The Children of Time

I: Verrin

⚔️ The Betrayal ⚔️

"What of the Angelics guarding her cell?" Verrin demanded, stomping up the wooden stairs. She kept her face void of emotion yet inside she was anything but. The events that had occurred tonight thrashed against her mind; a barrage of dangerous possibilities now playing endlessly in her mind. Her imagination was running wild, and could not be stopped.

"Dead. Not one survived, Verrin," Allise whispered incredulously, her eyes betraying the same terror Verrin was trying her best to hide. "Their bodies were discovered by the women who were supposed to relieve them of their shift. If they had just arrived sooner they—"

"Would be dead too," Verrin interrupted. She stopped climbing the stairs and turned to face the younger woman with a stern look. "I realize you are a relatively new to your Whites but this... this thing that killed those women; she's too dangerous to be left unchecked. She needs to be recaptured immediately." 

Allise's face lost all colour. "Mother and Maiden . . . who was this person?"

Verrin climbed the last few steps and opened the door, revealing the massacre inside. The room was rather spacious, decorated with what had once been fine satin and textured tiles. The wooden furniture had been obliterated, chunks of it scattered across the room.

Then there was the blood, and the flesh.

She heard Allise gasp as she, too, saw the sickening sight. Verrin gestured to the room. "A monster. One of the last remnants of a long forgotten age." She felt her stomach churn as she forced herself to look away from the deformities she had once called friends.

As she stood in the doorway, her head turned away, the smell of burnt flesh and dark magic caused her nostrils to flare. She could almost taste the soot, and the evil that infected the room. It seemed to strangle the air, masking it in an almost tangible mist.

Steeling her emotions, Verrin forced herself to take a step into the prison. Then another. And through the sunlight that poured in from the window she could see the remains of several bodies scattered throughout the room; each one killed in a way more gruesome than the last. Her hands curled into white-knuckled fists as she made her way across the bloodied floor and inspected their bodies with a heeled boot. Goosebumps began crawling their way up her spine as she touched a mysterious piece of flesh that had somehow, someway been attached to a human.

Bile began rising in her throat as she dropped the slimy piece of detached skin and she had to cover her mouth with the back of her hand to stop herself from heaving. In all her years hunting the Undying, this was by far the most disturbing sight she had ever witnessed. Though that fact only fuelled her need to capture those that aided in this monster's escape.

"How did we stop her before?" Allise asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Verrin noticed the slight shake in the other woman's hands, and she couldn't be sure if it was from fear or anger. Anger could be harnessed. Weaponized. Fear was a senseless instinct created by the mind for people who couldn't defend themselves against the terrors of the world. She had no use for fear.

Before Verrin could answer, a scream shot its way around the camp. A blood curdling scream followed by an eerie silence. Her heart dropped into her stomach from remorse, for whomever that had been was dead. Screams before death were unmistakably animalistic. Primal. She looked at Allise, who looked like she wanted to disappear into the walls.