Harken

Chapter 5

Nekrah inhaled slowly, tasting the emerald smoke, then sent it spiralling into the atmosphere as a ring. He was thinking. Harken may have been 'born' from a part of him, but the boy was different. He, the supreme religious ruler, wasn't able to deduce a persons character or intentions just by their eyes or their past by the strands of hair on their head. That part scared him, made him feel inferior and good-for-nothing. But he wasn't a wannabe prophet: he was a god. And he wasn't going to let the boy see through him, no. The cigar dropped to the table and he summoned Jainko. "I need you to enter his dreams", he said. She smiled back.
******
The misty fog swirled around him, hiding him from the grimness all around. Harken was in a graveyard, standing between rows of mossy marble that had succumbed to bitter dullness. He ran his fingers along the carved names, felt the dead lamenting their own passing and their eyes watching the flowers wither. He ignored her; he knew she wasn't safe. She stood there, glimmering in a patch of sunlight, her yellow robes floating around her. And yet she wore the face of a demon and raised her eyes to meet his. "How are you enjoying all this?", she mused and Jainko took a step towards him. Harken didn't reply. "Are you finding it fun? Your powers and all that attention everyone's giving you", the sarcasm dripped venomously from her words, "were you planning on meeting the boy, or killing him?". She smiled wide, beckoning him to follow her. He didn't want to but his feet moved. "You must be Jainko, I've seen your picture".
She kept walking but she nodded in response. They walked for what felt like an hour, but was only a few minutes, time dragging them along like a plague doctor and his cart of dead bodies. The lake glistened before them: it's calmly lulling navy waves retreated to reveal spindly skeletons and rusted metal plaques. This was a place where many died but were easily forgotten. Jainko stretched her arm out towards the swirling water and called, "Liking it dear?". Harken stayed silent, she wanted him to speak. "She fits right in!", Jainko raised her head and laughed. The joy bounced around the surrounding darkness uncomfortably. Then he saw her: Promise floated gently on the surface, her body bruised a sickly purple and her eyes swollen shut. Blood leaked from the corner of her gaping mouth, tumbling down onto the raw scratches on her neck. She looked like she'd never been alive. At all. Harken sighed softly. "I forgot how destructive people can be when they put their mind to it, notably myself Jainko". "Well, you are wanted by all the island", the flouncy false laugh returned, "but what do you really want? Fame? Power? Women? There's so much you could have and so little you couldn't. Why..." she was interrupted by the male turning. He looked towards the lake now, and began to walk. Slowly, entering the water until it's freezing waters reached his knees and the scum simmering on its surface began to cling to him. Until the blood from the corpse began to mingle with what surrounded him and he could touch its grainy, squishy skin. Until he was able to use the necklace around its neck, a small pentagram, to carve into the flesh of its hand his name and what he stood for: Harken, freedom. Jainko stared wide eyed, disturbed by this all. "It's just a dream." He mused, "Nothings real". He threw the pendant at her and she screamed.
******
The satin pillows around her were no comfort, but Jainko clutched them to her chest hoping they might. They didn't. They couldn't. She hadn't even begun to believe that Harken could do that. Was he taking advantage of the dream or would he do that to a real body? Her real body? Nekrah had sent her on a mission she couldn't complete; she would die before she did anything that could harm Harken, even just a cut meant nothing. It was hopeless and yet she knew that she would have to try again right until the end.
Nekrah would make her.