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Darkness. Darkness was all around her, stalking her, closing in on her. It was forcing its way into her nose and mouth, choking her. She could do nothing to help herself besides continue to run.
Run for her life. Run to escape the shadows. Except shadows never died. They were always there, because there was always something to bring them to life. So she ran to live, to get away, to avoid that smell for as long as she could.
The metallic stench of blood, that had risen up to suffocate her. The life-nectar, surrounding her endlessly. It streamed continuously, and unimaginably from the bodies. The carnage all around her.
Of course there was carnage. Carnage followed a desire to rule. A desire of hate, formed from those same shadows that followed her. They connected in a never-ending circle. And in the wake of the shadows, there was always death. She couldn’t think of a time it had been different. Because for her, there had been no such time.
She heard her name. It was a whisper from those shadows, carried by the wind. The wind was her enemy as well. It blew in the direction opposite of where she needed to travel to evade it all. Carried her scent to the darkness. Prevented her from complete escape. But there was blood on her own hands, as well. From the horseman.
And now she could hear the hooves of his horse pounding on the ground behind her. The horseman born from the shadows, like all else truly was- even those things that created the shadows. The things people thought created the shadows. She had wounded him. Barely. And by accident. Yet the horseman knew not what an accident was. To him, it was all identical. He would have her dead for it.
She had to keep running. She had to live. She had to-
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Desarea Vilaese awoke drenched in sweat, shivering violently. She inhaled sharply at the intensity of the pain striking her throat and upper chest. There was no description for it- the only thing she could do was clutch at her throat in desperation, and let out a shriek.
Shadows.
They were nowhere near her. The room was completely dark, so that she couldn’t see. There was no way the shadows had formed. But they came from all. Perhaps they had at least broken through her defenses.
The woman shook her head in desperation. Whatever this was- because it was impossible to even take the shadows into consideration- would not defeat her. She had been through too much in her life. It would not be the death of her. Her death would come when she chose to allow it to do so. That point had not yet arrived.
Blood.
She could smell the metallic scent once again. Taste it, even. But that was logical. Her nails were long- she had managed to break into her skin. Thankfully she’d moved her hands to clutch her shoulders before doing so. If she broke into her neck… She’d be dead, no matter what. Plus she had bitten into her tongue.
Spitting the blood onto the floor, Desarea cursed loudly as she swung her legs over the other edge of her bed and stood. She hissed when she felt the liquid on the floor. It was blood. But not hers. She knew it wasn’t hers. It couldn’t have been. She hadn’t spit there.
With another muffled oath, she groped for her candle and a match, wasting no time in lighting the object. A lantern would have been better, but she was aiming for speed. For a moment, what she saw made her stare in disbelief. Then she did what she hadn’t done in years.
She screamed. Loudly. Continuously. Until one of her servants came running into her room and saw what caused her to scream. The poor man fainted, and still she screamed. She screamed until more of her servants came to fetch her, and pulled her out of her room, only to leave her in the kitchen while they exited her home to lose anything they had consumed within the last day.
Because every possible place in her room rested a head. And written in the blood spread over her floor, and over her walls, were the same words over and over again.
I missed you.
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“Akatia, why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” The young woman turned her head to smile politely at the male who asked the question. She was sitting in front of her easel, which she had positioned by her window, a paintbrush in hand. “I always paint. You know that, Anias.”
The man stared at her, eyes narrowing in confusion. “Not that. You don’t paint what I see on that canvas.”
Climbing to her feet and making her way over to the man, Akatia continued to smile at him. “It’s finished. I’ve been working on it all morning. Don’t you like it?” At his side, she turned slightly to glance admiringly at her own work. “I think it’s quite beautiful. Broken and beautiful, just as things were always meant to be. Because the shadows always come back. You know that, don’t you, Anias?”
Anias shook his head slowly. “Akatia, what on Saerelia did you dream last night?”
She shrugged, dropping the smile. “Oh, nothing exciting.” Her smile popped back onto her face as easily as it had gone. “I need to go pay a visit to an old friend.”
Almost frozen, Anias watched his wife head towards the door in her graceful, disturbingly smooth gait. When she was almost gone, he managed to speak in a choked voice. “Who exactly are you going to see?”
Akatia paused mid-step, and gave him a smile that would haunt him endlessly until her return, much later than he expected. “You remember Desarea Vilaese.”
An invisible hand clenched tightly around Anias’s heart. He turned away from her, and approached the easel she had left up. The image was not what the woman he knew painted. Still… He’d seen her dark side before. It was troublesome. Nothing like the woman he loved. More of what he saw on that canvas. Akatia really was a magnificent painter.
The background was dark, rain pouring down. It was a wooded area, with a tiny sliver of the moon just in the picture. But the important part, taking up the majority of the canvas, was what drew his eyes. A beautiful woman lay on the ground, throat slashed, dress cut open, heart carved out, with carmine blood surrounding her, and tainting her pure white skin.
Anias left the room, trying without success to put the illustration out of his mind.
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“Madame, are you all right?”
Desarea stared blankly at the wall ahead of her, shivering. Her shoulders had been bandaged by her maids, and her room had been cleaned by those of her servants with the strongest stomachs. But she would not sleep in there again. Earlier in the day, when she had been in her right mind for a few minutes, she ordered her belongings that were not stained be moved into a different room.
