T.R.O.D.E.

Chapter 5

Cleo was lost. Completely lost. Surrounded by an endless blue horizon and countless colored clouds, she wasn’t sure how she got there or why she was where she was. It was beautiful, no doubt there though. It seemed as if the clouds went on forever and when she reached out to tough them, they responded with a life-like quality. She barely brushed them and they wrapped around whatever appendage happened to make contact. Reds, blues, yellows, and every color in between were visible, all responding equally. By caressing her arms and legs and face, they lulled her with whispers that she could barely deem audible. Strangely, she wasn’t afraid.

She noticed, however, that one particular wisp of a cloud seemed to be more affectionate than the others. It too ran across her body and through her clothes but somehow a bit gentler, as if trying to stand out from the others without attracting attention. Cleo tapped it with a finger, but instead of shying away like the others, it came to a complete stop in front of her.

Frowning curiously, she watched as the cloud began to morph, taking the form of a shapely woman with slightly pointed ears. Peering closer, Cleo realized that there were two big eyes that were smoldering a brilliant gold that stood out against her dusky, lilac colored skin. The glow emanating from her eyes highlighted high cheekbones and smiling, dark violet lips.

Cleo’s mind revved. This beautiful, elf-like woman…why did she seem so familiar? It was as if she knew this woman. Everything about her seemed familiar: her silvery, snow-white hair, the misty skin, and most of all, those bewitchingly jeweled eyes of hers. Who was she?

She opened her mouth, ready to let the question spill from her lips…and was shocked to find that only wordless air breezed past her lips. Cleo’s eyes widened in alarm and she grasped at her throat desperately. Her eyes snapped to the woman and narrowed as an amused smile spread across her dark lips. The woman obviously knew something that Cleo did not.

‘What’s going on?’ she thought.

‘Do not be afraid, child. No one can harm you here.’

Cleo involuntarily jumped at the sweet voice in her head. She knew the voice wasn’t her own, but she refused to acknowledge the fact that the misplaced voice was that of the strange and beautiful woman hovering near her. But, she needed to be sure…

‘Are…are you talking…to me?’

The woman smiled teasingly. ‘You’re answering are you not?’

Cleo jumped again but not so much from fear as from surprise. ‘How?’

‘In dreams, one cannot speak, but must communicate through thoughts and actions. Here, words have no value as they do in your physical world, and as a consequence, are completely useless.’

Cleo was no longer surprised. ‘So I am dreaming, then?’ The question was phrased as a statement.

‘In a way.’

She frowned. ‘So, who are you?’

‘My name,’ the woman smiled warmly, ‘is DawnEve.’

'Is that all? You don’t have a last name? And why are you purple? Where do you come from?’ The questions caught up to her, spilling out of her mind like water falling from a tipped glass.

DawnEve shook her head and gave a humor filled laugh. Such an eager litle thing. ‘You’ll know all you need to in time, Cleopatra.’

Before Cleo could think of asking how she knew her name, DawnEve’s body dissolved into a column of purple smoke. 'Your answers will come when the four of them arrive. For now, Cleopatra, take care. And beware of snakes.’

‘Wait! What does that mean? Who are the ‘four of them’? Where are you going?’

For a moment, Cleo saw within the smoke four shining orbs glinting like molten crystals. One blazed an eerily beautiful green, while another, a vivid red. A third shone with the color of an electric blue, and the last, brilliant silver. The smoke closed in around the small balls of light and shimmered as rays of luminosity burst through different sections of the hazy pillar.

Forgetting that she couldn’t speak with words, Cleo opened her mouth to question DawnEve. She gasped silently as the smoke rushed towards her at a breakneck speed, entering her body through her opened mouth. The force of the entry threw her head back as the purple haze, along with the orbs, slid down her throat and into her waiting soul.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

“Gah!”

Cleo bolted upright, out of breath. That dream…she’d never had a dream like that before. Although it wasn’t the least bit scary, it was quite unexpected.

“Beware of snakes?” she murmured to herself, confused about the message in her dream. “What did that mean?”

She shivered. She hated snakes. She hated the way their beady eyes glared as their forked serpent’s tongue darted out to taste the surrounding air, the way they slithered, their love of dark, cold places…

Shivering again, Cleo glanced at her clock. She groaned sleepily. According to the cat-shaped wall clock, it was six-thirty a.m.

Although she didn’t have work today at Sirius, she had business to attend to. Chores, grocery shopping, volunteering at the Human Society for Lost and/or Abandoned Animals…

She rolled out of bed and stretched, yawning loudly. She hated waking up early when it was still dark. She preferred the sunlight and the light it provided. But when it came to actually starting the day, facing the period when dawn was mistaken for dusk…ugh.

Padding to the bathroom, she stripped out of her t-shirt and looked into the mirror. Inspecting her face, she grumbled at the small but slightly noticeable half-moons that were developing beneath her eyes.

She was working too hard.

