Beginnings

If you've read Aftermath, you know what happens with the axe. If you haven't read Aftermath, I highly suggest it.

It took a really long time to get this out of Una and then he kept wandering off the the plot with his ramblings, which I included some of in here. Some was where he'd start talking and go off on this tangent that lasted like an hour. The ramblings, I think, well portray how much he didn't want to talk about what happened.

Read, Review and Enjoy.






Vera no doubt knows every detail about that night, but I have stubbornly refused to speak to even her about it. I have told her about my rape and the tortures and troubles I faced in years afterwards but I have never spoke to her about how I felt.

Where Mother is light, she is also darkness. In her light her children shine, in her darkness, we grow. Anger and hatred and malice are all a part of Mother but that was the first time I called on the darkness; very possibly, it was also the last.

Vera was right, when she said that I was a child of the night, a balance to her being a child of the day. She kept a very close eye on me during those first few years and rarely let me out at night. I had experienced the warmth of the day.

Truth be told that night was the start of my independence, it was the beginning of my healing and an ending to my childhood.

“That will help you be coy, go. Say. Hello.”

Erit said these words without emotion in his voice and while he stood between myself and my abusers. The doors to Vera’s temple were behind me and even though I knew the choice was mine, at the same time I understood that I had no choice. These men, I thought to myself, these animals, would continue to hurt more boys the way they hurt me. Something had to be done and I, I would stand in judgement.

I pressed my lips together and gave a small nod. I say that I had to do it, because Erit was there. Anyone who knows me, and even myself at that age, knew that Erit was no match for the brute strength I could call upon. I tried to meet their eyes and came only to look at their feet.

No victim should ever have to face their abuser, if it were up to me, heh, and it was, men like those standing before me would meet a terrifying demise. Vera’s and my discussion about the underworld very quickly led to the idea that rapists must be… destroyed.

It was through my own careful manipulation that the punishment for child rapists appeared. The man is chained, for it almost always is a man, to trees and is tortured. As he nears death a healer tends his wounds, a healer with power. The process is repeated many times, the idea that one would be tortured for days on end without the release of death can do wonders for scaring off molesters.

Hmm? Where was I?

Oh yes.

This punishment arose because when I managed to meet the eyes of the elder of my abusers, that is exactly what went through my head. Him screaming and begging for his life. This thought got me through the afternoon.

“Greetings and welcome to Vera’s temple.”

They both leered at me and I looked down again. To which Erit began talking, his words went right over my head, I hardly paid any mind to them. When the traders came towards us, I noticed how the older one seemed to hobble. How the younger was afflicted by some sort of back problem that made it almost impossible for him to bend without pain.

Mother can have certain affects on the living, but she -at least to my knowledge- relies heavily on her children to use their powers to do her bidding. Then, our instincts were driven by Mother, before power got in the way and we were left in sudden silence one day. The day the silence began, Vera and I started looking for the culprits. It took us ten thousand years to find the one responsible for delivering power to the people and by the time we found him, he was already plotting to take it back.

Ayato. That boy’s affects on the world have always echoed down through time. He smiles at someone in a market and that person goes on to be a great hero, talking about this angel who delivered the message of hope and peace. But then, being Mother’s counter part, Ayato would be capable of doing such things. Before I existed, before Vera existed, Ayato was the one who tended to mother and kept the people in line. Even then they whispered about him, behind their hands at full noon. Called him a devil in the worst places, a judge in most.

Vera had told me about this judge who seemed to sweep through villages, an unseen force that destroyed sinners and reverted everyone back to their connection with Mother. I had always wondered where that judge was, when it came to these men.

When I finally found my balls and asked Ayato about it, all he did was smile, ever so slightly and say, “judgement is what we make of it.”

Which has led me to believe that he delivered the men to my hands so that I could take whatever price I needed from their flesh. What kind of a man would I have become, if I hadn’t had that chance to kill, if I hadn’t taken my own fate and my own protection into my hands? If the world is Mother, then Ayato is Father, making us learn difficult lessons, but necessary ones.

I wonder if that would make Harella-shey a patricidal daughter…

Erit arranged for us to meet the men in the far corner of the garden, right against the wall and in a little alcove that could not be seen from the temple itself. Those who did not want to be found went to the alcove and succeeded it to the next person to show up, if anyone did show up. Vera called it the time out area, where her people went when they needed to be left alone.

Directly after this conversation Erit retrieved several freshly sharpened axes from the wood cutters, iron items that were new and fancy. He promised to either bring them back or replace them.

Those damned things took me four years to replace.

