Reckless

Chapter 2 Part 2

Note: This is not new content. This has been edited for easier reading. New content will be posted on Tuesday. 

Character POV: Roxanne

I don't know how long I'm out before I gradually come to. The sun is beginning to break over the horizon, casting dazzling diamonds across the surface of the lake that lies directly in front of me. I glance around, the air burning my airway as it goes down. I see the rolling hills, I see the stones with the swirls of my home language on them. I remember playing by the shores of this lake when I was a little girl with my sister Boudicca. I remember her bright red hair, the smile on her face as she talked about the great adventures she wanted to have in the future. But this isn't where I was last night. I was closer to London than to this lake.

I move then, trying to sit up, and a jolt of pain shoots through me that has me crying out and then quickly pressing my and to my mouth to quiet the sound for fear that someone might hear and finish the job that was started last night. I glance down, seeing my leg wrapped in strips of clean white cloth, the blood seeping through. A similar bandage is on both of my wrists, where the rope dug into my flesh. Besides my bandaged leg, the rest of my body is covered in a layer of furs to keep my warm.

"Morning," comes the voice, the same low female voice I remember from the night before, coming from the left of me. I glance over to her, seeing her taking a liquid out of a cauldron with a ladle and placing it in a wooden cup. She hands it over to me gently, and I take it slowly, unsure about whether or not I can trust her. Her violet eyes land on me as she nods towards the cup. "It'll soothe your throat. And, according to my old Druid Witch friends, it should prompt your magic's natural healing ability. So, I suggest you drink it. Otherwise you risk infection or shock killing you." I catch the glimpse of the slumbering coals the cauldron is seated on, and she glances between it and I as she says, "I was afraid of how seeing fire would affect you. So, I thought I would keep you warm with furs and try this method of making the tea. You have been through enough." She grows quiet as I see the fire in her eyes, the pure hatred surfacing in her soul. I do not know why she cares so much, and I am not sure I want to ask that question.

I drink the sludge, grimacing against the taste, but the moment it touches my tongue, I know that she is right. This mixture was one of the potions taught to me as a child by the local witch, something to heal any grievous wound. The moment I have downed most of it, I feel my throat begin to loosen up and the throbbing in my wrists diminish. I reach up and carefully unwrap one wrist, to find that it has healed. I try moving my leg, but I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming still. She reaches out, putting an arm behind me and easing me back to the ground as she hisses, "It is not an instant cure. And, even when it heals, you will probably have a permanent limp and will have a scar that no magic will be able to erase. But you will be alive and you will still have your leg, so I think it is important to keep that in mind before you get all upset."

She is right. But it will take me some time to learn how to master this new body, this new impairment in my battle training. It will throw me off balance initially, and that is something I will have to be mindful of going forward. Once I am settled back down on the ground again, I see the dark stains on her hands. "Who are you?" I ask, and then, after a beat when I have figured out what caused that stain on her hands, I come up with a follow-up. "What happened to the village?" I ask her, recalling how they all cheered when he dragged me away, calling for me to be burned at the stake when I refused his marriage proposal, desperate to believe that I was this evil bitch because I was different and upset the fragile order of their small-minded society.

The vampire woman looks up at me then, smirking in genuine as she says, "My name is Ariadne, one of the three original vampires, a Queen of the Vampires." I instantly still, this name having been driven into me as being the main enemy who I was to kill immediately upon meeting her. She smiles then, leaning back against a tree stump as she says, "Ah. I see you have heard of me, and all great things I am sure." She winks, relishing in her bad, insane reputation. Ariadne holds up her hands and says, "Based on what you know, this probably will not come as much of a surprise. I killed them all, even their children. When you teach kids to hate, it's just too much work to retrain their little brains." She shrugs it off, like she did not just admit to killing kids because it was too hard to teach them to be good.