Dearest Readers,
Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments and helpful suggestions that keep this story afloat. You are all so wonderful and I hope you know that I appreciate you!
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Thank you all for your support,
Ally Layne.
Do Not Go Gentle
Chapter 31: Under the Surface
As soon as I made it to the training arena, my eyes locked in on a familiar pulled-back mane of golden hair. His back was turned to me as he was helping another familiar face with teaching archery.
Aldarian, who was watching Glorfindel and Varis as the elf helped the dwarrowdam work on her archery form, looked at my approaching figure curiously. Something inside me made me want to get mad at Varis for some reason, but I decided to put that on the back burner. This wasn't about Varis- this was about the stupid Goldfish and his annoying mannish complexes.
It was when I set my face in a harsh glare at the Goldfish, that Aladarian immediately started to retreat back to the warrior and spoke something harshly to his companion.
I watched as the menace stiffened and turned around to see me stalking toward him like a predator, and immediately his eyes were on the sword that had made its way to my hand.
"Nemir, what are you-"
By the time he had started speaking, I was close enough to him to touch him with Riptide. I let him speak, wondering if he had decided to apologize, but his confusion only annoyed me further.
I swung at him with a sharp battle cry, and I saw his eyes widen dramatically as he quickly parried with his own sword.
"Persie! Stop this!" another voice, Aldarian, cried out.
I heard Varis's gasp sound out from the right of us, and a part of me realized that I had just interrupted her own healing process.
"No! He has to pay!" I yelled out while carrying out a series of violent attacks. Glorfindel never fought back, he only stayed on the defensive while I unleashed vicious strikes upon him.
"What is wrong?" the Goldfish asked, grunting as he blocked a hard hit that was aimed for his neck. He looked between me and where our blades remained collected in shock. "What are you doing?"
I gritted my teeth and felt a faint stinging sensation behind my eyes. "I trusted you!" I spat. "How dare you hold me back!"
"Hold you back? I most certainly have not been holding you back from anything!"
"Oh dear," I heard Varis say. "Do you think we should stop them?"
I kicked out at Glorfindel to put more distance between the two of us, and then went back to attack him again.
"I do not think I would live if I got in between the two of them," Aldarian admitted. He quickly pulled her away from where I was attacking Goldilocks as she had gotten one step too close to the fighting. "I say we just let them sort it out for themselves."
"I trusted you, and you decide that I am not good enough to fight!" I reminded Goldilocks, who still looked confused as to why I was trying to pummel him to the ground. "You have no right to try and control me, you jackass!"
Glorfindel dodged another onslaught of attacks. "I never said you were not good enough, where in Arda did you hear that from?"
I dove at him, growling when I leaped and instead of hitting his body I fell into the dirt. He was too quick, and I was too angry to see straight. I whirled around and used my sword to stand up off the ground. "Lord Elrond told me, you bastard!"
His eyes narrowed. "You must have misunderstood-"
I whipped riptide at him once more, and he blocked masterfully again. Why won't he fight me? Can't he see I need him to fight me? I need to let this out somehow and I can't do it if he just tries to defend himself this entire time!
"I heard it all!"
He grunted as he took the brunt of another attack. "That is not what I meant!"
"What did you mean, then?"
In one, solid and quick maneuver that I had been taught since I first started training with a sword, Glorfindel disarmed me and caught Riptide in his other hand.
I growled, and felt a tug in my gut, urging for the water that surrounded us in troughs and water basins to-
"That is enough, Persephone!" he snapped, dropping the swords on the ground and crossing his arms defiantly. "I know that look. If you try to hit me with water I will… I will…"
I crossed my arms in return. "You'll do what? Talk me to death?"
He looked down at me with fierce eyes. "No. But you are wrong to assume I do not think you are good enough for battle. You are wrong to try and fight me whilst I am trying to help your friends. You are wrong to fight me while my back was turned, and you are wrong to assume that I do not trust you to have you at my side!"
The water that had been under my control exploded at his words, and within moments everyone in the training arena was completely drenched from head to toe. I reveled in the feeling of my wounds being closed up, and my skin pushing the thread Elrond had used out of its system before closing fully.
