Phirias

The Past Keeps Coming Back

“That’s really nice to say to the woman who just saved your miserable existence.” Cian’s voice sounded like he had more than one set of vocal chords. I looked at him with tears in my eyes. “Cian, are you okay? You don’t sound right.” His skin looked like it was burning. “You do realize, it isn’t just his voice that isn’t right.” Iris spoke up out of the awkward silence. Adrian looked at me and pulled me into his arms. As he pulled me to him, Cian tried to reach for me through the door. His hand hit the invisible wall and it extended and split into a set of claws and monster hands. I jumped back and away from both of them. “You can’t stay here with him. You must go back to Phirias.” Adrian tried to grab me and pull me away from the door. I snatched myself away from him and stepped back over the threshold. I held onto Cian like he could vanish at any minute. “Look, it’s douchebags in HD.” Cian looked at Adrian and shut the door in his face. “Cian, you can’t do that to him!” I looked at Cian. He returned my look with anger and fire in his eyes. “You have to go back with me to Phirias!” Adrian was yelling from outside. “Go home, dude.” Cian yelled back. I reached for the doorknob and Cian snatched my hand away. I looked up at him, shocked. “Cian, what is wrong with you?” I asked him angrily. “You don’t need to run around with guys like him, or anyone without me right now. I don’t trust him.” He kissed me. It was one of those things that kept me from being able to stay upset with him. “Cian, he has been protecting me from everything that has the potential to hurt me. He has been keeping me safe! Please, try to understand. He won’t hurt me.” I cupped Cian’s face in my hands, making him look at me. I had to make this argument stop. “Please Danya, come back to Phirias with me?” I sighed, “I don’t want to leave this place without Cian.” Cian pulled me in for a kiss. I looked into his eyes. There was something different about his eyes. They had a red tint over them. I jumped back and Cian looked hurt. “What’s wrong?” I couldn’t explain to him what it was. It would worry him and just cause a bigger mess in the end. “Nothing really, I’m fine.” I hated to keep it from him, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things first. I opened the door and looked at Adrian. “We need to go, quickly!” There was a large group of ghouls surrounding us. “Get inside Adrian!” I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him in, but as soon as my hand crossed the threshold of the door, it was like his arm hit an invisible wall. Cian once again shut the door. “You really cannot go out there. They will rip you to shreds.” He looked at me with fear in his eyes. “Cian, I have to go out there. I have to save him!” I reached for the door and was knocked out. When I woke up, I was in a bedroom. As I tried to get up, I was greeted by a beast. “Scales of stone..” A voice in my head was present just long enough for those words to linger. He pushed me back down on the bed and held me there. He was huge, with scales that appeared to be stone, eyes that were like fire. It’s hair was the shade of a raven and the scales glowed red with symbols that I did not recognize. “Danya.” He said as he stared straight into my soul. His voice sucked all of the heat out of the room. I couldn’t breathe or speak. “Do not try to leave this place, this is your destiny.” I had no clue what that was supposed to mean, but I had to get away from wherever this was and get back to Phirias. I reached up and touched one of the scales, and blacked out. The next thing I saw confused me. I was walking around a battlefield. There were bodies everywhere. Men in coats and blood and death. I felt sorry for them. They all died in vein. (how did I know that?) There were men on horses slaughtering the wounded. I felt scared for my life. I hid as one horse passed me by. I saw the faces of people I knew, people that I was close with. I was crying. I sat down amongst the blood and the dirt for a time, then decided that I needed to move before someone found me. The men riding around on the horses were in scorched armor. They had symbols on the front that I did not recognize. They were looking for someone specific. They were looking for me. I’m frozen with fear. I can’t find anywhere safe to hide. I know my love will come and save me. He always made sure I was safe. I can hear footsteps. My love told me to meet him to make sure that I was safe and that I wasn’t hurt during the battle. There are no safe ways to get to the house. Those men are all around me. I slipped out close to dusk, they shouldn’t be able to see me as well. I