Here is Chapter 12 ready to be read. Hope you all enjoy sorry for the late update my vacation ran longer than expected.
Drew walked over to the door and casually opened it.
"Yeah, Doc?" she asked.
"Zendaya's back" he said shortly before turning and heading back to the living room. Drew followed him and was relieved to see Zak and Zendaya talking and laughing on the couch, just like brother and sister.
"Hey, mom" Zendaya said smiling.
"Hi Sweetheart" Drew said kissing her daughter's forehead.
"Ew, mom" Zendaya wiping off her forehead.
"What, I was just kissing my little girl's forehead" Drew said with a cheeky smile.
"I'm not a little girl anymore" She told Drew. "I'm 2633 years old." she said. The others in the room looked shocked at the new slice of information. Although what did they expect, Drew did tell them her and Vasilis had broken over a thousand years ago.
"What" said Zendaya. "Considering how old my parents are." she shrugged her shoulders.
"Mom, Zendaya was telling me about the cool adventures you guys went on when she was a kid." Zak told his mom.
"Really, what exactly did she tell you?" Drew asked curiously.
"How you explored King Tut's tomb, and sailed down the Nile. And how you tried to help the people of Africa." Zak said.
"Looks like your morals haven't changed much in over 2,000 years." Said Miranda, and Fiskerton growled in agreement.
"Mom, I'm sorry I freaked earlier." Zendaya said.
"It's alright sweetheart" Drew said sitting down on the couch next to her daughter. Drew hugged her and smiled reassuringly.
"Its just, that thing...it brings back so many bad memories."
"You don't need to apologize, I understand" Drew said.
"Well we don't" said Miranda.
"And time for more explaining" Drew said.
"What have you figured out so far?" asked Zendaya.
"I think that the moonstone of death turned Argost evil." Said Zak, sure of his answer.
"Uh, no" said Zendaya.
"Oh" Zak said. His face scrunched up and he seemed to be trying to figure it out.
"Zak, don't strain yourself sweetie." Drew said patting her son on the head.
"My dad wasn't the one who held Luna Lapidus Mortis for too long, it was me." Zendaya said. They all looked confused, well minus Drew who had lived through it.
"So it turned you evil?" asked Zak.
"So, it turned you evil" questioned Zak eying Zendaya suspiciously.
"Yeah, that thing destroyed my life." she said looking down with a heartbreaking look in her eyes. They all leaned in slightly wanting to hear another piece of the incredibly intricate puzzle that seemed to have consumed their lives.
"We found Luna Lapidus Mortis when we had been exploring an Egyptian tomb when I was around 553. I remember seeing all of the beautiful treasures in the tomb and marveling at their beauty. And I was especially captivated by a seemingly harmless moonstone necklace I found in a glass case in the middle of all the treasures. Mom had told me to not touch anything in the tomb, she had said it needed to be preserved. But I couldn't help myself. It was so beautiful, and from the minute I saw it I had felt like it was rightfully mine. I don't know why I felt that way but I did, so I took it, now I no it was just a trick by the moonstone. I think that adventure was the last one we had before our family was ripped to shreds." Zendaya said wiping non existent tears. "There's an example of one of the things that's left over from my time with the moonstone, I have no ability to cry. I wore Luna Lapidus Mortis around my neck for six months." she said emphasizing the importance of this. "When we finally figured out what it was doing to me I didn't want to believe it." Drew's face showed an immense amount of pain, it seemed to be an extremely difficult topic for them. "Luna Lapidus Mortis while extremely dangerous never actually causes pain when in the holder's possession, if anything its the exact opposite. It makes you feel so good so amazing that you never want to let go of it. It gives you a feeling of absolute joy, and blissfulness."
"Sounds like a crazy whacked up drug" Miranda said. Getting a few nods from the others.
"Yay, it is. And while it's doing this it slowly takes away parts of you. It basically chisels away at you until you are a husk of happiness, and then once it has everything the stone deactivates, and then you realize you can't feel, anything. Not love, not happiness, not even pain. My mom and dad managed to get the stone away from me at the very last second. Now, I am so thankful for it. But back then, life without the stone was unbearable, the only thing I felt was pain and a horrible need for the stone. The stone makes you dependent on it, so that when its taken away from you, all you want to do is die." She told them. And they all had horror streaked across their faces. "And trust me I tried to kill myself, like a lot, but I just wouldn't die." She said laughing, and right then you could see the similarities between her and Argost. " I jumped from building's, I tried to drown myself, I even tried to bury myself alive. But being immortal those didn't work out well." They all looked horrified at the things she was telling them. "Nothing worked, I did such horrible things then." All of her giggling suddenly died and she looked so guilty. "You don't realize it when you're holding the stone, but it puts horrible murderous thoughts in your head and you don't even realize they're there until its gone. I did such unspeakable things. I killed innocent people, I destroyed lives, I broke apart my family." Zendaya hugged her knees and buried her head in them. "And I can't even cry about it" she said. Even though Zendaya was very old at that moment all you could see was a scared child who needed comfort from her mother. Drew pulled Zendaya into a hug and gently stroked her hair. The others watched as the heartbreaking scene took place. Fiskerton was even crying in the corner holding a handkerchief.
"When they finally got the stone away from me, I only had one emotion left, pain." Zendaya said her voice wavering slightly. "For years, that was all I felt. It was absolute hell, I just wanted to die." She looked around at all the people in the room. "But slowly over the course of about 1,000 years I gained back nearly all emotions."
"Nearly all?" questioned Zak. "What are you missing?"
"The feeling of being at peace" she told him.
"That is the only feeling I have never been able to recover" she told them. Her head dropped down and they could all tell the one thing she wanted to do most in the world was cry.