With a mournful sigh, Cleo stepped away from the mirror…and froze at her reflection. Instead of looking into her normal grey-green eyes, she was staring into two familiar gold ones. She blinked, once, twice, and the eyes were gone. All that glared back was her own face, completely normal.

“What the hell,” she mumbled, shaking her head as if trying to clear her mind. “I really am working too hard.”

Peering back into the mirror to confirm that her suspicions were nothing more than side-effects from working too hard, she turned the nozzle of the shower to ‘cold’ and proceeded to wake herself up with a blast of ice water.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Nafretiti chuckled as she watched the beautiful young girl step into some sort of strange, futuristic waterfall. Stupid human. In addition to not know who she was, she also lacked the ability to recognize that her own sire was calling to her.

‘Too bad,’ Nafretiti thought with a sneer. ‘All of that raw power radiating off of her surpasses even my own. What a shame it’s been wasted on such an idiotic heir.’

When she’d succeeded her sire, she’d known for months of the power she possessed. It was impossible not to notice such a talent as being able to levitate or teleport—basic immortality skills. However, being able to see the reflection of your sire without even trying...thatwasn’t supposed to happen until actually meeting it.

It was a very curious thing that this particular heir had yet to be found.

Any fool could see that she was the new heir that everyone was getting so excited over. Or…she would be the next heir if she weren’t about to die.

Nafretiti would see to it that this new heir would never be discovered, even if her power was so immense that it resembled a magical lighthouse. The fool.

Smearing stagnated mist over the portal-like opening she’d used to watch the Earth with for centuries since being locked up, she rose to stand, dusting off her robes and shaking them free of dust and cloudy blue-gray haze. She wrinkled her nose.

“Damn you, DawnEve,” she growled to herself. The answering echo of her voice across the desolate, colorless landscape had Nafretiti’s fist curling into a fist.

Sealed away in this Limbo-like dimension was worse than hell itself. She knew. She’d met many demons here in Nesia, and, after a while of talking to them, had grown she'd decided to rid herself of the annoyance. And the demons had disappeared. Very mysteriously...

There was literally northing to do…or no one to talk to. Or kill. Or conspire against.

She’d been floating around for almost six hundred years, biding her time and regaining her strength after having them taken and sealed by DawnEve. Being sealed away for over half a millennia was absolutely boring, but completely necessary for what she had planned.

Taking over the world was trivial, but required a great deal of methodic planning to keep it that way. Why only take the world when you could have so much more? She’d take it though…and heaven, and hell, and whatever else she could find that was worth ruling over.

Of course, she couldn’t do it until she was free of this place.

“It’s only a matter of time before I’m strong enough to break through this cursed seal that’s cutting off the full strength of my power,” she said to herself.

She moved through the thick, aimless mist that was common to Nesia. Desolate, forsaken, and discarded were the only words to describe this limbo. So empty was it that there wasn’t a sky or anything that expressed similarities to land in sight. There was only white space with faded smoke swirling around in a non-existent wind, quite possibly magical exhaust from beings that were here before her.

This hellish void could outlast eternity itself.

She’d come to know this place like her own glorious reflection. She knew where the darkest corners were, where the lightest corners were. She even knew that she was the six hundred and sixty-seventh occupant of this barren world; a being whom she’d heard of during her years as a mortal that seemed very infamous in human religion was the six hundred and sixty-sixth. His name was Satin, or Saton…or something in that region.

She also knew that there was a crack in this dimension’s outermost wall that spilled into Earth, and widened with each passing year. How it came to be; she didn’t know that. Luckily, she also didn’t care for that matter. All she knew was that that crack that widened with each passing year gave her a very distinct chance to escape Nesia without using an ounce of her restored power.

And all of this without DawnEve’s knowledge.

For Nafretiti, this year would be the year that allowed her to escape through that crack to freedom. This would be the year that she’d reclaim her place in high immortal society as Queen of the Unimaginable. This would be the year that that damned DawnEve would fall to the ground like a dirty animal, her heir following closely behind her.

Nafretiti grinned nastily.

She drifted through the smoky fog, golden eyes bright with excitement. There, on the invisible wall of the outermost region of the Limbo-void was a long, wide crack, just big enough for a beautiful goddess with an appetite for revenge and a thirst for death to slip through. Hopefully, if the stories or her past were true, Nesia, if opened, would deposit her back to the time an place from which she came. Ancient Egypt.

Nafretiti smiled luxuriously and gazed at the blank space that was meant to fool those stupid enough to believe that it was not what it looked like: a way out.

Unfortunately for Nesia, Nafretiti, in addition to her renewed state of power, was no such fool.

She stuck an arm through the still portal. At contact, the space rippled as if composed of water, molding around her slender limb. She felt warmth: the sun.

The hot, Egyptian sun. She smirked triumphantly.

“I’m coming for you, DawnEve,” she said in a sing-song voice to herself, stepping through the glowing slice that connected her to Earth. “How many ways are there to kill a goddess, I wonder?”