ran for the house, but when I got there I was alone. He wasn’t there to meet me. My heart was broken. “I can’t believe he forgot about me.” I said to myself out loud. I should have kept my mouth shut. The door opened and Cian stepped in. I ran and hid in the closet upstairs. “I know you’re here!” He called out to me. I had always been scared of him. “I will find you, it’s just a matter of time.” Tears ran down my face as he walked around the house looking for me. I slipped out through a secret door at the back of the closet. Only I knew it was there. I followed the tunnel until I could see the moonlight. I was in the forest. I could hear the creatures of nighttime greeting me. I walked back toward the battlefield to find my love. I was hurt deeply by the events of the day. As I walked up to the battlefield, I couldn’t help but realize that the ground, although littered with the corpses of the fallen, was no longer covered in blood. I heard the hooves of a horse behind me. It was him, on his horse. Cian grabbed me around my waist and off we went. He took me to what I’d like to call the dungeon room, where we were met at the entrance by my love. “Help me, please?” I cried. “Let her go!” He came right up to him and tried to save me, but my love was met by the end of his gun. “I need her for the ritual, you know that.” Cian pulled me close and dragged me into the other room. “No! Cian, please let her go!” he screamed through the locked door. I tried to fight him as he strapped me to the table. He had a set of knives all lined out and in order by size. “You are my key to ultimate power.” He said to me with a crazed look in his eye. Just then, he broke down the door. Cian murmured something in a language I could not understand, and as my love dove at him, he drove a knife into my chest and then ran it into his. “No, what have you done?” After moments of agony, I passed out.

The next time I woke up, I was in the same bed. This time, it was Cian that was waiting for me to open my eyes. “What happened?” I was hoping he could tell me. He just shook his head. “Where’s Iris?” I looked at him for an answer, but there wasn’t one. “She walked out the front door to look for your ‘friend’.” He seemed upset about Adrian, he would just have to understand. “He won’t survive out there without me, I have to keep him safe.” He looked at me with hurt in his eyes. “I’m sorry, you aren’t safe with him.” I heard a scream outside. “Danya, I need your help! Please, come quick!” It was Iris. I jumped out of the bed and ran for the door. I touched the doorknob and it burned the palm of my hand. “What the- It burns your hands when you try to open it too?” He sighed. “Why does it do that?” He looked at me apologetically. “it doesn’t do that to me.” He walked to the corner of the room and turned away from me. “Cian, open the door.” If he could open the door, then I could go help Adrian. “I can’t let you go out there.” I ran for the door and he was instantly there blocking me. “Move out of my way.” I was so angry with him that I couldn’t even see straight. What happened to my sweet understanding soulmate that I’ve always known? I wish he was here instead of whoever this was. “I’m going now; I can’t stay here and let them get hurt.” He looked at me with a helpless look in his eyes. He sighed and opened the door. “Adrian! Iris!” I ran down the hallway and the stairs. “Danya, don’t go down there! You’re going to get hurt!” He yelled after me. I could hear his footsteps right behind me. I kept going. There was no way I would let those two get hurt. She was my best friend, and he saved my life in more ways than I could count. (not that I would actually tell him that.) As I reached the doorway, the screaming stopped. I tried to look outside, but everything outside the house was smoking, as if it were on fire. “Adrian? Iris? Are you okay?” I was hoping that I wasn’t going to see a gruesome scene on the other side of that door. But, something told me that my wish wasn’t going to be honored. “Danya, we’re fine. Come on out here.” Odd, I thought. Screaming one second, fine the next? Something wasn’t right… “I’m telling you, don’t go out there, it’s a trap.” Cian came up right behind me, and whispered in my ear. Startled, I turned around and faced my love, and buried my face into his chest. I knew he was right. I didn’t want to believe it, but in my heart I knew. He was just trying to make sure I was safe. All of the emotions running through me made me realize that all of the things that were happening were my fault. “Danya, come out here!” Adrian’s voice rang through my ears. “You can't go out there. If you do, they will take you straight to the