICHO ROSALES
1103 Words
Pellegarde’s revenge
Chapter Five
JERICHO ROSALES
Jericho makes her way towards the outskirts of Eden,
With her heightened sense of smell she makes use of a piece of cloth Tranquillo obtained during his battle with Gilbert.
As she edged closer and closer.
“This scent… it’s too familiar.”
“Do I know this man?”
She said with an expression of confusion.
She reaches Pellegarde’s lair,the cavern.
She sees a young man sharpening his sword on the edge of the cliff above the cavern.
A man she recognizes all too well.
Jericho stands at the borderlands of Eden, wind whipping her cloak around her.
She Faces Pellegarde for the first time… as an enemy…
But something feels wrong
Her blade is at her side, but her soul is heavy.
An Inner monologue reveals her mental battle:
“He looks like a ghost from my childhood”
“ But I had buried that boy long ago… hadn’t I?”
Pellegarde immediately notices a presence, he looked beneath him from atop the cliff.
He sees Jericho and immediately recognizes her
His whole heart throbbing.
Their eyes meet for the first time in ten years.
This sparks a whole new spiral of emotions.
“Jericho”
“You don’t have to do this” Pellegarde says calmly
——-
Jericho(narration): “The way he said those words”
“Like he cared.”
“Like he still knew me. But .…But how could he?”
——-
“I do,” she finally replies, but her heart stutters.
“Jericho Rosales” he calls out to her again.
This shocks her.
Nobody uses that name. She’s only ever been Jericho Galdril.
“Wha…who are you referring to?”
“My name is Jericho Galdril, daughter of the alpha king” She quickly responded.
Although her words were etched in confusion.
“No you’re not!”, he steps closer to her.
“This is hard to grasp I know but that is your true identity”
“You were taken by Galdril”
“Your bloodline is sacred and tied to an ancient prophecy”
“You’re not lost Jericho, you’re the main piece of this puzzle”
“And I know you feel a change too”
He says as he delivers the truth.
“They needed your power. But you were never meant to be their weapon…”
“You were meant to free us all, You’re meant to Protect Eden from all evil.” He talks ever so quietly.
Jericho didn’t know how to respond to what he just said to her.
Her entire mind was boggling.
The mark on Jericho’s skin: begins to glow faintly when she’s near Pellegarde.
Then,
She has a brief flashback, almost like a vision. .
She heard a woman’s voice singing to her as a baby.
She saw the same mark on the woman’s arm that she possesses on hers.
A mark on her arm that Galdril told her was a “warrior’s blessing”… but now she wonders if it was a birthmark.
Soon she snapped out of it, falling to her knees in confusion,
“Wha.. What did I just see?”
“What are the Heavens trying to show me?”
“I do not understand any of this” she whispered, frustration leaking into her voice.
Pellegarde moves closer and their eyes meet.
She moves closer too, not in battle.
But almost drawn by a magnetic force.
It felt like a brief escape from her spiraling mind..
It felt peaceful.
——-
Jericho (inner monologue): He stepped forward, slowly. Not like a predator. But like a memory returning to me.
“ My heart… it betrayed me.”
Their eyes lock too long.
She notices his hands.
Rough, scarred, but truly gentle when he lowered his blade.
——-
“Do you feel it too?” Pellegarde asks.
She doesn’t answer.
But her silence says everything.
They almost touch, hand to hand,
But she pulls away at the last second.
She’s scared of what this all means.
“I’m so confused, I don’t understand any of this,”
“You’re alive and well Gilbert, I haven’t seen you in ten years”
“And now this? About my entire existence?”
“Unbelievable”
“I shall take my leave now, I see no reason in sparring with you anymore .”
Jericho says, trying to remain calm.
“You know I never lied to you, it’s good to see you again… Jericho” Pellegarde responds.
Jericho nods reluctantly,
Feeling the weight of everything she’s just seen and heard.
“Jericho Rosales”she says her name again in a softer, almost whispered way.
Her childhood lover Gilbert Pellegarde still breathes.
She freezes before walking away from the confrontation, confused and visibly shaken.
She retreats to a cliffside, staring at Eden’s lights in the distance.
“Am I their weapon… or their prisoner?”
“Why does his voice still sound like home after ten years?”
“And why do I even fit a second, want to believe him?”
She sits at the cliffside questioning everything.
Her past, present and future.
———
Flashback.
Jericho & Ishmael (when younger)
“You’re not like us Jericho, you’re different, you are special”
Ishmael once told her this same words that she was different… different from the others.
Maybe he always knew.
——
Pellegarde is alone now.
Sitting by the fire with his eyes on the moon.
“Jericho”
“Please fight, do not let them steal everything that you truly are from you”
“Don’t let them keep brains-washing you like some puppet”
“Fight Jericho” he says, As if talking to her face to face.
——-
Back at the Galdril’s fortress.
Jericho returns, shaken.
Galdril sees her approaching,
He speaks.
“You look like you had a lot on your plate my dear Jericho”
“Tell me, did you put an end to that delinquent?”
Jericho’s face tensed, caught between fear and confusion.
“The freedom fighter escaped.”
A lie. But a necessary one.
“You seemed troubled sister, are you sure you’re alright?” Tranquillo said.
“Yeah.. I’m fine, I just need to rest”
She walks away from the throne room.
But Ishmael catches her eye.
He knows that she knows about Pellegarde now.
Jericho (inner monologue); “I wasn’t ready to betray them”
“But I also wasn’t ready to destroy him.”
“So, For now….. I lied.”
- Writer
