Chapter 10: Unveiling

Finding her way, while leaning onto a rough wooden staff, bent and branched at the head, she arrived at Heimdall's rock, which stood before the slope running into the valley of the fallen.

Her eyes were melancholic and the gaze was deep and distant, clouded by fogs of bitterness, heralded by the mist that gathered in her eyes, threatening to pour.

She had an unusual gait for an old woman even though she had attempted severally to act more advanced in age than her strides suggested most of the time. Coming down the rock, she went down and safely met the large oak, and without searching, she gently made her way forward until she met the large vacuum which plunged deep into her heart, raising questions that she could not take at a go.

Meanwhile, that moment, Mary in a bid to make up for the wrongs that Henrietta had met because of her, chose to share every tale of joy or woe that ever came her way.

"It was a night like this, Lucian. Who has disturbed your sleep," she knelt down, rubbing the black sand against her palm.

"Henrietta, that wasn't the saddest part.

You know we both thought it was over when he was born. My treasure in the sky, conceived in the innocence of my heart...no. it was burning desire that covered the truth that stared back into my face. I can't say I didn't know, because the moment he butchered those people and drained them in a flash without a single drop on his body, I knew it could only be the devil himself.

But...but until I lost him, it didn't occur to me what had become of me," she looked at Henrietta and smiled.

Katharina was an unusual human being. My parents could quite get their hands around what the problem was but she was beautiful. A man once came one day while we were feeling the direction of the wind by the side of a river. He watched her dazzling under the touch of sunset, her golden hair dancing with the winds that went a bit gentle on her. The way he took her hand without acknowledging me was as though I was none existent. I admit, she and I were like clothes sown from different materials. She had the deep blue in her eyes, I had brown. Her thin pink lips was adorable even as a child. He looked into those eyes and muttered," and here's my goddess of beauty."

He didn't speak to me but I held onto his memory, engraving it into my mind that he became my obsession and very often, I found myself sitting out by that river, hoping to see him.

But Katharina was slow of speech. No, she hardly spoke. She often kept to herself in almost everything. And it was saddening when my parents began to ignore me and adored her more.

"It wasn't anything. If you can admit it to yourself, your were purely jealous of the girl.

But how's it that I heard not much about her since we met?"

"She woke up one day, kissed our parents and held their hands for awhile at the sitting room. I watched them from the door I was clinging to, having been separated from her. She moved into a separate bedroom a week after we met the man.

No one told me she was leaving home, and when she felt my presence, her mood turned sour in a second. She didn't look at me, and after she walked out of the door, my parents nudged me aside and holding hands, they went to their room and that was the last time."

"You mean they committed suicide on the same day she left?"

"They didn't just commit suicide, they killed one another holding a knife that each struck into the other's heart.

I never saw her again. I lost all family in one day."

Indifferent to her story, Henrietta sighed and gathered her legs on the bed.

And having felt it, Mary remembered the day that the child was lost. She had gotten up after a quick nap without any sign of him. And after several searching, she found and followed a footstep that led her to Heimdall's rock, below which she found a piece torn from the pants the child was wearing that day, and after searching for hours long, she returned to meet Henrietta in their tent, and announced it to her. She appeared sincerely worried and went out in search of him while she followed suit, but when her foot almost sunk into the mud that Henrietta had stepped into mistakenly. She observed the parallel markings on the sole of the footwear, exactly as the one that she followed earlier.

And with a deep sigh, she got up to leave, dragging her feet along but she didn't go to her chamber, she remembered Ivy.

"Hey, what are you doing here, you hag!"

Raising her hands, her walking stick fell away. 

Illuminating the sky, the moon danced slowly in the sky, as the valley went into deep sleep and the owl hooted nonstop. Bats flying around started gathering and swarming, and with a moan, she exclaimed with a hoax voice, " you are near."

Hearing that the patrol guard looked down and met the white substance sprayed in a defined line around the large hole, going on to connect to the other behind him," what on earth are you doing? And who the hell are you?"

"Language wolf, you shouldn't say hell."

Turning sharply at the aura of the new voice, he stood rooted on the spot, eyes shooting out and bulging out of their sockets with golden strands fastened against his skin and every hole on his head, feeding and after a short while, they disengaged from his body, pushed him down the hole and curled back into the long hair of a stunning woman in the old woman's clothes.

"What sweet reward this is.

You can come out now," she said, dusting her clothes," ewww! I won't spend so much as another day in these tatters."

"Good evening, Your Grace."

"So, being away for fifteen years have made you forget that the night is day to us?

That can pass. Where's he?"

" No sign of him for now but I have a friend who's going to help me in the search," he swallowed, with flashes of what had happened flooding him.

"The search? 

If he doesn't want to be found, you won't find him. I locked your both so that when he wakes, you may as well, but what's this about finding him."

"It's not about finding him, your Grace, it's about searching for him inside him... and for both of our sakes, I will advise you do not push him. He's in the full blood rage."

"Lucian lost his memory? No...no but the blood rage is a different matter, he must have lost someone dear to him before it can be released."

"Yes, and he did... and you are going to help me weaken him," he replied and struck her by the ribs, hands embedded between them," I believe you know what I'm holding right now, and what it could do to you. So you will listen and bind yourself to the oath."

"Ra, this isn't you... how could....no no."

"Come on, what are you afraid of? It's me, your ex-lover, high mistress. It's Vincent Dagama!"