7 Chapter 7: Nightmare

The woods shadowed her on a moonlit night amidst a curtain of rain. Each drop crimson, the color of newly shed blood. Lightning faded without thunder creating a noiseless barrage. She had a sweat taste in her mouth as she took her first breath, and oh how great the air tasted on her tongue.

The rain was warm to the skin as she stood basking in the breeze. She held her hand up, the dark tattoos like oily stains on her wrist. As she collected the rain it turned black in her hands, then cooled until it felt like ice. She let it slip between her fingers, watching it sink into the earth.

Voices echoed from around her, but always stayed out of sight. Foot steps caught her attention with each passing second. a song played in the wind, a hauntingly beautiful melody.

"What is my name?" She asked herself, she couldn't remember anything.

The whispers in the trees and through the thickets answered in one voice, and the name had power. It didn't feel right, the word felt heavy to say.

"No that can't be right, " she recollected and turned away from the voices who continued to speak the name over and over again. They spoke it louder and clearer, each time it sounded wrong.

As she walked away, she could here them weeping as she abandoned them. The sound stunned her, making her feel ashamed for leaving them.

The rain intensified until she walked into a clearing. A body laid next to a tree, at first she didn't recognize it. The frail thing was emaciated, her hair matted and missing patches from the scalp. The corpses eyes were cloudy but still green. She looked at her own corpse in horror.

She backed away impacting someone from behind. She turned quickly to find another woman glaring at her. Tall and broad with dark grey skin and tattoos covering her naked body. Her face displaying only malice and power that made the very air toxic.

The creature looked at her with haunted eyes. Her hard face proud and stoic, terrible and beautiful. Not a single rain drop touched her skin, as if an invisible shroud had parted the heavens.

Rain walked away, each step sinking into the rotten earth. It was growing more slick as the storm seemed to grow. There was something terrifying about the silence, as if all things were drowned out by an act of nature that was seemingly unrelenting and impossible to comprehend. She felt that silence before back in the monastery, she felt it again now. Something looming in shadow and inescapable.

The woman smiled, it was the same smile the creature had back in the red wing. It was the same smile as the shadow from before. Rain wanted to scream. Either out of fear or defiance her cry pierced the silence ripping it apart from within.

The rain quickened, and the earth flooded under her feet. Rain realized she was about to drown in it and swam in the dark liquid desperate to get away. But yet she couldn't, hands like claws were clinging to her feet and pulling her down. She felt herself being dragged to the bottom of the Red Sea.

From the surface the woman's gaze never left her.

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It was then that Rain heard lightning in the distance for the first time, loud and thundering. She gasped for air, and found her eyes couldn't see anything. Her arms were freed and she pressed them against a bandage that had been wrapped around her eyes, she moved to tear it apart.

"Don't do that, keep still," a voice called out to her in alarm, it was the same foreign accent she vaguely recollected from before, "your eyes were in the sunlight too long, you have to let them heal."

She tried to speak but found her throat dry and it pained her to move her vocal chords.

"Maxine give her the beverage, she has some fight in her left I see."

Maxine? The name hit her like a bag of bricks.

A pair of soft hands touched her shoulder, and provided a chalice to her lips. As the moisture of the elixer touched her tongue she felt a surge of relief as she drank from the entire cup.

"Maxine?" She asked; her voice had a rasp but was returning.

"Her mark is growing faster than expected?" Maxine was talking to her partner.

"It'll settle once we get her to the sanctuary, but we'll have to move quickly."

"Where are we going? Maxine?" Rain asked still confused. She could tell by the sounds of crickets that night had fallen, and she felt a cloak covering her body.

"It's in the woods, but don't worry we'll get there before we're noticed." Maxine placed an object in her hand. Rain could tell it was the same emerald ring she had carried with her, her mother's keepsake.