brothers.” I started to cry, and he pulled me close to him. It wasn’t long before I realized that in order to save them, I had to put myself in the danger that we had all been trying to avoid all along. “You have to trust me,” I looked up at Cian, who had a confused look on his face. “I have to go out there, it’s the only way to help them. Even if it is a trap, I have to help them.” He started to object, but I kissed him for what I was afraid would be the last time. As tears ran down his cheek, I hugged him and opened the door. “It’s on fire!” I turned back to look at Cian, who was already trying to pull me back inside. “Hurry! Come back!” He was yelling at me. But, it was already too late. I crossed over the threshold and I was on the front porch of the beautiful mansion in the middle of Terra. My friends were bound to a post in the middle of the yard. The brothers were all around them. “To our long lost brother, take these souls and join us!” The group of all of them were chanting. None of them realized that I had stepped out of the front door. I had the advantage. I was going to use it. “How nice of you to join us.” Came a voice from the circle of men surrounding my friends. Well, so much for having the element of surprise. “For your information, I’m not joining you, I’m getting my friends. We will leave this place.” I could feel the power surging through me. I could hear and feel it in my voice. As I started toward them, I heard a whimper coming from inside the circle. I was shocked when I saw her. “Lilly?” I cried. They had my baby.. As my baby, not the spirit that had met me at her grave in Terra. “Yes, we found her. Come with us, and no one will be harmed.” I ran for my daughter, only to find that it was a trap. The little one in the middle of the circle wasn’t my beloved Lilly, it was a demon. “You bastards, I will kill all of you!” I screamed. “The wound that never heals is that of a lost child.” I shivered as Aaron came up behind me. “You will be the first to die.” My words were as sharp as knives. I started to reach for my weapons, but they weren’t there. Shocked, I ran around the closed circle. Out of pure rage, I ran past my two bound friends and cut them loose with one of the claws from the creature that I had killed earlier. I was moving much faster than I ever thought I could. Before we knew it, I had Iris inside the house, and I was helping Adrian on the porch. “You need to come inside, it’s not safe out there.” Came Cian’s voice from the doorway. “I need to help Adrian, he would do the same for me.” I looked up at him, begging him to understand. “He would never forgive himself if anything ever happened to you on his accord.” He stared back at me, unable to reach me beyond the doorway of the mansion. “He could die without my help, I have to get him back to Phirias.” I didn’t want to leave Cian, but it was the only thing I could think of to solve our problem. We couldn’t be sitting ducks anymore. “Danya, they are going to come back.” I kept trying to wake Adrian up. I sat there, just shaking him for what seemed like hours. “If he hasn’t woke up by now, he probably isn’t going to.” I jumped when I heard Iris’s voice. I couldn’t talk, I just looked at her. “You can’t beat yourself up over it, he’s only human.” I looked at his bare chest, specifically at his tattoo. Had it grown? It definitely looked bigger than I remembered. But, the last time I had seen it was when I saved his life. “If you aren’t going to come in, you at least need to have a game plan of what we should do, seeing as it probably isn’t a good idea to just sit here and wait for those assholes to come back.” She couldn’t have been anymore right about that. “We need to go back to Phirias. That is the only thing we can do to fix all of this.” There was nothing left to do, except ask Prudence for her help. “You can’t go out there by yourself, it’s a death trap waiting to happen.” Cian was not happy about this idea. “You could end up something’s lunch.” He was right, I had to wake Adrian up. We had to get Cian out of the mansion. “If I come in there to make a plan, you have to promise to let me see it through. I have to be the one that does it.” Cian just looked at me. “You have to promise me, love.” I wanted him to just trust me for once. I knew what I was doing. (Well, to an extent.) “Come here.” He motioned for me to come inside. “What do you think you should do?” He asked me. That was an excellent question. I had no idea as to what would remedy our situation. But, I had to start somewhere. Talking to Prudence seemed like as good of a place as any. “I need to get back to Phirias and talk to Prudence, I think she could help