Ritual

Chapter 2

Esmee moved in her sleep, and it startled me, but she wasn't awake. I let out a sigh of relief and held the painting with both of my hands. It was surprisingly heavy, and I lifted it high upwards to release it from the hook it was hanging on. It let loose, and I almost lost my balance as I stumbled backward from the weight.

I finally have it out, and I slowly laid it aside on the floor. When I looked back at the wall, my breath caught up in my throat. There was a safe, locked and heavy, and it had number pads on its lock mechanism. I felt a smile forming on my face, and I excitedly started to type in the numbers from mother's note.

After I did, I heard a latch from somewhere inside open, and the little door opened. I pulled it wide to see what was inside, and there was only a single book. The cover was very thick and was adorned with many different jewels. Krurian was wealthy for its prominence and abundance of jewels and crystals from our land, so I thought it was interesting.

It was also very dusty, I blew on it, and a cloud of dust was released into the air. I coughed heavily, and soon, Esmee was awoken, with a mix of an annoyed and surprised look on her face.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I glanced at her, and I glanced at the mysterious open safe and the mysterious book in my hands. "Nothing of importance," I said.

"What's that you're holding?" she asked.

I sighed. There's no point in hiding it from her. We're mother's children, after all, and for all, I know this was possibly meant for the two of us. I sat down next to her on her bed, and she looked confused and disoriented.

"Before mother died, on her death bed, she gave me something," I said and pulled out the note. "It was this, and it had the numbers 51075 written on it. I didn't know what it was for at first, but I found out that it was for that safe." I pointed to it. "It was hidden behind our painting, and... I found this book." I then realized that the book was written in a strange language that I couldn't quite understand. It seemed like something only magic users would understand.

"Oh, she gave you a book," she said, and she pulled something out from her neck, and I noticed she wore a new necklace, everything in blue and with a big, purple ball that contained a strange, red liquid that looked like blood. "She gave me this necklace."

I stared at the liquid. "What is that? Is that blood?" I asked.

She replied with a shrug of her shoulders.

I smiled at her, an assurance that as long as I'm alive, she'll be alright because I'm all she's got. I know she missed mother and father, and I couldn't make her strong if I wasn't, so for now, I had to play pretend for my little sister.

"So, are you going to read it?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I said, feeling the cover. "It seems incomprehensible."

I lifted the cover, just to see what was inside, and noticed that behind the cover, where there was a space, was a message written by mother. I felt my heart stop, and Esmee saw it too, and she came closer to me so she could read it properly.

"Alexios and Esmee," it says. "I could feel my life slipping away from me, and I don't know what it is, but the doctors could not understand what is happening to me. It is the most unbearable thought to think that I might leave you both behind. I don't want to. I don't want to go. I want to stay with you and keep you safe, but I can't. I hope you'll find the strength in you soon to go on without us. For the meantime."

I flipped the page because the message continued at the back. "I need you both to do something for me. I need you to bring me back to life after I die. The reason why I'm dying and you've become sterile is because of the hybrid's blood, a dangerous creature that my mother and father hunted for and used to end the Great Death of Krurian. Everyone ingested its blood. And it was poison. It was a curse, and it is now punishing the ones who have hunted the hybrids down and killed them for their blood. It is punishing our family. This book belonged to my mother, and somewhere in this book, though I do not believe it, is a way to bring the dead back to life. And that is all I want, to be with the both of you again. Do it for me."

The message left me and Esmee dumbfounded, and we were left looking at each other as if the answers were in our eyes. The idea of bringing the dead back to life seemed baffling, and there were lots of things to process from what I just read. I remembered mother's story from the Great Death of Krurian, and how her king father and queen mother hunted these hybrids outside the kingdom walls and drank their blood for resistance against the disease, and even though it cured us, it cursed the ones who killed the hybrids, including us.

"I don't understand," Esmee said, and I couldn't agree more with her.

"Me, too," I said, and I closed the book. I don't know much about what to do yet, but it starts with this book, and I'm going to read it and find a way to bring mother back.