Chapter 3 - A tale of revelations
Hello all. This chapter is going to be told through Loreena's POV because it might be easier than 'she said, she said' throughout this chapter so bear with it. And by the way enjoy.
I sighed with the memories returning to my head, and began to tell this priest about my life. He seems different from those who have hurt me all my life; he doesn't know what his brethren have done to me and my people. My life was a peaceful one for the first ten years, filled with its own comings and goings. I was the only child of a fairly young couple named Victoria and Tristan, My father was the last of his family to follow the old ways of our people. The reason for this was not told to me until my twentieth year of life. The magick of the earth flowed throughout his veins with his blood. His family line goes back probably to the time when the gods walked the earth's ground with the first humans. We believed a handful of humans began to understand the earth's powers and communicated with the spirits of the dead as well as the spirits of the living.
The people who began to understand the spirits of the earth became shamans and healers. They used their powers to help others because of the Law of Threefold. This means if you send out magick or anything else positive or negative, it will come back three times more than what you originally sent out. So you could help yourself greatly or do serious damage to yourself. So my people lived in clans with a 'wise one' or in my language 'Wiccan' to not only help the clan with healing the sick but also to communicate with the Mother Goddess and the Father God, who were believed to have created everything, including all of the gods and all of the goddesses.
My mother was orphaned in her sixth year of life because her parents were killed in a vicious argument with unknown people at the time. She wandered around for weeks at a time clutching in her hand, a pendent that had a star within a circle. She finally came up to a village starving and was discovered by the elder druid a kind old man by the name of Katra. He adopted my mother and named her Victoria after his late wife because my mother looked like her, and he raised her as his own. That particular village was the one my father lived in so they met and fell in love. When I turned sixteen, I met a kind young man named Micah, he was what was called a 'heretic'.He had told me aheretic was someone who was banished from his home. I had fallen deeply in love with him over the next two years and I pledged my life for him. After I turned eighteen I married him and he became like us a follower of the Lord and Lady.
One night after I turned twenty, my parents sat me and my husband down and talked with us. They had told us of a different group of people, these people were followers of one god and the founder of the faith was executed for his beliefs but was raised back to life by his own god to show the people what he had meant for them. I was confused about this for a long time. My father looked troubled as he told us that the followers of this faith have grown twisted with greed that they had sent missionaries to places around our country to spread this faith to people like us.I asked what he meant, and mother said "Those who possess the magick of the earth." I couldn't understand why these people wanted to take those who communicated with the earth and try to tell them that what they believed in was wrong. After all we had done nothing to them. Micah looked into my eyes and told me he was a follower of that faith in Rome before he was banished because he questioned the Pope's business over politics and the promise of salvation in heaven if the Church was given enough money.
Mother took off her pendent she had worn throughout my life and told me to keep it with me always. I asked what was wrong and she told me at the first light I must take myhusband and leave this place because the warriors of the faith called 'inquisitioners' were coming to the village with a hoard of English soldiers, because they had heard a couple of the villagers they had converted had not completely given up the old ways and tried to mix the faith. Mother's face was solemn "And in order to 'preserve the purity' of their faith they intend to kill everyone in the village. Hearing this, tears started filling my eyes; I didn't want my parents to stay here and possibly get killed by these people, I tried to ask them to come with us but my father had taken his sword out and had set it next to the door.
When I look back, that night was probably the last time I would sleep so well for a long time. I was shaken awake by screaming. I woke up my husband and told him to get dressed and to get our horse right away. I went to the front door and saw Mother and Father getting ready. I once again tried to convince them to come with us, but they only told us to run and protect the Earth. Father gave me one of his knives and said to protect ourselves and they both hugged us. Micah led me to the stables and as we rode outside our cottage caught on fire. We rode outside the village and saw what the Christians would call 'Hell on Earth'. I had seen villagers getting hung by their necks while getting impaled with spears. They seemed to try to call for anyone to help but couldn't because of the flowing blood from their mouths. I tore my eyes to see old men and women getting dragged to stakes and getting burned alive. One old woman tried to escape the flames but the English soldiers who were burning her caught her and threw her back into the fire. I will still hear her screaming until the day I die. I turned to see helpless women and children being held down because of the soldiers' swords going through their shoulders and the long robed men reading out loud to them from I would imagine the Bible. I turned to see my mother getting dragged off by laughing men, they were trying to drag her behind a building to do horrible things to her. My father ran up and brandishing his sword, struck down the men holding mother, they hugged each other when one inquisitioner came up from behind him and stabbed him in the upper back. Mother held him as he lay there dying, she took his sword and took her own life by slitting her throat open. She chose to die for what she was rather than live for what she wasn't.
Suddenly an archer's arrow went through my horse's neck and fell rapidly. Micah took my knife and was fighting soldiers and inquisitoners left and right, he was fighting for me. One guard who was fat was trying to pull me inside a building by my hair and possibly try to rape me, was stopped by Micah who lost his right hand in a horrible fight with an inquistioner, he held the knife Father gave me up to the soldier's throat and told him to release me now. Another soldier, a lanky one came up and told Micah to fight him. Micah ignored him and continued to hold the knife up to the fat one's neck. The lanky guard grew angry and stabbed my husband in the side. I tried to look as my eyes were blinded with tears as my husband tried to reach out to me, his eyes with tears as well. Then the lanky one swung his sword and severed my husband's head from his shoulders. I couldn't move I was literally paralyzed, my whole family, my whole life, gone in an instant. I tried to look up and was struck in the head by the lanky soldier's sword. As I was falling unconscious the fat soldier had the lanky one by the neck trying to strangle him for ruining his fun. But the lanky one said they needed one person alive for the trials….