Chapter Ten:
I tried to open my eyes desperately knowing what would come of this but I couldn't, they forcibly sealed shut.
At first it came in burst, sharp stabs of pain assaulting my body than the picture began to from and the pain was rushed with fear, with an even more unbearable pain, one that seemed to consume me; claw at my sanity from the inside out.
I could see myself clearly on the inside of my mind, standing in darkness, standing in white.
The first day he found me.
I straightened my metaphorical self reflected in white inside my mind and released control.
My grandmother had just spent her last of her month's wages on the fabric of my white, a soft vibrant white cotton dress. I had run so fast that day, thrusting myself into the green open field just behind our little house. Nate and had just gotten back from his interview but I had barely given him a second glance as I danced and twirled into the open field a huge plastered innocent grin on my face.
'Absolute bliss is not absolute, but unattainable.'
He words were cruel in a singsong melodic sort of way, as if he was right behind me dancing along with an obliviously demented lame child.
I remember then, that moment when I had first heard his voice inside my head; I hated the feeling it brought back crushing memories that pounded on my skull until I was left crying in the dirt ruining my white cotton dress.
I was thirteen then, I am seventeen now.
I rubbed my burning eyes and looked around I was no longer in a field; I was in a bedroom. A beautiful stunningly rich bedroom with oak hand curved entrancing designing.
"My pretty, pretty Praeda." His voice coaxed me inside my mind, surrounding all logical or survival reasoning and crushing them into submission. "I have waited for you for so long." His voice reminded me of the rabid dogs that hung around our garbage can who I would always take pity on; due to the fact that they looked so pathetic with their ribs sticking out, my grandmother use to tell me to stay away from them, she sad they look pathetic but they'll bite off you hand and not spare a second thought to it.
"W-Where am I?" My voice was hoarse from all the crying, I look down at my dress and tried to no avail to undo the dirty mess I had made my white dress out to be.
"Conceal yourself darling." It took me weeks to fully understand everything the crazy man said.
"I don't understand." My voice was weak, Dominus didn't like weak, and my present self trued to warn her to try anyway, to not argue. I knew what was coming. I was watching to scene unfold before my eyes and all I desperately wanted to do was be in that marble waiting room.
"Do not try my patience."
"Do it now!" My present self screamed into her dark cell of my mind. "Please"
"I told you I don't understand." My past self's voice grew a little stronger only serving to anger Dominus enough to rip the door off its hinges with a thundering snap.
"You will do what I tell you to now!" He voice was no longer coaxing or calm but it was shaking, shaking with unshed fury. "Now!" His voice boomed in the small room.
His voice angered my thirteen year old self and I begged her silently from my careful watching place to stop, to just try but she could hear a thing and so I watched as my thirteen year old self straightened her teenage back.
Pushed her rigid hands against the floor and stood up, straightening to her full length and glaring at the impressive man before her. "I said I do not understand, do you understand that." It wasn't a question in the least.
Both my present self and thirteen year old self flew against the tiny room and dangled on the wall, as Dominus laughed slightly with his hand in the air limply as if he wasn't even putting any effort at all in the act that was crushing my air-way passage.
"Now conceal yourself Tessa or you will unfortunately die."
"How?" Was all I could mange to choke out, my eyes brimming with tears, my lungs burning as they begged for air.
He smiled, a gloriously beautiful smile that almost warmed my heart "Close your eyes." He instructed calmly. "Now find the fire inside you."
Again I didn't understand, so I pretended and the worst of all lied "Okay what next?"
I fell then breaking my left leg in the process as I crashed to the hard floor smacking my wrist against something sharp that had be sticking out of the floor and watched as blood gusted out of the burning area. Found the fire. I thought angrily before I was thrown again against the wall and asked to try again.
It took three days, a broken leg, and two severely damaged lungs from lack of oxygen, massive amounts of blood loose and my first scar to get me to find my fire inside of my and pull it back in from leaking out every time I felt something more than numbness.
"Now that wasn't so hard was it, seems just absolutely wasteful to suspend so much precious energy and power, now doesn't it?"
I gasped, sucking in giant gulps of air as I sprung to my feet; hyperaware of my surroundings I fell into a relaxing but dangerous stance as I glared at my captors who had doubled in numbers.
"Good to see you're awake." He didn't seem happy nor was he moved at all.
I breathed calmly narrowing my eyes at the tense man, cocky like Will. I didn't particularly like that attribute. I relaxed my stance keeping my sensed as they were and cracked my neck to get the kinks out, I was not in the talking mood; I was in the fighting mood.
"Do you know where you are?" A woman asked, another Nephlium.
"I do." She smiled at this seeming pleased.
"Good, can you tell us why you refused to answer any of Charlotte's questions?"
My lips twitched as I looked around, Will and Jem had been maneuvered to the side and guessing by the glare on Will's face he didn't care for it.
"You realize you are breaking your laws."
This wasn't a question.
I sat down cross-legged in front of the woman and the rest of the Enclave perfectly at ease, which seemed to surprise them.
"Under the Accords you must tell us who you are!" The man who spoke before demanded of me.
Not a sound.
"Her name is Theresa, Tessa Gray." Will's voice surprised me for a moment before I turned slightly to look at him with an amused smile. His eyebrows rose incredulously at me and he glared cold and hard.
"What are you?" This was a new person who spoke, a far much older person, one I remembered. One of the second generations; his parents had die in their uprising he was left alone, a child no more than twelve out there on the battle field yielding a sword, the sight was hilarious to some but frightening to others.
"Do you understand why I felt I needed to call you?" Charlotte spoke hastily in her anger.
"I am afraid if you do not answer you will be sentenced to death." The woman spoke calmly clearly. I stared at the old man, who looked as if he was ready to dissipate into dust. He studied me; with even hard eyes, eyes that had grown up harshly, eyes that had witnessed his parents slaughtered without even having a fighting chance. I wondered how he was still alive.
I hadn't even registered what the woman had really said until people had began to move around me. I sprung to my feet with ease and grace and watched all of them as they circled around me. "Now, now boys, lets all be nice."
The man who spoke to me first laughed "Do you honestly think you can take all of us Downworlder, with no weapon?"
I locked my eyes with the firm and middle-aged warrior and smiled viciously making him even flinch a little. I ran my tongue across my teeth and glanced briefly to the old man whose eyes flared with renewed energy at the sight and spoke to him "Easily."
His blade was out of his belt and at my neck within two seconds as he stared into my eyes. My smile was carefully placed on my lips as if I was testing him to do it. "You will tell me exactly who you are." He had mustered so much hatred into one sentence that everyone around me, except for me froze in shock. The blade cut into my skin as he pressed harder as a warning. He measured my eyes before spinning rapidly and extending out his left leg to knock me balance off.
A calculated mistake.
I bent my knees and sprung up in the air, thrusting my body back so that I briefly touched the ground with the tips of my fingers before springing again and landing on a Nephliums shoulders. Catching the old man's alit eyes I brought the Nephlium down with one single fluid twist and a loud shocking snap of his neck.
"That is the first time you have underestimated me Nephlium, you will do well to make sure you do not test my patience."