Glorfindel had closed his eyes at the water's wrath, but they soon blinked open and were filled with anger that I doubted would stay leashed for long.
A strain of thread dropped from my hand, and I watched as it fell to the ground slowly.
I ignored all the gasps of shock from being drowned in water while standing on land, and saw that Varis had to be helped up by Aldarian from where the blast had knocked her down with a scowl.
"Why won't you let me fight, then?" I asked, looking up at the golden warrior with pure rage. "There is something you are holding back, just say it!"
His anger finally became unleashed. "This!" He yelled, whipping his hands up in the air. "This is why you cannot fight among the rest of us, Persie! You are so wrapped up in yourself that you fail to see those around you!"
My mouth opened to reply but his steely glare cut me off.
"You will let me finish since you have been begging for me to explain. I do not trust you to make the right decisions if let out on scouts or guard duty because you are so drawn within yourself most of the time, and you let your demons haunt you so much that they influence what you do on the outside. You are too unpredictable- and could be a danger to the rest of us if you untether yourself from reality for even a moment!"
"You… you don't trust me?" I asked, sounding like a beaten-down child. "Why don't-"
Glorfindel scowled at the words. "I do not trust that you will always make the right decisions to help others when you cannot help yourself."
I bit my lip as tears started to form in my eyes. Something inside me broke at that moment, and I knew that he was right.
"I-I… I didn't mean to do this-"
"When will you learn? There is something so dark inside you and just waiting to come out. How could I endanger others when you are an explosion waiting to happen?"
I let out a shaky breath and felt tears start to fall from my eyes. "Tell me how you really feel."
Aldarian stepped to my side, holding a hand up in my defense. "Glorfindel, that is enough-"
"Stand down," the Commander demanded. "You are not involved in this, Lord Aldarian, so I suggest you stay out of it."
I felt the elf at my side stiffen. "Lord Glorfindel-"
"That is enough."
I swallowed the bile that had risen to my throat. I looked back to see Varis standing there, hugging herself for warmth, and I felt more tears fall from my eyes.
How could I endanger others when you are an explosion waiting to happen?
Another breath.
A danger to the rest of us-
Too unpredictable-
Let your demons haunt you-
Glorfindel stood there stoically, but this time he looked at me in slight confusion. "Nemir, what is wrong?"
"Can you not see what you are doing to her?" Aldarian demanded once more from my side.
An explosion waiting-
You cannot help yourself-
"I told you to stay out of this, Logonion!"
"She does not need you to yell at her like this!"
"How would you know what she needs?"
An explosion-
Unpredictable-
"Persie?"
I looked to Varis, who was eyeing me warily. "Hm?"
"Are you okay?"
Danger-
More tears fell.
Explosion…
I took one last look at the arguing ellon, and then I ran.
I heard Varis let out a choked cry, startling the others out of their violent haze.
"Persie!"
"Nemir, wait!"
I ignored their cries, ran through the training arena, and didn't break a sweat. The bottom of my dress had torn from the impromptu fight with Glorfindel and allowed my strides to lengthen even more.
With every push of my step, I heard others running after me, but I felt another tug in my gut and some startled cries. The jets of water coming from the falls wouldn't hurt them. Just startle them. Startle them just enough for me to escape.
My feet led me to where Glorfindel had brought me just that morning when everything felt so different. I had forgiven him, he had forgiven me. It seems like there is going to be more of that in the future, but now I just couldn't face him.
I can't believe he really didn't trust me to have his back? Was I not enough?
The feeling of the water, of the strong river current ripping past me, was bliss that I had so thoughtlessly forgotten.
I let my body sink to the bottom of the river, and allowed myself to be carried along by the violent current from the pressure of the waterfall.
It was healing, and the rush of the water against my skin- skin that remained dry even though I was completely submerged… it was mesmerizing.
"I was told you would be arriving."
I whipped around to see a River Nymph, lounging about within the current. I internally groaned. What did I have to do to find some peace in this world?
