"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." --The Matrix
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It is not pleasant to wake up with what feels like a hammer being driven through the back of your skull.
Just clearing that up.
The back of my head pounded, feeling like a screw was being driven into the bone with each pulse. My eyelids were caked down to the skin below them, and about as heavy as a brick.
Something wet trickled against my arm, running from my elbow to wrist. I stretched out my fingers and felt along the ground-- the rough, wet, and cold stone a foreign touch to my hand.
Through the small sliver of a crack I managed to make with my right eyelid, a bright yellow light shone, illuminating everything to a color so bright I felt as if I had to close my eyes to avoid blindness.
Slowly, the light dimmed to a non-blinding brightness. I forced my eyes open, feeling like it took all my strength to do that one, simple move.
The ceiling was high above me, stone pieced together, sparkling with wet.
I turned my eyes to the side to see the wall. It was the same as the ceiling--brown, mold covered bricks. A dank stench filled my nostrils.
Where am I?
A clattering of objects sounded behind me.
"Take the food. Here's an extra for her," a gruff voice ordered. A one-man march followed the man from the dungeon.
The dungeon. That's where I am.
A sudden thought hit me. There were two others in my same cell. Who were they? Why'd Vadik put my in a cell with two other people? What were they going to do--
Squeak.
I cursed and bolted across to the other side of the cell. The back of my head erupted into white-hot pain, flaring through my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the headache threatened to attack me.
It didn't work.
"The zombie lives!" shouted (at least I thought shouted--it was probably normal-speak) a low voice.
I turned my head in the direction of the sound. Emerald green eyes sparkled as they met mine, twinkling in happiness--even though we were in a jail.
"Joshua," I muttered.
He opened his arms, unable to hold back his smile anymore. I threw myself onto him. His body was small and thin underneath the white shirt that hid him. His hair was tangled and long, he was dirty, he smelled bad--I didn't care.
Number one, because that was normal, and number two, he was my brother.
His hand rubbed the top of my head, careful to avoid the base of my skull. "I missed you," he whispered.
I pulled back. A small beard and mustache was on his face. "Every day."
He bent down, beckoning me to sit with him. I glanced across the cell to the corner. A thin man was lying down against the wall, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell slightly, and when he breathed out, the piece of gray hair that fell across his face moved with him.
"How'd you get out?" Joshua asked.
I turned my attention back to him. "Not the right question. How did you get here?"
Joshua's face darkened. He reached down and absentmindedly scratched at his leg, where it joined with his wooden one. He scowled. "Vadik happened."
I touched his hand lightly. "What'd he do?"
"He framed me for murdering the king," Joshua spat. "I was supposed to 'help him move' something, and he went in first. By the time I went in, the king was dead."
"And Vadik blamed it on you..." I finished for him.
Joshua nodded. "They brought me and Father down here. This is where we've lived for six months. Home sweet home."
I grinned a little at his sarcasm, then became solemn again. "Baupa's down here?"
Joshua raised his eyebrows and pointed across the cell to the man in the corner. "You haven't noticed him?"
That's Baupa?
My heart felt like it had been stabbed slowly with a needle. The man in the corner didn't look a bit like my father. His sickly body wasn't anything like how I remembered him, even when we were at the village.
Joshua's eyes fell. "Then again, I wouldn't recognize him either..."
I swallowed and turned my head to Baupa. "Is he--how has he been?"
"Once you left, the--"Joshua lowered his voice to barely a whisper "--'A' word was kept away from him at all times. He hasn't touched it since."
A small flicker of hope fluttered in my chest. "That's good."
Joshua and I fell silent, listening to the drip, drip, drip of the water falling down the walls.
"Now you answer my question, Zara." Joshua seized my wrist. "How did you get away from the castle?"
"You know about that?"
Joshua nodded. "Yep. You were sent there on the terms of a deal." He grinned in excitement. "Did you kill it? The thing they sent you there to kill?"