us.” I looked back and forth between Cian and Iris, I heard no objections. “Or you could leave the hag out of this and we could find our own solution.” It was Adrian. He had woken up! “Adrian!” I ran to the doorway to meet him. “Yeah, did you really think I had passed?” He asked me, sarcastically. “Well, I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t get you to wake up.” I sighed. “So, when will we be going to grace our least favorite old witch with our presence?” He asked. “I don’t think that will be a great idea.” Cian added. “Cian, we have to go.” I looked at him with tears in my eyes. “I don’t want to just leave you here, but I have no clue how to fix this.” I told him. “Then it’s settled, we will go to Phirias.” I think Adrian was having way too much fun with this whole thing. I looked to my love, and walked over the threshold of the door to say goodbye. “I will return to you, I promise. I love you more than anything.” I kissed him and held him close for a short while. I grabbed my things, and we left Terra. “Will we have to travel all the way back on foot?” I asked Adrian. The sooner I could get back to Cian, the better. “I don’t believe we will. We will find the horses soon.” He looked at me with a smile on his face. We walked through the seemingly never ending forest till I was pretty sure I was going to pass out from lack of rest. But, I kept going. For Lilly, For Cian, and most of all for myself. “You really do love him, don’t you?” Adrian asked me randomly. We walked in silence for a while. I did love Cian, but I didn’t understand the weight of the question until much later. “Yes, I do love him. I believe he is my soulmate.” I looked at Adrian, hoping for a response. Anything to keep my mind off of being away from my love. We came upon the area where we were separated. Adrian whistled, and the horses came running up to us, as if they were waiting for our return. I hopped on my black mare and took off, not even realizing that I had left Adrian in the distance. I needed to get the answers I’d been searching for all this time. “Danya, you’re being too hard on her! Slow down!” I wasn’t going to slow down, I needed to get to Phirias. “We need to hurry, we have people waiting on us!” I yelled back to him. At that moment, my horse collapsed. She fell, and so did I. With my leg stuck underneath her. Adrian immediately jumped off of his horse and ran to me. “I told you that this would happen, Danya.” He let out a long sigh. I couldn’t feel my leg. My horse just laid there. Adrian pushed her off of me, picked me up, and put me on the back of his horse. I felt pain creeping up my leg as the bloodflow returned. “Are you okay?” He was looking at me, as if he was expecting me to roll off of the horse and into his arms. “No, I’m not okay. My mare just fell on me!” I yelled at him. “We need to get you back to Phirias as soon as possible.” He said as he got back on the horse and took off. The horse ran and Adrian would not let it stop until we reached our destination. “I never thought that I would say this, but I’m happy to be back.” Adrian said as we rode past the magical barrier and into town. People stopped what they were doing to stare as we rode by them. I don’t really remember much right after that. I passed out from the pain in my hip and my leg. “She will not be able to move for a while.- We cannot tell her that, she won’t accept it.- She really doesn’t have a choice, the leg is broken.” I heard voices arguing as I found the strength to open my eyes. “She’s awake, don’t upset her. Just break it to her gently.” Prudence said as she left the room. “What are you supposed to tell me?” I looked at Adrian, who had a guilty look on his face. This isn’t good, he wouldn’t have that look on his face if it was. I finally looked down at my leg. That’s just great! How am I supposed to ride with a damn cast on my leg? “You can’t.” Adrian was sitting next to me on the bed. “You really think that this will stop me from getting back to him?” This jealousy thing was going to stop. “It’s not that I want to stop you from getting back to your poison, your leg is broken. You cannot go anywhere.” He whispered as he too, left me alone in the room. “Poison?” I thought out loud. Broken? I tears ran down my cheeks as I tried to get up off of the bed. My efforts were met with failure. Frustrated and angry, I forced myself to sit up. All of this talk of destiny, fate, and whatever else and I break my leg? What kind of god or goddess would let this happen? I couldn’t think of anything that I could do to deserve this. I didn’t ask for any of this, it was dropped on me. Literally. This isn’t right. Something had to happen. Something