Malice Maze

Chapter 28
The Assassin

Roxy awoke in tremendous pain. Her whole body screamed out at her and she screamed herself awake. Pain could not even begin to describe the feeling that was tearing through her so violently she could hardly contain it. She reached a hand to her stomach and was surprised to come in contact with it much sooner than she usually did the flat athletic body. She glanced down at her stomach and was horrified to see the swell there, the apparent pregnancy that should not have been. She screamed again and glanced around her. Nine months could not have passed, she could not have slept for nine months on the floor of a cave. Yet, she had. Around her the rotting bodies of the Famor still littered about, the one who had impregnated her still on the ground, his knife sticking out from his skull. Except there was something wrong with the scene. There was no signs of struggled anymore, the blood that had fled all of their bodies had been drained. Could it have been washed away by the raising of the waters that flowed through? No, not so completely.

Her wrist, still torn to shreds, was dried of all blood. Her body contained no blood, the baby was filled with it. The baby had fed off of her blood and the blood her wrist came in contact with. Her baby was killing her and trying to now tear his way from her body to finish the job. All of the horror she had learned about Famor and the babies who had not been produced in the correct fashion were coming to fruition. She was going to die because she had killed the father of her baby.

Roxy’s eyes widened and the horror filled her. She was alive long enough to incubate and feel the rip-roaring pain that would shoot through her as she gave birth. Would she die swiftly or would she watch her baby destroy her? A baby destined to die the same way all babies died from the Famor when they had gone a little crazy. Roxy closed her eyes and felt the first tearing of her lining, the first destruction of her stomach, and God, or Dralnu, or someone was merciful. She found herself blacking out again. Her death came in the blackness of it all, a baby emerging from her and looking up around the caverns, a baby already smarter and more confident. From the assassin had been born the ultimate in darkness. With Roxy’s death life was now threatened.