"What do you want?" I asked. The nymph, with long red hair and blue fins with unnatural blue eyes to match, tilted her head.
"Why are you so upset, child?"
I gritted my teeth. "I am not a child."
The nymph let out a giggle that the current seemed to amplify. "Even if you are not a child, you are certainly acting like one."
My upper lip curled up in a snarl. "You have more sass than the last Water Nymph I met."
She shrugged, running her webbed hands against her hair. "I like to think my… sass, as you call it, makes me far more admirable."
"I don't know if I'd be so quick to call it that."
She giggled again, and bubbles rose from her mouth to create a halo around her head. "You are rather funny. I think we would be good friends if you came here more often."
I rolled my eyes. "What, are you lonely or something?"
She grinned. "Not at all. We are only alone at the moment because you are scaring the others with your angry disposition."
"I do not have- wait, what?"
The nymph nodded. "Perhaps if you calm down, the others will do the same?"
I let the water touch my skin, completely becoming one with the river, and the river in me. The water soaked into my veins, becoming one with my heartbeat, and thoroughly calmed me to the point where exhaustion followed.
Normally it wasn't that easy.
"What did you do?"
The nymph smiled. "The water favors you, Persephone. And so does He."
Out of the darkness surrounding us, there came nearly a dozen other nymphs all different in coloring but all connected with their surroundings just as I was. It was calming to see them so at ease with the river as if it flowed within them just as it did me.
Suddenly, I didn't feel so odd or displaced after all.
"I'm sorry if I had scared you."
The answering smiles and echoes of affection made a feeling of happiness rush through me.
"What the Hades was that?"
One of the other nymphs laughed. "We are connected to the water, just like you."
Another cut in and continued, "The water reacts to our feelings, and you must have felt our happiness as if it were a part of you."
I blinked. "That's creepy."
The sassy nymph I first had the opportunity to meet rolled her eyes. "We have been waiting a long time for a savior to come, and are blessed that it is one as connected to the water as we are."
I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly. "I don't know about-"
"Shush. He is coming."
They scattered.
And I was left alone.
But I wasn't really alone, was I?
An invisible hand wrapped around my waist, and I was dragged through the rivers at an unimaginable pace and warped out into the sea.
"Hello, Persephone Jackson, it is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."
My ripped dress suddenly made me feel very out of fashion as an unbelievably handsome sea god swam up to me. He was not alone, either. What must have been his court, or rather, his bodyguards, were keeping a distance behind him with sharks being used as their mighty steeds.
The two mermen looked over to me, nodded respectfully, and resumed their posts.
That certainly felt like home.
"You must be Lord Ulmo," I said, taking in the finery of his cape that draped behind him, and the two tails that he sported. His stomach was ripped, and his abs were oh so fine. He had black hair, a black beard, and dark grey eyes.
He looked very different from my father but similar enough where I could feel the power of the oceans swirling off of him.
He laughed at my bluntness. "You are not wrong, my dear."
I raised a brow. "What am I doing here?"
Ulmo held a large staff in his hand, and something was palmed in his other. His hand was closed, so I couldn't see what he withheld from me.
"I come bearing a gift," he told me, swimming up closer to where I was floating. "It was sent to me from your father. He told me that he was very proud of you, and wanted to remind you of where you come from."
His hand opened.
Laying on his palm was a ring and not just any old ring- but my mom's ring.
Sally's ring.
I reached out a hand, slowly itching to grab for it.
"You can take it, I will not hurt you," he mused at my hesitance and reached it out to me even further. "This is for you, my dear."
I took the ring in my fingers and palmed it in my hand. The familiar weight of the ring was instant, even though we were hundreds of feet in the water. "Why?"
Ulmo smiled. "There is a darkness spreading, young Persephone. And it will be up to you to stop it."
I gulped.
"Do not fear, that is why I have come to you. I have a proposition."
I slipped my mom's ring on my right ring finger. It was a perfect fit. "What is it?"
His smile widened as he looked at the ring on my finger and back into my eyes. "What would you say if I offered to help you control your powers?"
"Uh... what?"