She couldn’t sleep in a room where she had dreamt of the Horseman. And the shadows. Not when they had been gone from her mind for so long. She couldn’t enter a room where she had awoken in pain, and hurt herself. A room in which the walls had been painted with blood, with those words she thought she was safe from for the rest of her life.
I missed you.
Years previous, she had done what she had in order to avoid this happening. Everything had been to stop things from going back to the way they were. The constant running, all because of that battle she‘d been a part of because of her job. Because of the man that she had loved too much.
And because of the Horseman.
She whimpered loudly, glancing in the direction of the maid who stood by her side, worry shining in her eyes. The woman had worked for her since she’d done everything in her power to erase her past. Yet nothing could make her all right at the moment. Not a thing. She wanted to curl into a ball and hide for the rest of her life.
“Madame? You have a… A guest. One I don’t think you’ll be happy to see. But she insists.”
Desarea nodded almost imperceptibly, otherwise unmoving. A guest that she wouldn’t be happy to see? What was that? Who did she not want to see?
The maid exited, and the voice she heard next caused Desarea to allow several tears to slip down her cheeks, and burrow more deeply into her blanket.
“Hello, Tarei Calysp.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Oh, but it is. You know it is. Whether you like it or not. No matter how long you’ve run from it. And I helped you do that. You should probably listen to me right now.”
“I am listening.” Desarea hissed, eyes squeezed shut. She didn’t want to listen. She wanted to run and hide from everything that threatened the life she built for herself after his death. Things like this woman, and the blood that decorated her walls, and the shadows. She wanted to leave the country, and start again. “Speak faster, or I will have you thrown out.”
“You could try.” Akatia agreed, taking a seat in a chair across from the one Desarea was huddled in. “And I could reveal your presence to everyone who hunts you. For there are many. The Horseman still desires your blood, even after all of these years. Our old master wants you to return. And of course… He still lives. And he wants to know where you are. He wants that more than anything. Your name is scattered in every letter he sends to me.”
“You’re lying! He died years ago- he died and he left me with his legacy and-“
“And you gave it up.” A sugary smile on her lips, Akatia interrupted her. “I would never lie, Tarei. You simply never asked me if I knew of his status. You took our master’s word for it. You believed so easily that he had been killed. That was the lie. Our master was the liar. But he does live. How do you think he would feel if he knew what you had done?”
Desarea didn’t respond. Thoughts were flying through her mind. He couldn’t be alive. The master told her he was killed by the other forces while she was away. He was gone- never coming back. He had left her with only memories, and something else that she could never bear to look at.
So she gave it away. To Akatia Kanir. That evil woman who took, and took, and even when she gave, she would take back so many times the amount later on. Desarea did not want to know what she had come for. Though in truth she already knew. And she could never repay, whatever Akatia would ask.
“What do you want?” The woman eventually spoke hoarsely, eyes never opening. The pain had returned to her throat. She wouldn’t dare to clutch it. She couldn’t harm herself in that way- not again. She was lucky to have survived the first time, so many years before. Lucky Akatia had arrived in time.
And Akatia knew that. And Akatia would take advantage of that. And Desarea would be unable to refuse, yet unable to succeed. And her life would end.
“I did a lot for you, Tarei.”
Desarea wanted to scream, and attack Akatia for continuing to call her by the name she had thrown away such a long time before. She held herself back, however, aware that doing so would create more trouble. The last thing she needed.
“I took what you asked me to take, and I made it safe. I left it in the hands of a most powerful man. A man who resides across the seas, in Ascilaen. He takes extraordinary care of it. I should know… I took time in the summer months to travel- to visit it. Oh, how it has grown. I took it from you, at your request, with all of those tears in your eyes, pouring down your face. I took it, after I had already saved you once. Rescued you from those self-inflicted wounds. How bloody you were, that time. It was beautiful. But you, Tarei, are always beautiful.”
“If you won’t tell me what you wish, leave my home. I wish to be at peace… I want to be safe, in this home, as I have been since it all ended.”
“And yet it begins again.” Akatia giggled. “It’s amusing, actually. It ended seventeen years ago. You’ve been safe, for seventeen years. It has been safe, for seventeen years. He has searched for you, for seventeen years. Don’t you recall what the master said of the number seventeen? I do. You see, darling Tarei, I dreamed last night. I dreamed of all of it.”
A light was shining in Akatia’s eyes. It was a light that Desarea was accustomed to, though it would always disgust her. She’d seen it many times, before she’d been forced to run.
A light of bloodlust.
“It was marvelous, Tarei. And now, with it beginning once more, you need to return all of those favors I did for you. Continue to do for you. And you can’t run from me. You can’t run from anyone. You can’t escape the past, and you can’t hide from the future. All you can do, my sweet Tarei Calysp, is one thing.”
“And what is that?” Desarea looked up, a glare shining in her eyes. She couldn’t refuse- that was true. “Tell me what it is that I can do, Akatia Kanir.”
Akatia, with that light still in her eyes, and the smile full of deadly sugar still spread over her lips, spoke quietly.
“Obey me.”
So, originally it was going to be one part. Just a plain short story. And then I started to like it. I'll probably keep it maybe three parts for now- this being the first- and go back to it later, if I want.
Oh, I chose names carefully- here's the ones you've met as of this part. I think they fit.
Desarea- from Desdemona: (Greek) she who is very unfortunate; unhappy one
Akatia (a kay she uh)- from Acacia: (Greek) thorny
Anias- from Aeneas: (Greek) praised
Tarei- from Terri: (Greek) reaper
