Chapter 117-2
Chapter 117-2
Clanm
Helping him avoid the spell traps. “Troy, this is…” suddenly, her face whitened in terror. “Run. Run!”
I let her pull me away, and behind me, I heard strange faint growls. Turning my head, I caught a glimpse of something dark in the woods. Not shadows closing in but something tangible with strange antennas and red glowing eyes.
She was right. She believed that there were monsters in the woods.
“Kiana, it’s not real, remember. Whatever it is we’re running from, it’s not real.” I didn’t stop her from running, but I made her slow down a little. “I’m the only thing here that’s real.”
“It hurts.”
With a grunt, I closed my eyes to avoid watching her chest covered in blood again. I had no idea what that was about, but it was freaking me out.
“It’s not real. The monsters aren’t real. Take a look at them. A nice long look. I won’t let them hurt
you.”
“Troy, I can’t do that.”
Stopping, I pulled her close and wrapped her in my arms. “They have antennas, sweetie. Weird tentacles and bug eyes. And they’re not even moving. They’re just looking and blinking and making noises that aren’t real. They’re monsters but from the imagination of a five-year-old. You’ve seen them before. Have you been here before?”
Slowly, she pulled her head back and peeked around me. Her head flinched, but she continued to stare, and slowly, she relaxed. “They’re not real. They’re not even scary.”
“To a five-year-old, I imagine they’re terrifying, but mostly, they look like something out of a cheesy horror movie.”
“The Fly,” she said with a hoarse laugh. “I snuck in when my mom was watching it. It gave me nightmares.”
“I feel strange saying this, but your dad was right. Your mom has a problem with the horror genre. All right, so you knew that they were here. Did you sense them, or have you been here before?”
Intertwining our fingers again, she wrinkled her nose and looked around. “I’ve been here before. I think I might be in some kind of loop, but I don’t know what comes next. I go to sleep, and when I wake up, I’m in a nightmare and I’m running in the woods. We stop back there, and I see the monsters. I run, but I’m alone. It’s the first time that I’m not alone.”
O
Chapter 117-2
Clam
“Okay, so the house is real. The woods are real. Back there is definitely real, but this isn’t. I think
something is trying deliberately to scare you away from the memory. To keep you from seeing it.
We need to go back.”
I had a damn good feeling there was a reason she didn’t want to go back. Part of me was worried, given whose magic was funneling me in here, but when we walked back, there was no mistaking it.
“The den of the Darkwyn Coven,” she echoed. “They came here. They brought me here. My mother
must have known them.”
“Come on. There’s no one here, which means they’re probably inside. This isn’t real, so no matter what you see, we need to keep moving forward,” I said grimly.
I was expecting all kinds of horrors, but nothing stopped us. Hell, the door even swung open for us. That little display of monsters was the only deterrent, which was strange. Like someone had just put up a sign that said detour, but in a way that would make a young child understand.
In front of us, Ragor stood, one hand down by his side like it was closed around something, and his other hand planted on his hip. There were three women standing in front of him.
“The Crone,” Kiana whispered. “She looks the same even though she’d be twenty years younger.”
“Look at the former Maiden. She does look twenty years younger.” Troy was referring to the Mother, or at least, the witch I knew as the Mother, standing quietly by the door. In between the Crone and the Mother stood a stranger.
Relief swept over me. At least it wasn’t Lunessa, but if this was a memory, it meant one horrifying
thing.
“They knew,” Kiana said angrily. “They knew who I was, they knew who my father was, and they knew who my mother was. All this time, and they’ve never said a word. How could they not say anything?”
Could Lunessa see what I was seeing? It didn’t matter.
“Maybe it’s because their intentions are not as pure as we’d like to think.”
1
M
103
Comments
LUCK DRAW >
L