The pain scrawled across Brennen's scarred face as he told me to go surfaced to the tip of my mind. I might as well have.
"No, Josh. I didn't kill him."
"How'd you get away then?"
I lowered my eyes, unable to stare at Joshua. "I didn't get away. He let me go."
"It what?"
"He let me go." I looked up at Joshua. Disbelief was painted on his face. I sighed. "Joshua, he's not horrible. He's kind. Caring."
I lowered my voice. "Hurting."
"Zara, he kept you prisoner. He's a monster."
Why does this keep becoming a topic?
"No, Joshua." I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, trying to calm my headache. "He is no monster. Besides, the king sent me there on a lie."
Joshua shook his head viciously. "Zara--"
A cough from the corner saved me from an escalating argument. "Z-zara?"
My throat constricted. I was somewhere between excitement and disgust. My father's voice rang hoarsely throughout the dungeon. It was weak and scratchy, but, unlike the last time I heard him speak, it was clear. He knew what he was saying.
Joshua got up and held out his hand. His eyebrows were raised at me in a "this isn't over" glare.
I grasped his fingers and pulled myself up. My heart pounded as my brain formed one single word.
"Baupa."
He stared dully back at me, his mouth slightly open. "I thought--I thought you'd have left. Not come back."
He remembers that? He actually understood me then, too?
I shook my head, warily watching him struggle to get up. "No. I came back."
Baupa grasped the wall behind him, holding on to it weakly. His legs shook with the strain of standing. His eyes searched me, then fell on the green dress.
Please don't ask.
Thankfully, he didn't. Instead, his bottom lip trembled. "Lizaveta, I'm so--"
Joshua interrupted him harshly. "Zara, not Lizaveta."
Baupa's face fell. I clenched my teeth. "Lizaveta's fine."
Joshua stared up at me in confusion. "But, I thought--"
"Does it honestly matter what I'm called right now? Here, to solve this problem, call me George."
Everyone's face lit up into a smile at that. Baupa coughed again, the force of it racking his whole body. He shook Joshua off and took a tentative step towards me. "Lizaveta, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Part of me wanted to take his apology and tell him "It's okay." The other part wanted to say "I can't forgive you. It was over ten years that you made Joshua and I grow up too fast."
So, instead of saying either, I shut my mouth and stayed silent. I managed to stare up into his eyes, which welled with tears.
Our silent "family moment" was cut short by a clanking of gates.
"Well, well, well, isn't this touching."
Rage immediately erupted inside my chest. I twirled around to face the man who spoke. "What, Vadik?"
He tsked. "Now, is that any way to address your king?"
Joshua piped up from behind me. "You are no king of ours."
Baupa coughed again.
A slow smile formed on Vadik's face. He started to whistle.
The memory hit me like a ton of bricks. He was singing that before he hit me.
"Where did you hear that song?"
Vadik titled his head innocently. "What song?"
"The one you're whistling." Dummy.
"You're going to have to sing it for me."
My breath caught in my chest. I'm not singing that.
I got an idea. Having never thought the spell before, I knew it was going to be difficult.
Alithea.
Vadik's eyes just barely clouded over.
I resisted the urge to do a massive fist pump. Yes!
Heart pounding, I asked the question. "Now, tell me, where did you hear that song?"
"I made it up," he answered flatly.
"Zara?" Joshua touched my arm gently. "What did you do? What's the song?"
I swallowed. Not looking at my brother, I answered his question. "I heard it the night Mother died. The men who killed her sang it."
It went silent in the cell. The only noise was the plipping of water to the floor.
I glared at Vadik. "Do you know the men who killed my mother?"
His eyes were slowly losing some of their cloudiness. I only have a few seconds left. "Yes."
"Did you kill her?" I blurted.
He smiled a toothy grin. "Your little 'magic spell' isn't working on me anymore, darling."
"Then I'll do it again."
I raised my hand dramatically, knowing that there was no way I could cast the spell again. It took up too much of my energy.
