“How did I get out here?”

Trajan’s eyes lock with Eva’s. He looks every bit terrified.

It was the beginning of Trajan’s madness and the end of Aramei’s life.

From that year on, Aramei only grew worse. The drinking of Trajan’s blood in order to sustain her consumed them. Over time, it became every day, sometimes twice a day, but no matter how much or how often she drank, it would never make her better for long and nothing could reverse the consequences of her bond. Within six years, she did not know herself anymore, not even briefly. The only thing the blood would do was keep her body alive, but her mind was too far gone to bring it back. And the only thing that her mind seemed to remember as though that one small part of her life had been somehow trapped in the depths of her subconscious was her need to bear him a child. She could call him by his name in their native tongue, but it had only been to call him to her when she felt her body could conceive.

Throughout the remaining two hundred years of Aramei’s immortal life, Trajan never allowed himself to believe that when she spoke his name it was only for this purpose and that she had forgotten him.

He knew it to be true, but he would die before he ever admitted it to himself.

Time and Space is pushing me through it again. But this time it’s different. I see everything of the rest of Aramei’s life all the way up to the day I saw her myself for the first time in the cave, but it all flashes by so quickly. I’m falling fast and hard into some unknown place because I know that it’s not back in the cabin. I try to scream out a name, any name, but when my mouth opens I have no voice. It feels like my limbs are detached from my body, that I’m just a particle of dust being hurled through the ether. Everything is so loud, yet at the same time, I hear nothing. I see faces and their lips moving, but like my own, nothing comes from them.

And then my body is plunged into infinite darkness.

Is this Hell? Have I died and gone to Hell?

The air echoes all around me violently as if I’m falling through a black hole. I try to see upward into the heavens, to find the top of the tunnel, but I’m too far inside of it.

And then a sort of peace and calm overcomes me.

I shut my eyes and let my head fall back to feel the wind on my face. I’m ready to accept death because it’s so lulling, so beautiful.

Everything stops.

I open my eyes carefully, expecting to see…I don’t know.

And as my eyes creep open the rest of the way and my surroundings becomes clearer, I see that I am in no place I have ever imagined before.

Chapter 27

Somewhere Unknown – Present Day?

I LOOK DOWN AT my hands, confused by how I can even see them; I’ve never been able to actually see myself in Aramei’s mind before. My hands are filthy and bruised and fouled by tiny cuts. I’m clad in a tattered green dress which covers my arms to my wrists and my legs to my ankles and I see that my feet are bare. My hair is loose and falls messily about my face, which hurts tremendously just under my eye. I reach up to touch the bone and wince.

There is small window out ahead; just a hole in the rock with no glass or shutters or anything that might make it look modern or familiar.

Slowly, I walk towards the window and the torch blazing high on the stone wall reveals more of the space. Everything is made of stone: the walls, the floor, the twisting, spiraling steps that descend down into cold darkness behind me and even the scaling roof that towers above.

There’s something foul on the air. I can only describe it as the smell of death because I’ve never smelled something so horrible and death first comes to mind.

I stop at the window and cautiously lean forward to peer outside, afraid of what I might see. My breath hitches in my lungs when I see the charred landscape which stretches farther than I can see in every direction. I must be more than one thousand feet over the land. I can see a giant river snaking through the black hills far off in the distance, and down below, nestled amid the rolling black hills I spot tiny dots of orange firelight as though burning inside small cottages.

This isn’t right. Nothing about this place feels like a part of anyone’s past. It doesn’t seem to me like any real place that ever could have existed. It doesn’t appear real, yet it feels absolutely real as I stand here as a part of it.

I walk backwards away from the view with my hands pressed against my chest, my head shaking side to side as if continuously telling myself “No” over and over again. No, this is a dream; this can’t be real….

Suddenly I hear a violent scream echo through the stone stairwell. My body jerks around and my ears pop, amplifying the scream even more. The voice screams out again; blood-curdling and desperate. I’m afraid at first and can’t move, but then I begin to walk towards it. It’s coming from the floor above me. I stop at the foot of the stairs and gaze up, but can see nothing around the wall as the stairs spiral around and upward into the sky. I wonder how much higher this tower can reach.

The screams just get louder as I ascend the steps, funneling down into my ears and causing my heart to beat violently inside my chest. Though the air is cold and my feet are frozen to the bone, sweat beads off my forehead relentlessly, drenching my hair. A shadow moves along the wall and I freeze in my steps until I see that the shadow follows suit and realize that it’s my own. Another blazing torch is mounted on the wall and the heat burning off it only offers my body more discomfort. When I make it to the next floor, I see an enormous wooden door set in the wall straight ahead. There are no more stairs leading upward so I know this is the highest point in the tower.