The axes were hidden amongst the bushes and hedges in the alcove. Wood was delivered for the little fire pit and Erit brought blankets and set everything up as if it were a lover’s retreat. Then we went to dinner with Vera and pretended that we were up to nothing at all. I highly doubt that Vera didn’t suspect something, but it is entirely possible that instead of us getting into trouble, she thought we were going to rendezvous with the traders for a little dirty fun.

After dinner and after the sun had set, Erit and I went out to the little alcove and started a fire. We sat in wait and it was sometime later that the traders arrived. Instantly I felt something prickling up my spine, felt dirty even being around them. This feeling, I’ve come to realise, was my own ability to read people. I fed the ability and learned how to tell the good from the evil, the sinners from those who I can deal with.

The older one looked to the younger one and smirked before he moved to the stone wall that lined two walls of the alcove. The younger one pressed a hand onto the stone wall and leered at me.

“So,” the younger one said, though he still looked older than Erit, “you are a young sexual demon, your friend says?” My eyes were purple, my hair blonde and I had to remind myself that the way I looked, the way I moved, was strange and demonic to other people, “have you ever been satisfied by another man?”

“Only once,” I lied, “one man, one time.”

“Then he ate his soul,” Erit said quickly, “the village hunted him down and brought him here all in chains and Vera took him on. To. Pleasure her visitors.”

“The things I would like to do to you.”

The world wobbled. I swear that I heard a voice at the back of my mind, telling me to calm down, to breath now before I passed out. I swallowed hard and concentrated on the place where I was and the people who surrounded me. With no outlet, I directed my emotion towards the stone wall. Stone can absorb emotion, power and was versatile. I directed my emotion towards the stone because I did not want what happened to the tree to happen to any other living plant.

As I did this, the stone very curiously asked what I would like it to do. The world was floating around me by then, I don’t recall what kind of a conversation was happening between the men who stood around me while I sat on the ground atop a blanket. Darkness flowed out of the night and into the little alcove, dimming the light that the fire gave off. This darkness I took into myself and pushed into the stone as easily as I breathed out.

“Eat them.” I said.

I hardly expected the stone to do anything, I must say that right away. Vera and I had discovered that I was able to drain the life force of plants and even animals and we suspected that I could heal myself with this life force. I have never had the need to try this, preferring to use time to heal my wounds instead of taking the life of innocent beings.

My powers allowed me to lift things even.

We never suspected that I could tell nature how to act.

I recall Erit’s face, I recall the startled yelp as the older one fell into the stone and disappeared, all but his feet. The stone slowly sucked in the feet over the course of the night. When Erit and I would return in the morning to clean up, the feet would be gone. The younger one shouted the older one’s name and tried to run to him, only to find himself attached by his right hand to the stone wall.

I leapt up at the older one’s disappearance and turned to the younger one. Horrified I watched as the younger one was slowly pulled towards the wall. In an instant I knew what I had to do. I retrieved the axe from behind the hedge and attempted to cut the younger one’s arm by the wrist. My aim was not good then and I missed. The stone immediately sucked in the axe, handle and all. Erit immediately passed me the second axe, having retrieved it from some bushes.

The younger one was in the stone up to his elbow and my aim was true. Sharp new axe and my brute strength, the axe cut through the elbow as easily as a warm knife through butter. The axe slid past the elbow and the head buried itself in the wall, leaving the handle sticking out.

In pain, the younger trader stumbled and hit the wall. Even to this day I have to wonder how stupid he actually was. Perhaps the older one was the brains of the outfit, for one would think that if a wall started eating a person, the last place the person should lean is on the wall that just tried to eat the person.

He was gone in an instant, a streak of blood the only indication that he had ever existed.

“By Mother,” I squeaked out, looking to Erit for help.

It was one of the few times that I saw Erit disgruntled. The man had to take a moment to compose himself, to stop being a frightened man and to be the Erit I knew and loved. He let out his breath slowly and looked from the bloody streak, to the feet that were still visible on the other wall.

“Collect the blankets,” he said quietly, kicking dirt onto the fire, “we will go to bed. If anyone asks, we spent the night in the back gardens with the traders, they got drunk and went back to their tents. No idea what happened to them.” Erit paused and cleared his throat, “In the morning, we will come back and clean up the mess.”

“We have to buy two axes,” I complained bitterly.

Erit snorted, then laughed, “those damned things are expensive. I will call in a few debts and collect some money, but you have to pay me back. Otherwise, I won’t be able to eat for several years.”

“Of course,” I said.

“And we never. Ever. Tell Vera about this. Ever.”


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