[pt.20] The Attempt To Get In, The Attempt To Get Out

4.5K 33 8
                                    

Part 20

THE ATTEMPT TO GET IN, THE ATTEMPT TO GET OUT

“We are expendable assets, Nicholai. And we’ve just been expended.”

~Carlos Oliviera in Resident Evil: Apocalypse~

[Lunalea POV]

When I sat there alone in the damp chamber, the memory of my past started flooding my head. The memory of the night my mother died must had been some kind of plug; once it’s pulled, the other memories were just pouring out. Now I got a theory of why I lost my memory: my mother’s death must be so painful for me that my unconscious repressed everything from that point backwards.

I remembered the twenty years I spent with my mother, Arianwen. We live in a cottage just outside the border of Green Vista Village. When I was a little girl I used to go and play with the children in the village. I remembered my mother was a white witch whose main job was to heal people. The earnings weren’t that much, sometimes people even paid her with food, but somehow we could live. When I was old enough, I worked at a small manuscriptorium in the village, where I got to read some interesting materials. And then when I reached seventeen of age, I began having black-outs now and then; the demon side in me started to emerge. My mother and I spent most of the next three years traveling all over the kingdom to find for a cure. We had yet to succeed when Haelock and its underlings razed our house..

Thinking about my mother made me want to cry, so I pushed back the thoughts. There’s no time to grieve. I had a more pressing matter at hand: getting out of this place. I gazed down and gently caressed my belly. “I’ll get us out of here, I promise..” I whispered.

But first of all… I glanced at Arnvid’s head on the floor and tried to overcome the sudden agony and guilt that clutched my heart. At least I had to bury what’s left from the courageous hunter. So I digged the soil ground with my hands, since there’s nothing else I could use. “Farewell, Arnvid..” I whispered my parting words with great difficulty, holding back my tears, as I cautiously put his head inside a hole on the ground, “Thank you for what you’ve done for me.. and I wish you could forgive me..”

After the short unceremonial burial, I explored the chamber and found that the only way out was a hole blocked by a massive thick flat circular stone. By my physical strength alone it was impossible to remove the stone. Earlier when Vaughan was present, his oppressing aura made me feel weak so I didn’t bother to try using magic. Now that he left, I could feel my power returning bit by bit. So I waited anxiously until I felt strong enough—if only I got my tonic I could have recovered faster, but my canvas bag was nowhere to be seen. I kept reminding myself that Vaughan could be back at any second and the thought made me grow more anxious.

Approximately fifteen minutes passed, and I tried to spark a fire using magic. To my relief it worked. I got up and went over to the exit hole. I pressed my left ear to the stone, trying to pick any sound coming from outside. I heard nothing. I guessed it’s a good thing I didn’t use magic in front of Vaughan; I just hoped he thought I was weak as a human and therefore didn’t feel the need to place some guards outside this chamber.

I crouched and touched the soil under the blocking stone. I muttered a spell to lift up the ground. Slowly but surely, the circular stone began rolling to one side, forming a gap where I could slip through. Before I exited the chamber though, I took a peak to make sure it’s clear outside. It’s quite dark so I made a light orb and held it in front of me. Hm..alright, as far as I could see there’s no one.

As soon as I was outside, I noticed I was in some kind of tunnel. I held the light orb high above my head and saw that at one end there was nothing but darkness, and at the other end the tunnel branched into five. Which way should I go? Gambling would do me no good here. I tried to sniff the air in order to decide which way the smell was less foul, but I couldn’t distinguish it. ‘Is there any spell that can help me in this kind of situation?’ I asked myself. ‘I think there’s one.. Yes, a tracking spell.’ The spell would allow me to trace my footsteps; perhaps it’s the only way to get out.

My Love, Please Kill MeWhere stories live. Discover now