Vadik held up his hands in mock surrender. "If you'd really like to know, then no, I didn't help. I was only aware of Regol's plan."
His eyes flashed red. "I should have helped though. I would've gotten the job done."
Anger welled up in my chest.
I kept my rage to myself.
Joshua fell on the cell bars and clawed and Vadik's face, trying to harm him. He screamed at him, yelling curses and unintelligible words.
Vadik simply held up his hand. Joshua was immediately thrown against the back wall. A loud crack echoed across the dungeon from where his head met the stone. He fell to the floor like a rag doll, unmoving.
"Joshua!" I screeched. I bent down next to his body. His chest rose and fell faintly.
Still alive.
Vadik laughed. It was all I could do to not try and kill him right then and there. The only thing stopping me was the fact that he would be expecting that.
"Why'd she die?"
Vadik shrugged. "She knew too much. My father needed her gone."
Rage built up inside my chest, boiling over my limit.
"Kaio!" I screamed. Flames shot from my fingertips, headed straight for Vadik.
He sidestepped out of the way, letting them hit the wall behind him. "Feeble attempt, Zara, really. I would expect more from you."
Vadik grabbed the cell bars and smiled. "Now, I can down here for a specific reason. Care to guess what that is?"
My nose turned up in disgust. "No, Vadik. Nor do I really give a--"
He cut me off before I could finish the rest of my sentence. "I need to know," he whispered, "--if the Beast is able to be killed like normal people."
He really thinks I'm going to answer this?
His mask of a smile slipped away. "You know, I could make you answer with whatever spell you used on me."
I stayed silent, finding Baupa's hand and squeezing it. I didn't care if I was going to dislike him or not, but at that moment, I needed something to hold on to.
"Can it be killed like normal, Zara?"
The memory of me stabbing him in the heart and Brennen calmly pulling it out was the first thing I thought of.
"You've already done this, remember? You tried. He beat you up."
Vadik pursed his lips and nodded. "Ah. Yes. That makes things more difficult. Now I have to find what'll kill him."
Something behind his eyes clicked. "Would they... yes! They would!"
He clapped his hand together. "Well, then, all I was doing was coming down to tell you that your beloved monster would be dead soon. Hope you can somehow get whatever last words you wish to say to him delivered quickly."
Vadik waved his hand, walking up the stairs. "Bye now!"
"You're a monster!" I screamed, unable to hold it back anymore.
He froze on the top step. "I'm a what?" he chuckled. He stepped back down the stairs slowly.
"Brennen isn't the monster. You are."
"Oh, so the beast has a name now? How lovely. And," he paused and smiled the smile that would leave girls falling at his feet. "Do I look like a beast to you?"
I started to hold my hand in a fist. Ice began creeping through the cell bars. "I don't know what happened to you, Vadik. What changed you. Why you changed. I just know you need to be stopped."
"Does your magic book have a remedy for that?"
He grabbed my hand, right over the ice. Frigid cold pulled through my skin.
"You Vadik," he hissed. "Your Vadik is gone, buried beneath a pile of schemes and emotion. It it's only me now."
He let go. My hands burned from the cold, but I made no sound.
"If you use magic again, I'll kill your family in a heartbeat."
He held up the cross necklace, examining it. "So what do you do? Just imagine the place you want to go?"
I didn't answer.
He nodded. "Imagining it is. Thank you for all your help, Lizaveta."
With one last little wave, then walked up the stairs and out the room, closing the door behind him.
All the rage and fear that I kept bundled up inside me burst as soon as the door shut. I sobbed into my knees, unable to stop. A hand gently touch my back and arms pulled me close to another. I let them, not caring who it was.
I have no idea how long I was crying. Just that I was.
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What do you think the thing is that'll make the Beast killable?
Second question (Eee! I actually have questions this time!) What do you think of her family this go round?
Thank you all for reading!
And that quote up top? I just put it there because of the chapter name.
Oh my goodness, The Matrix was so awesome.
Noa.