good, and quickly. “You shouldn’t fuss so much.” It was Ven! She walked over to me and sat down. “I don’t know how to help you.” She said to me with tears in her eyes. We sat there in silence for a while. “I need to get back to Terra.” I finally spoke. She just looked at my leg and shook her head. “If you want to help me, that’s how you’re going to do it. I have to go back.” I looked at her, and she stood up. “Danya, your leg is broken. There is no way to get you there.” She let out a quiet sob.” I need you to go and get Prudence. I have some questions for her.” I needed to find out how to get Cian out of Terra and back here to Phirias. “Very well then.” She said as she ran off to find Prudence. “Don’t think that just because you’re supposed to save us that you can just order my people around, Danya.” Prudence scowled at me. “I wasn’t ordering anyone around, I need to talk to you. I obviously can’t get up to find you.” I met her face with an expression as cold as ice. “I found Cian, he is in the middle of Terra.” She seemed shocked, like she didn’t expect me to find him. “Your Cian? In the middle of Terra?” She sat down in a chair at the foot of my bed. “Yes. But, he cannot step out of the mansion. It’s almost like he’s hitting a wall. Adrian couldn’t even step foot inside either.” I could feel the tears coming back to my face. “I didn’t want to leave him there. You don’t understand how hard it was for me to actually come back. I just want to be with him.” I felt like my heart was breaking into pieces. “Don’t cry child,”Prudence had a certain look about her that said she was somewhere in a far away place and time. “Did you see the monster?” She asked with a completely serious face. “Monster? “ I thought back to when I was in the room in the mansion. “Scales made of stone…” I heard the voice whisper through my head again. “I did see something that could have been classified as a monster,” I sighed. “Oh?” She said, urging me to continue. “It had scales made of stone. It was huge, about 9ft tall.” I closed my eyes to try to envision it again. “My grandmother died using all of her power to contain that beast. Did he see it too?” Prudence asked me, as if I really was supposed to know. “I don’t think so. He never mentioned it to me.” It clicked to me just then, was he the monster she was talking about? Cian was not a monster. “I’m going to tell you a story, Danya. Not even my family has heard the story.” She cleared her throat and I nodded at her to begin. “When I was a little girl, my grandmother was the Crone of our coven and the leader of our beloved Phirias. The brothers were trying to find the bodies of the sisters. My grandmother tried to do the same. She dreamed of a better future for our people, and for me. There were ghouls all over the place searching as well. When she found you, there was a demon covering your body, sheltering you from the rubble. My grandmother knew to take you from the rubble, and as far away from that beast as possible. She found a mansion, one in the middle of Terra. The mansion was a place of power, protected by the ancients who are buried there. It became a temple of sorts. We went there and prayed once a week. We prayed for your return, for the return of life in our world, for the return of civilization, and for life to continue. The last time we went there, we were followed. The brothers had chased us right up to the door. They have been praying for the return of their lost brother for some time now, but that’s a story for a different time. They had killed the Crone of a coven that no longer exists. She forced me to run, but I hid amongst some headstones nearby. She lured the beast into the temple, and used the very last of her power to trap him there. He was with the brothers. They alone wiped out 3 of the last civilized covens to exist. Your beloved is the one my grandmother trapped there so long ago. I’m afraid I can’t help you get him out.” She looked away, as if she were ashamed. “You’re serious? He’s NOT a demon. He is a human being, just like me. He is the love of my life, and I’m not going a step further in helping you until I can get him out of that f*****g house, and here with me!” I don’t think I had ever been as angry at anyone in my whole entire life as I was at prudence right at that moment. She stood up without another word, and left the room. “Prudence? You come back here and tell me what I need to know!” I was so sick of not being able to get a straight answer out of anyone. I felt cold. I felt as if nothing mattered anymore. Prudence wasn’t going to help me, and there was no one else who knew how to help me. Tears escaped and began to flow freely.