I feel my heart thrashing against my ribs, trying to burst out as I approach the giant door. A fiery torch burns on each side of it.

A voice resonates from inside and becomes louder as the door is pushed open and a tall, brooding figure steps out before me.

I freeze in my spot in the wide open. There’s no where I can run except down, but it’s already too late. I wouldn’t have time to make it to the stairs before I’m seen.

The man walks toward me and my heart falls right down into my knees. All of the saliva evaporates from my mouth instantly. When he is within ten feet of me, I feel like I should be certain that I’m about to die, but instead I’m not even sure that he sees me.

He stops within three feet and looks around curiously as though he senses something odd, like when someone feels there are eyes watching them, hidden in the shadows.

I can’t breathe.

And then he looks directly at me, but I sense that he’s seeing through me instead. His black hair is buzzed short and a long, braided goatee dangles from his chin. He is dressed in strange leather-like attire: long, split coat like Trajan always wore, black leather pants and tall boots with silver buckles around the shins. Black silk shirt with a crisscrossing tie that holds each side together. His eyes are fiery red and orange, just like a flame. His cheekbones are strong and high making his eyes appear tightened and almond-shaped.

He sniffs the air around my head and a forked tongue snakes out of his mouth. I yelp, thrusting my hand over my mouth, but he doesn’t hear me.

And then he walks right through me, taking the breath right out of my lungs. I don’t move for what seems like forever, until finally I gather my composure and make my way to the door. Placing my palm against the wood, I take a deep breath before pushing it open.

Aramei is looking directly at me as she dangles by her wrists from shackles mounted high enough on the wall that her feet barely touch the floor.

“Adria….”

My stomach wrenches so violently that it crushes my insides into a ball. My mouth is hung open, my eyes wide and terrified and confused.

I dash across the giant circular stone room to get to her.

She has been beaten and tortured; her face is heavily bruised, her thin white gown is covered in blood and blackness like soot from a fireplace. I reach out intent on touching her, just to see first if she’s even real, but my hands stop just inches from her waist. Her arms are stretched high above her head. Her long hair is wild like strips of dry straw and soiled with filth and muck.

“Aramei…I-I….”

I can’t even begin to understand the meaning of conversation or inquiry. I feel like I need to wake up. Any second now I should wake up. But my heart tells me this isn’t a dream. I’m really here and she is really there, speaking to me.

She’s actually speaking to me….

“I’ve waited for so long,” she says. Her tears are choking her into submission, streaming from her eyes in a display of suffering and absolute relief. “I’ve waited for you for two hundred years.”

I can’t hold my own tears back; they stream down my face.

“You know me?” I say, choking the words through my sobbing. “How can…What is this place?”

So many questions. I can’t decide which is more important and then a fragment of my rational mind sears into my awareness. I look up at her shackles again and immediately know that I need to help her down.

“Where’s the key?” I say desperately, my head jerking around in every direction looking for any sign of it.

“No, Adria…listen to me….”

I stop and look up at her.

“There’s nothing you can do for me here,” she says.

Two tiny droplets of blood fall in slow-motion from the end of her chin. For a moment, I’m mesmerized by how they fall, so poetically and quiet.

“You can’t stay here long,” she says pleadingly, snapping me back into her voice. “Adria, you have to leave this place.”

“But…I-I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.” I feel like I might die with the weight of all these questions and the uncertainties crushing my chest and my brain.

“You know what you have to do,” she says softly and I just stand here, staring up at her.

“I’m getting you down.”

“No!” she shouts, thrashing her hands above her making the chains resonate an ominous racket through the room.

The severity of her voice stops me cold.

“You have to free me,” she says so desperately. “I don’t want to be trapped… to feel the pain anymore.”

And before I have a chance to protest, the door bursts open and the strange man from before storms back inside. I push myself against the nearest wall, pressing my fingertips into the grooves of the stone, clutching it with so much force that it hurts.

He still doesn’t see me, but he stops once again like he did outside the room, because he senses that something is amiss.

Aramei screams out to me, “You can’t stay here! Hurry!” and the man grins a wicked grin and slithers his way towards her.

In the moment she cries out at him and a set of giant black porous wings emerge from his back, I am sucked from this strange place and find myself dangling from the balcony in the cabin by Eva’s hand.

The realization of my predicament snaps me into the moment and I panic. “Oh my God! Eva! Don’t let me fall!” I grip her wrist, struggling to stay in her grasp until finally she pulls me back over the railing and we both land hard on the wooden floor.